Will the Texas-Ohio State kick time be later than noon? Many people are wondering

Some of my favorite stories to cover are those that 99.1 percent are completely oblivious to, but the remaining 0.9 percent care about a lot.

The Texas-Ohio State kick time story is one of those stories. God bless college football.

The game shapes up as the crown jewel of the entire college football non-conference schedule. It's a rematch of a College Football Playoff semifinal. It's only the second time Bevo has stepped inside the Horseshoe. It pits the likely preseason No. 1 against the likely preseason No. 3. Somehow, I haven't mentioned Arch Manning, or Jeremiah Smith, or Caleb Downs, or Colin Simmons, or Julian Sayin yet.

Fox drew 9.19 million for Texas's Week 2 trip to Michigan last season -- the most-watched non-conference game of the year -- and it would be surprise if Longhorns-Buckeyes does not hit eight figures. In college football, it basically doesn't get more box office than "Arch Manning's QB1 debut against the defending national champions," and certainly not in Week 1.

And so, lots of interest has centered around when the game will be played. 

Earlier this month, Fox announced it will carry Texas-Ohio State and Michigan-Ohio State, but did not include a kick time for either game. The Game has aired annually at noon since 2007 and draws some of the highest regular-season ratings each year, so the question that it will kick any time later than 12 p.m. seems not even worth asking. 

But Texas-Ohio State? In the August heat? Is it possible? Maybe?

Further reporting around the announcement revealed a night game is not happening. At least not on Saturday.

Now, reporting from Chip Brown at Horns247 indicated Ohio State approached Texas with the option to push the game to Sunday night, Aug. 31. Texas declined. 

The motivation Longhorns' refusal to move the game is obvious. 

In all reality, Texas declined to give Ohio State a competitive advantage of playing under the lights, as was their right.

But the real interesting slice from this news pie is that Fox was willing to move a marquee game off its Big Noon window (or, as a reader points out, Ohio State approached Texas hoping both schools could then approach Fox to move the game a day). It was right around this time four years ago that Oklahoma it was "bitterly disappointed" that Fox scheduled its home date with Nebraska in Big Noon (11 a.m. local time) for that season. Oklahoma and Texas joined the SEC within two months of that. The timing was not a coincidence. That's not to say OU and Texas would've declined SEC invites if Fox played that Nebraska game at 7 p.m., but not bending to OU's one request to not play that one game at 11 a.m. was the final nail in the coffin for the Sooners.

And with Oklahoma and Texas no longer Fox properties, the Big Noon Burden has shifted even more heavily toward Ohio State. The Buckeyes played seven of their 12 regular season games at noon in 2024, including the last six. Fox aired all but one. With Michigan, Nebraska and Wisconsin down, Penn State playing a soft schedule, and Oregon and USC inconveniently located, Ohio State carried the burden of the Big Noon slate. 

And it's been a heavy burden.

An Ohio lawmaker has crafted a bill that would ban the Buckeyes from playing certain games at noon. A former Buckeye has threatened to boycott the game if it's at noon. It's rough out there.

There's no way Fox is not aware of the noise around Big Noon in general, and this game in particular. At the same time, as Don Draper once yelled, "That's what the money's for." Fox pays hundreds of million dollars for year in exchange for the right to schedule games as it sees fit. CBS also pays millions for the mid-afternoon window, as NBC does for prime time games. ABC has a killer lineup for Opening Weekend, with Syracuse vs. Tennessee at noon, Alabama at Florida State at 3:30 and LSU at Clemson in prime time on Saturday, and then Notre Dame at Miami on Sunday night. The most advantageous window for Fox is the noon one (sorry, Orange and Vols). And despite outcries of fans, people watch Big Noon. 

In 2024, ABC, in its first year of owning SEC rights, boasted the two most-watched windows, in prime time and 3:30 p.m. ET. Big Noon was third. The argument there can go either way. When Big Noon was No. 1, Fox could argue, See, it's the most-watched window. The audience has spoken. At No. 3, Fox can spin it as, ABC is so strong in the mid-afternoon and at night, we really have no other choice but to anchor our strategy around Big Noon. That was the original strategy when Fox first began the Big Noon branding in 2019, which clearly paid off. 

I realize this is a lot of words about the kick time of a single college football game. Fox will probably air the game at noon. Ohio State will (probably) not leave the Big Ten if and when that happens.

But the fact that we don't yet know the kick time, and that the network was apparently willing to trade Big Noon for Big Sunday Night, is news in and of itself... for at least 0.9 percent of us.