In the 2013 season, Fox aired a college football pre-game show on its Fox Sports 1 channel, Fox College Saturday. The program was unable to compete with ESPN's popular and established College GameDay, with Fox only being able to sustain an average viewership of 70,000. The show was cancelled after a single season, and its role was ultimately subsumed by a Friday-night edition of Fox Sports Live. Fox introduced the Big Noon Saturday window for its college football coverage in the 2019 season; the network had aired occasional noon kickoffs during the season before, and they were among Fox's top-viewed games in the 2018 season. Fox has positioned the timeslot as featuring one of its flagship games of the day. Big Noon Kickoff was henceforth introduced as a pre-game show for the new window. Sports Illustrated described the show as being "built around" Urban Meyer. Meyer stated that he had prepared for the role by studying clips of Fox's NFL pre-game show Fox NFL Sunday, and Alex Rodriguez, as an example of another player-turned-television analyst. Fox executive producer Brad Zager explained that his presence was meant to help provide "intelligent dialogue" to the show.
Reception
The Big Lead felt that Big Noon Kickoff showed promise, but that the show's "formal" and "corporate" atmosphere led to most of the panelists seeming "stiff" on-air, and exacerbated their relative lack of broadcasting experience. Quinn was considered to be a stand-out among the panelists in its premiere broadcast, considering him the most "comfortable" on-air, and noting that both him and Meyer were well-versed at leveraging their past experience to provide insights.
Viewership
During the first episode, the show garnered 838,000 viewers, which amounted to a 0.8 rating. A special two-hour edition of Big Noon Kickoff leading into the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 30, 2019 received a series-high 1.6 overnight rating, beating College GameDay in its time slotfor the first time in the program's history.
On-location broadcasts
Unlike College GameDay, Big Noon Kickoff does not regularly do remote broadcasts, preferring to originate from the Fox Sports studio in Los Angeles. However, the show has occasionally done on-location broadcasts, particularly as a lead-in to major games. On November 23, 2019, the show scheduled an on-location edition from Columbus, Ohio for the Ohio State/Penn Staterivalry game, which ESPN also chose as its site for College GameDay that week. Winners listed in BOLD * denotes a neutral site host Rankings from AP Poll and CFP Rankings released prior to game
