“The World’s Biggest Fantasy Football Draft”: How College Football Schedules Are Created

There are less than 100 days until the start of the 2024 college football season, which means it's time to announce some kickoff dates and times.

Networks have begun announcing which big games they will broadcast in 2024, and revealing kick-off times for key fixtures. For example, FOX Sports will broadcast the September 7 game between Texas And Michiganthe game on 14 September between Alabama And Wisconsin and the 120th edition of “The Game” on November 30, with all three games airing in the “Big Noon” window.

While these three games are among the most important of the 2024 season, determining which games will be broadcast on which networks is not as simple. Earlier in the offseason, FOX, along with NBC and CBS, held a draft to determine which network would receive the rights to broadcast certain Big Ten games in the 2024 season.

So I had Michael Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics at FOX Sports, on my podcast to discuss the draft process, which he called “the biggest fantasy football draft on earth.” We also talked about how the NFL schedule is created, the birth of the “Big Noon” window and what to expect from Friday night college football games on FOX in 2024.

Here is an excerpt from my conversation with Mulvihill.

Klatt: Can you describe what the draft process is like for networks that select games?

Mulvihill: “The college football schedule is literally set by draft. In the case of the Big Ten, we (FOX), CBS and NBC go through a draft where FOX has the first three picks on the board, and then we have No. 6 and our next pick is a little later. So it's not just a simple rotation – one, two, three; one, two, three – the picks change a little bit as we go through that selection order.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about what we would do with those top three picks and what we thought would be left for us. We tried to guess what the other networks might prioritize. A couple of guys on my team, Derek Crocker and Ryan Kasoff, do a phenomenal job of playing through how we think the draft might go. They go through dozens of iterations of how the draft might go. It's just game theory. It's thinking, 'If X happens, what's our next move? If we do that, how are other people going to react?' We spend a lot of time thinking about that because there's a lot of money at stake and we're trying to reach a huge audience.

“I like to say that the college football draft is the biggest fantasy football draft in the world, but you have to put $500 million up for it. So it's a little bit different than the $50 or $100 fantasy football draft with friends. It's different in terms of the stakes, but it's not that different in terms of the mechanics. You're thinking about how to best distribute inventory, what factors might help attract the biggest audience possible, and how to try to put yourself in a strategic position to not get exposed when the later picks of the draft come around and you don't have anything high-quality for a certain date.”

Klatt: Why did you choose the games you chose for “Big Noon” this year?

Mulvihill: “We are in the top three in the Big Ten this year and we will stay that way for the next few years. That's a really advantageous position.”

“We don’t really earn our salary by voting for Michigan-Ohio State No. 1. For any college football fan, that's the obvious first choice. When you think about the next few options, it gets a little more interesting. We felt this year that Texas-Michigan was probably in the top three based on its merits alone. But you also have to consider what else is available on that date. There are days where you might downgrade the top choice on a given date a little bit because you feel like the second and third best games on that date are pretty good. So there's not a huge need to get the best available game on that date. In the case of the Texas-Michigan game on Sept. 7, we really felt like it would go way down to No. 2 and even further down to No. 3 if we didn't get that game.

“We wanted to make sure we secured the first pick at a time when there weren't a lot of quality players. So Michigan-Ohio State is No. 1, Texas-Michigan is No. 2, and we had a really fascinating conversation about what to do with the third pick, and you were involved in that.”

Klatt: I find the process of scouting the teams fascinating before we even get to the point where you select the weekends where we have the top picks, so how did you make the third pick?

Mulvihill: “We've probably discussed this pick more than any other pick in the history of college football on FOX. There were two dates we thought were particularly strong: October 12th, when Ohio State heads west and plays Oregon. One of the best games of the season, not just in the Big Ten, but probably in all of college football.

“The other really interesting date is Nov. 2. There are two big-league games on that day. One is Ohio State versus Penn State, a very traditional Big Ten matchup. The other is Oregon coming east to play Michigan in the Big House. When you pick a date, you pick the date, not a specific game. So if we picked Nov. 2, we would be deciding two weeks in advance whether we wanted Ohio State versus Penn State or Oregon versus Michigan.”

