With the season starting today, let's take a look at a few of the changes & additions to how you'll consuming college football in 2017:
More networks for the Big Ten
As you've heard by now, FOX Sports is now a Big Ten television partner, taking a portion of the rights. ESPN remains a Big Ten partner as well, but FOX has become the primary partner, so both FOX and FS1 will be carrying games from the conference.
Here's information on what each Big Ten TV partner will be carrying.
Stadium goes live
WatchStadium.com went live this past week. They'll have a schedule of Conference USA, Patriot League and SoCon football games football games. Right now, the best way to view the channel may be through online/digital means, such as their website or through PlutoTV, as they'll be releasing more info on where to watch on linear TV soon.
In addition to the 24/7 channel, several C-USA and Mountain West games will be shown exclusively on Facebook through a Stadium College Football page. These 15 games remind me a bit of the Mountain West and C-USA games that would be produced by Campus Insiders to be exclusively shown through that portal.
Verizon's go90 continues to carry events from the conference portals that used to be at Campus Insiders and these events appear to be friendlier compared to prior years with respect to casting to devices, but we'll see if that continues (I think it may).
Speaking of PlutoTV
PlutoTV not only has the 24/7 Stadium feed, they'll carry events from the Big Sky conference. WatchBigSky.com will continue to carry those events as well.
Eleven Sports
Eleven Sports, formerly in the US known as One World Sports, has jumped into college sports coverage with games from the Big Sky, Ivy League (who had games on the channel as One World Sports), Southland and UMass.
Eleven Sports has coverage on Verizon's go90. From what I've seen, all of the conferences & schools listed above retained live streaming rights to their games, so check the conference or school streaming pages for info if you can't get Eleven Sports.
beIN Sports Connect
beIN Sports Connect as an app has worked well for their programming, but if you tried viewing from their website, they required Microsoft's Silverlight technology, which is a bit outdated and, frankly, blocked by a lot of modern browsers including Microsoft's own Edge browser.
Anyways, they've remedied that and you won't need any dodgy plugins to view their content through the website.
Hawai'i Football On the Mainland
After a season where Hawai'i home games were only viewable if ESPN or CBS Sports Network picked up the game, Hawai'i home games produced by Spectrum Sports in Hawai'i will be available online through the Mountain West app.
With that said, the Mountain West app hasn't received any new content since late June. The move of content over to Stadium from Campus Insiders and from SportsLabs over to Sidearm Sports may mean a new app is in process. Hopefully the situation sorts itself out by next Saturday.
