Ohio State was interested in opening the season against Texas in prime time.
Fox Sports confirmed to Front Office Sports that there was discussion about moving the Buckeyes’ Week 1 game against the Longhorns to Sunday night. The game is currently scheduled for Aug. 30 at noon ET and Ohio State pitched the idea of playing the game on Aug. 31. Per Fox Sports’ Michael Mulvihill, the network was willing to push the game back but Texas wasn’t keen on the idea.
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Mulvihill revealed that Ohio State A.D. Ross Bjork approached Fox with the idea. Since 2019, Fox has been putting its top Big Ten or Big 12 game of the week at noon — labeling the window Big Noon — in a strategy to maximize viewership as the games would no longer be competing with the highest-profile matchups on other networks, which traditionally air later in the day. In this case, it would have been possible to move the game to Sunday because the matchup will take place before the NFL season kicks off.
Wednesday afternoon, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte said he didn’t want his team to have a short week ahead of the second game of the season.
It’s not news at this point to say there is a segment of Ohio State fans who are sick of their team playing at noon. Fox has relied heavily on the Buckeyes for its early window in recent years and Ohio State played seven of its 12 regular-season games at noon ET on the way to the national title in 2024.
Backlash has even gotten political. A member of the Ohio general assembly authored a bill designed to prevent state schools in Ohio from playing at noon outside of rivalry games that have typically kicked off at that time like Ohio State’s annual game vs. Michigan.
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The College Football Playoff rematch between the Buckeyes and Longhorns is the marquee game of Week 1 and is set to start a Saturday that also includes Alabama at Florida State and LSU at Clemson. Had the game been moved to Sunday, the game would be at the same time as Notre Dame’s trip to Miami. That game, on ABC, is currently a standalone game after Virginia Tech and South Carolina also play on Sunday.
The game is also the second straight year that Texas will play an early-season game against a Big Ten opponent at noon ET on Fox. A year ago, the Longhorns played at Michigan in Week 2 and took down the defending national champions 31-12.
