Buckeye Scoop has an interview with the long time Oregon beat writer talking about how the Ducks administration is not happy about this 9 AM start time for a game that was originally slated for prime time. James Crepea shares the story of how Smith had to pony up at least $1M and probably much, much more to keep Oregon from backing out of the game. According to Crepea, when the two game series was originally scheduled, one of the agreed upon details was both games were to be broadcast in prime time. Last years game, which the folks out in Oregon were hugely disappointed in the cancellation was an ABC game set for 5 PM PST and 8PM for the rest of the country. No problems there, but when Fox shifted around the Columbus game to a noon start, Oregon was prepared to pay the $1M buyout fee and just schedule some lackey in Eugene and make a whole lot more money. Enter Gene Smith to save the day. While the numbers will probably never be released, he paid at least $1M and probably a whole lot more.

We've talked about the noon start for big games before and there's a split among the fans for, against or ambivalent (even 11W writers are a coin toss) but there are a lot of reasons elite schools schedule games and one of the biggest is national exposure for their team in prime time. Noon time starts for games against Akron are fine, but the atmosphere is going to be half of what it was if the game were played at night. I don't know if the B1G can do anything about the noon start in their current contract, but I would look for them to bring it up in the next deals negotiations because these 12 pm starts are el stinko.

EDIT: the game time discussion takes place in the first part of the video with the rest being boilerplate talk about the game.