On Wednesday, the Pac-12 and FOX Sports announced that the No. 21 Colorado football game against the Utah Utes will be moving to occupy FOX’s “Big Noon Kickoff” time slot on Saturday. The game was originally scheduled for Friday night.
Colorado football will now kickoff against Utah at 12:05 p.m. ET, with the game being nationally televised on FOX. The crew covering the game in Boulder will be Gus Johnson, former Colorado quarterback Joel Klatt, and Jenny Taft.
The game was moved to fill the opening caused by the cancellation of the Michigan at Ohio State game, which was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns within the Michigan football program.
“We were contacted yesterday by the conference about our willingness to move the Utah game to Saturday morning and kickoff at 10 a.m.,” said Colorado athletic director Rick George. “As we have previously said, we were very interested in playing at that time to get a nationwide audience in FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff window. The Utah vs. Colorado is always a hard-fought game, and we are looking forward to hosting both FOX and the Utes at Folsom Field Saturday.”
Buffs head coach Karl Dorrell also spoke on the date change, talking about how it is a positive for the football team.
“I think this is a blessing in disguise for us,” Dorrell said over zoom. “We had short practices getting ready for San Diego State, and now we got an extra practice to get ready for Utah, so it’s a good thing for us.”
The extra day of practice could be crucial for the Buffs as the Utah game is make it or break it for the Colorado football season. With a chance to appear in the Pac-12 Championship, the Buffs need a win over Utah and a UCLA win over USC to win the Pac-12 South division title. Unfortunately for Colorado football, if USC comes out victorious this weekend, it won’t matter what happens in the Utah game as the Trojans will win the tiebreaker over Colorado due to having played one more conference game than the Buffs.
With the game slated to start around 10 a.m. local time (MT), it will be the earliest kickoff in Folsom Field’s 97-year history.
Photo courtesy of CUBuffs.com
My name is Colin Bailey and I’m a Los Angeles native and currently a Journalism Major/Sports Media Minor at the University of Colorado Boulder.