A Look at Appearance Counts & CFB Telecasts Scheduled in 2015

Several conferences have appearance requirements for their schools as part of their primary television packages, usually to allow secondary partners access to games involving high profile schools.  Since we're at the halfway point of the weekly TV selection process, it is a good time to take a look at any places where a school may have to make a few appearances in a secondary package so the primary rightsholder can access their games later in the year.

American
So far, seventeen games have been scheduled to air on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.  Last year, those networks were required to air 28 games from the conference on those four networks.  Assuming this holds up, eleven games will need to be selected for these four networks over the course of the next six week.  This is easy to accomplish if you assume that the Black Friday games (Navy at Houston and Tulsa at Tulane) air in two of the scheduled ESPN Networks windows for that day.  Neither ESPNEWS nor CBS Sports Network are scheduled to carry an American game that day.

Big 12
* Including future selections, eight games have been selected by ESPN of a maximum of nineteen selections.  This includes the Kansas at Texas game on Longhorn Network & Jayhawk TV.  It does not include Rice at Texas as that game was claimed as Texas's member retained game.
* As I understand it, a school can appear a maximum of six times in the ABC/ESPN package, excluding Longhorn Network games.  Both Texas and TCU have appeared three times in this package.
* FOX must air at least one more Big 12 game the rest of this season on the broadcast network to hit their required number of six games.  FS1 has already met its minimum of six nationally televised pay TV telecasts.
* Overall, 22 games have been aired nationally on ABC, FOX, ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC/ESPN2 reverse mirror.  If TCU at Iowa St. airs on ESPN2 on 10/17, bump up the count by one.  At least 25 games have to air nationally on the platforms listed above.

Big Ten
In a bit of a mild upset, each Big Ten school has already made the required number of appearances on BTN in both the minimum number of appearances (two) and the number of games vs. other Big Ten schools (one).

BYU
BYU has already been scheduled for the minimum of three home games on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2, one home game on ESPNU and a home game on BYUtv, so the game vs. Fresno St. on 11/21 is open in terms of which networks can air the game.

Pac-12
Pac-12 schools can appear as part of ESPN and FOX's 44 Pac-12 games no more than nine times total.  Based on this:

• Stanford must play one of its next five games on Pac-12 Networks to ensure that the Notre Dame game airs in the ESPN or FOX packages.  
• UCLA & Utah must appear on Pac-12 Networks twice in their remaining games.  They have yet to appear on Pac-12 Networks.

FOX and ESPN also have requirements regarding the number of games on broadcast networks and the number of games that must appear in east coast prime time.  ESPN has met their number of two games on ABC and both happened to air in prime time (only one needed to).  FOX has four games set for their broadcast network and has aired two of those games in primetime, so they will need to air four more games the rest of the way, with two of those four in prime time.

Mountain West

Really its a Boise St. requirement.  They must have at least three of their Mountain West controlled games air on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 and they were scheduled for three once the home game vs. Hawai'i was selected to air on ESPN2 on 10/3.

SEC
Got this wrong last year.  No school can appear more than FIVE times on CBS during the season, with rare exceptions allowing for a sixth appearance.  Note that this does not include the first two games that appeared on CBS as they were sublicensed from ESPN, confirmed by SEC football contact Chuck Dunlap.  So far, Georgia is the only team to have been scheduled to appear on CBS three times as part of their package of games.  Tennessee, Alabama and Florida have each been scheduled twice.