The Big Ten turned heads with its billion dollar television deal that transformed the college football landscape. The deals with Fox, NBC, and CBS sought to bring a national spotlight to the conference thanks to coast-to-coast expansion. And it was praised as an NFL model that gave the Big Ten three nationally televised windows every single week on three different broadcast networks.
But as we get further into those deals, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that NBC and CBS are getting the short end of the scheduling stick.
This week represents a true rarity in the Big Ten calendar as NBC and CBS have the two biggest games in the conference. CBS will televise #1 Ohio State playing their first road game of the season at undefeated Washington. NBC gets the Penn State white out game in what should be the top game of the week between the third ranked Nittany Lions and #6 Oregon. Meanwhile, Fox will showcase USC visiting Illinois, who just got obliterated by Indiana.
It’s a rarity because of just how much control Fox has over Big Ten rights. Although many college football fans might see the three as equals, the relationship is actually much more lopsided towards Fox.
The annual “Big Ten draft” between the three networks is one of the most interesting sports media events of the year. The Athletic went inside the process earlier this year and detailed just how seriously each network takes the process. But Fox has a huge advantage over NBC and CBS when it comes to picking the best games.
Per the Big Ten’s current contract with the networks, which runs through 2029, Fox owns the top three picks and five of the first 11, while CBS and NBC each have three of the top 11 and rotate the No. 4 overall choice each year. The networks can make trades, which Fox and NBC executed last year for the No. 3 overall pick.
Why is the draft so heavily tilted towards Fox Sports? Well, it’s complicated.
Technically, the Big Ten Network controls media rights for the conference through 2032, not the conference itself. And Fox is a 60% majority owner of BTN, meaning Fox, in essence, dictates media rights for the conference.
At the onset of the new media deals in 2023, ESPN unearthed chaos inside the conference and its new partners as then-commissioner Kevin Warren did not actually have signed agreements to complete the contracts. Major details including restrictions on night games and whether rights to the conference championship game were actually going to NBC or CBS were left unresolved. In fact, Pete Thamel reported the schools owed $40 million back to Fox for that last snafu. But the bottom line is that Fox has majority control over what happens with Big Ten television rights.
What this also essentially meant was the latest round of Big Ten television deals were effectively sub-license arrangements, in which both the Big Ten Network and Fox essentially controlled the rights and worked with the Big Ten to sub-license them off. That meant a majority of the value of the deal had already been sold.
“It was a joint negotiation with the conference and Fox working together and doing deals with these other networks,” said an industry source. “They both needed each other to do the deals.”
That factor is key to understanding the issues Petitti faces. There are two new partners — NBC and CBS — attempting to work out their longform deals. There’s a familiar partner, Fox, that’s riding shotgun on this bumpy ride, including being upset Warren promised a title game Fox controlled without permission.
In every way that counts, Fox is the primary partner of the Big Ten while NBC and CBS are secondary. And that’s seen in the schedule and in the ratings.
When the SEC signed an exclusive contract with ESPN, CBS lost its marquee 3:30 p.m. ET SEC football timeslot that had regularly been the most-watched college football window. This season, ABC is having huge success. The last two weeks featured enormous showcases in Tennessee-Georgia and Auburn-Oklahoma. The latter drew 6.1 million viewers and ABC is off to its best start in college football viewership since 2006. The former drew a massive 12.6 million.
On the flip side, this has been the CBS 3:30 p.m. ET schedule so far this year in its new Big Ten deal:
Week 1: Nevada at #2 Penn State
Week 2: Oklahoma State at #6 Oregon
Week 3: USC at Purdue
Week 4: #21 Michigan at Nebraska
While Michigan-Nebraska was able to draw over 5 million viewers with those two name brand programs, the other matchups have failed to impress in ratings. According to the Sports Media Watch and TV Media Blog databases, the CBS window is getting trounced by its SEC on ABC competition. Through 4 weeks, the 3:30 timeslot on ABC is averaging 8.5 million viewers. The Big Ten on CBS is averaging just 2.78 million viewers by comparison.
Similarly, NBC’s Penn State-Oregon matchup is another rare instance of getting a must-see Big Ten game. Look at these games through the first month of the season.
Week 1: New Mexico at #14 Michigan
Week 2: Boston College at Michigan State
Week 3: Ohio at #1 Ohio State (Peacock exclusive)
Week 4: #9 Illinois at #19 Indiana
NBC has the unique challenge of scheduling its Big Ten games alongside its Notre Dame home schedule. That’s why the Week 3 game featuring the top ranked Buckeyes served as a Peacock exclusive. But it’s a similar story to NBC in that the ratings just can’t keep up with ABC and the SEC. So far in primetime, the SEC on ABC is averaging 8.64 million viewers. NBC is averaging 3.1 million viewers with its top audience by far being the Notre Dame-Texas A&M game (5.8 million).
Compare those totals to Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff, which averaged 5.58 million viewers last year. So far through its first four weeks of the season, the timeslot is averaging 6.8 million viewers, supported by the record-setting Ohio State-Texas game (16.6 million viewers).
Moving forward, will it be a different story? Can NBC and CBS catch up in ratings and at least get closer to their direct competition or at least what Fox is able to draw for Big Noon?
Unfortunately for those networks, the odds are stacked against them. And that comes down to the Big Ten’s overall weakness as a conference and Fox’s scheduling advantage.
Yes, the Big Ten has caught and surpassed the SEC at the top of the league. The conference has the last two national champions in Ohio State and Michigan. Oregon was the #1 seed last year entering the College Football Playoff and Penn State made it to the semifinals. The balance of power has slowly started moving north.
But where the Big Ten can’t compete is in its depth of attractive television matchups each and every week. The SEC easily has 10-12 teams that can carry national television windows and reach a wide audience. However, as just one example, next week’s Big Ten national television schedule is hardly appointment viewing.
Fox (Noon) – Wisconsin at Michigan: see if Badgers coach Luke Fickell can hold onto his job for one more week!
CBS (3:30) – Penn State at UCLA: DeShaun Foster has already lost his job!
NBC (7:30) – Minnesota at Ohio State: Can the Gophers cover the spread!
Those games are tough sells even for college football diehards and Big Ten loyalists. On November 1st, Ohio State and Penn State will face off in what will likely be another Big Noon Fox game. It will be one of the most-watched games of the season. What do CBS and NBC have to choose from? USC-Nebraska, Indiana-Maryland, or Purdue-Michigan anyone? It was a similar story last season. If you look at the latter weeks of the season you will see an awful lot of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois on NBC and CBS airwaves.
The Big Ten desperately needs former powerhouses like USC and Nebraska to step up to the plate and recapture their former glory. The conference desperately needs proud programs like Wisconsin and Iowa to start being nationally relevant again. And if Indiana and Illinois can keep building under Curt Cignetti and Bret Bielema, that would be a bonus. If Vanderbilt can be a Top 25 team, there’s no excuse for what has become of Purdue. And the less said about Maryland and Rutgers, the better.
We are a couple of years into the Big Ten’s new landmark television deals, but the trends are becoming clear. It’s always better to own rights than it is to rent them. Fox will always have the biggest games that can make a season like Ohio State-Michigan or Ohio State-Texas. And most weeks, at least one or both of the Big Ten’s secondary networks are going to struggle to air a truly compelling matchup.
If NBC and CBS are only able to get a small handful of top teams and top games every season and are routinely getting blown out by the competition, they have to ask themselves if they are truly getting their money’s worth.
About Matt Yoder