Big Noon Kickoff
Big Noon Kickoff is a college football studio show broadcast by Fox. Premiering on August 31, 2019, it serves as a pre-game show for Fox College Football, and in particular, Big Noon Saturday—the network's new weekly 12:00 p.m ET/9:00 a.m PT kickoff window.
| Big Noon Kickoff | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | College football pre-game show |
| Presented by | Rob Stone Reggie Bush Matt Leinart Brady Quinn Charles Woodson Tom Verducci Bruce Feldman Urban Meyer (2019-2020) |
| Opening theme | Fox CFB Theme |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 32 (as of December 19, 2020) |
| Production | |
| Production locations | Fox Network Center Los Angeles Various NCAA stadiums (for road shows) |
| Running time | 60 minutes (2019, November 7th, 2020 show) 120 minutes (special on-location broadcasts, 2019; full-time, 2020-present) |
| Production company | Fox Sports |
| Distributor | Fox Corporation |
| Release | |
| Original network | Fox FS1 (weekly simulcasts) |
| Picture format | 480i (SDTV), 480p upconverted (HDTV) (downconverted to letterboxed 4:3 on SDTV feed since 2009) |
| Original release | August 31, 2019 – present |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Fox College Football Fox NFL Sunday |
It is hosted by Rob Stone, and features former USC running back Reggie Bush, 2004 Heisman Trophy winner and former USC quarterback Matt Leinart, and former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn as panelists, with Bruce Feldman acting as Fox’s CFB insider, 1997 Heisman Trophy winner and former Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson joining on some weeks, and Tom Verducci doing feature reports. Former Utah, Florida, and Ohio State coach Urban Meyer was on the show for the first two seasons, but left to take the Jacksonville Jaguars head coaching job.
Throughout the fall, Big Noon Kickoff de facto pre-empts Weekend Marketplace, a little-known two-hour block of paid programming managed by Fox and aired in some of the network's markets.
History
In the 2013 season, Fox aired a college football pre-game show on its Fox Sports 1 channel, Fox College Saturday. The program was unable to compete with ESPN's popular and established College GameDay, with Fox only being able to sustain an average viewership of 70,000. The show was cancelled after a single season, and its role was supplanted by the Friday-night edition of Fox Sports Live.[1][2]
Fox introduced the Big Noon Saturday window for its college football coverage in the 2019 season; the network had aired occasional noon kickoffs during the season before (including, after having acquired the Big Ten's primary football rights in 2017, the Michigan–Ohio State rivalry),[3] and they were among Fox's top-viewed games in the 2018 season. Fox has positioned the timeslot as featuring one of its flagship games of the day.[4] Big Noon Kickoff was henceforth introduced as a pre-game show for the new window.[5][4]
Sports Illustrated described the show as being "built around" Urban Meyer (who retired as head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes at the end of the 2018 season, and had previously been an ESPN analyst). Meyer stated that he had prepared for the role by studying clips of Fox's NFL pre-game show Fox NFL Sunday, and Alex Rodriguez (who joined ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball in 2018),[6] as an example of another player-turned-television analyst. Fox executive producer Brad Zager explained that his presence was meant to help provide "intelligent dialogue" to the show.[4]
For the 2020 season, the program was expanded to two hours.[7] On November 4, 2020, for undisclosed reasons citing CDC and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services guidance, Fox announced that the November 7, 2020 edition of Big Noon Kickoff would not feature the program's usual panel, and that the program would be shortened to one hour. The guest panel was led by Fox NFL Kickoff host Charissa Thompson, joined by Fox NFL Sunday analysts Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long, and Emmanuel Acho from Fox Sports 1's Speak for Yourself.[8][9] On November 12, Meyer revealed that he had recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection[10]
Reception
The Big Lead felt that Big Noon Kickoff showed promise, but that the show's "formal" and "corporate" atmosphere (in comparison to the "casual fun" of College GameDay) led to most of the panelists seeming "stiff" on-air, and exacerbated their relative lack of broadcasting experience. Quinn was considered to be a stand-out among the panelists in its premiere broadcast, considering him the most "comfortable" on-air, and noting that both him and Meyer were well-versed at leveraging their past experience to provide insights.[11]
