Members of the Ohio General Assembly are very concerned about college football.
A bill has been introduced in the legislature to prohibit Ohio State and other state schools from playing most of its home games before 3:30 p.m. Under the terms of the proposal by Rep. Tex Fischer (R), games including at least one state school and games including top-10 teams would be prohibited from starting earlier than the mid-afternoon. With one exception.
“Division (B) of this section does not apply if an earlier start time of a college football game between two teams is a college football tradition,” the bill states. “For this purpose, a ‘college football tradition’ is a start time of a game between the teams of two institutions whose football teams have competed against each other at least fifty times and the start time has been the same for at least ninety-five per cent of those games.”
Of course, that caveat would exempt Ohio State’s annual rivalry game with Michigan from the ban. The Buckeyes and Wolverines have traditionally played at noon ET on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
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The bill comes amidst much consternation among Ohio State fans with the Big Ten’s media rights contract with Fox. The network gets the pick of the conference’s top game every weekend in football season and places its marquee game of the week at noon ET as part of its “Big Noon Saturday” programming. With other top games around the country later in the afternoon and in the evening, Fox has been rewarded with strong ratings in the time slot.
That time slot has heavily featured Ohio State. Seven of the Buckeyes’ 12 regular-season games were at noon ET in 2024 and six of those games were at home. Marquee contests vs. Penn State, Indiana and Michigan were all on Fox at noon.
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The early start times have drawn…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-football/article/ohio-general-assembly-member-authors-bill-to-prevent-state-schools-from-playing-home-football-games-at-noon-143630915.html
Author : Nick Bromberg
Publish date : 2025-05-15 14:36:00
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