I'm guessing that this subject has been discussed at length, but does anyone know who the braintrust is who schedules these start times... and why a consistently Top-10 team tolerates it?

You can blame The Mouse. They base everything off of Eastern Time. ESPN is carrying the game so they put it in their 12:00 ET window. Disney merged ESPN and ABC Sport into one division and since ESPN produces sports on ABC they didn’t want it to overlap with Bama/UK at 3:30 ET or Texas/Ohio State at 7:30 ET.

They consider the 3:30 and 7:30 windows as their prime slots, so they schedule their best matchups there. They did schedule the A&M game at noon on ABC, so they (and ASU) also get an early start in College Station. I guess they don’t mind the overlap in the noon window because it’s not prime viewing time.

Approximately 76.7% of the United States population lives in the eastern and central time zones.

That works out to about 3/4 of approximately 340,000,000 people. That is lot of potential viewing eyeballs.

Businesses pay top dollar to advertise their products/services to reach the target audience. Networks need to show numbers to get top dollar.

To the fan, does the start time really matter?

Avid college football fans on the west coast watch Game Day at 6 am Pacific. And that show is a shell of what it once was.

My youngest son played college ball from 2001 thru 2003 at a west coast school with a horrible program. I asked him how he and his team mates felt about 9 am starts in Alabama, Louisiana and Texas? Dad we are getting to play football, stay in fabulous hotels and have fun. Then we pick up 3 hours of time flying home, which gives us more time to do what is really important. I asked before I thought it thru; What is truly important son? Hanging out with girls, Dad! DUH.....

For this Duck grey beard, a 9 am Duck game means i happily do my wifes honey do list Friday.

For me it is Duck football. Anytime, any place, anywhere. It is must watch TV. For a sporting event this game has very little appeal to viewers outside of Oregon, Oklahoma and Lincoln Riley.

Go Ducks.......