Exclusive | The shocking reason why Ohio State and Michigan dont play late-season night games

Ohio State fans who are ticked off about the Buckeyes playing their huge game against Indiana next week at noon on Saturday should be most upset at their own university.In a peculiar arrangement, both Ohio State and Michigan have stipulations in their TV deals with Fox, CBS and NBC that they cannot be assigned to play at night in the final three weeks of the regular season, sources told The Post.

The Buckeyes and Wolverines could choose to accommodate a request to play at night late in the season, but Michigan hasn’t agreed to that in the last two years and former Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith said that the program would never do it again for a home game after making an exception against Michigan State.“We will not do it in the future at home.

We might do it away,” Smith said last June.“If a colleague calls from another school and said, ‘Hey, would you be willing to play a night game at our place?’ We have to make that call.

Both athletic directors have to agree on that.And so usually I would talk to Ryan (Day) and see if we’re interested in doing that and we will say yes or no.

But it depends on who it is, where it is or what time our team might get back.That always plays a role into their plan.

If there’s a second Saturday in November and we’re somewhere and our team doesn’t get back until 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, that might be a problem.”Last May, ESPN’s Pete Thamel wrote that former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, who left the job to become president of the NFL’s Bears, left a number of details in the TV deal with Fox, CBS and NBC that had not been finalized.Sources said that this scenario with Michigan and Ohio State was one of those lingering issues that held up the deal before it was finalized.Other schools currently have limitations that are not as draconian — Penn State, Wisconsin and Michigan State are among schools that have a finite amount of late-season games that they are able to be assigned at ...