Lincoln Riley explains the 9 am PT kickoff against Colorado
USC fans are set to experience two very different college football Saturdays with their Trojans over these next two weeks. First, USC will head to Tempe this weekend to kick off against the Arizona State Sun Devils in a 7:30 pm PT game. The following week, on Sept. 30, the Trojans will be in Boulder, with a game against Colorado scheduled to kick at 9:00 am PT.
Those two times present wildly different challenges for a road team and that kickoff time against Colorado could prove to be a bit tricky coming off such a late road game in the desert. But USC agreed to the 9 am PT game against Colorado, which will kick off at 10 am local time. According to Jon Wilner of the Mercury News, Pac-12 TV policy states that both participants must sign off on any game that kicks off before 11 am local time.
USC head coach Lincoln Riley said there was a conversation about whether to play at that time or deny the request to kick off early. The one sticking point for him was putting it back to back with such a late road game at Arizona State. The Trojans will be very late getting back to campus. Pushing the start to the week back and the end to the week up will certainly shorten some of the available prep time for the game against Colorado.
“That was, honestly, to me, the only potential drawback of it,” Riley said. “We were able to put out kind of a mock schedule and kind of have a minute to scratch through it on our end of what that would look like.”
Riley said this recent bye week gave the Trojans some confidence in being able to agree to the early kick.
“Our guys are pretty rested,” he said. “I think we might have felt maybe a little different if we were in the middle of a six or seven-game stretch.”
And the good news if the Trojans get through the Buffaloes unscathed is how that early time sets them up for the rest of this run they’re on. A home game against a potentially tricky Arizona team would be up next before the heavy hitters show up in games at Notre Dame and home against Utah.
“You play that one a little bit earlier, but then you get home at a good time and a good chance for the guys to rest and recover, with the stretch obviously coming up ahead of that game.”
Riley also knows that FOX’s Big Noon timeslot presents a massive television opportunity, especially against head coach Deion Sanders and Colorado. They’ve been the media darling this season and are putting up astounding numbers in terms of television viewers. The hope is that they can get through Oregon this weekend while USC takes care of Arizona State, setting up a must-watch showdown in Boulder.
Colorado drew an average of 8 million viewers for its first two games, both in that Big Noon slot. Colorado’s night game against Colorado State drew 9.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched late-night college football game ever on ESPN.
