Friday, March 4, 2016

Odds & Sods

* The Sun Belt released their schedule on March 3rd and noted in the release that one more game would be set aside for a Thursday or Friday night game on ESPN or ESPNU.  If they are considering a non-conference game, Boise St. at UL-Lafayette or Miami (FL) at Appalachian St. could be moved.

Boise St.at ULL could easily fit on the opening Thursday or Friday night on ESPNU, or potentially leading into a Pac-12 game on ESPN on Friday if ESPN selects either Kansas St. at Stanford or Colorado St. vs. Colorado.  As for Miami (FL) at Appalachian St., ESPN currently does not have a Friday night game on 9/16 and no other games have been moved to a weeknight.

It is also possible that the final move involves the finalization of the Arkansas St. at Georgia St. game, which will be determined once the NFL schedule is set in April.  Depending on the date of the Georgia St. game, ESPN could move another Sun Belt game to either Thursday or Friday to air on ESPNU.

* Mountain West schedules showed up on 3/2 with two weeknight games already set for ESPN with two Boise St. home games moving (BYU to Thursday 10/20, UNLV to Friday 11/18).

The BYU game could end up as a doubleheader with Miami (FL) at Virginia Tech, though they might want to start the ACC game a bit earlier to allow for BYU at Boise St. to start around 8pm Mountain Time.  They could show the game on ESPN2 as well with an earlier start time.  UNLV's visit will likely be after college basketball games as ESPN has carried games from the 2K Sports Classic around this Friday previously.  In those cases, ESPN2 usually shows a Mountain West or Pac-12 game following basketball.

As the conference noted, both ESPN and CBSSN will start working to move some games to Thursday and Friday nights.  Those moves have been announced in mid-April in prior seasons along with the networks televising the games.

* Army at Temple moving to Friday 9/2 is the 3rd Friday night game for CBSSN for 2016, as they'll also have games on 11/4 (Central Michigan at Miami (OH)) and 11/18 (Memphis at Cincinnati).  I believe 11/11 will remain open for the possibility of another Veterans' Classic men's basketball event, especially since it would fall on Veterans' Day.  Also, the start time for Memphis at Cincinnati should be determined once start times for the Paradise Jam are set, assuming CBSSN will be carrying the event again.

* Right now, the following openings exist in the ESPN/ESPN2 Thursday & Friday schedules:

Thursday
  • 9/1: Options include Oregon St. at Minnesosa and South Carolina at Vanderbilt
  • 9/8: Should be closed due to US Open Women's Semifinals
  • 11/3: Oklahoma at Iowa St. and UCLA at Colorado are available
  • 11/24: LSU at Texas A&M
As mentioned above, a doubleheader could happen on 10/20, along with the potential for one on 10/27 with California at USC being available along with Virginia Tech at Pittsburgh already on ESPN.  On 10/29/15, a comparable date last season, North Carolina at Pittsburgh and Oregon at Arizona St. were a doubleheader on ESPN.

Friday
  • 9/2: Two primary options are Kansas St. at Stanford and Colorado St. vs. Colorado
  • 9/16: No games have been moved to this date
  • 9/30: Toledo at BYU and Stanford at Washington are available
* Last but not least, the Riviera Division of the Cancun Challenge was announced and once again, CBSSN will be televising that portion of the event.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The US Open women's semifinals are on 9/8 with the men's semifinals on 9/9. Those dates were announced this morning.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Thanks. My mistake.