The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - How College Football and NFL TV Schedules get made with Michael Mulvihill

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Fox Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt sits down with Fox Sports President of Insights and Analytics, Michael Mulvihill to discuss how College Football and NFL games are scheduled between the different TV networks. Michael explains how the game selection process between TV networks works and why it’s closer to a fantasy football draft than people may realize. The two also discuss the decision making when choosing the Big Noon Saturday Games that were announced last week: Michigan-Ohio State, Texas-Michigan and Alabama-Wisconsin. Mulvihill also details the origins of the concept of Big Noon Saturday and why FOX is adding big-time games on the Friday night schedule this Fall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'd like to say that the college football draft is basically the world's greatest fantasy football draft. I was just going to say yes. But it takes $500 million to play. College football has never been better. Interest has never been higher. Believe that we are at the dawn of the golden age of college football. It was an epic day of college football. It was one of those days where you fall in love with the sport all over again.

Hey, welcome into the Joel Clatt show, everybody. I am Joel Clatt, and this is going to be a very special and unique edition. of the episode. First and foremost, if you're out there, make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Get down there into the comments. Comment below. Like the video. I like to jump into the comments as well, and we can have a little bit of a dialogue, but make sure you're doing that if you're out there on YouTube. And if you're not on YouTube, make sure to go there and subscribe. Okay, so today, what you're starting to see in college football this time of year is the schedule is starting to be released. And it's not which teams are going to play which

teams because we know that quite far in advance. It's different than that. It's starting to be what games are going to be played at what times and which networks are going to be broadcasting those games. So Fox announced in the last couple of weeks three games that will definitely be on our air and in particular the Big Noon Saturday schedule for Gus and Jenny and I. So September 7th, we've got Texas at Michigan. September 14th, we've got Alabama at Wisconsin, and then of course November 30th. the game as Ohio State and Michigan Tangle at the end of the year. But rather than just give you

the schedule and start talking about some of those matchups, I wanted to take you behind the scenes here. And that's why this is going to be such a unique and special episode of the show. So without further ado, I'm going to bring on what I deem as the smartest man in television and our president here at Fox Sports of Data and Analytics. And that is Mike Mova Hill is going to join the show. Mike, what's going on, man? How are you? Lots going on this time of year. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. This will be like the conversations that you and I have constantly throughout the year, except this time we're going to do it in front of an audience and try to give people a little bit of insight into, as you say, how the schedule comes together, how the collegiate process is a little different from the NFL and how we try to get the best games for you, Gus and Jenny to do all season. Yeah, it's a fascinating process. And to be honest with you, when I first started in this business and even was doing these games with Gus, I started with Gus in 2000. So this is going to be our 10th season together.

I didn't really understand at that point how even the college schedule was made from a television picks process. So let's start with the games that we have announced. And of course, that's September 7th, Texas at Michigan in a huge non-conference affair. September 14th, the week after, as Alabama travels up to face Wisconsin, and then November 30th, the game as Michigan and Ohio State Tangle. Those are the three games that we have publicly declared. Laird will be on Fox. They will be on Big Noon. Take us into those selections and how they were made.

So I'll back up a little bit and just describe for people the process by which these selections are made, right? The college football schedule is determined literally by a draft. So in the case of the Big Ten, we and CBS and NBC go through a draft where Fox holds the top three picks on the board. And then we have the number six. And then our next one is a little later. than that. So it's not just a straight rotation, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. The picks change a little bit as we go through that selection order. And we spend a lot of time thinking about what are we going to do with those top three picks. What do we think will be left for us on the board later? We try to guess at what the other networks might prioritize. A couple guys on my team, Derek Crocker and

Ryan Kassoff, do a phenomenal job, mocking out. out how we think the draft might go. They go through dozens of iterations of how the draft might play out. And it's just game theory. It's just thinking about if X happens, what's our next move? And after we do that, how do we think somebody else will respond to it? And we spend a lot of time thinking about it because, you know, there's a lot of money at stake. There are huge audiences that we're trying to capture.

