Ohio State football is one of the biggest programs in the country and the defending national champion, the type of team you expect to see regularly kicking off in prime time on Saturday nights in the fall.

Those big-time night games at The Shoe have become a relative rarity, however, after the Big Ten secured massive rights packages split between Fox, CBS and NBC. With the Big Ten now the centerpiece of its college football offering, Fox has gone to serious lengths to own the noon ET time slot, and as the Buckeyes are a constant in the national title conversation, that means a lot of brunch kickoffs for Ohio State fans.

The Buckeyes played in Fox's Big Noon Saturday game six times in 2024, hosting five of those games. The team did not kick off later than noon ET in the regular season after the Oct. 12 game at Oregon, and its only night home game of the season came in September against Western Michigan.

A home game in the College Football Playoff against Tennessee was likely a bit of a salve, but athletic director Ross Bjork acknowledged his fans' ongoing frustrations given the news that the program's massive season opener against Texas is once again getting Big Noon Saturday treatment after Texas declined to move the game to Sunday.

“Look, I think our program, our fans, deserve some marquee night games. So we started having that conversation,” Bjork said Thursday. “Texas, in the contract, it goes both ways. They have the ability to approve or not if the game moves off of a Saturday. We asked them. I don’t blame them."

Because the game—a rematch of last year's national semifinal—will be played in Week 1, Sundays aren't yet taken up by NFL games, leaving the opportunity available for Ohio State-Texas to join a slate that currently features South Carolina vs. Virginia Tech and Miami vs. Notre Dame, both on ABC/ESPN. Texas, unsurprisingly, would rather face a noon crowd at Ohio Stadium than one in prime time with a national holiday the next day.

Those conversations started. We worked with Fox. They were understanding. But, really, at the end of the day, there’s no flexibility in the contracts," Bjork said. "Fox bought the noon window. CBS bought the afternoon window. And NBC has the night window. And then the Big Ten Network and Peacock layer into that."

He went on to acknowledge that Ohio State has "carried" the Big Noon Saturday slate and called for more flexibility moving forward, confirming that he would keep a dialogue open with Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti.

Does he see things changing in the short term, however?

"Probably not."

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Ohio State AD on Big Noon Controversy: 'Fans Deserve Some Marquee Night Games'.

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