I don't believe the game time has anything to do with the quality of teams, or the quality of the matchup. Number 5 Texas is playing at 12:00 also. Actually, Austin is in the Central Time Zone, so that game is at 11:00AM at the stadium. ESPN has the #2 team playing the #16 team at 3:30. The other 3:30 games on ESPN channels are: one unranked game, one game with the #18 team, and one game with the #19 team. They don't delegate bad teams or bad games to a certain time slot. They try to spread things out so they don't have the #2, #4, #5, and #16 teams all playing in the same time slot, so that people will watch all day long instead of changing channels at every commercial break during one time slot, then ignoring the other time slots. They have it set up to try to maximize the amount of time that people will spend watching ESPN channels on Saturday.