Fox’s Michigan-Ohio State broadcast plans: A massive event, a simple strategy

Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh
By Richard Deitsch
Nov 25, 2022

It may sound counterintuitive, but longtime Fox Sports college football producer Chuck McDonald has one major directive when it comes to producing Saturday’s mega-matchup between No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Michigan on Fox (noon ET).

Stay out of the way.

“If you try to overproduce or insert yourself into a big game, that’s the mistake,” McDonald said. “In some ways, producing this game is much easier than others. You don’t need to hype it. You don’t need to make it bigger than it already is. It’s already big. Your biggest job is not to mess it up.”

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The game is obviously massive. Michigan and Ohio State are meeting as undefeated teams for the first time since 2006. It’s the 13th time both are ranked in the top five as opponents. Both programs are proven sports viewership titans. Last year’s game in Ann Arbor — Michigan’s 42-27 victory to end Ohio State’s eight-game winning streak — averaged 15.83 million viewers on Fox. Per The Athletic’s Bill Shea: It was the most-watched Michigan-Ohio State game since 2016 when 17 million viewers watched on ABC and digital measurements. Last year’s game had a larger audience than all of the conference championship games and every bowl except the Rose Bowl, the Cotton and Orange bowls (both College Football Playoff semifinal games) and the national title game, per Sports Media Watch.

I was curious how a college football producer and director approach a game with so much interest. McDonald has been the lead producer of Fox’s top college football game for the past 12 years and has worked at the network since 1996. This will be the fifth Michigan-Ohio State game he and longtime college football lead director Rich Dewey have worked together. The game will be called by Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt. Tom Rinaldi, who was in Doha, Qatar, earlier in the week for Fox’s World Cup coverage, will serve as the sideline reporter with regular sideline reporter Jenny Taft assigned to the World Cup.

Unsurprisingly, Fox Sports is amplifying its shoulder programming around Saturday’s game including expanding its “Big Noon Kickoff” pregame show an extra hour. That show will be on-site. ESPN’s “College GameDay” will also be in Columbus. One interesting viewership twist this year is that the Michigan-Ohio State game faces competition from another Fox Sports property — the World Cup. Defending World Cup champion France plays Denmark at 11 a.m. ET on FS1 followed by Argentina and Mexico kicking off at 2 p.m. ET on FS1. Mexico is obviously one of the biggest draws for an American audience, and Argentina (featuring Leo Messi) is coming off a shocking loss to Saudi Arabia. If not for the added competition, I think Fox would get 18 million-plus viewers for this game. We’ll see what the final number is come next week.

“I worked NASCAR for a long time and it was always odd to have the Super Bowl as the first race of the season,” McDonald said. “Michigan-Ohio State feels the same way. The interesting part for us is we know we’re going to do it every year. The second the previous game ends, we’re starting to think about next year. It’s unique in the fact that no matter what their records are, the rivalry will pull you in and the hype will be big.”

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The production crew arrived in Columbus on Thursday. Dewey said the broadcast will have six additional manned cameras and an extra super-slo-mo camera. They will also get three additional cameras upon the conclusion of “Big Noon Kickoff.” Viewers will see camera angles from pylons and on the end lines, which is an added bonus for this game.

“We get to cover a number of big games throughout the year,” said Dewey, who joined Fox Sports in 1994. “Is this one heightened? Sure. Does it mean added nerves? No. Because once the game starts, you’re covering football. But you do have more stuff to cover it with. If I’ve done my job beforehand, I’ve told our camera guys, ‘OK, if you’re in this situation, shoot this, and if you’re in that situation, shoot that.’ You still come back to your regular nuts-and-bolts coverage. The pretty stuff, the extra stuff, that shows up in second and third looks on a play. That makes the game feel bigger.”

One of the biggest challenges for college football game broadcasts is that every stadium is its own ecosystem. The NFL is much different. Every NFL stadium has assigned camera positions, and producers and directors simply decide based on their equipment which positions to use that day. Not so with college stadiums, which are not uniform. Dewey and McDonald said Ohio Stadium fortunately has many of the same features of an NFL stadium with its setup — including camera cart positions on each sideline.

Given how many times this crew has done both Ohio State and Michigan games, McDonald said the production group has a very good relationship with both programs.

“Urban (Meyer) was a little more uptight this week than Ryan (Day) is,” McDonald said. “But Ohio State has always let us into practice. They let us talk openly to players and hang out in their lunchroom. Our meetings with coaches are always good. The interesting part about Michigan with Jim Harbaugh is that they used to be more arm’s length with us early on (during Harbaugh’s tenure) even though he knew a lot of us from the NFL. But something changed last year. We saw it the first game we did with Michigan. He just really likes this team. You could just feel his love of his players, the connection, and it kind of changed our relationship with them. This year, with all the turnover, we were interested to see if that (access) continued and it absolutely has. The access has been a lot better, the relationship with the program has gotten better. I think we’ve earned their trust over the years, and that’s a big part of dealing with these programs. We’re around a lot, and that helps with the comfort level.”

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Dewey said he expects to be at Ohio Stadium by 5:30 a.m. on Saturday. He’ll hold his meeting with the camera operators at 6:30 a.m. Dewey said he is anticipating Ohio State fans rushing the field if the Buckeyes win, so he is planning accordingly for the postgame shots in the event that happens.

“I’m going to tell my camera guys in the meeting, listen, if Ohio State wins, expect them to storm the field,” Dewey said. “But safety first. Nobody gets trampled. Be safe. Then let’s cover what that scene is. As far as getting to the winning coach for an interview, we have to have a Plan B. The advantage of doing a game this big is you have opportunities to have Plan Bs and Cs. For instance, we have a sky cam and you can always float the sky cam to where the coaches meet in the center of the field. So if we needed it, we can use the sky cam to shoot the interview with the winning coach.

“I don’t think people realize the army it takes to do a broadcast at this level and how talented and how big a deal it is to have the continuity that we do with people working together for 12 years. I give a big shoutout to our crew.”

What both McDonald and Dewey obviously want is a close game. That will juice an already big viewership number. Also, as all sports television producers and directors will tell you, blowouts are a much bigger challenge than a fourth-quarter thriller.

“The challenging games are the ones where someone wins by 40,” McDonald said. “Blowouts are hard to do. So we hope it’s close. Also, we know these teams very well. We’re ready for them. As Gus likes to say, I’m going to call balls and strikes today. The game will take care of itself.”


Related reading

Andy Staples: Every team in the Big Ten should be rooting for Michigan in The Game
Bill Shea: Ohio State-Michigan, NFL, U.S.-England — a massive Thanksgiving ratings recipe
Stewart Mandel: Michigan-Ohio State expectations, TV viewership and postseason decisions

(Photo of Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh: Ric Tapia / Associated Press)

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Richard Deitsch

Richard Deitsch is a media reporter for The Athletic. He previously worked for 20 years for Sports Illustrated, where he covered seven Olympic Games, multiple NCAA championships and U.S. Open tennis. Richard also hosts a weekly sports media podcast. Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddeitsch