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The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES -- Each of the Big Ten Conference's new West Coast schools will make at least one appearance this coming season on Fox Sports' "College Football Friday" package.
The 12-game schedule includes nine Big Ten matchups. Oregon, Southern California, UCLA and Washington will have at least one Friday night home game. The Bruins, Ducks and Huskies, along with Rutgers, Michigan State and Purdue, will make two appearances.
Washington -- which got to the College Football Playoff title game before losing to Michigan -- visits Rutgers on Sept. 27 in its first conference road game and hosts UCLA on Nov. 15.
The Bruins are the only team playing on back-to-back Fridays. They host Iowa on Nov. 8 before their trip to Seattle to face the Huskies.
Oregon hosts Michigan State on Oct. 4 before going to Purdue two weeks later.
USC will host Rutgers on Oct. 25 at 11 p.m. Eastern/8 p.m. Pacific. The kickoff is late because Fox has Game 1 of the World Series.
With the exception of the USC game, the other Big Ten games on the West Coast will start at 9 p.m. Eastern.
Five Big Ten schools -- Indiana, Penn State, Ohio State, Minnesota and Wisconsin -- are not scheduled for Friday night. Ohio State and Michigan have been among the most vehemently opposed to Friday games since the conference started holding them in 2017, with a limited slate on Big Ten Network and FS1.
"It did take us some time and a lot of collaboration between us, the conference office and all the athletic directors to finally get to where we are," said Mike Mulvihill, Fox president for insights and analytics. "I think our expansion partners, especially Oregon and Washington, understand that Friday night represents an opportunity for them to be in a window and have a chance to have a prime-time game without that much direct college football competition."
The other Big 10 matchups are Illinois at Nebraska on Sept. 20, Northwestern at Maryland on Oct. 11 and Purdue at Michigan State on Nov. 22. All three start at 8 p.m.
Though the package is predominantly Big Ten, it will kick off with a Big 12 matchup on Sept. 13 when Arizona travels to Kansas State. Except it won't count as a conference game even though this will be Arizona's first year in the Big 12 because a home-and-home series between the two schools already was scheduled before the latest wave of conference realignment.
Fox also will carry Utah at UCF on Nov. 29 and the Mountain West championship game on Dec. 6.
The only Friday that Fox does not have a game scheduled is Nov. 1 because of the possibility of a World Series Game 6.
The college football package will fill a void for Fox on Friday nights during the fall when WWE's "Friday Night SmackDown" moves to USA Network. The final "SmackDown" on Fox airs on Sept. 6.
It will not be the first time Fox has tried to stake a claim to what is considered an underutilized time slot. It launched "Big Noon Saturday" in 2019. Last season's package averaged 6.74 million viewers on Fox, an 8% increase over 2022.
Networks are expected to announce their complete schedules for the first three weeks of the college football season next week. Fox already announced that "Big Noon Saturday" will open the season with Texas at Michigan on Sept. 6, followed by Wisconsin at Alabama one week later.
TNT getting playoff games
TNT Sports will begin airing College Football Playoff games this upcoming season through a sublicense with ESPN.
The five-year agreement announced Wednesday gives TNT two first-round games the first two years. Beginning in 2026, it expands to two first-round and two quarterfinals.
ESPN's $7.8 billion deal with the CFP, which was announced in March, allowed it to sublicense games to other networks. Financial terms of the sublicense were not announced.
"Our strategy has always been to try and round out our portfolio and continue to add the right set of rights whenever there is a possibility," TNT Sports Chairman and CEO Luis Silberwasser said to The Associated Press. "When we look at the landscape and what can really bring in massive levels of audience that is in the popular culture and must watch, the College Football Playoff is at the top of the list."
TNT Sports was one of the companies that bid on the CFP rights package before it was retained by ESPN.
Rosalyn Durant, ESPN's executive vice president for programming and acquisitions, said TNT approached them after the renewal deal was announced and things progressed from there.
As to which quarterfinal games TNT might carry when the deal expands in two years, Durant said that remains to be determined.
This will be the first season of the 12-team playoff.
ESPN has carried the College Football Playoff since it started in the 2014 season. It replaced the Bowl Championship Series.
The top four conference champions will receive first-round byes. Four first-round games will take place Dec. 20-21 followed by the quarterfinals (Fiesta Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl) Dec. 31-Jan. 1. The semifinals are the Orange Bowl on Jan. 9 and Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10 before the championship game takes place on Jan. 20 in Atlanta.
Kickoff times for the CFP are expected to be announced on June 6, when ESPN releases its bowl schedule.
It is also another instance of ESPN and TNT teaming up together. The two work close together since they have rights to the NBA and NHL.
CFP games on TNT will also be streamed on Max, but it also means the entire playoff will be on Venu Sports -- the streaming platform planned by ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that was announced in February.
Besides adding the NHL three years ago and NASCAR next year, TNT's future carrying the NBA remains up in the air as discussions continue with the league on a new rights agreement.
Silberwasser said though that the CFP was something they were looking independent of how NBA discussions are going.
"We continue to be optimistic about it and are working with them on different scenarios," Silberwasser said about the NBA talks. "We continue to have productive conversations with them, and we hope to make a deal that is good for both."
ESPN's rights to the College Football Playoff run through the 2031 season. The title game moves to ABC in 2026.