I'd like to say that the college football draft is basically the world's greatest fantasy football draft. I was just going to say, yes. But it takes $500 million to play, right? So it's a little bit different than your $50 or $100 fantasy football draft with your friends. It's different in terms of the stakes. But it's not that different in terms of the mechanics of it. You're still just thinking about best possible allocation of inventory. What are the factors that might go into attracting the biggest audience possible? And how do you try to put yourself in a strategic position to not be exposed when the later picks of the draft come around, you don't want to get caught in a situation

where you just don't have anything high quality for a particular date. So in the case of this year's draft, we do now hold the top three selections in the Big Ten. We'll have that every year for the next several year. It's a really advantageous position to be in. Which is why to interject. This is why Gus and Jenny and I

call Michigan, Ohio State every single year, is because we have the top pitch in the Big Ten every year. And that's, of course, going to be the top pick because it's the highest rated game in college football. Right. So we don't really earn our salaries by picking Michigan, Ohio State number one, right? Like any college football fan would see that that's the obvious first selection.

Then when you start thinking about those next couple choices, it gets a little bit more interesting. We felt this year that Texas, Michigan was probably a top three game just on its own merits. but there's also a consideration of what else is available on that date. And there are days where you might downgrade the top pick a little bit on a specific date because you feel like the second best game and the third best game on that date are actually pretty good. So there's not that much of an urgent need to get the best available game on that date.

In the case of the Texas Michigan game on September 7th, we really felt like if we didn't get that game, it was a long way down to the number two and then an even longer way down to the number three. So we wanted to make sure that we locked in the top choice on a date where we didn't necessarily feel there was a great depth of high quality inventory. So Michigan, Ohio states the one, Texas Michigan becomes the two. And then we had a really fascinating conversation about what to do with the third pick. You were involved in it. Well, that's one of the things that I think is interesting is that, and by the way, one of the things

that I very much appreciate about working at Fox is the collaborative effort that takes place. So months ago, we were going through myself and Steve, who works obviously, you guys always know that I referenced Steve, we started going through our preparation of what we felt like these teams were going to look like in the fall. Right. Now, truth be told, it's become much more difficult with the transfer rules and how quickly teams can change. And in particular, because you're starting to do your draft prep with your crew, yourself and Derek Crocker and Ryan Cassoff. And we're trying to do that before the spring transfer window. So we understand that there are teams that could be getting a giant transfer at quarterback, let's say,

that's going to change the game. For instance, a few years ago, Joe Burrow loses the spring quarterback battle at Ohio State and ends up going to LSU, and that changes what LSU is going look like. That's just a small example. But the process of going through that, we start on a Zoom call and sometimes in person going through each week and more specifically each team. And we start talking through each team. How do we think each team is going to do? What do we think about these schedules that they're going to have to play? And what could they potentially be on the fifth week of the season or the sixth week? Joel, are they going to get there undefeated? Well, I don't know. They're going to have a tough game in week three. If they can get past that game in week three, that team might

be undefeated. The process of trying to scout the teams, I find fascinating before we even get to the place where you guys are selecting weekends and drafting against, if you will, other networks. So that's a great setup because we do have very in-depth conversations with you and some of our other analysts where we just focus on the football, right? We just focus on the quality of potential matchups and which teams we think are going to have big years. In the case of that number three pick, we probably debated that pick more than any other single pick in the history of college football on Fox,

because there were two dates that were in play that we thought were especially strong. One is October 12th, where Ohio State will go out west and play Oregon, one of the best games of the season, not just in the Big Ten, but probably in all of college football. The other date that's really interesting is November 2nd. There are two, I would say, ultra-premium games on that date.

One is Ohio State going to Penn State, very traditional Big Ten matchup, and the other is Oregon coming east to play Michigan in the big house. When you select a date, you're selecting the date. You're not selecting a specific game. So if we were to pick November 2nd, when the time comes, when we get two weeks out of that date, will actually make a selection of whether we want Ohio State Penn State or Oregon, Michigan. For now, you just take that date and you maintain the flexibility to decide later what game you'll actually take. Why was this decision so difficult? A lot of factors came into play.

