Big Ten still undecided on Penn State/Washington daytime kickoff for Week 10

When Penn State travels out to Seattle in Week 10, it won’t have to deal with Husky Stadium under the lights or the perils of West Coast-to-East Coast travel after a night game. That much we know. 

However, we still don’t know exactly when Penn State and Washington will kick off. The game is set for either 3:30 p.m. ET or 4:15 p.m. ET, with an announcement of the official time and network to be made after the Week 9 slate of games is complete. 

The only Big Ten kickoff times and networks announced for Week 10 on Monday were Nebraska at Illinois, which is the Friday night game on FOX kicking off at 8:00 p.m. ET, Maryland at Purdue, which is the Big Ten Network game at 12:30 p.m. ET, and Oregon at Ohio State, which will be the CBS midday game, kicking off at 3:30 p.m. ET. 

The rest of the slate, including Penn State at Washington, Michigan State at Michigan, UCLA at Minnesota, Iowa at Northwestern, and Rutgers at Wisconsin, is still TBD. The Big Ten is in turmoil as Oregon plummets from its preseason No. 2 ranking, and expected mid-tier contenders like Penn State and Washington have slumped to the back of the pack; the uncertainty around who is good has seemingly extended to the conference’s broadcasting partners. 

Penn State is lucky not to travel back from Seattle after a night game

There are plenty of difficulties that come with the cross-country travel of the bloated 18-team Big Ten. A night game on the West Coast compounds all of them. A 3:30 p.m. ET or 4:15 p.m. ET kickoff will be either 12:30 p.m. local time or 1:15 p.m. local time, which does not present any body clock concerns for the Nittany Lions, as kicking off at 8:00 p.m. local (11:00 p.m. ET) would. 

The issues of cross-country travel don’t extend just to that week’s game, either. There’s a compounding effect, especially when you have to fly home after a late-night game on the West Coast and arrive home in the morning on the East Coast. That sleep isn’t easy to catch up on, and with Minnesota, which is currently 3-1 in the Big Ten, heading to Happy Valley in Week 11, Penn State will need to bounce back quickly. 

FOX faces an absolute nightmare scenario in Week 10

While CBS is going head-to-head with Alabama at LSU on ABC in the 3:30 slate, FOX hasn’t yet chosen its fighters to match up against an ABC/ESPN slate at noon that features BYU at Utah in what could be a top-10 matchup and Texas at Missouri. Iowa at Northwestern and UCLA at Minnesota will be interesting games, no doubt, but aren’t nearly the draw of ESPN’s slate. 

At night, NBC is smart to have Notre Dame’s rights to mix-and-match with Big Ten games, because in an ugly Big Ten slate, the network will have one of the games of the year as Miami travels to South Bend. 

It’s difficult on the West Coast, but Penn State at Washington would have likely been the best option for Fox if both preseason-ranked teams lived up to expectations, but it appears to be the lone game the network has decided it doesn’t want.

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