“Big Noon Kickoff” host Rob Stone, the veteran, multi-sport Fox broadcaster, has no qualms about labeling his pregame show and the marquee broadcast that follows “a five-hour national commercial, essentially free of charge.”
The beneficiaries of that promotion this weekend will be the University of Kansas and its football program, a “burgeoning power” as Stone says, receiving its first-ever visit from “Big Noon.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Stone told reporters Friday. “I think we really wanted to be here last year when Kansas and TCU were unbeaten and the cards didn’t play out. So we love spreading the ‘Big Noon’ gospel and we love promoting a program that’s clearly on the rise.”
ESPN’s “College GameDay” is the progenitor of what is now effectively a two-show morning-pregame genre with “Big Noon” as its upstart competition. “GameDay,” which has been broadcasting live from campuses around the country for three decades, made its own first visit to Lawrence for that KU-TCU game last year even though the game aired on a Fox channel.
Now, “Big Noon,” which has moved to full-time campus visits over the last two years, is in town as the Jayhawks face off with unbeaten No. 6 Oklahoma Saturday at 11 a.m. (the “noon” is Eastern Time), making KU just one of five schools nationwide to host both pregame shows in the past two seasons.
Lance Leipold’s Kansas football program has plenty of admirers among the talent that stars on “Big Noon.”
“You kind of saw glimpses of competitiveness and the games were getting tighter and all that,” said Matt Leinart, a former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at USC. “And now that Coach Leipold has come, you can just see the difference. Coach is a winner, he’s won everywhere he’s been, he’s got an incredible staff, and he’s brought that kind of culture, what he knows, and he’s instilled that into the team.”
Added Stone, who praised KU for implementing “shiny, new, sexy objects” in the form of its locker and weight rooms, with the Gateway District soon to follow: “The facilities are here, the people are here, the name recognition is here. There’s no reason Kansas shouldn’t be a national force for the foreseeable future.”
The confidence stretches beyond just the boundaries of KU’s campus. “Big Noon” went to three straight Colorado games — one at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, the other two in Boulder — to start the season and has since visited Cincinnati and now Kansas, giving the show’s personalities a good snapshot of the new-look Big 12 Conference. Colorado joins the league next season along with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah as Oklahoma and Texas depart for the Southeastern Conference.
Stone described Commissioner Brett Yormark’s work in securing the new schools as “miraculous.”
“I think he’s kind of like the MVP of college football, to be honest with you,” Stone said.
Leinart equated Deion Sanders’ reconstruction of Colorado, with which “Big Noon” became so familiar, with what Leipold has already been doing for the better part of three seasons at KU.
“He’s building something really cool here,” Leinart said. “OU and Texas are leaving the conference, it’s going to be wide open in the future, and why not Kansas?”
Meyer speaks to team
Urban Meyer, a three-time championship-winning coach between his stints at Florida and Ohio State, rejoined Fox and “Big Noon Kickoff” as an analyst in 2022 following an ephemeral and scandal-ridden tenure with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars.
He said Friday that he remembered bringing his Bowling Green team, from his first-ever head coaching gig, to Lawrence in 2002, which was also former coach Mark Mangino’s first year at the helm at Kansas. The Falcons beat the Jayhawks 39-16.
“Within five years he had them in the Orange Bowl, ranked No. 2, so it’s always amazed me that Kansas can’t support a great elite basketball program and great football,” Meyer said. “It’s too nice a place. Lot of good players around the area, so I think Lance Leipold is the right guy at the right time.”
Leipold had Meyer speak to his team Friday morning.
Meyer said his own mantra of “four to six, A to B” — essentially urging players to exert maximum effort for a play’s four-to-six-second duration — dovetailed well with Leipold’s emphasis on being “relentless.”
“An athlete is going to say something to himself before he’s got to do something, before the ball’s snapped,” Meyer said. “And I always wanted our players to think ‘effort, effort, effort,’ not worry about making mistakes.”
Former college football coach and current Fox analyst Urban Meyer speaks to reporters on the Hill on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023.
Guarding against Gabriel
Leinart lauded his fellow lefty quarterback, OU’s starter Dillon Gabriel, a fifth-year senior and UCF transfer who has thrown 112 touchdowns to just 23 interceptions in his career. As Meyer put it, “It seems like he’s been around for 10 years.”
“I love him, man,” Leinart said. “He’s an incredible player. He’s been around a long time, he’s won a lot of games, but this year just feels different with him. He’s a real, real Heisman candidate, the way he’s played. Big moments, fourth-quarter drives. He’s going to have to play that well tomorrow.”
Meyer suggested the KU defense, which has been “good and bad at times,” will need to limit potential big plays Saturday.
“I always thought he was really good, but if he plays like he did against Texas, Kansas is in trouble,” Meyer said. “I mean, that game against Texas, he was unbelievable. But if he doesn’t, Kansas got a chance to win this game.”