One is simply the quality of that Ohio State Oregon game. One is the novelty of having a matchup of a traditional Big Ten power with a West Coast school in the first season of the Big Ten going to West Coast expansion. A third factor is that we have built our Fox College Football identity around the idea of playing our best games at noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central, we have built that into the most watched game of the week in college football. We have an enormous pride in it. I take a lot of personal pride in what we have built there. And for us to take the Ohio state Oregon game. That's obviously a game that we can't play at noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific. So it would trigger, it would trigger sort of a domino effect on that date where we would have to

play later in the day. Another network would get to play in our noon window. We would have to put a lesser game on in the noon window. So there were just implications of taking a game that we couldn't play at noon eastern. In addition to all that, other factors that have nothing to do with football, but that do play into our decision making, that November 2nd date is three days before the presidential election. And there will be a lot of political money in our advertising marketplace this year. And the idea of being in control of that date, having the optionality to take Ohio State, Penn State, or Michigan, Oregon just a few days before the election and all that campaign money that will come with it, that really resonated with me. And,

And in a situation where those two dates were very close and you can make an argument for either one, the political element mattered. We also think about renewals that we have coming with our distributors. You know, you can obviously get Fox via an antenna, but most people get it via a bundle, whether that's a cable or satellite or now we have internet distributed bundles via YouTube TV and others. and we are occasionally faced with a need to renew our deals with those distributors, and we want to make sure we have the most compelling games that we can have as those renewals come up. So without revealing too much, we do have significant renewals coming up this fall, and sometimes the geography of where those companies that we're dealing with are particularly strong play into the games that 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 new brand, what that means to us as a company, where the advertising money could be, where the distribution money could be, all these things come into play. The choice of what to do with that third pick, as I say, it was the most, it was the most intensely debated college football draft pick that we have ever had. And in the end, the choice that we made was, we traded the pick. We just, we didn't, we didn't make the choice, right?

The choice was so different. that we just didn't make it. We can trade our picks in this selection process, just like you would trade picks in the NFL draft. And we actually came to a solution that I think worked out really well for everybody. I think everybody's going to be satisfied. I won't name the network that we did the deal with because they haven't announced yet what they did with the pick, and it's their news to share.

But I can tell you that in moving down from the number three pick, we then moved up at a later portion of the draft. We ended up with five of the top seven picks in the draft, and we were still able to get that November second date. So we are the Chicago Bears is basically what you're telling me. We traded our pickaway. Carolina got Bryce Young, and we got all these picks in return in order to build some more depth in this schedule

to make a blunt and bad analogy. No, that's exactly right. I mean, when we look at the draft board, we think a lot about where is there separation in the board. Sure. You know, how many really... And that's where it goes back to the football conversation, really. And we'll talk about that as well.

You know, and in particular, the weeks where it's pretty clear to identify, there's only one game. Yeah. You know, that can carry a weekend, right? Obviously, there's more than one games. I don't want to disparage any game that goes on. And you all know that I love college football enough to know that every game is important. But there's a difference between great college football and games that can carry those network windows.

And what they would consider is their prime window, not necessarily prime time, but their prime window. Think SEC on CBS, which now obviously moves to the Big 10, prime time on ABC. Those windows now NBC in a prime time on Big Big 10 and what we do at noon, those are our prime windows. And so you're looking for those games to carry those types of windows. And there are weekends where there's really only one that you feel like can really carry the water of those things. Yeah. And I'm glad you said that the way you did because I think it's important to just understand that we have to make determinations about the audience potential of these games. And sometimes those determinations have nothing to do with the perceived competitiveness of the game.

They don't have anything to do with a judgment about a fan base. They definitely don't have anything to do with a perception of the quality of the effort among the kids that are actually going to compete and play the game. But we do have to acknowledge that there are games that are capable of delivering an audience of 10 million, and there are games that are probably only capable of delivering an audience of three or four million. And we have to do the analysis to figure out which ones are at that most premium level. build our schedule around that. Okay, so I would love to know because all of that, and again, you know, I know it's difficult to understand, but to try to recap very briefly, we draft weekends where we're putting number one picks or control of the weekend on certain dates. That's how

the college draft works. It's very different in every conference based on the contracts within that conference with their television partners. And it's also miles different from the NFL. You're obviously involved in both. I would love to hear the differences, and I'm sure our audience would as well. What are the major differences in the network's draft or process

