First, FOX put the Ohio State game at noon, Now NBC is burying the White Out behind a paywall

This offseason when you took a look at Penn State’s schedule, Week 10 was the obvious spot for the White Out, one of the best traditions in college football. However, corporate interests trumped tradition and fears that FOX would claim Penn State’s Week 10 matchup with Ohio State for its Big Noon Kickoff prompted the program to move the White Out a week later when the Nittany Lions host the Washington Huskies. 

Penn State lost in Week 10 20-13 to the Buckeyes and will likely fall out of the top 5 in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the year. Meanwhile, Washington lost Kalen DeBoer to Alabama this offseason, and under Jedd Fisch, the Huskies are 4-4 after making a run to the National Championship Game. 

The lack of national intrigue for this game has led NBC to put the matchup behind a paywall on its Peacock streaming service. Penn State will get its White Out in primetime with an 8:00 p.m. ET kickoff at Beaver Stadium, but plenty of fans who are unwilling to pay for Peacock won’t be able to watch it. 

The major TV networks are funneling money into the sport, but they’ve been a major factor in the major realignment that has left conferences with no geographical coherence, and now they’re significantly impacting one of the sport’s premier program’s most important annual traditions. 

Penn State fans called for a boycott of FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show on Saturday morning before Week 10, and they may look for some sort of retribution this week now that NBC is burying the White Out as a streaming-only game.