* Nearly every FBS game for the first three weeks of the season has been accounted for with respect to a kickoff time and/or television arrangement. There are a few items remaining at the FCS level:
- Ivy League - The conference allowed its deal with NBC to lapse. No idea if they are talking to NBC once again for a new deal or have solicited bids from other networks.
- MEAC - I believe they are finalizing their TV schedule, especially for any Thursday night games being requested for airing on ESPNU
- Webcasts - Once conferences set up their main rights package, whether it is TV or streaming, schools then get to work on their own packages for self-produced webcasts or local TV
* Starting with the games on 9/20, FBS games have their kickoff time and, usually, their network assignment set twelve days in advance. Usually two Mondays before the date of the game. Each conference allows for a limited number of times where a network(s) can wait until the Sunday before a game to set the time & TV.
* Regional sports networks will also start releasing their schedules over the next few weeks. I try to pick up as many of these as I can, but if you see one, please pass it along. Same with any affiliate lists for the American Sports Network or Raycom's ACC Network.
Men's Basketball
* The Mountain West, via the schools themselves, began releasing their TV schedules. In terms of the placement of the games on networks, the distribution is very similar to last year. For regular season games, the breakdown is as follows:
- CBS Sports Network: 30
- ESPNU: 10
- ESPN2: 2
- ESPN3: 20
Not every schools released their non-conference schedule, so they should be additions to the list. The games were also released without tip times, but I would expect most of the ESPN2 & ESPNU games to be late evening on the east coast and the CBSSN weeknight games to be at 9pm or 11pm ET.
I can't remember if CBS retained the top choices to Mountain West basketball like they do with the conference's football selections, but if you believe that San Diego St., New Mexico and UNLV are the best known schools in the conference, CBS did lock up the six round robin meetings between these three teams and it could be argued, so far, that they've selected the best available non-conference games too.
* The MGM Grand Showcase & Main Event events will be televised & webcast by ESPN. Per the Main Event's website, their bracket will be announced on August 5th. This might be the date that other ESPN owned/televised events will have their brackets released.
* West Virginia vs. NC State is the marquee game for the Gotham Classic on 12/20. To be honest, the entire exempt event is centered around this game. It should be on ESPN2 or ESPNU. ESPN is booked with bowl games.
* A few CBS telecasts have come out. Some are attached to other events on the network:
- Wisconsin at Marquette - Sublicensed game from FOX on 12/6. Should lead into pregame coverage of the SEC Football Championship.
- North Carolina at Kentucky - With a noon ET tipoff on 12/13, it would be the lead-in for Army-Navy pregame.
- CBS Sports Classic on 12/20 - A doubleheader of North Carolina-Ohio St. & UCLA-Kentucky starting at 1pm ET.
- UNLV at Kansas - Wrote about this one earlier. CBS has picked this one up and the start time is likely to be dependent on the NFL playoff schedule.
3 comments:
Matt, the West Virginia-NC State game is part of the Gotham Classic, but is not involved in the exempt portion of the event, which makes about as little sense as you'd think. The exempt tournament supposed to feature Richmond and a Power 5-level opponent (per Spider message boards anyway), though based on my tracking, there aren't many options for a team like that available at the moment. The Wolfpack-Mountaineer game is just an add-on to make a doubleheader (or tripleheader even, as Howard's schedule says they're playing in New York as part of the Gotham Classic on 12/19, which could be an error on their part). Both WVU (Puerto Rico) and NC State (one of the Global Sports round-robins) are already committed to exempt tourneys for this season.
NBC spent on NASCAR, which will include the 2nd half of the Xfinity Series (I believe they are replacing Nationwide as sponsor). I think motorsports are going to fill a lot of Saturday content.
As for college basketball, they'll have around 40-50 games when counting A-10, CAA and any exempt events.
Want to also address one item: raiding BTN ownership. How would they go about that? BTN is 51% owned by FOX. I would not think FOX is interested in selling. So if they bought into the conference's share, the conference would be making less money off the network itself and NBC would not have any real say in the network's operations. So you'll need to explain that one to me.
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