In recent years, the Ohio State Buckeyes football fans have become increasingly frustrated with the high volume of noon kickoffs their beloved Buckeyes team has been forced to play in. This has been very apparent this college football offseason, as well. Recently, one Ohio legislator has been hoping to fix that.
Ohio representative Tex Fischer has authored a bill prohibiting Ohio State from playing marquee games before 3:30 p.m. ET. A notable exception would be the Buckeyes’ annual rivalry game against the Michigan Wolverines, which has become a tradition to kick off at noon.
Ohio State Moving To Kill Noon Kickoffs with $10,000,000 Penalties In Play
Since Fox, one of the Big Ten’s television partners, introduced its “Big Noon Saturday” window ahead of the 2019 season, Ohio State has become a fixture of the earliest broadcast time of the day.
The Buckeyes have played 35 noon games since the start of the 2019 season, including seven last year on their way to their first national championship in a decade. Each Ohio State’s final six regular-season games began at noon, three of which came at home.
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The bill, as written, would prevent any game from being played in the state of Ohio if it meets both of the following criteria:
- One of the competing teams is a football team from a state university
- Both teams are ranked in the top 10 of the Associated Press poll of the FBS
Of note, only one of the Buckeyes’ 2024 games would have fallen under that criteria: The Nov. 23 meeting with Indiana, in which the Buckeyes and Hoosiers were ranked No. 2 and No. 5 in the AP Top 25, respectively. Ohio State played only one other top-10 team in the noon slot against No. 3 Penn State, though that was on the road.
If the bill becomes law, the ramifications for skirting it would be steep. The legislation states that if a game starts before 3:30 p.m., the Ohio attorney general will impose a fine of $10 million against either the host team’s conference (the Big Ten) or the television network, whichever one scheduled the earlier kickoff.
While noon kickoffs offer fans, particularly those watching from home, time to take in other college football games from across the country later in the day, they’re generally an annoyance for fans attending the game in person. They force them to wake up earlier in the morning and give them less time to tailgate.
When Fox debuted “Big Noon Saturday,” it was a way for the network to air a marquee matchup during what’s typically a barer early slate rather than competing against the SEC’s longstanding 3:30 p.m. game on CBS or ESPN’s primetime game (CBS now primarily airs a Big Ten game during the 3:30 p.m. slot as part of a new media rights deal with the conference).
Fox adds some pageantry to its noon kickoff by bringing the network’s pregame show, “Big Noon Kickoff,” to the game site, much like ESPN does with “College GameDay.”
KEEP READING: Analyst Josh Pate Slams ‘Big Noon Kickoff’ for ‘Ruining’ College Football’s Biggest Games
Unfortunately for Ohio State, the Big Ten’s most consistently successful program since “Big Noon Saturday” launched six years ago, that interest in putting the Buckeyes in marquee time slots for Fox often means receiving a disproportionate share of early start times.
The bill hasn’t yet appeared on the Ohio legislature database, but journalist D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster published its text Thursday.
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