Fox Sports will show a Friday prime-time college football game on its broadcast network every week starting this season, a source familiar with the network's plans said. The athlete.
Games will come from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Mountain West. The first game has not yet been set because the telecast schedule, coordinated with other networks, will not be finalized until May. The move focuses the network more around football with Friday and Saturday nights focusing on the college game and Sunday featuring the NFL.
Fox still plans to show its biggest games of the week on Saturday during the “Big Noon Kickoff” highlight.
Regular Friday night matches were highly anticipated after Fox did not renew the rights to WWE's Friday Night Smackdown. Fox Sports executives believe the college game will produce higher ratings than WWE.
However, WWE is 52 weeks a year, while college football is a little over three months.
Fox's goal is to have the No. 1 college football game on Friday and Saturday and then the top-rated NFL contests on Sunday afternoon, said the network's president of insight and analytics Michael Mulvihill. The extension of college football to a regular Friday prime-time broadcast means that in the fall, top NFL and college games will be shown every night of the week except Tuesday and Wednesday.
For parts of the fall, ESPN televised MAC games during midweek.
The late afternoon NFL Sunday window, which rotates between Fox and CBS, is the highest-rated of the weekend overall.
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