MLB Postseason Considerations with College Football TV Scheduling

If you haven't heard, the MLB postseason is throwing some curveballs at college football TV scheduling this year.  With the early season work stoppage pushing the schedule back several days, it affected when some series start, finish, and when some networks would have Saturday MLB commitments.

* Two Saturday nights could be out of play for FOX.  October 29th will have World Series Game 2 and, if necessary, November 5th will be Game 7.

What does that mean for scheduling on each date?  Let's start with October 29th because it is a guaranteed date for baseball.  FOX Sports preselected four games for that week involving the conferences they have rights to:

• Utah at Washington State (Thursday night)
• Oklahoma at Iowa State
• Colorado State at Boise State
• San Diego State at Fresno State

Its also been strongly rumored that Ohio State at Penn State will be the Big Noon game on FOX, but that is not official at this time.  My expectation is that if the Big Ten game is at noon, Oklahoma at Iowa State could be the game following it on FOX.

FS1 has four opening available at this time, so they could carry the two MW games plus two other games from either the Big Ten, Big 12 or Pac-12.  They could also toss one of the MW games on FS2.

Also, BTN is scheduled to carry two women's volleyball matches, so that will take out one CFB window.  Each match gets allotted a two hour window.

Currently, both ESPN and ESPN2 are scheduled to carry a 10:30pm game, so they may end up with two Pac-12 games out of the four available on Saturday.

One other consideration: Northwestern at Iowa is Iowa's homecoming game and will be a mid-afternoon game (3pm or 3:30pm ET).

As for November 5th, FOX Sports again has two Mountain West games, but nothing else.  At the moment, they're not intending to carry a mid-afternoon game on FOX either.  There's a full schedule of the Big 12 and Big Ten that day, and ESPN2 will take a Friday night Pac-12 game.  They really can't plan for a college football window they might not be able to fulfill, so I'd expect them to assume a maximum of six five games across FOX (2 1) and FS1 (4).  If they toss a game on FS2 and there's a opening on FOX that night, maybe they can rotate games up at the last minute.

EDIT: I neglected to check the MLS playoff schedule and the MLS Cup is scheduled to air on FOX on 11/5.  There's only one college football window for FOX that day.  Assuming a primetime game for the World Series, the MLS Cup likely features in the mid-afternoon on the broadcast network.

* 10/22 could have NLCS Game 4 on FOX or FS1.  I *think* this could be a primetime game, but both TBS and FOX Sports would carry LDS games that day.  FOX Sports took two MW games and four Big Ten homecoming games are scheduled for that day: Indiana at Rutgers (12pm), Northwestern at Maryland & Purdue at Wisconsin (3:30pm), and Minnesota at Penn State (7:30pm).  

BTN will not have a night game due to women's volleyball.  FS1 is also committed to a NASCAR Truck Series race in the early afternoon so they'll be down one window on that network right off the bat.

* FS1 could have a conflict for up to two college football windows if both NLDS reach a Game 4 on 10/15.  FOX preselected one MW game and two Big Ten homecoming games have their start times locked that day: Wisconsin at Michigan State (mid-afternoon) and Minnesota at Illinois (12pm ET).

BTN will lose one game window that day at either 4pm or 8pm ET for women's volleyball.

FS1 already took one Big 12 game that week for Thursday night: Baylor at West Virginia, so that may affect the number of selections they take on from the conference.  Three other Big 12, three Big Ten and four Pac-12 games are available that day

* Now for ESPN's conundrum on 10/8 as that day is guaranteed to have four MLB postseason games.  Currently the MLB game windows that day are at 3:30pm and 7pm ET on ESPN and 5pm & 8:30pm ET on ESPN2.

This happens to be CBS's week to carry the top two SEC choices at 3:30pm and 8pm.  What this likely means is that ESPN and ESPN2 at 12pm will be SEC games and the remaining three SEC games would get sent to SEC Network.  Tentatively, there's a 10:30pm ET window on ESPN as well for what I would assume is a Pac-12 game.

ABC is committed to three game windows but one will be Texas vs. Oklahoma, so across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, there's a max of five game windows open with two on ESPN and ESPN2 for the SEC.

Wisconsin at Northwestern is locked to mid-afternoon if that were to be considered for ABC.

The ACC has seven games available that day, six of them intraconference games.  Could end up being a day for the ACC RSN doubleheader.

There's no ESPN Thursday night game on 10/6 to alleviate the logjam.  They've scheduled two NBA preseason games for ESPN that evening.  If this were a normal MLB season ending on a Sunday, I think this particular Thursday would have had MLB games instead and freed ESPN from any college football conflicts on Saturdays from MLB.

* One of the items that ESPN would often plan around is UFC, but it appears that the three pay-per-view prelims from September-November will be shown on ESPNEWS and none of them confict with any ESPN MLB postseason events