Thoughts on Early Season CFB TV selections for 2026

* SEC game slotting will be announced on 6/10 and as part of this, the remaining SEC+ games will be set.  These should be the remaining games to be set for the streaming platform:

• 9/26: Tulsa at Arkansas
• 10/17: The Citadel at Texas A&M
• 11/21: Wofford at Ole Miss, Tennessee Tech at Mississippi State, Chattanooga at Alabama & Samford at Auburn

* I wasn't surprised that Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame was scheduled for primetime on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.  What did catch me out was that the Apple Cup was moved to Sunday to precede the game as NBC previously planned to carry Braves-Phillies that afternoon.

I was surprised that Purdue at UCLA was put in the late evening slot on BTN on 9/19.  When looking at places to juggle time and TV that day, if the desire was to have that game on BTN, it could have been flipped with Eastern Washington at Washington and the North Dakota at Nebraska game could have stayed at 7:15pm.

* Why was North Dakota State at Sacramento State given such a high profile slot as the ESPN "After Dark" slot? They can certainly lean into the storyline of two schools moving up to FBS and put a lot of focus on that.  The reality is that the Big 12 and ACC weren't offering many games. For the two other games that are available matching up FBS school, both from the Big 12, other TV partners gobbled them up: Utah State at Utah on FOX and Northern Illinois at Arizona on TNT.

I don't know where TNT would have been picking on 9/19. I'd assume they were 5th at the max. If they were lower, then ESPN could have had the ability to choose NIU-Arizona. Either way, a nice pickup for the MAC to get on ESPN.

* The American getting two games on ESPN on Black Friday is surprising from the standpoint that ESPN has eight games from the Players Era 16 to fit in. Knowing that two arenas will be in use, ESPN2 will likely get the majority of games that afternoon and evening. ESPN will probably pick up a game or two from that event after football and likely one more men's basketball game, such as West Virginia vs. North Carolina in the Dick Vitale Invitational from Charlotte.

* The MAC's TV schedule release accounted for nine of their ten game windows on CBS Sports Network. CBS Sports PR didn't release a schedule of game windows for CBS nor CBSSN, but piecing together everyone else's TV schedule left the 12pm window open on both 9/26 and 10/24.

9/26 has plenty of quality non-conference games hosted by the MAC to choose from and seems like the better date, both for ESPN to take a game for ESPNU and for CBSSN: 

UConn at Miami (OH)
San Diego State at Toledo

Boise State at Western Michigan

South Florida at Bowling Green

UNLV at Akron

* The Pac-12 didn't provide a lot of details on how TV would be set up for the final week of the season knowing that the matchups they set up were tentative, but we do know the following from their TV release and from one partner's release

• USA and the CW will carry two games each
• USA's games will air at 6pm and 9:30pm ET.  
• The CW games are TBD, but we do know that the Mountain West will not have a game on Saturday 11/28 on the CW.  I'd expect the ACC to have a football game that week.  Its possible that a basketball game could be mixed in too.

The conference also had five games noted as potentially moving to either a Thursday or Friday night, and I expected all of them to end up on one of those two nights, but ended up only moving two of those games off Saturday.

* I am not well versed on the programming schedule of The CW, but I didn't expect to see three games played on Friday nights (a fourth Friday game is the afternoon of Black Friday).  Two of those are weeks where a Saturday window is taken up by a NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race.

* With The CW taking an ACC game for week 0, at least one week during the season the CW will be skipping an ACC game. I'd assume a week to skip would be potentially in October (there's 3 weeks with 5-6 games on Saturday) or November 7th. With the MW and Pac-12, plus NASCAR through early November, taking up other programming hours on Saturdays, it doesn't feel as likely that they would skip two weeks and do two games in a given week.

* Kansas State at Arizona State game claimed in advance by ESPN for 10/24 had to be for a particular reason that I imagine will be more visible later in the season.  The first thing I checked was to see if ESPN had no other options for the "After Dark" window, and they have two other options for the Big 12.  FOX Sports might have the top two choice this particular week and both games that may interest them could be hosted by schools that could occupy the late evening window (Houston at Utah & Iowa State at Arizona).

* Seems like the Big Ten schools have loosened their grip on their homecoming games being pinned to a specific TV window or a narrow range of TV windows, like the noon and afternoon windows.  Only one game, Indiana at Rutgers on 10/3, was pinned to a specific start time and that time is 8pm ET.  Don't know if Rutgers did that by design to get their 3rd home game locked in as a night game so they wouldn't have to host any others at night. 

If I recall correctly, there are some limits around the homecoming games being set aside for six day holds and TV partners, if a game is held, may have to put further limits or confirm a start time for the game.