Friday Night Lights: Fox’s New College Football Broadcast Schedule

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In college football, it’s already spring. But first, The Athletic media reporter Andrew Marchand is here to break down Friday night’s newest feature.

Fridays on Fox

Weeknight network college football

This season, Fox will broadcast Friday prime-time Big 12, Big Ten and Mountain West games. While college football has been on Fridays for years, it’s typically been on ESPN and other cable channels.

After Fox did not renew the rights for WWE’s Friday Night Smackdown, this was largely anticipated. I brought in Andrew to answer a few questions on what this means for college football going forward.

Where do you predict the success of network Friday night games in Year 1?

It will be a success, but we need to define success appropriately. Big Noon, which Fox created a few years ago to make its top game kick off at noon on Saturdays, will receive the network’s No. 1 game of the week. This Friday TV window will still feature big-name teams — at least one each week. Despite not having the best game of the week, it figures to establish Fox as a destination for college football on Friday nights, and the Big Noon Kickoff pregame could be helped in its Saturday ratings fight with ESPN’s College GameDay. Viewers leave their TVs on from the night before and then often stay. It is a strong TV plan.

What’s the biggest competition? I’ve seen concerns about high school football and the start of the World Series.

When the Big Ten added Oregon and Washington, part of the calculus was Fox adding the league’s fourth-best game each Friday. So yes, people will still go to high school games, and the World Series — also on Fox — could move one matchup to FS1 this fall, but Fox Sports executives believe this will rate better than WWE’s Smackdown.

Overall, Fridays just got a little more fun.

Spring Has Sprung

Team storylines to follow

Spring ball has begun at many schools across the country. Here’s a look at the programs starting this week:

• Georgia: Georgia largely sat in the background during an offseason full of turnover on many teams’ coaching staffs and rosters. The Bulldogs’ Kirby Smart has all but officially taken over Nick Saban’s title as the greatest active coach in the sport, and the team returns starting QB Carson Beck. Georgia’s 2024 schedule isn’t very forgiving. The season opens in Atlanta against Clemson, and the Bulldogs hit the road for games against Kentucky and Alabama before hosting Auburn. That all makes for a new sense of urgency in Athens.

Other schools kicked off spring ball last week …

And elsewhere, some schools are even further into spring ball, with spring games starting this weekend. What’s the hurry, Mizzou?

Quick Snaps

What’s it like to take over a program late into the coaching carousel? For Bill O’Brien at Boston College, it’s 100 meetings and a lot of catching up.

Will the Trojans be underdogs to the Big Ten’s elite in Year 1? In a mailbag yesterday, Antonio Morales answered where USC might stack up.

In an open later published yesterday, the NAACP urged Black college athletes to “reconsider any potential decision” to attend a public university in Florida following last week’s news that the University of Florida is eliminating its Diversity and Inclusion office.

It’s March Madness season! And at Nebraska, the men’s and women’s teams are reaching new levels of success.

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(Top photo: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

2024-03-12 17:12:57
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