Thursday, September 10, 2015

Roundup from CFB Week 1 and C-USA & Pac-12 MBK items

Brief Roundup of CFB items from Week 1
* Appears that DirecTV is the only provider currently offering ESPN College Extra in HD.  Others, from your responses and my own experience, are receiving the service in standard definition.
* FOX Sports GO may only be offering the ACC RSN games in areas where the RSN is considered "in-market" for the ACC.  You may need to use WatchESPN in other cases.
* For those of you who like to use devices to mirror a video to your screen using a Chromecast, LiveStream.com, which is the video provider for Campus Insiders, appears to have upgraded the capabilities of its video to be Chromecast friendly.  In other words, you don't need to just cast your screen.  LiveStream videos now have the Chromecast icon on videos and are castable through the app.  Games shown via these means include:
  • Mountain West Network
    • ROOT Sports
    • Campus Insiders Exclusives
    • Potentially the Hawai'i PPV games produced by Oceanic Cable
  • Patriot League Network
  • The WCC's TheW.tv
You can go to the Campus Insiders website to mirror these games to your screen using the LiveStream video.  At this time, or at least as of last week, this was not possible with the Campus Insiders Android app.  Apologies to iPhone/iPad & Windows Phone users as I don't have access to the other devices to pass along their capabilities.

* BTN's BTN2Go app was also upgraded for use with Roku and Chromecast
* Thunderstorms mess with schedules big time.  On a smaller scale, so does believing that a college football game will end in three hours.  

Men's Basketball
The Big East released its schedule on Tuesday and it gives a bit of insight into where FOX can fit some other games into their schedules.  We don't really know what they'll pick for intraconference play from C-USA or the Pac-12, but here's some notes on non-conference play:

C-USA
Not all C-USA schools have reported their full season schedules, and I'm not up for digging through everyone else's schedule to find a few Louisiana Tech or FIU games.  Here's some notable non-conference games:

11/19 Oregon St. at Rice - CBSSN or FSN.  FS1 is booked.
12/2 VCU at Middle Tennessee - FS1 or FSN.  CBSSN is booked.
12/4 Alabama at Southern Miss - CBSSN at 9pm ET, FS1 or FSN.
12/12 Auburn vs. Middle Tennessee - CBSSN or FSN.  If classified as SEC game, the SEC TV partners.  FS1 is booked.
12/22 Georgetown at Charlotte - CBSSN at 7pm ET or FSN.  FS1 is booked and CBSSN has an opening at 7pm with Miami (FL) at La Salle & St. John's vs. South Carolina as bookends.

From there, both CBSSN and FOX will take some intraconference games and then the American Sports Network package will kick in.

Pac-12
Most FOX & FS1 games should be part of conference play.  Potential non-conference picks would be on 12/2 and 12/5.

On 12/2, FS1 has no games scheduled at this time and two non-conference games that would be appealing to them are BYU at Utah and Gonzaga at Washington St.  It is possible ESPNU or ESPN2 carries one of these games at 11:15pm ET and FS1 ends up with the other, maybe paired with the VCU at Middle Tennessee game.  12/2 is scheduled quite heavily for ESPN as it is the final day of play in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

For 12/5, Texas A&M is at Arizona St.  FS1 has Big East games at 12pm, 2pm & 8:30pm ET with a Big 12 football game expected to air around 4pm or 4:30pm ET.  The Pac-12 MBK game could air at 10:30pm ET.

Potential honorable mentions for non-conference games as part of FOX's 22 games include Missouri at Arizona (12/13, after Big East tripleheader?), DePaul at Stanford (12/15, more for the Big East tie-in after Monmouth-Georgetown) and Texas at Stanford (12/19, after Big East doubleheader at 4pm ET or after Orange Bowl Classic at 10pm ET. 6pm ET may have UFC on FOX prelim fights).

Note that ESPN has already used four of its 44 selections: San Diego St. at Utah and Baylor at Oregon (11/16), SMU at Stanford (11/19) and Kentucky at UCLA (12/3).

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