Rumor: Texas at Michigan football to kick off at noon

Almost certain to be the case.

It won’t take long for Michigan football to get into the meat of its schedule in 2024, unlike this past year when it finally played a premier program in Penn State all the way in Week 11.

The Wolverines host Texas in Week 2 of the 2024 season, as the two College Football Playoff teams from 2023 face off early as one of the bigger games of the upcoming year. While Michigan fans certainly hope it will have a decided homefield advantage with it being a night game, the Longhorns athletic director, Chris Del Conte, told the media on Tuesday that he expects the game to be on Fox — which would indicate it to be a noon game.

Fox has first rights when it comes to selecting Big Ten games, and with it being a home game for the Wolverines, it would have first designation. But it isn’t always tried and true, as Michigan’s Week 2 game against Washington (then in the Pac-12) in 2021 was a night game on ABC. ABC and ESPN no longer have the Big Ten rights deal, and given that this is only one of two projected ranked-on-ranked matchups (the other being NC State vs. Tennessee in Charlotte), there’s a good chance Fox takes this one and makes it the Big Noon Kickoff game.

This will only be the second time the Wolverines and Longhorns will face each other, with the other being in the Rose Bowl in 2005.