Television revenue is the major driver of the significant increases we’ve seen in college athletic budgets over the past two decades. TV revenue has definitely helped level the playing field between large budget schools in the SEC and the smaller budget schools like Mississippi State and Ole Miss. The downside is that because of TV, kickoff times are solely determined by television executives, and those decisions are made less than two weeks from game day. This makes planning a football weekend a bit more challenging to fans attending the game.
The exception, of course, are the first three games of the year.