Ryan Day pushes back on noon kickoff gripes: 'It doesn't matter'

Ohio State fans have been very vocal in recent weeks about their frustration with noon kickoffs. The Buckeyes will play their sixth noon game of the season on Saturday against Indiana, and next weekend’s matchup with Michigan is already set for noon.

That means that Ohio State will end the regular season with six straight noon kickoffs. Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day was asked about all of the noon kickoffs when he appeared on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday.

Day admitted that he’s heard all of the gripes, but he and his team are tuning out the noise.

“There’s a lot of noise in this world. That’s just the way it goes,” Ryan Day said. “We don’t worry about that stuff. We just worry about playing football and preparing.”

Ohio State has done an excellent job of that so far this season. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 2 in the College Football Playoff entering Saturday’s showdown with No. 5 Indiana.

Day’s only concern is making sure his team shows up ready to play, no matter when or where the game is.

“It doesn’t matter where we play. Last week we played at Wrigley [Field] at 11 a.m. local time and that was good, we made that work,” Day said. “We’re going to make whatever time work. It doesn’t matter. So at some point, they’ve gotta put the football down and we’ll be ready to play.”

Ohio State is playing at noon so often because of Fox and Big Noon Kickoff. ESPN and other networks have typically put their biggest games on during primetime. Fox wanted to differentiate itself by putting its marquee game on at noon.

As Joel Klatt recently shared on Twitter, the plan has worked. However, fans of Big Ten teams, including Ohio State are frustrated about no longer getting as many night games.

“Lots of talk about Big Noon Saturday…Here are some things I think you should know,” Klatt said recently in a thread on Twitter. “Big Noon Saturday has been the most watched CFB window for the last few years…last year our window avg. almost 7m viewers/game. Prior to Big Noon this window in CFB was non-existent. Fox Sports saw a clear opportunity to build value into the sport by creating a 3rd window for premium CFB. That clearly worked.”