Michigan-Penn State to kick off at noon on ABC

Michigan will be getting a national showcase.

Next Saturday's Michigan-Penn State game in State College, Pa., will kick off at noon and be a nationally televised game on ABC (Channel 7 in Detroit), the Big Ten announced Saturday night.

Michigan State will play at Ohio State in the 3:30 p.m. slot, with the winner having the inside track for the Big Ten East Division title. That makes it the conference's marquee game, big enough that ESPN's "College GameDay" will be in Columbus.

It will be Michigan's first scheduled noon game since facing BYU on Sept. 26. (The Wolverines played at noon the following week at Maryland, but that was supposed to be at night and was moved to avoid a pending hurricane.)

U-M has played later in the weeks since, often because of the national draw with a ranked U-M team and in the 3:30 p.m. or night slot, there are more eyeballs, drawing in the western half of the country as well.

Next week presents an interesting diversion from that theory.

By putting Michigan-Penn State at noon, the viewers of MSU and OSU will be able to watch the teams that will face off against those teams a week later. Plus, it will not siphon viewers away from the Big Ten's marquee matchup by placing it at the same time.

Michigan-Ohio State was already announced as a noon kickoff Nov. 28 in Ann Arbor.

Contact Mark Snyder at msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mark__snyder. Download our new Wolverines Xtra app on iTunesand Android!