Utah had a dream weekend, and Monday came swinging back hard.
The Utes got the full College GameDay treatment, beat Houston in a tight one, climbed to No. 6 in the AP poll and watched BYU lose. Then the mood turned fast: the Big 12 dropped a 10 a.m. Mountain Time kickoff for next week’s Holy War, ESPN personality Pat McAfee’s complaints about his Utah experience blew up online, and the university ended the day with an apology to McAfee and ESPN.
That sequence left plenty for Utah fans to stew over, but the bigger point sits underneath all of it: the people writing the checks usually get the final say.
McAfee is entitled to his reaction, even if his version of what happened was off. He said people called him “creepy,” but that never happened.
Worse, he went too far when he tied Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which took place in Orem, 40 miles away, to Utah’s campus. If anyone owed an apology in that exchange, it was Utah.
Instead, the school issued one to McAfee late Monday, a move that understandably irritated Utes fans. Utah’s only crime, in the eyes of many, was taking a playful shot at ESPN’s loudest showman - and finding out he didn’t enjoy being the butt of the joke.
But McAfee’s employer is part of the machine that drives the Big 12’s revenue, and the league knows it. ESPN and Fox help produce the money that gets distributed to campuses at about $30-something million a year. That reality hangs over everything, including scheduling.
The Holy War’s Nov. 7 kickoff at 10 a.m. local time on ESPN or ABC is miserable for fans, no question. But from the Big 12 and ESPN’s perspective, it makes sense. A top-10 rivalry deserves a national spotlight, and the early window gives it the best chance to get one.
The alternatives weren’t great. Prime time would have put the game opposite Miami-Notre Dame on NBC, which would have swallowed plenty of attention.
The afternoon wasn’t much better, with Alabama-LSU on ABC and Oregon-Ohio State on CBS at 3:30 p.m. Eastern.
In that traffic jam, the Holy War fits best in the 12 p.m. Eastern slot.
That also gives the game a real shot in the ratings race. Texas-Missouri will be on the other main network slot, while Fox’s Big Noon window likely features a lower-tier Big Ten game such as Iowa-Northwestern. For a rivalry with this kind of juice, the Holy War can absolutely compete.
The bigger gripe from Utah and BYU fans is the date itself. Why not put the Holy War on rivalry weekend?
Because the Big 12 isn’t just thinking about one game. It has to build a full schedule around a crowded national calendar, and the final Saturday of the regular season is already packed. Ohio State-Michigan takes the early Fox window, which leaves the afternoon and prime-time slots loaded with Alabama-Auburn, USC-UCLA and Oregon-Washington.
There’s another wrinkle, too: when the conference sets the schedule each winter, it doesn’t know what will be moved to the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it doesn’t know how meaningful any game will turn out to be.
The Holy War has also only been played on rivalry weekend once in the past 16 years, in 2018, so it isn’t locked into that spot the way some other games are around the country.
For fans - and maybe for the schools themselves - the final Saturday would probably feel best, especially in the afternoon or prime time. But for ESPN and Fox, a mid-season showcase is the smarter business play.
And after Monday’s reminders about how this all works, the message was pretty clear: the networks run the sport.
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Morgan Scalley and Evans both pointed to the same larger lesson from the game: Utahs margin on defense will come from relentless effort and cleaner execution when the field gets short. The Utes were able to hold firm in the red zone and force a field goal instead of giving up a touchdown, the kind of response they will need if they want those momentum-shifting mistakes to stay off the board. [Read more 🡒]