FOX is about to put a bow on its fifth season of Big Noon Kickoff, and even though ESPN’s College GameDay continues to lead in viewership, FOX isn’t taking its foot off the pedal.

Big Noon Kickoff averaged 1.02 million viewers through the first 10 weeks of the 2023 season according to reporting from Sports Business Journal. That figure was up from the 997,000 viewer average last year, the first year FOX sent its college football pregame show on the road for the entire regular season.

The show has seen its biggest growth in the final hour leading into FOX’s Big Noon Saturday game of the week broadcast. The 11 a.m. hour is averaging over 1.4 million viewers during that window through nine weeks.

FOX has seemed to master creating its own party atmosphere for the on-campus, on-location live show hosted by Rob Stone. Brady Quinn, Matt Leinart, Mark Ingram, and Urban Meyer fill out the desk, with Bruce Feldman and Chris “The Bear” Fallica contributing throughout the course of the morning.

Stone said the show continues to improve and gain momentum. It’s clear the program is on an upward trajectory.

“We’re a toddler, but we’re not in our crib anymore,” Stone said. “We’re demanding a king-sized bed.”

“It’s just a testament to everyone at Fox believing in what we can make this,” Leinart added. “And then also the guys up here and everybody part of this crew — in front of the camera and behind the camera — everybody makes the show go.”

The show obviously wants to eventually overtake GameDay as the most popular college football pregame show in the country, but many elements pull from the formula ESPN has used to make GameDay what it is. Imitation is the most honest form of flattery in Quinn’s eyes, who said that the big difference between what viewers get on FOX is the focus funneling into the noon game of the week.

“Obviously, if you’re gonna start out with the idea to do a college football pregame show, you take a lot of things [GameDay has] done because they’ve been successful,” Quinn said. “What we’re trying to do is taking the tailgate — that party and that atmosphere inside the stadium right before the game — right to kick.”

“The vast majority of our games are that,” the Big Noon Kickoff host added. “So hopefully when you’re watching you get more of the intensity wrapping up to like, here it is, here are the two teams. Boom. Gus and Joel, take it away.”

When the Hero World Challenge tees off later this week in The Bahamas, NBC Sports will reportedly be auditioning its next PGA Tour lead analyst in Paul McGinley.

The Irish Independent on Monday reported that McGinley, a Ryder Cup champion for Europe who contributes analysis to both Sky Sports and Golf Channel, will get to test out doing play-by-play analysis alongside Dan Hicks.

NBC is going to be hiring a new lead analyst after the departure of Paul Azinger following October’s Ryder Cup. The network’s PGA Tour broadcast schedule for 2024 doesn’t begin in earnest until February.

It’s believed that if McGinley gets the lead analyst nod, he will continue to honor his obligations to Sky and Golf Channel under the Comcast banner.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Kings announced they were going to provide a radio/TV simulcast for fans, leaving TV voice Alex Faust without a role with the franchise. The move eventually elevated Faust’s profile, leading to a role with AppleTV’s Friday Night Baseball package.

As the 2023-2024 NHL season began, Alex Faust was named as a fill-in for the New York Rangers radio network. He said the new opportunity has allowed him to view his role from a different lens and question if he wants to be the voice of one team again.

“It’s actually a question I’ve asked myself because, in some ways what happened with the Kings, while it stung and it still stings a bit, it afforded me a luxury that you don’t get in this business very often, and that’s time,” Faust said while on the Sports Media Watch podcast. “It’s time away from full-time in a sport with a team to explore other opportunities. In this case, an opportunity to fill in a little bit with another team.

“But for now, I’m just enjoying the ride … being a national voice you get to parachute in, do the game, and go home and kind of wipe your hands clean of it. With a team, there’s an emotional component to it. There’s an emotional investment. Even though I wasn’t from Los Angeles, you get swept up when you’re working every single day, when you’re at the rink every day, when you’re building relationships with coaches and players,” continued Faust. “Never mind the crest on the front of the jersey, you are a part of that family, a part of that organization. You’re vested in their success. So it’s a very different feeling than being invested in the success of a network.”

Alex Faust was also asked about the fallout from his exit from the Los Angeles Kings, and he noted he was shocked by the move.

“I had every intent of making it a long-term proposition. I had put down roots there (and) bought a house there. And it’s a business at the end of the day, so it happens to pro athletes, it happens to white-collar workers, it happens to blue-collar workers. It is just a fact of life that sometimes businesses have to pivot when there are challenges thrown their way,” Faust said.

“I know what the realities are in the business right now, especially for regional sports networks. And, at the time, the Kings’ rights deal was up and I was just a casualty of that. They decided they wanted to go with a simulcast. This was before they inked a new rights agreement with Bally Sports.

“But, I guess, at the end of the day, I was the only one from the crew let go. Everybody else was brought back this season. It’s disappointing, and I still wonder if the economics were a little bit different or if circumstances were a little bit different, whether it would’ve just been status quo. But life moves on and you can’t spend time dwelling on the past, especially when it’s out of your control, and especially when the reasons aren’t ones that you necessarily love or agree with.”