2026 Conference TV Requirements, Six Day Holds and Likely First Picks

Instead of cluttering up the weekly picks for 2026, I'm going to keep track of selection specific information in this post like six day holds that have been used, the number of times I think a network has chosen first and the required appearances that a school needs to fill on conference networks like Big Ten Network.

Six Day Holds Used

ACC (4 remaining): 

American (4 remaining): 

Big Ten (4 remaining): 

Big 12  (4 remaining): 

MW: 

SEC: 

Please note that this is my guess about who chose first in a given Saturday. This is not a confirmation from either the networks or conferences of who chose first.

Big Ten

Assumed top Saturday choice each week.  Weeks 0-3 and 13 were known in advance of the early season selection release. 

08/29	NBC: SJSU at USC
09/05	CBS: Boise State at Oregon
09/12	FOX: Oklahoma at Michigan
09/19	FOX: Kent St at Ohio State
09/26
10/03
10/10
10/17
10/24
10/31
11/07
11/14
11/21
11/28	FOX: Michigan at Ohio State

Each school is supposed to appear on BTN twice each season with at least one appearance against another Big Ten school.  Here's the remaining requirements for each Big Ten school.

Illinois	One Big Ten opponent
Indiana	One Big Ten opponent
Iowa	One Big Ten opponent
Maryland	One Big Ten opponent
Michigan	One Big Ten opponent
Michigan State	One Big Ten opponent
Minnesota	One Big Ten opponent
Nebraska	One Big Ten opponent
Northwestern	One Big Ten opponent
Ohio State	One Big Ten opponent
Oregon	One Big Ten opponent
Penn State	One Big Ten opponent
Purdue	Complete
Rutgers	One Big Ten opponent
UCLA	Complete
USC	One Big Ten opponent
Washington	One Big Ten opponent
Wisconsin	One Big Ten opponent

127 regular season games are available to the Big Ten's rightsholders.  NBC Sports has received an extra regular season selection as part of the transaction for selling the Big Ten Championship game to FOX.  Whether that game is being spent on Peacock or NBC is unknown at the moment.

Here's the known selections used by each rightsholder, and I hope to know more about how many games each rightsholder should have later in the summer:

FOX/FS1	NBC	CBS	Peacock	BTN
21 of ??	5 of ??	4 of 14	4 of ??	21 of ??

Big 12

Assumed top Saturday choice each week.  

08/29	ESPN: UNC vs. TCU
09/05	FOX: BC at Cincy
09/12	ESPN: Oregon at OK State
09/19	FS1: ASU vs. Kansas
09/26
10/03
10/10
10/17
10/24
10/31
11/07
11/14
11/21
11/28

ABC & ESPN Networks has the top four choices across the season.  After that, FOX Sports and ESPN share selections.  

Per Jon Wilner of Bay Area News Group and other reports,

* FOX Sports is capped somewhere around 35 games per season with at least seven games on FOX broadcast network.  

* ESPN will carry (at least?) 27 games across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.  Initially, gaames were not expected to air on ESPNU, but some will air there.

* TNT will carry 13 games.  Ten games will be intraconference games.  

* Remaining games will be on ESPN+, which appears to be 33 games at the most.

* Counts below exclude the conference championship game airing on ABC.

FOX	6
FS1	3
Total	9 of 35

ABC	0
ESPN	9
ESPN2	1
ESPNU	5
TBD	1
Linear TV	16
ESPN+	15
Overall	31 of 60

TNT

3 of 13

American

The American has a minimum of 40 games per season on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, excluding the conference championship game.  At least 20 of the 40 are expected to be on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2.  Counts below exclude the conference championship game on ABC.

ABC	0
ESPN	7
ESPN2	5
ESPNU	3
ESPNEWS/Other	0
TBD	8
Total	23