Sigh....
Alright so here's the thing. ESPN doesn't have it out for Tech, they want viewers and they don't care about your personal game day experience at all.
It's important to remember that the 12:30 game isn't considered the bottom of the barrel in terms of priority. In fact, that slot is given higher priority than even the night games on ESPNU. It's not that we're bad per se. Just to middle of the road.
Why? Well think of it like this. ESPN wants to keep as many fans in front of the TV Saturday all day long. Fans generally watch their own teams and the marquee matchups, so they spread those out to keep you glued all day long. The prime time slot is still key, but if they load all the games into that slot they'll lose viewers.
Notional Example:
Team A - In the marquee matchup of the week. CFP contender. They have 100 fans in the fanbase that watch every game
Team B - Not a CFP contender but probably a bowl contender. 40 fans
Team C - Power-5 bottom feeder. 20 fans
Let's say ESPN finds that about 25% of the fans listed above are also general fans who wanna watch the week's big game. They can put these 3 teams in one of 3 slots: 1 noon game and 2 night games that overlap
Obvious Team A gets the prime time slot on ABC, it's needed to attract the "general fans" to the prime time slot. But what about the other 2?
If they put team C at noon:
-20 Team C fans watching Team C at noon
-100 Team A fans will watch Team A at night
-40 Team B fans watch Team B at night
- 4 team C fans watching Team A at night
-164 game viewers
Now, lets put Team B at noon:
-40 Team B fans watching Team B at noon
-100 Team A fans watching Team A at night
-20 Team C fans watching Team C at night
-10 Team B fans watching Team A at night
-170 game viewers
Gross over-simplification but you get the picture. We are Team B, and that's all there is to it. Being the Marquee matchup would be nice, but if we are getting 7PM on ESPNU(Or the Ocho or whatever), that's probably a bad sign for the direction of the program. That's when the lowest priority games are played.