Oklahoma football: Sooners not happy with kickoff time for 2021 Nebraska game
By Chip Rouse
You know the 2021 Oklahoma football season isn’t that far off when they start announcing kickoff times and the TV networks that will cover the games.
On Thursday, the Big 12’s TV partners announced game times and coverage designations across their various platforms for the first several games of upcoming college football season. And, to put it mildly, Oklahoma was less than enamored with what it learned.
Oklahoma’s Sept. 4 season-opening game at Tulane and the much-anticipated Sept. 18 home contest at a full-capacity Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium are both scheduled for 11 a.m. CT kickoffs. This development opened up an old wound for an Oklahoma administration that is not happy about this outcome, especially regarding the game with Nebraska.
OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, considered by many across the college football landscape to be the best in the business, reacted immediately to the announcement that the Sept. 18 game with the Sooners’ former longtime conference-rival Nebraska would be carried on FOX’s “Big Noon Saturday” broadcast.
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FOX’s high-noon time slot (11 a.m. CT) is supposedly set up as that network’s showcase college game of the day, and is preceded by “Big Noon Kickoff,” which this year will include former Sooner coach Bob Stoops as one of the studio analysts, replacing another college coaching icon, Urban Meyer.
The addition of Stoops to the pregame show most likely was one of the reasons FOX wanted the OU-Nebraska game in the early time slot, but Castiglione — and, presumably, the entire Sooner football organization — strongly disagrees with that decision.
“We are bitterly disappointed that the great Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry, on the 50th anniversary of the ‘Game of the Century (in 1971), will kickoff at 11 a.m.,” Castiglione said in a statement first reported on ESPN.com.
“We tried every possible avenue to proactively make our case,” the OU AD said. “However, in the end, our TV partner chose to exercise its full contractual rights and denied our request.”
It was also announced that the Sept. 4 season-opener with Tulane will be at 11 a.m. and televised nationally on ABC.
The Sooners have been disgruntled in previous seasons with the number of 11 a.m. kickoffs they have been assigned to play. The announcement that OU would play two of its first three games of the 2021 season added to that pent-up frustration. There were many years, when both teams were members of the Big 12, and the Big Eight and Big Seven before that, that the Oklahoma-Nebraska matchup, usually in November, was considered a marquee game.
Oklahoma with 50 and Nebraska with 46 rank first and second all-time with the most conference championships.
The game between the two teams on Thanksgiving Day in 1971, won by Nebraska 35-31, featured 17 of the 22 All-Big 12 selections that season (nine on Nebraska and eight on Oklahoma). The fact that Nebraska came into the game ranked No. 1 and OU as No. 2 added to the showcase appeal of the matchup.
It has also been revealed that Oklahoma’s annual rivalry game with Texas in Dallas on Oct. 9 will be televised on one of the ESPN platforms as well as the Nov. 21 Bedlam rivalry with Oklahoma State. Kickoff times for those games will be determined at a later date.