COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State will be at the center of the college football world on Saturday morning even before the No. 2 Buckeyes take the field against No. 8 Penn State at noon.

ESPN, Fox and Big Ten Network are all sending their pregame shows to broadcast live from OSU in the hours prior to kickoff. College GameDay starts at 9 a.m., and their newest challenger, Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff featuring former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, starts at 10.

“This country loves college football,” ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said on Friday. “The NFL, obviously, is as big as it gets. To me, college football is just a step beneath it.”

College GameDay has been on the air since 1997, and Saturday will be the 19th time it has come to Ohio State, which is more than any other school.

But this is the first season of the Big Noon Kickoff, which Fox has used to lead into its feature game. It will be the second time that the show broadcasts from Ohio State this season.

Despite the arrival of Big Noon Kickoff, it hasn’t changed the way Herbstreit and the College GameDay team presents its product.

“We’ve been doing this show for a long time, have a lot of confidence in what we’ve been doing and what we continue to do,” Herbstreit said. “Respectfully, we don’t really think much about anybody. We just continue to kind of raise the bar and do the best that we can.”

Meyer has been the star of the Big Noon Kickoff thus far. He is in his second stint as a college football analyst after working with ESPN in 2011 before he came to Ohio State.

A big feature of the Big Noon Kickoff has been Urban’s Playbook, in which he along with fellow co-hosts Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and Brady Quinn help break down certain concepts from the run-pass option to throwing the fade in the end zone.

“It’s a natural transition I think for any coach at his level like a Nick Saban type of guy,” Herbstreit said. “He’s naturally doing a really good job. He and I are good friends, and I wish him nothing but all the success.”

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