The PAC-10 schools announced a portion of their early season telecast list. Its a larger list than I've seen in the six seasons I've been tracking college sports. For the ABC/ESPN list, the 1st surprise is the number of preselected games (16 of 21 games). The other surprise is that over half of the games on ABC/ESPN are on ESPN, where in the past 60%-70% of the games were on ABC. And several of the games that ABC could take may still air on ESPN. Its possible that 70% of the ABC/ESPN games could end up being ESPN games.
I think the 21st window may be the TCU vs. Oregon St. game.
As a team-related aside, USC is involved in at least six of the seven ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 windows and already has ten of its twelve games assigned to a network & time slot.
A second surprise was an abbreviated list of FSN games. These games tend not to appear until June 1st along with the Versus games. No Versus games were selected today. Its expected that Versus will have their selection on June 1st.
PAC-10 associate commissioner Duane Lindberg has also provided me the list of the other five 12-day/6-day windows.
Here's the list. All times Eastern
ABC
9/18 Nebraska at Washingon, 3:30pm
10/9 USC at Stanford, 8pm
10/23 12-Day Window, 3:30pm
10/30 Oregon at USC, 8pm
11/6 12-Day Window, 3:30pm
12/4 12-Day Window, 3:30pm
ABC, ESPN or ESPN2
10/2 Washington at USC, 8pm
11/13 USC at Arizona, 8pm
11/20 Oregon St. at USC, 8pm
11/27 Notre Dame at USC, 8pm
ESPN/ESPN2
9/4 TCU vs. Oregon St. @Arlington, 7:45pm ESPN
9/11 Stanford at UCLA, 10:30pm ESPN
9/18 Iowa at Arizona, 10:30pm ESPN
9/18 Wake Forest at Stanford, 11:15pm ESPN2
10/2 Stanford at Oregon, 11:15pm ESPN
10/16 12-Day Window (Oregon St. at Washington OR Arizona at Washington St.), 10:15pm ESPN
10/21 UCLA at Oregon, 9pm ESPN
11/6 12-Day Window, 10:15pm ESPN
11/18 UCLA at Washington, 8pm ESPN
11/26 Arizona at Oregon, 7pm ESPN
12/2 Arizona St. at Arizona, 8pm ESPN
FSN
9/11 Colorado at California, 3:30pm
9/11 Virginia at USC, 10:30pm
9/18 Houston at UCLA, 10:30pm
9/25 Oregon at Arizona St., 10:30pm
10/16 California at USC, 3:30pm
11/20 Stanford at California, 3:30pm
11/26 UCLA at Arizona St., 3:30pm
Four OOC road games involving PAC-10 teams were also selected today.
9/4 UCLA at Kansas St., 3:30pm ABC
9/11 Oregon at Tennessee, 4:30pm ESPN
9/18 Arizona St. at Wisconsin, 3:30pm ABC/ESPN2 (reverse mirror)
9/18 USC at Minnesota, 3:30pm ESPN
What do you think's going to happen with the 3:30 ABC window on 9/4? Surprise choice for UCLA-K-State, that game certainly doesn't warrant national tv coverage?
ReplyDeleteMy guess: I think ESPN2's going to push back the Nationwide start to 6:45 to squeeze in Uconn-Michigan on a ABC/ESPN2 reverse mirror at 3:30.
If that doesn't happen, you have very weak matchups such as North Texas @ Clemson, or Kentucky @ Louisville, or the game goes national.
It isn't a game that warrants national TV coverage. I could definitely see them doing what you suggest.
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