When FOX announced its big, bold plan to dominate the noon Eastern time window, everyone out West had to wonder where they fit in the network's plans. Obviously, a game that kicks at noon Eastern and 9 a.m. Pacific is only going to be played in the Eastern or Central time zones, i.e., the Big Ten and the Big 12.
Turns out, maybe that's not so obvious.
At the league's media day on Wednesday, the Pac-12 indicated it would be open to playing at noon Eastern, turning the Big Noon Kickoff into the Big Breakfast Kickoff. And yes, the coaches are on board with it.
“When you wake up — if you’re a college football player or coach, you want to wake up and you want to play football. The hardest thing with Saturdays is when you wake up and then you’ve got to wait until 7:00 at night,” Chip Kelly told CollegeFootballTalk. “If they want us to play at 9:00, we’ll play at 9:00; if they want us to play at 7:00 at night, we’ll play at 7:00 at night. Want us to play at 6:00 in the morning, we’ll play at 6:00 in the morning. That part, that’s — we always talk about control the controllables, and we don’t have the control over kickoffs. So they tell us when to play, we’ll play."
Colorado's Mel Tucker and Utah's Kyle Whittingham were also quoted as being on board with the Pigskin with a Side of Bacon idea.
Living out West, it's a pick-your-poison kind of deal. Would you rather wake up to play at 5 a.m. and be done by noon, or sleep in as late as you want but not finish your game until 11 p.m. or later? Opinions will vary, of course, but I'd bet most players and coaches would rather put their work in early and call it a day while it's still the same day.
In theory, we'd be talking about only a few games a year. For its noon window, FOX is going to want Oregon-Washington and USC-UCLA, and not so much Cal-Oregon State.
That is, unless Football and French Toast becomes such a hit on the West Coast that the Pac-12 Networks want to get in on the action.