'Big Noon Kickoff' Beats ESPN's College GameDay In Ratings Before Monster Michigan-Ohio State Matchup

Look out College Gameday, there's a new top dog in the world of college football kickoff shows — at least last weekend there was — and its name is Big Noon Kickoff.

Fox's competitor to ESPN's long-running kickoff show capped a strong season by besting the College Gameday.

The show brought in an average of 2.34 million viewers over the three hours that it was on, which made it the most-watched pregame show on any network. Furthermore, the show brought in a record 4.35 million viewers during the broadcast from Ann Arbor's 11 o'clock hour.

Now, it of course is a major help that the show was the lead for the most-aniticpated college football game of the season. Saturday's Michigan-Ohio State delivered the goods on the ratings front as well.

That's all true, but it has been a heck of a year for the Big Noon Kickoff crew. It started at the beginning of the season when Spectrum customers found themselves in the middle of a carriage dispute between the cable company and Disney. That made College Gameday impossible to watch. So, viewers flipped over to Fox and it looks like plenty hung around.

I was one of those Spectrum customers who got college football blocked at the start of the season. I stuck with Big Noon Kickoff from that point and have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Of course, It helped that Mark Ingram truck sticking the Cincinnati Bearcat and then doing the worm next to its corpse still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Follow on X: @Matt_Reigle

Written by
Matt is a University of Central Florida graduate and a long-suffering Philadelphia Flyers fan living in Orlando, Florida. He can usually be heard playing guitar, shoe-horning obscure quotes from The Simpsons into conversations, or giving dissertations to captive audiences on why Iron Maiden is the greatest band of all time.