Friday, December 4, 2015

2015 CFB TV Facts & Figures - Mountain West

The Mountain West wasn't prominently involved in the fight for the Group of Five's access bowl slot and it showed with the number of selections that ESPN decided to move over to ESPN3 instead of televise late in the evening.  Conversely, CBS elected before the season to not pick up its option to show the conference's championship game for a third season with ESPN picking it up for 2015 and future seasons, though the conference remains tethered to CBS Sports Network for the rest of the decade.

Some notes on the Mountain West:

* Nine Saturday games were selected to air on ESPN's television outlets through the in-season selection process.  Four games aired on ESPN2 and five on ESPNU.  Overall, this was down two from 2014 when eleven Saturday games aired over ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNews.

* Seven games were streamed exclusively through ESPN3, the most the conference has had streamed in the three years they've been back with ESPN.

* Sixteen regular season games aired on ESPN television, excluding the conference championship game.  This is a four game decrease from 2014.
  • ESPN: 1 (-2)
  • ESPN2: 9 (+2)
  • ESPNU: 6 (-1)
  • ESPNEWS: 0 (-3)
* Four games, by decision of the home schools, did not have any live video.  There's been some conjecture that the decision is due to the conference requiring a higher quality webcast for those games than the schools could make available, but I do not know if that was the actual reason.

* CBS Sports Network did not select any extra games after ROOT Sports and Campus Insiders set their schedules, leaving their number for 2015 at one less game (22) than 2014.  It should be noted that neither CBSSN nor ESPN is required to select a game after ROOT and CI select theirs.  ESPN made the only selection of Tulsa at New Mexico, which aired on ESPN3.

* In terms of the range of nationally televised game start times (schools are allowed to pick their own start times for ESPN3 games), equalizing it to the location of the game, here's the breakdown by network for Saturday games:
  • CBSSN
    • 12pm-3:29pm: 5
    • 3:30pm-6:59pm: 5
    • 7pm and later: 7
  • ESPN2 and ESPNU: 
    • 12pm-3:29pm: 2
    • 7pm and later: 8
* For those keeping track of the bonuses that are earned by Mountain West schools, note that it was tweaked slightly to help out schools in the Western Division who do not play Boise St. every season, unlike Mountain Division schools.

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