Sunday, September 8, 2013

Week Four CFB Guesses

* DISCLAIMER: These are, for the most part, educated guesses.  They should not be used as factual.  If you're booking travel based on this list, DON'T!  Wait until Monday when game times are announced.

* Tennessee at Florida was inadvertently set for the CBS slot on the ESPN & CBS websites over the summer.  Even with Florida's loss, the possibility of a loss by Tennessee and the possibility of an Auburn-LSU matchup between 3-0 teams, I still give the nod to Tennessee-Florida

* The Big Ten schedule is really weak.  Purdue at Wisconsin is on ABC by default.

* The American has their two early season marquee non-conference games this week.

* I assume that ABC will get priority over FOX with the Pac-12, and vice versa on the Big 12.

* The Big 12 schedule is light after Kansas St. at Texas.  ESPN can place up to 4-5 Big 12 games on ESPNU and this might be a place to do it.

* I have Utah at BYU on ESPN2.  It would fulfill the requirement of three BYU home games on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 with games vs. Boise St. and Texas being the other two.  By getting that requirement out of the way, it does not pigeonhole ESPN into a decision with the Georgia Tech game.

12pm ESPN: West Virginia vs. Maryland
12pm ESPN2: Arkansas at Rutgers
12pm FOX Sports 1: Louisiana Tech at Kansas
12pm ESPNU: UL-Monroe at Baylor
12pm BTN: Kent St. at Penn St., Florida A&M at Ohio St, Maine at Northwestern
12:21pm SEC Network:  SMU at Texas A&M
12:30pm ACC RSNs: Tulane at Syracuse
12:30pm ACC Network: Marshall at Virginia Tech
3pm Pac-12: Idaho at Washington St.
3:30pm CBS: Tennessee at Florida (semi confirmed)
3:30pm ABC/ESPN2: Purdue at Wisconsin
3:30pm ABC/ESPN2:  North Carolina at Georgia Tech
3:30pm ESPN: Michigan at Connecticut
3:30pm ESPNU: Pittsburgh at Duke
3:30pm BTN: San Jose St. at Minnesota, Western Michigan at Iowa, South Dakota at Nebraska
4pm FOX Sports 1:  Utah St. at USC
7pm FOX:  Kansas St. at Texas
7pm ESPN2:  Colorado St. at Alabama
7pm ESPNU:  North Texas at Georgia
7:30pm SEC/FOX RSNs:  Troy at Mississippi St.
7:45pm ESPN:  Auburn at LSU
8pm ABC: Arizona St. at Stanford
10:30pm ESPN2: Utah at BYU
10:30pm ESPNU: New Mexico St. at UCLA
10:30pm Pac-12: Idaho St. at Washington

TBA SEC PPV: South Carolina St. at South Carolina (my mistake, not on schedule)

ESPN3 Exclusives
VMI at Virginia
Savannah St. at Miami (FL)
Bethune-Cookman at Florida St.
Arkansas St. at Memphis
Vanderbilt at Massachusetts
Cincinnati at Miami (OH)
Wyoming at Air Force

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

South Carolina has a bye week on 21. They moved the SC State game to another year.

Mike R said...

You don't think ESPN will use one of their ABC picks for the American on either Michigan-Conn or Arkansas-RU to get it out of the way?

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Thanks. I must have not replaced this game with the Coastal Carolina game later in the year.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

I thought about it Mike. Michigan-Connecticut, to me, was an issue when pairing it with a Big Ten game like Purdue-Wisconsin. I certainly could have done this:

ABC/ESPN2 - Michigan-Connecticut & Georgia Tech-North Carolina
ESPN - Purdue at Wisconsin

I also think they may be looking to save those games for Louisville games in November, along with the possibility that an American game on either Black Friday or Championship Saturday has BCS implications.

bigddan11 said...

While I agree that ESPN2 is the likely station to air BYU/ Utah, I wouldn't be shocked if it ended up as an ABC game solely because of Utah's 2-0 start and BYU's thrashing of Texas. That, and they don't like starting BYU/ Utah at 8:30 at night MDT.