* FOX Sports selected Oklahoma vs. Texas in advance of the season and set the start time & TV network in advance of the 12 day selection process.
* Four Big Ten homecoming games are scheduled this week. Maryland at Michigan and Northwestern at Michigan St. will be played at 12pm ET, while Indiana at Ohio St. and Iowa at Minnesota are set for mid-afternoon start times.
* FS1 is scheduled to carry prelim matches for the UFC pay-per-view from 8pm - 10pm ET.
* CBS Sports Network will have MAC and American Athletic selections, but they are not set for a specific conference in the 12pm & 7pm windows.
* Notre Dame at Virginia Tech would have looked a lot better had the Hokies not lost to Old Dominion. With that said, I think its best available game for ESPN to work with for ABC primetime. If anything, there might be a consideration for Florida St. at Miami along with this one to be held for a six day decision based on the result of Stanford-Notre Dame
* I gave LSU at Florida the slot nod over Auburn at Mississippi St. I could be swayed to swap the two games, but Mississippi St.'s loss yesterday didn't help.
* I slotted FOX with the top Big 12 selection (OU-Texas) and the top Big Ten pick (Indiana-OSU). I pushed the top Pac-12 selection to ESPN, where I think another six day hold could be used. ESPN could use a pair of six day holds with the result of Stanford-Notre Dame shaping both the game selections of the Pac-12 (10:30pm ESPN vs. 8pm FOX) and the ACC..
12pm ABC: Maryland at Michigan
12pm ESPN: Alabama at Arkansas
12pm ESPN2: Kansas at West Virginia
12pm FS1: Iowa St. at Oklahoma St.
12pm ESPNU: SMU at UCF
12pm ESPNEWS: East Carolina at Temple
12pm SEC: Missouri at South Carolina
12pm BTN: Northwestern at Michigan St.
12pm CBSSN: Buffalo at Central Michigan
12:20pm ACC Network: Boston College at NC State
12:30pm ACC RSNs: Syracuse at Pittsburgh
3:30pm ABC: Florida St. at Miami (FL)
3:30pm CBS: LSU at Florida
3:30pm ESPN: Clemson at Wake Forest
3:30pm ESPN2: Iowa at Minnesota
3:30pm FS1: Kansas St. at Baylor
3:30pm ESPNU: Connecticut at Memphis
3:30pm BTN: Illinois at Rutgers
4pm FOX: Indiana at Ohio St.
4pm SEC: UL-Monroe at Ole Miss
4pm Pac-12: California at Arizona
7pm ESPN: Auburn at Mississippi St.
7pm ESPN2: Vanderbilt at Georgia
7pm ESPNU: San Diego St. at Boise St.
7pm CBSSN: Tulane at Cincinnati
7:30pm FOX: Washington at UCLA
7:30pm SEC: Kentucky at Texas A&M
7:30pm BTN: Nebraska at Wisconsin
8pm ABC: Notre Dame at Virginia Tech
9pm Pac-12: Washington St. at Oregon St.
10pm FS1: Arizona St. at Colorado
10:30pm ESPN: Utah at Stanford
10:30pm ESPNU: Fresno St. at Nevada
Streaming
Eastern Michigan at Western Michigan
Northern Illinois at Ball St.
Ohio at Kent St.
Miami (OH) at Akron
Bowling Green at Toledo
I would expect more than one six-day hold. There's not much to choose from for network primetime. Fox is probably looking at picking from the best of the second choice in a bad Pac-12 week, the third choice in the Big 12 and the third choice in the Big 10 (assuming they even have two choices this week, which given where they are in their total Big 10 picks for the year, I'm guessing they don't). I agree that Washington-UCLA is the best pick today, but that runs the risk of an 0-4 team in network primetime. It's tough when the best games from the Big 10 and Big 12 are both locked into afternoon time slots. They would have been off this year with a prime time ALDS game to following Texas-OU and Ohio State-Indiana.
ReplyDeleteESPN at least has the ACC to add to the mix, although I'm not sure the Notre Dame-Stanford game will impact them as much as Fox. I suspect Notre Dame-West Virginia and Stanford-Utah are still going to be top ACC and Pac-12 games regardless of the Notre Dame-Stanford result.
As I recall, Mississippi State has by a rather comfortable margin the fewest CBS appearances of any non-Vanderbilt, non-recent-expansion SEC team (and may well have even been surpassed by A&M already). I think the Eye really prefers not to show them unless they're indisputably the marquee game, and they're not after last week.
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