USC-Michigan football not on Fox Big Noon Saturday this September

CBS, not Fox, will air USC’s highly-anticipated football game against Michigan in Ann Arbor on Sept. 21.

Life is full of surprises. Here’s the latest one: USC football will not play on Fox Big Noon Saturday when it visits the defending national champion Michigan Wolverines on Sept. 21 in Ann Arbor. The game has been picked up by CBS and will air in the mid-afternoon 3:30 p.m. Eastern time slot. That’s 12:30 p.m. in Los Angeles and the rest of the Pacific time zone.

Fox is the main Big Ten football television partner, with NBC getting second choice and CBS third. It is therefore quite surprising that CBS gets the big USC-Michigan game this September. USC’s move to the Big Ten — for a lot of television dollars — was something Fox wanted. If television doesn’t want something, it generally doesn’t happen. There is no bigger USC road game this year than the visit to the Big House in Ann Arbor in September, an early-season showcase between two glamor teams in college football. It was widely expected that Fox would pounce on the chance to show this game in the Big Noon Saturday window, but that did not happen.

There is a somewhat reasonable explanation for this: Fox announced it would air Texas at Michigan on Sept. 7 and Michigan at Ohio State on Nov. 30 as its first selections for Big Ten games this season. That might have given NBC and CBS a chance to choose some high-end games for their own schedules. However, one of Fox’s other early-season selections was Alabama at Wisconsin, a game which is clearly not as big as USC-Michigan.

Trojan fans won’t complain about this surprising move, though. They won’t have to get up especially early to watch this game. USC’s team also won’t have to get up early to play this game, either.

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