It didn’t take long for the grumbling to begin. Maybe a few minutes. At most, an hour. Utah and BYU fans were not happy when the Big 12 announced the 2025 football schedule last winter and placed the Holy War on the middle Saturday of the middle month of the season: Oct. 18. What in the world was the conference thinking?
Why not slot the rivalry at the end of the year, alongside so many other storied matchups?
Why not place it in the same early-November window as last year?
Or make it the conference opener for both schools?
Instead, the Big 12 and its TV partners slotted the rivalry into the most nondescript spot on the 14-week schedule.
Because the conference and its TV partners know what they’re doing, that’s why.
We’re 10 days from the 103rd installment of the Holy War, and the evidence to support the middle-middle strategy is already apparent: The Big 12 revealed on Monday that the Holy War will air on the Fox broadcast network at 6 p.m. Mountain Time.
That’s 8 p.m. Eastern. Prime time. On a broadcast network. Maximum eyeballs for the game. Maximum brand exposure for the schools and the conference.
Put another way: The Big 12 placed one of its most valuable media properties in a window that provides the audience the game deserves.
Had the Holy War been slotted into the traditional rivalry weekend, on the final Saturday of November, it would have faced competition from Michigan-Ohio State, Alabama-Auburn, LSU-Oklahoma, Oregon-Washington and USC-UCLA.
Granted, the Big 12 had the option to treat the Holy War in a fashion comparable to last year, when it served as the ESPN #AfterDark matchup on Nov. 9. But the conference and the networks saw the ratings and learned a valuable lesson about the Holy War’s value.
At that point in the season, the Utes had lost four in a row and BYU, while unbeaten, was ranked outside the top 10 and a secondary story on the national scene. To many, the Cougars were the team that played late Saturday night and found creative escapes on a regular basis.
But the 2024 Holy War, which started at 10:25 p.m. Eastern and ended after 2 a.m., drew 2.1 million viewers.
It was the best #AfterDark audience of the season for ESPN, with the exception of the USC-UCLA game and matchups involving the Colorado ratings machine.
The other Big 12 games slotted into the late window — those that did not involve Deion Sanders, Shedeur Sanders and eventual Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter — averaged just 1.5 million viewers.
The Holy War beat that by 600,000 viewers, or 40 percent.
If you’re the Big 12 and Fox and see that number, the response is obvious: If the Holy War can top 2 million viewers in the #AfterDark window on cable, imagine what it could do in a prime-time window on one of the broadcast networks.
The trick, of course, was finding just the right Saturday.
The comparable date this season, Nov. 8, features one marquee game, LSU-Alabama, and two matchups the networks expected to have major implications when the Big 12 schedule was finalized: Indiana-Penn State and Florida State-Clemson.
Why Oct. 18?
Yes, the Holy War is competing with Alabama-Tennessee, which will undoubtedly generate a massive audience. But to a certain extent, it’s impossible to find a Saturday without at least one high-level SEC matchup.
(That’s why Disney agreed to pay roughly $300 million annually for the SEC’s Game of the Week.)
And don’t forget: When the Big 12 placed the Holy War on the middle Saturday of the middle month, the conference didn’t know which network (Fox or ESPN) would air the game or which broadcast window it would be assigned.
But it wanted the option for a maximum-audience experience and might get a dream scenario: The Cougars are 18th in the AP poll this week, while the Utes are just outside the Top 25.
If both teams win this weekend — BYU visits Arizona and Utah hosts Arizona State — the Holy War likely will be a ranked-vs.-ranked matchup that the networks covet.
No matter how it plays out, a certain segment of Holy War fandom will always prefer the end of the season, which is understandable.
But the Big 12 has to consider the branding aspect, and practicality trumps tradition and local interests. The conference must place its best inventory in the most advantageous windows.
Nobody wants the alternative: a rivalry game with no media value.
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