Doesn't it seem like that most Saturdays now?

Maybe it's some kind of agreement with the ACC to feature their games at noon?

But it's usually like 0 big games at noon, 3 big games at 3:30 and a bunch of a marquee games at 7 and 8 pm

Because those games usually don't have national interest. They start at 9 am on the west coast, no one out there is waking up early for a football game. Might as well get some of the weaker games some airtime when they won't be buried by big matchups.

That makes sense although there are some weekends when they put marquee games on at noon. Texas/Oklahoma and sometimes OSU/Michigan.

Illinois-MSU isn't bad, of course its on the big 10 network, meaning most people won't get it so we get the craptacular Purdue-Minny game.

Manhattan Buckeye;521449 wrote:Illinois-MSU isn't bad, of course its on the big 10 network, meaning most people won't get it so we get the craptacular Purdue-Minny game.

That was the one game I was hoping to watch at noon, but didn't feel the need to drive somewhere and watch it.

Because no television station wants to pay a bunch of money for bad games. In the contracts its usually written that the companies broadcasting get to choose the games they want at noon, 3:30, and primetime. It is also usually written that the conference can demand a few big games remain in their traditional slot (ie, UofM-OSU, Texas-Oklahoma, and some SEC games).

The companies dont want to constantly be featuring the best match-ups outside of the primetime or at least late afternoon slot, so about 2 weeks before the games they will slot their times and usually put the worst games that they are carrying for the week at noon. Its why a lot of the games prior to the season for teams are TBA, even though they have what station will be covering them.

Non;521448 wrote:That makes sense although there are some weekends when they put marquee games on at noon. Texas/Oklahoma and sometimes OSU/Michigan.

Texas/OU and OSU/Michigan have (pretty much) always been at noon. They are also nationally televised on ABC at noon, but outside of those two, there are no national noon games on any of the free networks. The main reason is because it's 9:00am on the west coast when these games begin so there aren't as many people watching. Even if they put marquee games on at noon they wouldn't have ratings as good as they would later in the day. Ratings equal money. Also, the way the contracts are structured these networks have to carry so many games from certain conferences each week so they put the crappier games on at noon.