Friday, October 17, 2014

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

Similar to the CBS post from earlier this week, here's one on the men's basketball that FOX will carry across several platforms this upcoming season.  Will have posts on NBC and ESPN later in the month.

FOX
FOX has a ten game schedule of games they have rights to, so this is different compared to the years where you might have turned on your local FOX station to watch the ACC, Big 12, Big East or SEC regional television package of games.  This is an eight game increase from last year where FOX showed two Big East games.

The package is heavy on the Big East, with eight or nine games from the conference airing on the network.  The Pac-12 is guaranteed to have one game on the network with the possibility of a second.  Nearly every game is on a Saturday afternoon with the exception of the Duke-St. John's game on January 25th.  That game is during the off week between the NFL's conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

If you are paying attention to the schools being showcased for these games, Villanova will appear in four of the games and could appear in half of the games if their game vs. St. John's on March 7th is chosen for the flex slot at 12pm ET.  St. John's is the only other Big East school guaranteed to appear more than once on FOX.  They are currently scheduled for two appearances but could have two more games flexed in.

FOX Sports 1
FS1 will carry the bulk of games that FOX has direct rights to, exactly 140 games.  Up to 107 of the games will involve the Big East (106 guaranteed) including their conference tournament, with at least eighteen Pac-12 games (possibly nineteen) and four C-USA games including the C-USA championship game.   FS1 will also carry a pair of events from Las Vegas, the Orange Bowl Classic game between Wake Forest & Florida with a FOX Sports Florida simulcast and games involving the Big East from events at Barclays Center and the MSG Holiday Festival.

FS1 will again kick off Big East conference play with a quintuple-header on New Years Eve.  After that, there's a bit of a pattern when it comes to the weekly schedule.

Tuesday: Big East  - often a doubleheader
Wednesday: Big East - often a doubleheader
Thursday: Pac-12 - usually a single game
Saturday: Big East - often a doubleheader
Sunday: A mix of Big East and Pac-12

FOX Sports 2
Acting as FOX Sports 1's overflow channel for the second year in a row, the channel will carry seventeen Big East controlled games.  A new twist is that the channel will carry two Big East conference games late in the season as FOX adds in new NASCAR commitments.

FSN and sublicensed Big 12, ACC & SEC games
Regionally, FOX Sports Networks will carry nineteen Big East games and seven C-USA games with most of those games on the weekend.

In addition to these games, many FSN affiliated RSNs will carry at least three Big 12 conference games and a large schedule of ACC and SEC games sublicensed from ESPN (via Raycom in the case of the ACC).

Typically the SEC games are exclusive to FOX RSNs and do not make it on to the ROOT Sports RSNs or MSG Networks.  Last year the Big East games on FSN were made available in a few local markets in the conference to a FOX-owned broadcast affiliate or a deal was made with local cable (ie. Cox Cable in Rhode Island) to make sure that the Big East games were available in all of the conference's local markets as several are served by Comcast RSNs.

Several FOX RSNs & FOX affiliated RSNs such as the ROOT Sports group & MSG Networks also have deals to carry local schools or regional conferences.

Also, FOX College Sports will have one Big East game exclusively and will simulcast several regional telecasts from various FOX RSNs.

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