Big Ten Saturday Night on NBC will debut with the West Virginia Mountaineers at the Penn State Nittany Lions, NBC Sports has announced.
Kicking off Big Ten Saturday Night with a bang!@WVUfootball | @PennStateFball pic.twitter.com/TLsrO0keOa
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 6, 2023
West Virginia and Penn State will square off at Beaver Stadium in University Park, Pa., on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023 and the game will be televised by NBC at 7:30pm ET. The contest will also be streamed live via Peacock.
Last August, the Big Ten Conference announced a new seven-year media rights agreement with CBS, FOX and NBC that begins on July 1, 2023 and extends through the 2029-30 season. The Big Ten will have three premier windows for college football broadcasts on Saturdays, beginning at noon ET with the Big Noon Kickoff on FOX. Games will then follow on CBS at 3:30pm ET and on NBC in primetime.
The 2023 West Virginia-Penn State contest is the first of a home-and-home series that was scheduled back in September 2013. The second and final game of the series is slated for Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024 at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, W.Va.
Penn State and West Virginia first met on the gridiron in 1904 and have played 59 times. The Nittany Lions have dominated the overall series, leading 48-9-2. The two schools met in 46 consecutive seasons between 1947 and 1992, but the series has been dormant ever since.
Football Schedules
It will be a travesty if this package doesn’t include OSU-UM
You just love flogging the carcass of a dead horse when it is already just a pile of bones.
Anyway, Fox has UMich-OSU and they will show it on Big Noon.
Well z-man got bad news for you the Ohio State Michigan game is going to be broadcast on Fox every year per the contract they have exclusive rights to that game and they’re always going to have that as their noon game on Thanksgiving weekend. Keep in mind to everybody the majority of this Big Ten contract is with Fox they have 60% stake in the contract or 60% of the money if you will. Even though NBC gets a Prime Time game Fox still gets the first pick of the games every week so most of the Marquee Big Ten matchups will still go to Fox and be broadcast at noon.
Hank, that actually isn’t right. The first year (2023) is funky because CBS will only have 7 B10 games (paying roughly half what they’d pay other years) because they still have a full SEC slate of games (and the LA schools haven’t joined the B10 yet), but by the end of the contract, Fox will be paying roughly $500mm/year for half the first and half the second picks each week (but always the first overall pick, which will always be the UMich-OSU game), while NBC and CBS will be paying about $350mm/year each for 1/4th of the first picks, 1/4th the second picks, and half the 3rd picks each week each.
Something like that, though I expect NBC and CBS to split almost all of the OSU-PSU and UMich-MSU games between them.
NBC and CBS will also get all the LA school home games between them.
It has not been since 1965 that UM-OSU was on NBC.
Thanks for the clarification Richard I was not aware of that I just assumed Fox had first pick on almost every game the bottom line is they will have Ohio State Michigan every year so it doesn’t matter what NBC and CBS bring to the table in terms of prime time or late afternoon that will be Ohio State Michigan at noon on Fox every season. Guess I got that clarified but I do appreciate you’re letting me know about the split deal that NBC and CBS have. Agree with you on Notre Dame but correct me if I’m wrong does it Notre Dame still have a few Prime Time games guaranteed to them with NBC if that’s the case then there can’t be a big 10 Saturday night game every Saturday night right
Hi Hank, (the ordering of the comments here are messed up but) ND may still have 1-2 primetime games on NBC. NBC can handle that by swapping slots with CBS some times or maybe putting a #3 B10 game on Peacock 1-2 times (which probably wouldn’t go over well with fans but it is what it is).
Night football has been better than day football since 1970.
The SEC has more legitimate teams than the B1G. Yet, the SEC will be exclusive to ABC/ESPN while the B1G gets to be on Fox, CBS, AND NBC? Who does not see what is wrong with that picture? Also, Notre has to be pissed about having to share NBC with the B1G.
I don’t know why you think anything is wrong. The SEC actually decided to take less money to be exclusively on ABC/ESPN so that they could set kickoff times for all games well in advance (otherwise, if different channels pick and some have exclusive time slots, like with the old deal they had with CBS and ESPN, kickoff times for some games would only be set a week or 2 out).
The B10 was looking to maximize money and OTA exposure so rejected ESPN for more money and the Fox/CBS/NBC combo.
And who cares what ND thinks. They will only have 2-3 home games a year that will draw as many viewers as a top 3 B10 game (which is why NBC will pay the B10 over 5 times more money than they’ll pay ND).
If they don’t like it, they can join the B10.
BTW, while on the field, the B10 doesn’t have the depth the SEC does, it has major brands and the biggest markets. OSU, UMich, PSU, and now USC are as big TV draws as any 3-4 SEC programs, and the SEC doesn’t have 3-4 TV markets as important as NYC, LA, and Chicago (and DC).
And NBC should work on getting some non-P5 CFB for USA.
They can have USA sublicense a package of Sun Belt games, with the conference adding Eastern Kentucky and Stephen F. Austin as well.
Then in 2025, UMass can put all their home games on USA to guarantee that they would all be on linear TV.
An amazing coincidence: IIRC Penn State played the final NBC college football telecast of 1965, which was the last season NBC carried a full season of college football.