Sunday, January 24, 2010

2010 FB Scheduling: Where are we at

The Big 12, PAC-10, SEC (minus Kentucky), Big Ten and independent schedules are set. So what are we waiting on:

  1. The ACC = The conference generally gets their schedule set up in early Febuary. The conference usually has four Thursday night games to schedule and has a Labor Day game as part of its contract if it so desires. Because of the number or weeknight games, the conference often has some OOC games that are still waiting to have a date put to them.
  2. The Big East = Usually after the ACC is the Big East, which has both Thursday and Friday night games set in place. The conference has a fair amount of its schedule dictated by ESPN and that it has to schedule over fourteen or fifteen weeks, so again there are some OOC games that are not set.
  3. The MWC = The one non-AQ conference that is not contracted to ESPN, its schedule will often come out in mid-March or early April and will have all of its TV schedule set at that time.
  4. The other four non-AQs = Because the majority of these conferences have scheduling that includes weeknight TV appearances, ESPN often has a major hand in the scheduling. These tend to come out after the Big East's schedule is announced.
There are a couple high profile games that may be moved around or officially announced (Boise St.-Virginia Tech at FedEx Field, the rumored Oregon St.-TCU game at Cowboys Stadium). I'll probably do a post once Week One's schedule gets more set and try to place games & television assignments at that time.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Scheduling tidbits

  • Notre Dame announced its 2010 kickoff times. The 1st four telecasts will air at 3:30pm, the next three at 2:30pm and the Army game at Yankee Stadium will again be NBC's primetime telecast with a 7pm kickoff.
  • Marshall's road game at Ohio St. will be moved to Thursday, September 2nd. My expectation is that this will be a Big Ten Network game and this could be a regular staple of the Big Ten schedule. Indiana played their opener on Thursday night last year.
  • The SEC's 2nd Thursday night game has been announced as Auburn will host Mississippi St. on September 9th on ESPN. The following games comprise the Thursday night schedule with other games TBA:
    9/2 Southern Miss at South Carolina
    9/2 USC at Hawai'i
    9/9 Auburn at Mississippi St.
    10/21 UCLA at Oregon
    12/2 Arizona St. at Arizona
Texas A&M at Texas is expected to occupy this list on 11/25. ACC, Big East and other
possible Big 12 games should be announced over the next six weeks.

Monday, January 4, 2010

PAC-10 FB sked changes for 2010

The PAC-10 released a "tentative" (but most likely final) version of their 2010 football schedule, with two games moved to Thursday and two more moved to the Friday after Thanksgiving. These changes along with others were done for television purposes.

Thursday 9/2 USC at Hawai'i ESPN (part of WAC contract)
Saturday 9/11 Stanford at UCLA ESPN/ESPN2
Saturday 9/25 UCLA at Texas ABC 8pm (part of Big 12 contract)
Thursday 10/21 UCLA at Oregon ESPN 9pm
Friday 11/26 Arizona at Oregon TBA (available to all TV partners)
Friday 11/26 UCLA at Arizona St. TBA (available to all TV partners)
Thursday 12/2 Arizona St. at Arizona ESPN 8pm

Also, all five rivalry games will be played on the final week of the season. Consequently, only one game will be played on 11/20: California at Washington St. and it could be a week where all national TV partners pass on televising the PAC-10. Oregon St. is also waiting to announce its 12th game, though preliminary reports listed Eastern Washington as the opponent.

For the UCLA-Texas game, that game was moved from 9/18 to 9/25 when Texas at Texas Tech was moved to 9/18. Florida Atlantic's trip to Austin was then moved from 9/25 to 11/20.

EDIT: Two games will be played on 11/20 as USC-Oregon St. was also moved to that date.