Klatt: Why was the third election so difficult?

Mulvihill: “A lot of factors played a role. One is simply the quality of the Ohio State-Oregon game. Another is the novelty of having a traditional Big Ten power with a West Coast school in the first season of the Big Ten expanding to the West Coast. A third factor is that we built our FOX college football identity around the idea of ​​playing our best games at 12:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. CT and made that the most-watched game of the week in college football. We're tremendously proud of that. If we took the Ohio State-Oregon game, that would obviously be a game we couldn't play at 12:00 p.m. ET/9:00 a.m. PT. So that would create a domino effect that day because we would have to play later in the day and another network would be in our midday slot. We would have to put a less important game in the midday slot. There were consequences to taking a game we couldn't play at 12:00 p.m. ET could play.

Ohio State, Michigan and Utah in Joel Klatt's Top 25 after spring

“Another factor that has nothing to do with football but plays a role in our decision-making is that Nov. 2 is three days before the presidential election. There's going to be a lot of political money at play in our advertising market this year. The idea of ​​controlling that date, having the opportunity to win Ohio State-Penn State or Oregon-Michigan just days before the election, and all the campaign money that comes with that really appealed to me. In a situation where those two dates were close together and you could make an argument for either of them, the political element was important.

“We're also thinking about upcoming contract renewals with our distributors. You can get FOX on an antenna, of course, but most people get it through a package, whether it's cable, satellite or over the internet, and we occasionally face the need to renew our contracts with those distributors. We want to make sure we have the most exciting games when those contract renewals come up. Without giving too much away, we have major contract renewals coming up this fall, and sometimes the geography of the companies we work with plays a role in the games we want to select.

“So there are all these factors in terms of the strength of the game, the Big Ten expansion, the power of the 'Big Noon' brand, what it means to us as a company, where the advertising revenue might be, where the distribution revenue might be.

“All of those things play a role – and it was the most hotly debated draft pick in college football that we've ever had.”

Klatt: And what did you ultimately do with the third choice?

Mulvihill: “We traded the pick. We didn't make the choice. It was so difficult that we just couldn't do it. We can trade our picks in this selection process just like we would trade picks in the NFL Draft.”

“We actually came up with a solution that I think worked well for everybody. I think everybody will be happy. I won't mention the name of the broadcaster we made the deal with because they haven't announced what they did with the pick yet and it's their news that they announce. But I can tell you that after going down from No. 3, we moved up later in the draft. We ended up with five of the top seven picks in the draft and were still able to get the Nov. 2 pick.

Klatt: We are the Chicago Bearsis basically what you are telling me? We gave away our pick, which Carolina Panthers receive Bryce Young and We got all these picks in exchange for adding a little more depth to the schedule, to make a crude and poor comparison.

Mulvihill: “That's exactly right. When we look at the draft board, we think about where there are separations within the board.”

Klatt: There's a difference between great college football and games that they think can bring their best time, like “Big Noon” on FOX. They look for games that will bring that kind of time, and there are some weekends where just one game is enough for that kind of thing, right?

Mulvihill: “Yes, and I'm glad you said that. It's important to understand that we have to make decisions based on the audience potential of those games. Sometimes those decisions have nothing to do with the perceived competitiveness of the game or the assessment of a fan base. They definitely have nothing to do with the perception of the quality or effort of the kids who are going to compete and play the game. But we have to recognize that there are games that can draw an audience of 10 million and there are games that can only draw three or four million. We have to do the analysis to find out which ones are at that highest level and we build our schedule around that.”

You can find more of my conversation with Mulvihill on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Joel Klatt is FOX Sports’ lead college football game analyst and host of the podcast “The Joel Klatt Show.” Follow him on X/Twitter at @joelklatt And Subscribe to the “Joel Klatt Show” on YouTube.

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