Sunday, March 12, 2023

2023 Early Season CFB TV Guesses: Week 2

Good morning.  2023 is live on my site, so feel free to poke around.  Weeks 0 and 1 were already guessed, so if you missed those, head to that one first.

* If your school's game isn't listed here, assume its being streamed though ESPN3, ESPN+ or MW Network.  I will list Peacock games since those are specially chosen and a limited number.
* ESPN tends to skip this particular Thursday due to the NFL Opening Night game, plus both ESPN and ESPN2 tend to have US Open tennis.
* ESPN will also cede their midday Saturday window to the US Open women's final.
* Saw a remark from CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus that his broadcast network would have three Big Ten games over the first two weeks.  Assuming he doesn't take two for Week 1, and maybe that's the better week to take two, I have them taking two here.
* Houston at Rice was noted as potentially moving to Friday.  Let's take them up on that offer.
* So many ACC games to pick up, so I think we'll do the four short windows schedule here.  It will still put a couple FBS vs. FBS games on ACCNX/ESPN+, but with the RSN package appearing to be ending, these will move to ESPN to distribute.
* Because of the glut of Big 12 and Pac-12 games, particularly the number of higher quality Pac-12 games, I'm going to assume that FOX does a fourth broadcast network window.  They have the last two early season weeks (Week 2 in 2021, Week 3 in 2022).

Thursday
7pm ACCN: Murray State at Louisville

Friday
8pm ESPN2: Houston at Rice

Saturday
11am ACCN: App State at North Carolina
12pm FOX: UNLV at Michigan
12pm ABC: Southern Miss at Florida State
12pm CBS: Charlotte at Maryland
12pm ESPN: Texas A&M at Miami (FL)
12pm ESPN2: SMU at Oklahoma
12pm FS1: Iowa at Iowa State
12pm ESPNU: James Madison at Virginia
12pm BTN: Delaware at Penn State
12pm BTN: Richmond at Michigan State
12pm SECN: Arizona at Mississippi State
12pm CBSSN: Delaware State at Army West Point
2pm ACCN: Western Michigan at Syracuse
3pm Peacock: Eastern Michigan at Minnesota
3:30pm ABC: Auburn at California
3:30pm CBS: Temple at Rutgers
3:30pm FOX: Oregon at Texas Tech
3:30pm ESPN2: Ball State at Georgia
3:30pm FS1: Utah at Baylor
3:30pm ESPNU: Illinois at Kansas
3:30pm BTN: Youngstown State at Ohio State
3:30pm CBSSN: Wagner at Navy
4pm SECN: Middle Tennessee at Missouri
4pm Pac-12: UC Davis at Oregon State
5pm ACCN: Cincinnati at Pitt
7pm FOX: Nebraska at Colorado
7pm ESPN: Texas at Alabama
7pm ESPN2: Ole Miss at Tulane
7pm FS1: UCF at Boise State
7pm ESPNU: Vanderbilt at Wake Forest
7pm CBSSN: Air Force vs. Sam Houston
7:30pm ABC: Notre Dame at NC State
7:30pm NBC: UTEP at Northwestern
7:30pm SECN: Kent State at Arkansas
7:30pm BTN: Indiana State at Indiana
8pm ACCN: Purdue at Virginia Tech
8pm Pac-12: Tulsa at Washington
10:30pm FOX: Oklahoma State at Arizona State
10:30pm ESPN: Stanford at USC
10:30pm FS1: Wisconsin at Washington State
10:30pm CBSSN: UCLA at San Diego State

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Matt, as always enjoy your thoughts, consideration and work.

I might think of going with just a noon game for CBS from the BIG Ten. And then put UCLA and SanDiego State at 3:30.

Last year CBS did 2 MW games right off the bat.

Anyways this Big Ten week 2 is horrible. I know we have all talked about it on several different sites.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

I think that's another way to go. With the MW, I was assuming the Week 1 game, a Black Friday game TBD and the Army-AFA game from Denver on 11/4 to get to their 3 game minimum

Anonymous said...

yes i know these are guesses but cbs is not going to have a game on 9-9-23 in the noon eastern window with the nwsl broadcast schedule announced for 2023 just a little bit ago

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Then I'll need to adjust in a future revision. Thanks for mentioning it.

Charles Everett said...

FS1 won't have a 3:30 football game on 9/9. Fox baseball schedule was announced today and it has FS1 airing baseball in late afternoon.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Yep. That will be part of a revised set of guesses coming next week