Monday, March 2, 2020

2020 Early Season Selections (Take No. 2)

I usually take a mulligan on the first time I take a stab at the early season TV selections, so here's that mulligan.  The difference between that first try is that I didn't feel comfortable choosing games in Week Three because several Group of Five Conferences were not ready.  Now they are, so you'll get Week Three too.

To set up the posts:

* There's a lot not yet known about potential programming conflicts, like MLB on FOX & FS1, Big3/Fireball3 Championship on CBS and WNBA on CBSSN.  I've assumed one MLB game on FS1 on Saturday in both Week 1 & 2.

* Conflicts that have been considered include the US Open (all day Week 1 on ESPN2, midday on ESPN in Week 2), Little League World Series (Week 0 on ABC in afternoon) and motorsports on FOX (Week 1 on Sunday for FS1 & Monday on FOX)

* Still have no idea regarding what the plan is with Big 12 games on the FOX Sports branded & affiliated RSNs.  I elected not to place them on RSNs and use FS2 where I could.

* No clue as to whether any AAC games get sublicensed to CBS Sports Network.  At this point, I assumed none.

* For those keeping track, I assumed FOX Sports & ESPN had the top Saturday choice for these conferences in the first three Weeks

Week 1
ESPN: Big Ten (Bowling Green-Ohio St.) & Pac-12 (Alabama-USC)
FOX Sports: Big 12 (Buffalo-Kansas St., by default)

Week 2
ESPN: Big 12 (Tennessee-Oklahoma)
FOX Sports: Big Ten (Iowa St.-Iowa) & Pac-12 (Ohio St.-Oregon)

Week 3
ESPN: Big 12 (Maryland-West Virginia) & Pac-12 (USC-Stanford)
FOX Sports: Big Ten (Buffalo at Ohio State)

* The following choices were made regarding the Big 12 member retained games, because they set up the choices made for Weeks 1 & 2, and will help with week 3.

Week 1
New Hampshire at Kansas
Missouri St. at Oklahoma
USF at Texas

Week 2
North Dakota at Kansas St.
Prairie View A&M at TCU
Alabama St. at Texas Tech
Eastern Kentucky at West Virginia

Week 3
UIW at Baylor
UNLV at Iowa St.
Western Illinois at Oklahoma St.

Without further ado, Weeks 0 & 1Week 2 and Week 3.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With CBS new deal with the MW could they put games on big CBS in W1 & W2 before W3 with SEC coming in

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Yes, you'll see that when you look at Weeks 1 & 2.