With every passing day, the realization becomes just a little bit more real: Yep, they're actually going through with this.
The latest came on Wednesday, when Fox released its slate of Friday night games.
Like it did with Big Noon Saturday, Fox is trying to turn Friday nights into its own slice of the college football television landscape, putting stakes down in an overlooked and undervalued time slot, then reaping the windfall.
I would argue that Big Noon Saturday is not totally an unqualified success (a glut of 11 a.m. kickoffs was a driving factor in Oklahoma leaving the Big 12), but at an average of 6.739 million viewers last year, Big Noon has been the most-watched college football window for three seasons running.
"We're looking in Friday night to open up some new real estate that's just an easier competitive environment. Even if the games aren't always at the viewership level on Big Noon, they're going to be in such a friendly competitive window that I think we can actually do pretty well," Michael Mulvihill, Fox Sports's chief executive in charge of college football programming, said on Joel Klatt's podcast last week.
By Friday night, perhaps Mulvihill meant early Saturday morning. Or Friday rush hour, depending on where you live.
Setting aside the issue of playing games on a night historically reserved for high school football, Fox and the Big Ten (and the Big 12, to a lesser extent) are asking a lot of their players and their fans in pulling this off.
The schedule starts off reasonably well, with Arizona at Kansas State (a non-conference game, even though both are now Big 12 schools) and Illinois at Nebraska.
Then, on Sept. 27, Washington visits Rutgers, in a game that kicks at 5 p.m. Pacific time on a Friday.
The following week, Michigan State goes to Oregon, in a game that kicks at 9 p.m. in East Lansing. Oregon returns the favor on Oct. 18, with a 5 p.m. Pacific kick at Purdue.
That leads into the coup de grace on Oct. 25, Rutgers at USC in a Big Ten game that kicks off at 11 p.m. Eastern Time. It kicks off at 11 p.m. in the home market of the visiting team. The only options available to Rutgers fans (yes, they exist) to watch one of their marquee games of the season is to book a cross-country trip to Los Angeles or remain awake until, conservatively, 2:30 on a Friday night/Saturday morning.
The following week, Iowa visits UCLA in a 9 p.m. ET kick. Bruins home games aren't the draw they used to be, but how easy does it sound to drive from Westwood to Pasadena in Friday rush-hour traffic.
Friday night football is not a new phenomenon in college football, and neither are late night kicks. Only so many teams can play on Saturday late afternoons and in prime time -- or, at least, only so many teams can play at 3:30 and 7 ET on TV networks that people actually watch.
And it's not Fox's fault that the Big Ten decided to expand from coast to coast. (Okay, that may not be true; Fox provided the death blow to the Pac-12 by ponying up for Oregon and Washington.)
Either way, the games are happening, Rutgers and USC really are going to be in the same conference, and they had to play at some point.
But it seems the Big Ten and Fox have chosen to navigate its bicoastal reality is to lean all the way into it. You'd think if any game was slated for a Saturday afternoon kick for humane concerns, it'd be Rutgers-USC. But, apparently not.
Of the nine B1G Friday night games, five are cross-country affairs. Not only will Rutgers have to fly cross-country to play a conference game at near midnight body-clock time, they'll have to miss Thursday and Friday classes to do so.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.