Bow to your noon kickoff overlords: Pitt

Ever felt like Pitt just gets way more 12-12:30 starts than other ACC teams? Congratulations! Your intuition was correct! NC State beat writer Joe Giglio did the math, and showed Pitt has the most noon-1 start times in the league.

If you break it down to just home games, Pitt is also tied for the leader in that club house.

Personally, I think this is likely from a combination of two factors:

1. Pitt has been mediocre to “pretty good” during it’s time in the ACC. People want to watch good teams, and Pitt hasn’t done super well to justify getting more late starts
2. Pitt is a newer ACC team. With the exception of Virginia Tech and Miami, most of the old BE teams are towards the top of noonish starts. For example, not to trash Virginia, but there’s zero reason realistically that Virginia should be featured later than Pitt on a consistent basis considering their records since 2013.

For some of the Atlantic teams, I think simply having Clemson and Florida State on their schedule every year padded their later times a bit. Clemson almost had as many prime time games as Pitt had 12-1 games.

Everyone knows Pitt has attendance issues, but my understanding is Pitt actually does pretty well in terms of TV ratings for its region size. Most things are set by TV exposure these days, so it’s something to think about.

I doubt this will change any time soon, unless something drastic like Pitt becomes an annual ACC contender.

I can dream, can’t I?