Some B-Sides: CBSSN football schedule, late C-USA starts, SEC Thursday nights & more

* ESPN's first three weeks continue to look relatively bare.  No Saturday selections were announced yesterday for the first three weeks from the Big 12 or Pac-12, except for one ABC game.  Like I mentioned in a previous post, they could be trying to firm up their US Open tennis coverage, whether the coverage is on their platforms or somewhere else.  My theory: CBS Sports Network if ESPN doesn't keep everything on the middle weekend and some early weekday coverage.  See next section where 9/5 evening is not in use for CBSSN.

Its also entirely possible that the US Open schedule is set and that nearly everything on the cable platforms will be Big Ten and SEC games, which will render the last couple paragraphs meaningless.  And that happens a lot here if you've read this blog at any point.  Ever.

* Once ESPN does get around to their SEC selections, unless they swerve and put their SEC Thursday games on SEC Network after North Carolina vs. South Carolina, my expectation is that Auburn at Kentucky will start at 7pm ET as part of a doubleheader with UCLA at Stanford and Mississippi St. at Missouri at either 7:30pm or 8pm ET.  Both on ESPN.

* With the C-USA schedule release yesterday, there are a handful of timeslots available on CBS Sports Network to fill in.  Most of them will be earmarked to the American Athletic Conference and their package of games sublicensed from ESPN, with the Patriot League and Mountain West (up to two MW games) also in the picture.   Here's a Google Sheets doc with the openings, but for those of you who are not fans of clicking on links, here it is spelled out for you (all times Eastern):

9/5: 7pm & 10:30pm
9/12: 12pm (told that this is an American game slot)
9/26: 12pm
10/3: 12pm
10/10: 3:30pm
10/17: 7pm & 10:30pm
10/24: Around 4:30pm
10/31: 7pm
11/7: 12pm & 7pm
11/14: 7pm
11/21: 3:30pm & 7pm
11/27: 12pm (ie. Black Friday)
11/28: 12pm

The two Mountain West selections, if CBSSN were to use them, would be made after the ROOT Sports regional and Mountain West Network packages have been filled, along with any Hawai'i games set aside to fill their PPV package.  The Patriot League games could be aired on weeknights as well if the schools agree to move a game.

* Omitted this one from the C-USA list, but the Mississippi St. at Southern Miss game starting at 9pm local time (10pm ET) is not new for a FOX outlet, nor is it new for C-USA or even Southern Miss.  Since 2005, here's the C-USA games with a 9pm local time start for national television:

• 2005: Minnesota at Tulsa (ESPN2)
• 2010: UTEP at Houston (ESPN)
• 2011: Louisiana Tech at Southern Miss & Oklahoma St. at Tulsa (both on FSN)
• 2014: Texas Tech at UTEP (FS1)

The Oklahoma St.-Tulsa game was a mess as it had multiple weather delays, ending somewhere around 4:30am Eastern time.  There are also a handful of 8pm & 8:15pm local time starts for C-USA over this time period, with CSTV, ESPN and FOX platforms sharing in the late starts.

* Based on the FOX press release from yesterday, which usually doesn't hold up as the season progresses, there could be six late evening Saturday Eastern time Pac-12 windows on FOX Sports 1.  The two games already selected (UCF at Stanford on 9/12, BYU at UCLA on 9/19) and four more during the season: 10/17 at 9pm, 10/31 at 11pm, 11/14 at 10pm and 11/28 at 10pm.  There's also a chance a Big 12 or C-USA game could fill those time slots based on available games.

* Using the start time of 7:30pm ET for the Texas Tech at Texas game on FS1 on Thanksgiving, expect the two televised Las Vegas Classic games to bookend the football game like last year, or they could show one on FS2 with the other on FS1.  For the Friday LVC games, those could end up following the Pac-12 football game on FS1 which starts at 4pm ET, so 8pm ET might be the start of the MBK doubleheader.