of getting games in the National Football League versus what you just described like in the Big Ten? So the NFL process is completely controlled by the NFL. They author the schedule. And even with the exorbitant rights fees that we and other networks pay, we don't literally have a contractual right to choose any of our games. What we can do is lobby the league for games that we want. We put together a wish list of games that we would like to have that we hope to have. Every other network does the

same thing. I'm sure those lists are very similar, at least at the very top end, right? And we're just engaged in a constant conversation throughout the year about what worked last year, what could have worked better, what would we like to do differently? How do we feel these games can be allocated so that all the partners are being treated fairly, right? We want to lobby for our own interests, but we also have to maintain some recognition that everybody else is paying billions of dollars too, and everybody has to be treated fairly. And then ultimately... Can I jump in on that point? Just really quickly. It's also behooves every network for the other networks to succeed in particular when it comes to the Super Bowl.

Every network wants every single network to do a great job in the Super Bowl because then the next year's Super Bowl, which might be yours, is sold based on the last one's rights or I should say ratings, not rights, but ratings. So there is a more collaborative effort on the National Football League scale because it perpetuates itself to some degree where that's not necessarily the case in college football but but please continue well you know the point you're making about the super bowl is correct and even in the regular season and the playoffs i think we do root for each other's success right we want to be number one we want to have the best rating story of any network but we want the entire marketplace to do well too you know our

fortunes are very much intertwined and so if cbs and nbc are having success with the big 10 that probably means we're having success with the Big Ten. If CBS and NBC are having success on NFL Sundays, then we're probably having success too. So it's competitive, but it's not zero-sum. There is the potential for there to be a rising tide that lifts everybody's company and helps us all do a better job. So there's this lobbying process that goes on throughout the year. It intensifies around the time of the Super Bowl. We stay in constant touch with the league throughout the spring. But then when the NFL schedule comes out, we're as surprised as anybody. That's some of the things that are on the schedule.

We don't have perfect visibility into it. We didn't know until very, very late in the process that we had a chance to get the Super Bowl rematch this year. It came as kind of a pleasant surprise. We've never had a Super Bowl rematch on Fox before. This year we'll have Kansas City, San Francisco in week seven. That's probably the highlight of our schedule. So the NFL process is all about lobbying and conversation. And hopefully it reflects the strength of the relationship that we have with the league.

they're our most important partner, whereas the college football process is just a draft, right? There's not that much lobbying involved, and it really is more about just strategizing around your draft picks and trying to come up with the smartest way to allocate those resources that you can. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly a fascinating process. And because of the process in the college game, which is what we're all fans of, I would say that there's a little bit more, and this is across the country, right? I mean, ESPN, ABC, they have a lot of influence now, in particular with the SEC,

and they can shape the schedule a lot differently than networks can with the National Football League. Well, the same can be said in the Big Ten as well, even with the three partners. And part of that is coming to fruition with what will be announced later this week with a Friday schedule of games. in a package of games in the Big Ten that will be played on Friday night. And I know that's something that we as a company, although not specifically for Gus and I, you know, on Big Noon, but we as a company are very excited about not only the potential of that package, but also the implications of a game in the Big Ten

that would potentially then leave the audience at our network for the Big Noon slot the next morning. Yeah, this is probably the initiative that I'm the most excited about since we launched Big Noon five years ago, right? We're opening up Friday night for college football. We are then opening up Friday night starting in December for college basketball. So we'll have a September through mid-March collegiate sports presence on Friday night. This will be the first time that we've had two nights of our primetime schedule devoted to college sports, week. It's been a very involved process with the Big Ten conference and with the Big 12. They're contributing a few games to Friday night as well and with the coaches and ADs at schools in both

conferences to try to get to a Friday night schedule. I think part of what's exciting about it is that the Saturday landscape for college football, as you know, is extremely crowded and incredibly competitive. And it's hard to stand out. And we're looking in Friday night. And we're looking in Friday night to open up some new real estate that's just an easier competitive environment. And even if the games aren't always at the viewership level of what you and Gus and Jenny do on Big Noon, they're going to be in such a friendly competitive window that I think we can actually do pretty well. And it's just a chance for us to further the visibility of the Big Ten Conference of the Big 12 conference, hopefully raise the profile of college football generally. I'm sure very few people

watching are aware of this. But last season, was the most watched season of college football in history. If you just add up all the time that was spent viewing games, not just on Fox, but across all the networks, number one season of college football of all times. So we feel like the business of college football is evolving in a really positive way.

