Oklahoma-Michigan getting ‘Big Noon’ treatment from Fox in Week 2 rematch

A year after College GameDay and a 7:30 p.m. kickoff on ABC, Oklahoma and Michigan are getting the Big Noon treatment.

Fox announced Monday that the rematch of last year’s Week 2 game — a 24-13 Oklahoma win in Norman — will kick off at noon ET on Sept. 12 in Ann Arbor, almost certainly meaning Big Noon Kickoff is heading to The Big House.

Fox also announced it will air Ohio State vs. Michigan on Nov. 28 at noon — the rivalry’s now-established home in the Big Noon window — and that it has reclaimed the Big Ten Championship Game after buying the rights back from NBC, which held the game this year as part of its lone title game window in the seven-year deal. According to multiple reports, NBC had no choice but to sell to Fox — between $45 million and $55 million, well short of the $70 million NBC had been seeking from a streamer — because Fox’s majority ownership of the Big Ten Network gives it effective veto power over any sublicensing arrangement. Fox will now air the Big Ten Championship in five of the seven years covered by the current deal.

The broader scheduling picture depends on what Fox did in this year’s Big Ten TV draft. As Awful Announcing has detailed, Fox holds the first three picks as the conference’s primary rights holder, with CBS and NBC splitting the remaining six. Trades are permitted, and in 2024, Fox traded its third pick to NBC rather than choose between Ohio State-Oregon and Penn State-Ohio State. If Fox burned a top-three pick on Oklahoma-Michigan, as noted by Eleven Warriors’ Dan Hope, that opens up one of Ohio State’s games against Indiana or Oregon for CBS or NBC, though an Ohio State-Oregon night game looks unlikely given NBC is already committed to Notre Dame-Miami that evening.

NBC has been consistently on the short end of that draft process, and the network has expressed frustration to conference stakeholders about night game restrictions — including Ohio State and Michigan being able to veto night games after the first week of November — it claims it did not fully understand when signing on. Fox’s structural control over the rights means NBC and CBS routinely compete for whatever Fox passes on.  The top Big Ten matchups have remained few and far between for the conference’s secondary partners. Oklahoma-Michigan at noon on Fox in Week 2 is a reminder of why.