Viewership
During the first episode, the show garnered 838,000 viewers, which amounted to a 0.8 rating.[12] A special two-hour edition of Big Noon Kickoff leading into the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 30, 2019 received a series-high 1.6 overnight rating, beating College GameDay (which drew a 1.54 rating) in its time slot for the first time in the program's history.[13]
On-location broadcasts
Unlike College GameDay, Big Noon Kickoff does not regularly do remote broadcasts, preferring to originate from the Fox Sports studio in Los Angeles. However, the show has occasionally done on-location broadcasts, particularly as a lead-in to major games.[14] On November 23, 2019, the show scheduled an on-location edition from Columbus, Ohio for the Ohio State/Penn State rivalry game, which ESPN also chose as its site for College GameDay that week.[14]
| Date | Host | Visitor | Stadium | City | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 20, 2019 (Friday) | USC | 30 | #10 Utah | 23 | Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum | Los Angeles, CA | First Big Noon Kickoff road show, game on FS1, 9 ET/6 PT kickoff |
| October 12, 2019 | #11 Texas* | 27 | #6 Oklahoma | 34 | Cotton Bowl | Dallas, TX | Red River Rivalry, 2-hour show |
| October 26, 2019 | #3 Ohio State | 38 | #13 Wisconsin | 7 | Ohio Stadium | Columbus, OH | |
| November 23, 2019 | #2 Ohio State | 28 | #8 Penn State | 17 | Ohio State–Penn State rivalry, 2-hour show | ||
| November 30, 2019 | #13 Michigan | 27 | #1 Ohio State | 56 | Michigan Stadium | Ann Arbor, MI | The Game, 2-hour show (Also live from Michigan on November 29th, before Texas Tech-Texas) |
| December 7, 2019 | #8 Wisconsin* | 21 | #1 Ohio State | 34 | Lucas Oil Stadium | Indianapolis, IN | Big Ten Championship Game, 8:00 PM kickoff |
| October 24, 2020 | #5 Ohio State | 52 | Nebraska | 17 | Ohio Stadium | Columbus, OH | 2020 Big Ten season opener |
| November 21, 2020 | #3 Ohio State | 42 | #9 Indiana | 35 | |||
| December 19, 2020 | #4 Ohio State* | 22 | #15 Northwestern | 10 | Lucas Oil Stadium | Indianapolis, IN | Big Ten Championship Game |
Winners listed in BOLD
* denotes a neutral site host
Rankings from AP Poll and CFP Rankings (once released) released prior to game
References
- "Fox Sports 1 launching new Friday night college football pregame show". Awful Announcing. 2014-08-16. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
- "FS1 already giving up on Fox College Saturday?". Awful Announcing. 2014-06-02. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
- Landis, Bill (2017-05-16). "Ohio State vs. Michigan football rivalry to be televised on FOX during 2017 season". cleveland.com. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
- "Three keys for Urban Meyer, Fox's Big Noon Kickoff". SI.com. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
- "Watch: Trailer for FOX College Football Pregame show featuring Urban Meyer". Buckeyes Wire. 2019-08-14. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
- Finn, Chad. "Alex Rodriguez added to ESPN's 'Sunday Night Baseball' crew". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
- "Fox is expanding Big Noon Kickoff to two hours, despite no Big Ten games this fall". Awful Announcing. 2020-09-01. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
- "Fox Sports' 'Big Noon Kickoff' crew won't be at USC-Arizona State because of CDC guidelines". Los Angeles Times. 2020-11-05. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
- March, rew (2020-11-05). "Fox Sports' 'Big Noon Kickoff' crew out due to COVID-19 protocol". New York Post. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
- Kaufman, Joey. "Former Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer reveals he had coronavirus". USA Today. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
- "Big Noon Kickoff Filled With Ups and Downs in Regular Season Debut on Fox". The Big Lead. 2019-08-31. Retrieved 2019-09-16.
- "Big Noon Kickoff and College GameDay Week 1 Viewership". The Big Lead. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
- "Ohio State-Michigan matches ratings from last year, Big Noon Kickoff earns biggest audience ever". Awful Announcing. 2019-12-01. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
- "College GameDay's duel with Big Noon Kickoff from Columbus is most interesting chapter in Fox-ESPN rivalry in some time". Awful Announcing. 2019-11-22. Retrieved 2019-11-23.