LAWRENCE — Losers of five consecutive games by an average of 28.6 points and outscored 110-19 in its last two contests, the Kansas football program has little going right at the moment.

At least one television network, though, feels the Jayhawks are ready for prime time.

FOX executives on Sunday made the call to air KU’s upcoming contest at No. 4 TCU in front of a national audience, slotting it for a 7 p.m. Saturday kickoff on the their flagship network. It represents the Jayhawks’ first prime-time, nationally-televised game since Nov. 21, 2009, when KU played at Texas on ABC, and its first appearance on FOX since the 2008 Orange Bowl.

The Jayhawks (1-5, 0-3 Big 12) enter Saturday’s game a 37½-point underdog, the largest point spread of the 56 contests listed at odds outlet VegasInsider.com. With that in mind, it may seem peculiar FOX Sports executives felt this game worthy of a national audience in prime time.

Derek Crocker, senior director of collegiate sports for FOX Sports, told The Topeka Capital-Journal the decision was based on a multitude of factors.

"For us, we obviously want top-ranked teams, interesting storylines," Crocker said. "We’d done some homework before going into this pick, knowing TCU and Kansas have played some fairly tight games the past few years."

The Jayhawks haven’t lost to the Horned Frogs by more than two touchdowns since TCU (6-0, 3-0) entered the Big 12 in 2012 and have dropped the last three contests by a combined margin of 11 points, including last year’s one-point defeat at Memorial Stadium.

That, combined with the four upsets of top-10 squads falling to unranked opponents last week, made the KU/TCU matchup a palatable option for FOX.

"All of those things combined I think helped us make this pick," Crocker said, "and be comfortable with it in prime time."

The process of selecting start times and networks for Big 12 games is one which actually begins shortly after the national title game. Here’s how it works:

Big 12 partners FOX and ESPN stake claim to priority selections each week of the conference season through a draft, a process that begins in late January and escalates when the schedules are released in late May or early June. Think of it like this: The offseason draft sets up subsequent weekly drafts where, typically 12 days before the contest, each network lays claim to games based on the order determined over the summer.

This upcoming weekend, for example, FOX will air four conference games while ESPN-family network ABC will air one, meaning the former spent four summer picks on Week 8 contests (Crocker refused to say which network had this weekend’s No. 1 pick or which pick the KU/TCU contest was taken with, calling the information confidential).

A core group of six to eight FOX executives discuss the picks and potential scenarios throughout the week, but final decisions are typically made Sunday or Monday. This week, though, the networks used a clause that allows them to delay the announcements until six days before game day, one of four such windows given to the networks each season.

Crocker said the number of key matchups last week — Oklahoma/Texas, TCU/K-State and West Virginia/Texas Tech among them — led to the decision to wait until Sunday.

From there, the networks essentially have free reign. They choose to assign any drafted game to any of the standard timeslots and to any of their family of networks. There is no clause requiring any team to be featured in prime time any minimum number of times.

"We basically have carte blanche," Crocker said. "There’s no minimum or maximums, if that’s what you’re alluding to, or certain prime-time obligations or anything of that nature."

For its part, the Big 12 has little say in the discussions, though Crocker said FOX does communicate with the conference ahead of scheduling from time to time.

"There’s definitely conversation," Crocker said. "I’m not going to say they’re ever pressuring us to take a certain game or put it at a certain time slot. That’s part of the rights that we do have. But we’re definitely cognizant of the start times. We know there are certain start times that are more preferable for certain teams than others.

"I wouldn’t say we never have conversations with them, but at the same time they’re not pressuring us either."

One might assume the Big 12 would have a vested interest in at least requesting the networks give special prime-time consideration to teams in contention for the College Football Playoff, thus raising awareness and improving visibility of the league’s elite.

Not so, according to Bob Burda, the Big 12’s associate commissioner of communications.

"The (College Football Playoff) selection committee members are extremely diligent in their responsibility," Burda wrote in an email to The Capital-Journal, "and to suggest start times impact their knowledge of teams would insult the integrity of the committee members and the ranking/selection process."

Crocker said he wouldn’t consider prime time on Saturdays a "huge deal" but admitted there are "definitely" more people watching TV and, in the process, college football during that hour.

With the litany of televised games now airing on a seemingly ever-expanding number of television networks, schedulers like Crocker must take into consideration what the competition is airing and at what times, he said.

Here is where we get to perhaps the biggest reason KU finds itself in this unfamiliar slot.

Other nationally-televised games airing at the same time as KU’s contest Saturday include No. 19 Michigan at No. 2 Penn State (ABC) and No. 11 Southern Cal at No. 13 Notre Dame (NBC). With those massive showdowns likely to pull huge numbers, it may have been prudent for FOX to put its best Big 12 matchups earlier in the afternoon against less imposing opposition.

"For us it was looking at, in this particular game day, it’s what is going to get us the most number of eye balls throughout the total number of day and not just specifically in prime time," Crocker said. "Our strategy may be different than someone else’s strategy, but at least on this particular day we were really looking at it in terms of a total day viewership and not necessarily maybe a prime time-specific viewership.

"We try to be in a fan’s perspective of, what is the most competitive game and the top game that we can put in each individual window that’s available to us?"

KU certainly isn’t looking at its first nationally-televised opportunity in prime time in nearly eight years as a negative.

"We obviously know it’s going to be a great challenge because they’re a terrific football team, but man, you really could not script it any better," KU coach David Beaty said. "To be on prime time, to have that opportunity, to start the back half of our season with these six games we have left — what a great opportunity we have to get started right there at Fort Worth."

Asked his message to fans who may be puzzled to see five-touchdown underdog KU in such a premiere window, Crocker simply advised looking to some of the wild upsets we’ve already seen this season.

"Who would’ve thought that Iowa State would beat Oklahoma?" Crocker said. "That’s just one example. It’s that way every single year where you just don’t know how teams are going to perform on a certain night, how close the games are going to be. It’s kind of just a little bit of the unpredictable nature of college football.

"As a fan and now also working in television, it’s pretty exciting."

WEEK 8 BIG 12 FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

Oklahoma State (5-1, 2-1) at Texas (3-3, 2-1), 11 a.m. Saturday (ABC)

Iowa State (4-2, 2-1) at Texas Tech (4-2, 1-2), 11 a.m. Saturday (FS1)

Oklahoma (5-1, 2-1) at Kansas State (3-3, 1-2), 3 p.m. Saturday (FOX)

Kansas (1-5, 0-3) at TCU (6-0, 3-0), 7 p.m. Saturday (FOX)

West Virginia (4-2, 2-1) at Baylor (0-6, 0-3), 7 p.m. Saturday (FS1 or FS2)