The viewership has never been higher. The interest has never been higher. And we're just looking for ways to push that even further, right? How do we continue to grow the game? I think opening up Friday night's going to prove to be a great opportunity. It's fascinating because I opened the show. the open that you all heard and have heard, you know, every time you listen to one of these episodes. And I say, we're at the dawn of the golden age of college football.

Interest has never been higher. The sport's never been better. This is part of why is because of not only what I see on the field every Saturday and how I interact with you guys on Saturdays at and around the stadiums, but also my conversations here behind the curtain in the data and the analytics and learning things like this is the most watch season of college. football, creating a third premium window in college football like Big Noon has enhanced that. So now you have premium windows of games throughout the day in college football, which was not the case prior to Big Noon. And I would love, you know, you could easily, and if you would like, please do, take a victory lap because I don't think people at home realize how difficult it is to start something in television. It does not happen. It's even more rare when something is started in

television that is tied to a tent pole sporting event or window. That is a very rare thing. Now, you see it sometimes with events, the Rose Bowl and the Kentucky Derby and the Masters and so on and so forth. But to create something like Big Noon and have the success that we've had with Big Noon, this was your idea. Playing college football games at noon Eastern that are the biggest matchups of the weekend. And there was pushback. We've gotten pushback from fan bases. And yet, the proof is in the pudding. This has been a wild success in just five short years. Yeah, that's

really generous of you to say. And I do take my share of credit and pride in what it's become. And Derek and Ryan on my team take their share. And, not just our team, but Eric Shanks, Mark Soberman, Brad Zager, Robert Gottlieb, who came up with the name Big Noon Saturday and Big Noon kickoff. Everybody just embraced that idea and embrace the idea of doing something unconventional. Am I going to get in trouble for not listening all of the bosses? I just always say it was your idea. We just name them all. But no, I think we leaned into the idea of doing something a little bit different. And the way it came about was that, you know, frankly, for some time, we,

were putting our best college football games on in primetime. And we were getting beaten pretty badly. You know, the reality is that ABC has owned that real estate for a long time. Yep. And we weren't having much success going head to head. CBS had the top SEC game of the week at 3.30 for probably 30 years by the time we came up with big noon Saturday. And there was just a need to do something different. You know, we had to recognize that we couldn't keep trying to do the same thing and expect to have any success.

There was one specific game that really acted as a catalyst for what became Big Noon. The Big Ten has longstanding restrictions about playing primetime games in November. And in one of our first seasons with the Big Ten, we had a Michigan-Wisconsin game in November that we couldn't play in prime. the conventional thinking would have been, well, let's go at 3.30. If we can't go in prime time, let's just go as late in the day as we can. Let's do something a little bit different.

Let's try it at noon. Let's see what happens. I think we did 5.5 million viewers. We now regularly do quite a bit more than that for Big Noon. But at the time, 5.5 million viewers was a big win for us. And it led me and others to think, you know, we should just lean into this. I think as TV programmers,

what you're often trying to do, especially in sports, it's not come up with a brand new, entirely new idea. It's to just recognize something that is already showing signs of working and just lean further into that. That's what Caitlin Clark was this year. Caitlin Clark was just recognizing that something was doing pretty well on Big Ten Network, then elevating it to broadcast, then elevating it to broadcast primetime, and just creating momentum by identifying something that was working and then amplifying it.

that's what big noon was too we tried that one game at noon it did pretty well we knew that things weren't working in prime time so it was just recognizing that something had had demonstrated a potential to work and then just amplifying it as much as we could uh and we started that in 2019 the good first season we had a little bit of a weird season in the covid year and then we came back in 2021 stronger than ever we've grown ever since and we've been the number one window uh in college football now for three straight years. So I do like to think that we've created something that is a franchise and that will, I hope, endure and extend beyond the time that I'm doing this or that any of us are doing this. I really want this to be something that 20, 25, 30 years from now, Big Noon is still

part of college football. And it's just part of the heartbeat of the sport. Somebody else might be doing the draft. Somebody else might be doing the games. That's right. But I think we both hope that it'll have that kind of life where it's just a longstanding part of what makes college football so great. Well, I think that, and I think this goes to our human instinct. I think every one of us in our careers or really in any walk of life, we want to be a part of build into something bigger than ourselves. And so when you can, you know, find these types of moments and these types of things, in particular in our industry, which are hard to come by. You just don't make these.

