Captain Buckeye
Assistant Coach
Couldn’t have said it better.Respectfully, I think you're wrong. And it's not even about personal preference to me. Fox continuously puts us at a competitive disadvantage and eliminates our home field advantage by shoving noon kickoffs down our throats. Meanwhile, when we go to Texas in 2026, you can guarantee it will be an 8pm kick and an absolutely crazy atmosphere. Simply put, this is just unfair.
Do you go to many games? Because I do. And the atmosphere for noon games is generally garbage, with the Michigan game being the exception. And the fanbase cannot be expected to treat every single home game like it's the Michigan game. So what you end up with is a dead crowd at 99% of the noon games and it just sucks.
I was at the Oregon game in 2021. The first home game in The Shoe in over a year. Top 10 matchup. And it was absolutely fucking dead in there from the jump. And it remained dead during the entire game. It sucked. I've literally been in better atmospheres against MAC schools that kicked off later in the day.
I can already hear the argument "well this is an OSU fanbase problem!" no, it isn't. No other fanbase in sports has had to deal with shit like this. Having 80% of your games being kicked off at noon is just asinine - no fanbase in sports is going wild at noon every single weekend in the Fall. It just isn't realistic. NOW - if this was back in the day, you know, when kickoff times were normal and you only had a couple noon games per year? Yeah, it was a non issue. Getting up for a noon game once or twice a year isn't a big deal. Getting up for a noon game every Saturday for 3 months straight is absurd, and again, no other fanbase in sports has ever had to deal with some shit like this.
Plus we lose the atmosphere that we can show to recruits and even host recruits because many kids can’t make it to the games in time. Plus all the business lost Columbus generates with multiple more hours of food, drinks, hotel stay etc.
It’s a big deal. It’s what it is but the fact we have to carry the big ten at noon is ridiculous. Then they tout the success of the noon time slot? Like no shit it’s Ohio State. The time slot isn’t drawing it’s the teams playing.
The only bright side to me is we never have to play in Happy Valley at night anymore.
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