David Briggs: College football coaches should stop whining about early kickoffs

Jun. 9—Twice in the past five seasons, the Toledo football team played games out west that started after 10 p.m. Eastern time and ended well after the bars closed, then boarded a red-eye charter for a mid-morning arrival back home.

Then there was the whirlwind of 2018, when the Rockets — paying the piper for the Mid-American Conference's TV deal with ESPN — had back-to-back short weeks and played three games in 12 days.

It was all kind of insane and totally antithetical to the amateur model, but you know how many times Toledo's coaches (publicly) cursed their fate?

Not once.

I thought of this as we continue to hear big-time coaches raise hell about the grave injustices the scheduling gods have inflicted upon their teams.

The latest was Stanford's David Shaw, who blasted Fox for giving the Cardinal an early kickoff time for their opener Sept. 4 against Kansas State in Arlington, Texas. He had similar feelings about Oregon's showdown at Ohio State the next week. Both games will start at 9 a.m. Pacific time.

"I am [ticked] at Fox for our kickoff time against Kansas State," Shaw told the Athletic. "... For Stanford in particular and Oregon to be going and playing in a different time zone, and give us an early kickoff, to me, is incredibly disrespectful. And it shows a lack of understanding of what we have to do, and the way that time difference truly affects us. It shows a lack of care for our student athletes. That, to me, is something that is egregious, and I don't care who I [tick off], but I think they're wrong. A lot of our people in our conference are upset too."

He added: "[Fox] can say whatever they want to say. I don't want to hear [crap] about, 'Oh, it's great ratings.' I don't care about the ratings."

I think a lot of Shaw, but, here, I have a few thoughts:

1. Boo ...

2. freaking ...

3. hoo.

If only there were a way for conferences to negotiate the terms of their kazillion-dollar television contracts ... wait, there is?!?!

Here's the deal with all the noon games, and it's simple, really.

The Pac-12 chose to sign much of its media rights over Fox, as did the Big Ten and Big 12. In turn, Fox — which, believe it or not, does care about the ratings — made a strategic play to maximize its investment. Two years ago, the network went all in on the noon time slot, putting its marquee contests early rather than going up against ABC/ESPN and CBS in the more traditional later big-game windows.

To call the formula a success would be like calling Lake Erie a small puddle. In 2019, five of the college football season's 10 most-watched games were "Big Noon" showdowns on Fox.

Meanwhile, Big Television makes schools richer than God, allowing Shaw to earn $5 million per year and Ohio State to build a ninth waterfall in its palatial training complex. The Big Ten, for instance, is in the middle of a six-year, $2.64 billion deal with Fox and ESPN.

Sure, these deals come with trade-offs, for both sides.

The networks are stuck with a lot of meh games — Stanford, for instance, is 26-19 in the past four seasons — and schools cede control over kickoff times, often to the chagrin of both teams. Take the Oregon-Ohio State game. You think the Buckeyes wanted a noon start for their marquee nonconference game? Of course not. A primetime kick would have roused a more electric atmosphere and allowed more out-of-state recruits to make it to Columbus after playing a Friday night high school game.

But such is life.

Within reason — and MAC teams playing consecutive games on short rest is not, for the record — I have strong feelings on start times only when it comes to complaints about them.

For one, since when is traveling to a road venue supposed to be easy? Same as players from the east have to recalibrate their body clocks for late games out west, it cuts both ways. These early kickoffs are nothing new: not in college and not in the NFL, where West Coast teams regularly play road games at 10 a.m. local time. Heck, Hawaii played at 6 a.m. local time at Michigan a few years ago. (OK, now that is ridiculous.)

Also, again, this is all part of the deal.

For years, we've heard the Pac-12 whine that its games are on too late for the country to watch. Now, the highest-profile coach in the league is saying "a lot of our people in our conference" are mad they're on too early?

Which one is it?

Imagine negotiating the biggest network deal possible, then complaining when that network tried to maximize the partnership (and, by the way, instilling a defeatist, excuse-making mindset in your team).

Here's a thought: Coaches can either live by the conditions of the TV contracts that make them richer than God, or take a pay cut so their league can sign a less lucrative deal more to their liking, replete with a stipulation that game times must be approved by a quorum of sleep optimization experts.

Good one, right?

First Published June 8, 2021, 3:09pm