Any conversations between Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork, the Big Ten and its TV partners about the number of noon games Ohio State has had this season won’t take place until after the season is over.
While there have been plenty of complaints from Ohio State fans about the Buckeyes finishing their regular season with six straight noon games, it’s too late for anything to change on that front for this season now. The 12 p.m. kickoffs are already set for Ohio State’s last two games of the regular season, a pair of highly anticipated home games against Indiana and Michigan.
Speaking with Eleven Warriors after the Ohio State Board of Trustees’ athletic committee held its second meeting of the year on Monday, Bjork didn’t indicate whether he would make a push for Ohio State to have more later kickoffs next season. But he wasn’t surprised by the number of times the Buckeyes were selected to play in noon games this season given that FOX gets the first choice of Big Ten games most weeks and that FOX broadcasts its marquee game of the week at noon.
“I think that's an offseason conversation honestly, but here's what I'll say: FOX has the first pick. We're the biggest brand within the Big Ten. We have the most fans who watch our games. The ratings are really high, and I'll just kind of leave it at that, but that's really an offseason conversation,” Bjork said.
Another factor in Ohio State being selected to play at noon so frequently is that the other marquee team in the Big Ten this season has been Oregon, who hasn’t been selected to play in a Big Noon game all season because that would mean playing at 9 a.m. local time.
“If Oregon's playing on the West Coast, they really can't play a 12 noon Eastern Time game,” Bjork said. “You have us, Penn State, Indiana. We're the most successful programs this year. If you just look at that piece of it from a time zone standpoint, it kind of makes sense where it's landed. That's more of an offseason analysis, more of an offseason conversation.”
The consternation about Ohio State’s number of noon games this season, in which five of its eight home games have been noon games with only one home night game against Western Michigan, has come in conjunction with concerns about Ohio Stadium not being as loud as it should be for a venue that holds more than 100,000 fans. That said, the Buckeyes’ last two home games of the season will be their biggest home games of the year as Indiana brings a 10-0 record to the Shoe and Ohio State looks to end its three-game losing streak against Michigan, and Bjork hopes Ohio State fans will create the environment those games deserve despite the early afternoon start times.
“We need a home-field advantage for the Buckeyes,” Bjork said. “The players don't care when they play, they'll show up. We need our fans to have the same mentality that the Shoe should be loud no matter if it's a night game or a 12 noon game, because we need and deserve a home-field advantage.”
Bjork says Ohio State is looking into changes it can make on its end to help produce a more raucous gameday environment inside the Shoe.
“When we play music, how we play music, what's the script (for entertainment during TV timeouts) look like in-game, all of those things we're analyzing right now,” Bjork said. “I think we can modernize and I think we can be better and I think we can do more engagement opportunities and those are the kind of things that we're looking at.”
