'The world's greatest fantasy football draft': How college football schedules are made

The start of the 2024 college football season is less than 100 days away, which means it's time for some kickoff dates and times to be announced.

Networks have begun sharing which big games they'll be carrying in 2024, sharing kickoff times for important matchups. For instance, FOX Sports will carry the Sept. 7 game between Texas and Michigan, the Sept. 14 game between Alabama and Wisconsin and the 120th edition of "The Game" on Nov. 30 with all three games airing in the "Big Noon" window.

While those three games are a few of the biggest of the 2024 season, the process of determining which games will air on which networks isn't so simple. Earlier in the offseason, FOX, along with NBC and CBS, held a draft to determine which network will get the right to air certain Big Ten games in the 2024 season. 

So, I had FOX Sports President of Insights and Analytics Michael Mulvihill on my podcast to discuss the draft process, which he called "the world's greatest fantasy football draft." We also discussed the making of the NFL schedule, the birth of the "Big Noon" window and what to expect with Friday night college football games on FOX in 2024. 

Here's a snippet of my conversation with Mulvihill.

Klatt: Can you describe what the draft process is like for networks picking games? 

Mulvihill: "The college football schedule is determined literally via draft. In the case of the Big Ten, we (FOX), CBS and NBC go through a draft where FOX holds the top-three picks on the board, and then we have the No. 6 and our next pick is a little later than that. So, it's not just a straight rotation - one, two, three; one, two, three - the picks change a little bit as we go through that selection order. 

"We spent a lot of time thinking about