You know, normally you have to be a part of something that has already been established. But you're right. And I talk about it with my wife all the time. And I talk about how proud I am to just be in the seat that I am next to Gus and with Jenny and our entire crew and for this company, knowing that in the future, you know, someone's going to be actively seeking the big noon seat, you know. And that, to me, that makes it even more special rather than just doing a game at regardless of time and because it's the better game. You know, it really is something that is bigger than all of us.

And for that reason, it makes it really special. Yeah, I love hearing you say that. That makes the hair on my arm stand up a little bit because I agree with every word of that. I know it means a lot to people in this building. And, you know, honestly, hopefully it means a lot to kids on campus, the students that come out for the games, the alumni that come back. You know, there's nothing, I shouldn't say there's nothing, but there are a few things that are more special about going to college in America than having that big game experience on Saturday. And we're so proud that we get to contribute to it in some way. And you mentioned this earlier.

I think it's great now that college football has evolved in a way where there are big games under the lights. There are going to be big games in prime time on NBC and on ABC and on ABC. And that's a cool experience. And we get to provide a different kind of cool experience. We get to take over that early part of the day, and there's something fun about tailgating early in the morning and going to a daytime game and then having the whole day in front of you, too. So I think it has made college football Saturdays better,

not just for Fox, but across the entire landscape of the sport. Hopefully it's a reason why the sport is now more popular than ever. Again, more premium windows means that there's more opportunities for large audiences. And I'd say, you know, the coaches used to push back. Some players used to push back. And they're like, man, we just want to be on prime time. and I used to tell them, and I landed on this argument, and I thought it was always my best argument with these guys.

And I would tell the players, I remember telling a few of the guys at Oklahoma this. And I was like, hey, I was like, why would you want to play in prime time? And they were like, what do you mean? Of course we want to play in prime time. And I was like, you play at noon and you ball out. Every highlight the rest of the day is you. So the whole country is just going to watch your highlight the rest of the day all day, Saturday. And they sat there and they thought about it.

And they're like, yeah, we like noon. We like noon. So, you know, that's one of those things that it has certainly come full circle. So just to circle back, mark your calendars. These games are official. They are announced September 7th. Big noon kickoff will be coming to Michigan as we host Texas and Michigan in that huge ball game. By the way, they haven't played since I believe the Rose Bowl before the Texas USC Rose Bowl.

So that's a rematch of that game all the way back with Vince Young. and the Wolverines. Then September 14th will be in Madison, Big Noon, kickoff, Big Noon Saturday, Alabama and their new head coach, Kailin DeBore, coming up to face the Badgers. And then, of course, the game, November 30th, as the Wolverines try to make it four in a row against the Buckeyes, they travel to Columbus to face what a lot of us think could be the best team in college football this season. Mike, I appreciate you coming on, man. I enjoy our conversations immensely. Mike and I talk about a lot of things we talked about that we didn't get into on this podcast. But I appreciate our friendship, number one, but then also the professional relationship,

what you've provided here at Fox with Big Noon, Big Noon Saturday, Big Noon kickoff. It's been very special, and I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you for saying that. Thanks for everything you do, not just to make our games so great on the air, but everything that you contribute to our process to make sure that we are delivering the best schedule possible. And this was really fun. And if you ever had me back, I'll even put on a pair of pants. That's how much this means to me. I love it. He was like, do you want me to put on jeans? I was like, no, man, this is, this is good. This is, this is perfect. The arguments for our schedule will continue because trust me, I don't always see all the different sides outside of just the football, but I will tell

you it's been a fun process. So Mike Mulpahill, president of data and analytics at box sports. Thank you for watching. Remember to subscribe on YouTube, leave a comment below. Ask a question. I'll jump down there and I'll answer some questions in the comments below. And check out our content coming up the rest of the week. We'll be back with you next week with another episode of the Joel Clashio.