Wednesday, October 15, 2014

A Breakdown of 2014-15 CBS Sports Men's Basketball Schedule

The links by the network take you to the Google Sheets document with the games for that particular network

CBS
Besides being the over-the-air carrier of the NCAA tournament, CBS also has rights to games involving the American, Big Ten & SEC.  In addition to those conferences, CBS sublicenses games from the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12, plus the MVC & A-10 championship games, from ESPN and the Big East from FOX.

CBS is unique that they will often pay a conference based on the number of appearances while guaranteeing a minimum number of conference games.  For the conferences they have rights to:

American - 6 (two conference games, one home non-conference, one road non-conference)
Big Ten - 17 (eight conference games, one road non-conference game)
SEC - 14 (six conference games, two home non-conference)

For the conferences that they sublicense games from ESPN & FOX:

ACC - 11 (five conference games, one road non-conference game)
Big 12 - 5 (two conference games, one home non-conference game)
Big East - 3 (one conference game, one home non-conference game)
Pac-12 - 4 (two conference games)

The ACC's road non-conference appearance is from the North Carolina at Kentucky game.  The Big East's sublicensed games are part of a deal to place games on both CBS and CBS Sports Network

Two changes from the previous year
  • CBS has set up an event for themselves, called the CBS Sports Classic.  The event, similar to ESPN's Champions Classic event, will match North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio St. and UCLA in round robin matchups over a three year period.
  • The Conference USA championship, which has aired on CBS since 1996, will air on FOX Sports 1 this year.  CBS and FOX elected not to extend their sublicense of the game.
CBS typically webcasts the games they own direct rights to plus, I believe, the games sublicensed from FOX.  In the past, they have not webcast the games sublicensed from ESPN except in special circumstances such as an extended overrun from the previous game or other issues.

FOX Sports 1 gets the publicity, but CBS Sports Network might have a better mix of men's basketball and carries thirty more games.  Similar to the broadcast network, CBSSN carries a lot of sublicensed content from the American, Big East, NEC (??), OVC (??) and Southland (??) alongside the rights they control from the Atlantic 10, C-USA, Mountain West and Patriot League.  While the conferences aren't necessarily the most prestigious compared to some of the Power Five, they do provide a nice mix.

The network also handles a fair number of neutral site events with the Cancun Challenge, Corpus Christi Coastal Classic, Emerald Coast Classic (champ game only), Great Alaska Shootout and Paradise Jam.  The Veterans Classic, a new doubleheader played on the Navy campus, will also air on the network and kick off their live game schedule.  The schedule, per the Big 12 media guide, also includes the Iowa St. vs. South Carolina game on 1/3/15, though it was missing from CBS's own release.

For conference tournament action, the Atlantic 10 (semifinals), C-USA (semifinals), Mountain West (quarterfinals & semifinals) and Patriot League (semifinals & championship) will have portions of their tournaments air here.

Here's the breakdown by conference for regular season games based on the home team: 

American - 30
Atlantic 10 - 25
Big East - 18
C-USA - 8
Mountain West - 31
NEC - 2
OVC - 7
Patriot League - 12
Southland - 1

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