Additional Look at FOX College Football Schedule Release

Since FOX sends out a release that details out the when and where of their entire college football schedule, which usually has a few alterations when needed, it does allow for the entire schedule to get a look at.  Unfortunately, ESPN has not published a giant release with all their openings throughout the year in a few years, and frankly with the amount of games and channel space they have to fill and are solely devoted to college football most Saturdays, trying to do any "analysis" is a bit moot compared to FOX Sports where the number of games are more fixed and there are other events to work around, such as NASCAR, UFC and MLB postseason.

Here we go...

* Using the release, I do have a bit of a math discrepancy that I'm trying to resolve as I count one more telecast window than they have games available to televise.

With 64 regular season Big 12 games and not counting the conference championship game, after removing 33 games (ESPN's maximum 23 & 10 member retained games, including Tulsa at Oklahoma St.), FOX Sports should have 31 Big 12 games.  When that gets added to 25 Big Ten and 22 Pac-12 games, the total number of telecast windows for these three conferences should be 78 games.

After counting up telecast windows on FOX Sports outlets, removing the Big 12 member retained games on FSN and FS1 and conference championship games, I come up with 79 telecast windows:

• 31 on FOX
• 39 on FS1
• 9 weeknight & Black Friday games, once again excluding Tulsa-Oklahoma St.
• 30 on Saturday
• 7 on FSN
• Excluding these Big 12 member retained games: Eastern Washington at Texas Tech, UTSA at Baylor & Jackson St. at TCU
• 1 on FS2
• 1 on either FS1 or FS2

Maybe one of the FSN telecasts or the "swing" FS1/FS2 window disappears, or the ESPN Big 12 game count won't hit the maximum of 23 games, pushing another game into FOX Sports's Big 12 package.

* After the Big Ten released the start times for their homecoming games, I tried to match up which games FOX Sports couldn't carry based on the released start times for their college football schedule.  Each should be available for ESPN's platforms and BTN.

• Both 9/23 games would only be available for FOX broadcast network with FS1's windows currently at 3pm, unless these games could be moved up 30 miuntes.  Currently, their start times are 3:30pm or 4pm ET.
• Michigan at Indiana on 10/14 is only available to FS1 due to FOX clearing out their schedule that day for what appears to be the ALCS.  At that hour, the conflicting programming on FOX is a NASCAR Truck Series race.
• On 10/28, since FOX has only three windows across the broadcast network & FS1 and Penn St. at Ohio St. is already scheduled for FOX at 3:30pm ET, it is highly possible that neither Rutgers at Maryland, Wisconsin at Illinois or Indiana at Maryland air on FOX or FS1
• The first two are 12pm ET starts.  FOX is not scheduled to carry a game at that time and FS1's first window does not start until 3pm due to a NASCAR Truck Series race.
• Similar to the 9/23 games, unless Rutgers at Maryland can move up to 3pm, it will not be available to FS1.  

* With three scheduled Big 12 controlled FS1 games to start the year, including Tulsa at Oklahoma St. which does count toward meeting FS1's Big 12 minimums, three more Big 12 games have to appear on FS1 during the course of the season.  Similarly, with two FOX broadcast network games scheduled, four more will need to air on FOX.  

Bedlam (Oklahoma at Oklahoma St.) will fall into one of the two categories once it is slotted.

* With four Pac-12 games on FOX, they've already scheduled half of their required games for the season.  Three of those four are primetime games too, so they only need one more primetime game out of the minimum four remaining to be scheduled.

* Overall, 16 of FOX Sports's 22 Pac-12 telecast windows are accounted for and there's something to be deduced from that.

• Four already scheduled for the broadcast network
• Six FS1 selections used on weeknights, special dates and early season Saturdays
• Per FOX's schedule release, six Saturday FS1 in-season selections to start between 10pm & 11pm ET

With FOX required to air at least four more games on the broadcast network, there are two remaining windows that are "wildcards" and can air on either network at any time.

* One item I picked up on was that some portion of the Las Vegas Invitational, scheduled to air on FS1 on November 23th & 24th appears to be headed to either FS2 or FSN.  With FS1 scheduled to carry football games on Friday the 24th with telecast windows at 12pm, 4pm and 10:30pm ET, it appears that the event will have a window at 8pm, but the 10:30pm game would be on another outlet.  What could occur is FOX prioritize the championship game on Friday for FS1 & move the 3rd place game on either FS2 or FSN.