Major college football conferences on Thursday announced the kickoff times and TV networks for hundreds of early-season games and a smattering of weeknight matchups throughout the fall.
The grand reveal was notable for what it did not include: as many Friday night Big Ten conference games on Fox as the network aired last season.
That constitutes a major change for the West Coast quartet, which carried a heavy burden within the Fox Friday package last season: They accounted for seven of the 18 broadcast slots, with UCLA, Washington and Oregon each appearing twice. In 2025, the Big Ten’s western members drew just three Friday night assignments.
All in all, Fox aired nine Big Ten conference games on Friday night last season.
This fall, only five are scheduled: Iowa at Rutgers, Rutgers at Washington, Nebraska at Minnesota, Northwestern at USC and Minnesota at Oregon.
“Each season is its own puzzle to piece together when it comes to the Friday night inventory, so we’ll evaluate the feedback and, as always, work towards a balanced schedule for the 2025 season,” Kerry Kenny, the conference’s chief operating officer who oversees media strategy, told the Hotline earlier this year as the schedule was being crafted.
The drop in Friday night inventory in the Big Ten this fall is likely due to:
— Avoiding weeks when Fox is showing MLB postseason games. Last year, Fox aired the Rutgers-USC matchup in the Coliseum at 8 p.m. Pacific, following Game 1 of the World Series. That situation won’t be repeated in 2024.
— The ripple effect of moving games to Friday night in seasons with 14 total weeks, instead of 13.
The extended season, which is based on the calendar, creates double byes for each team. As a result, many Saturdays in October and November have fairly light schedules. Moving a game to Friday simply exacerbates the problem for the Big Ten’s broadcast partners (Fox, CBS, NBC and the Big Ten Network) when arranging their Saturday lineups.
The Big 12 also has a handful of conference games scheduled for Friday nights, on both ESPN and the Fox networks.
Other notable items from the early-season kickoff reveal (all times Pacific):
— Utah’s visit to UCLA, the most intriguing season opener for the legacy Pac-12 schools, will kick at 8 p.m. on Fox, which typically airs one or two games each season in primetime on the West Coast.
— Washington opens the season with back-to-back 8 p.m. home games (against Colorado State and UC Davis). Both are on the Big Ten Network.
— Arizona and Arizona State are scheduled for non-conference games on TNT as part of the Big 12’s sub-licensing package through its media rights deal with ESPN and Fox.
— None of the West Coast schools in the Big Ten are currently scheduled for streaming-only games (Peacock).
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— Oregon’s trip to Penn State in late September drew the East Coast primetime slot on NBC (4:30 p.m. PT) and will be a White Out game for the Nittany Lions.
— Kickoff for the Apple Cup, with Washington visiting Washington State, has been set for 4:30 p.m. on CBS. (The Pac-12 released its TV package earlier this spring.)
— Two West Coast teams are scheduled for 9 a.m. games: Oregon at Northwestern on Sept. 13 (Fox) and UCLA at Michigan State on Oct. 11 (TBD). However, more could be added when the TV networks begin setting kickoff times for the remaining portion of the schedule. That process begins in the middle of September.
— The power conferences have six games on Black Friday, which now includes an NFL game on Amazon — the same number as last season.
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