The Pac-12's Grand Experiment: Football Games Starting at 9 a.m.
The 2020 Pac-12 season will open with a 9 a.m. game between USC and Arizona State on Nov. 7, signaling the start of the conference’s grand East Coast exposure experiment.
That game between the top South Division contenders will be televised nationally by Fox, and presumably will one of several Pac-12 games that start at 9 a.m., although starting times have not been set for subsequent weekends.
Is it a good idea? Well, it couldn’t hurt. The Pac-12’s football reputation has been deteriorating at a rapid pace in recent years, and although this may seem like a desperation move, it should get a few more eyes on the conference. And if the Pac-12 is ever going to try something radical, this is the time.
The idea of early-morning starts has been bandied about by Pac-12 officials in the past, as a means combat the so-called East Coast bias. One of the main arguments against those early starts was the inconvenience it would cause for the people who planned to attend those games. And fan loyalty and ticket sales provide a significant portion of the huge revenue college football generates.
But because of the pandemic, no spectators will be allowed to attend Pac-12 games this season, thus eliminating a major barrier to the 9 a.m. starts.
Pac-12 coaches and officials have suggested for years that part of the reason the conference’s football reputation has worsened is because the TV viewers in the Central and Eastern time zones simply don’t get to see Pac-12 games.
The “Pac-12 After Dark” provided some late-night college football viewing for the West Coast audience, but few in the East would watch, and Pac-12 coaches complained about the logistics for visiting teams, whose players would return home at odd hours.
The 9 a.m. starts will allow these Pac-12 games to slip into attractive times slots for East Coast viewers, and visiting-team players can get home the same day.
Even the announcement of the Pac-12 schedule, which was made 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the ESPN and Fox networks, was timed and promoted to give it the maximum exposure for East Coast college football viewers.
And this season, with the Pac-12, Big Ten and Southeastern conference not playing nonconference games to provide conference comparisons, the eye test is more important that ever in determining rankings and the selections for the four-team College Football Playoff.
The eye test is predicated on viewers seeing teams play. Plus viewers who watch a team play a game are more likely to form a positive opinion of that team than people who simply see the final score and some statistics on Sports Center.
But will the early start affect play in those Pac-12 games? When a West Coast team plays a midday game on the East Coast, TV commentators often note that the visiting team’s biological clock is still at 9 a.m., suggesting it is a disadvantage.
Players would have to get up around 5 a.m. to prepare for a 9 a.m. start, and that would not seem conducive to high-level football either.
The feeling here is that these young men will adapt fine to the early starting time, and it should have little or no effect on the level of play.
The loser in this could be the Pac-12 Network, which figures to lose games to Fox and ESPN.
So this odd season of seven Pac-12 conference games starting the weekend of Nov. 6-7 provided the perfect testing ground for early-morning starts.
And you can be assured that if the 9 a.m. starts prove successful that they will become a regular part of Pac-12 football schedules in the future.
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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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