Big Noon’s Relationship With College Football Continues To Sour

It’s Big Nook Kickoff time for Penn State football and that’s not a punishment, but it might feel like it.

Along with Saturday’s game at Ohio State airing on Fox, the matchup serves as the site of this week’s Big Noon Kickoff — the network’s on-site pregame show. Hosted by Rob Stone, the show’s on-air team includes Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram, Matt Leinart, Chris Fallica, Urban Meyer and Dave Portnoy.

That’s enough contributors to field a 7-on-7 team in a summer passing league, but with two QBs and not much speed on the outside, those guys could probably generate attention but not much success in that scenario.

That’s pretty much the same for the show itself every Saturday.

Because Fox schedules some of the Big Ten Conference’s best games at noon each Saturday, the games invariably draw strong ratings. So, the network is getting what it wants — solid numbers in the first TV window of the day.

Before those games, though, if you want information or insight, it’s a rare find on Big Noon Kickoff. If you want relevance and respect for college football overall, it’s also hard to find.

The show does a solid job of focusing on the game that follows it at noon, reliably serving as an extra-long pregame show. That’s a good thing for the teams involved (because attention on national TV never hurts), but some fans — and especially those at Ohio State — are a little tired of noon games, and the accompanying pregame show.

It does not help that the show added Portnoy this season. He leans into his Michigan fandom and generates a reaction from Buckeye fans. But with Meyer, a national champion coach at Ohio State as a core member of the studio set, it kind of sends a mixed message. In that way, it’s typical of the sometimes-directionless show itself.

Last week at Indiana, interviewer/storyteller Tom Rinaldi, who’s good at what he does and often ranks as one of the show’s high points, conducted an interview and feature segment with Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza. Rinaldi visited IU during the week for the interview, but then he was not there for the show Saturday and presented his segment from Philadelphia, where he would be working the Giants-Eagles game the following day.

While that was convenient for Rinaldi in terms of travel and probably even logical, it was an example of Fox’s lack of investment in Big Noon Kickoff. Over on ESPN and College GameDay, Kirk Herbstreit reliably travels everywhere, always, because a presence matters. Plus, he’s got the dog, and it all comes off as kind of a family affair.

Likewise, if Big Noon Kickoff were relevant, that’s the show James Franklin would have visited for his first post-firing interview a few weeks ago. It was not, though.

Instead of the show that has the relationship with the conference, Franklin went to the show that has the relationship with his agent — and the show that has a couple of fellow clients of that agent (notably Nick Saban) as part of its on-air team.

This Saturday marks the first time Fox has had the chance to really dive into the Franklin and Penn State story, and maybe that will happen. Maybe the show will take the chance to be more than superficial with some topic, and that will be the one.

Big Noon Kickoff certainly has a resource for meaningful conversation in Meyer. After all, he was almost the successor to Joe Paterno as the Penn State coach. It’s a story that’s been reported and confirmed through the years, but never really shared by Meyer himself. This week could be an interesting time for some insights.

Still, it seems unlikely. That’s just not Big Noon Kickoff’s vibe. The show’s website bills itself as “the best pregame party in all college football” and the whole brofest approach seems more like its goal.

The show has been around controversy this season, but it was self-inflicted stuff — with Portnoy’s presence at OSU as a start-of-the-season storyline, for example, and that turned out to be somewhat contrived.

For as much as ESPN’s Pat McAfee may feel like a shill to some who watch College GameDay, he’s clearly having fun. Plus, he’s giving away his own money each week with that field goal challenge, so it seems more genuine — at least to the extent it can be.

There’s just not much of Big Noon Kickoff that feels that way, which makes it weaker by comparison and sometimes makes it hard to watch.

So, feel free to wait until kickoff to turn into Fox on Saturday, and then you’ll just have to hope that Ohio State does not pound Penn State — or the accompanying nicknames and praise for the Buckeyes will be coming fast and furious from play-by-play man Gus Johnson.

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