2025 Conference TV Requirements, Six Day Holds and Likely First Picks

Instead of cluttering up the weekly picks for 2025, I'm going to keep track of selection specific information in this post like six day holds that have been used, the number of times I think a network has chosen first and the required appearances that a school needs to fill on conference networks like Big Ten Network.

Updated as of 10/04/25 selections on 09/22/25.

Six Day Holds Used

ACC (4 remaining): 

American (3 remaining): 9/27 

Big Ten (4 remaining):

Big 12  (4 remaining):

SEC: 

Please note that this is my guess about who chose first in a given Saturday. This is not a confirmation from either the networks or conferences of who chose first.

Big Ten

Assumed top Saturday choice each week.  Weeks 1-5 and 14 were known in advance of the early season selection release.

08/30	FOX: Texas at Ohio State
09/06	CBS: OK State at Oregon
09/13	FOX: Oregon at NW
09/20	CBS: Michigan at Nebraska
09/27	NBC: Oregon at Penn State
10/04	NBC: Minn at Ohio State
10/11
10/18
10/25
11/01
11/08
11/15
11/22
11/29	FOX: Ohio State at Michigan

Each school is supposed to appear on BTN twice each season with at least one appearance against another Big Ten school

School	Remaining Needed
Illinois	One vs. B1G
Indiana	One vs. B1G
Iowa	One vs. B1G
Maryland	None
Michigan	One vs. B1G
Michigan State	One vs. B1G
Minnesota	None
Nebraska	One vs. B1G
Northwestern	None
Ohio State	One vs. B1G
Oregon	One vs. B1G
Penn State	One vs. B1G
Purdue	None
Rutgers	None
UCLA	None
USC	One vs. B1G
Washington	None
Wisconsin	One vs. B1G

124 regular season games are available to the Big Ten's rightsholders.  It appears that NBC, CBS and Peacock will take at least 39 of those games.  FOX, FS1 and BTN would take on 85 of them. 

Here's the known selections use by each rightsholder:

FOX/FS1	NBC	CBS	Peacock	BTN
18 of 41	7 of 15 (or 16)	7 of 15	5 of 8 (or 9)	27 of 44

Big 12

Assumed top Saturday choice each week.  

08/30	FOX: USD at ISU
09/06	FOX: Iowa at ISU
09/13	ESPN: Pitt at WVU
09/20	FOX: TxTech at Utah
09/27	ESPN: BYU at CU
10/04	ESPN: TxTech at UH
10/11
10/18
10/25
11/01
11/08
11/15
11/22
11/29

Starting with this season, ABC & ESPN Networks has the top four choices across the season.  After that, FOX Sports and ESPN share selections.  

Per Jon Wilner of Bay Area News Group and other reports,

* FOX Sports is capped somewhere around 35 games per season with at least seven games on FOX broadcast network.  

* ESPN will carry (at least?) 27 games across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.

* TNT will carry 13 games.  Ten games will be intraconference games.  Most games are early in the day and they will skip 9/20.

* Remaining games will be on ESPN+, which appears to be 33 games at the most.

* Counts below exclude the conference championship game airing on ABC.

FOX	14
FS1	3
Total	17 of 35

ABC	0
ESPN	13
ESPN2	4
TBD	1
Linear TV	18 of 27 (?)
ESPN+	17 of 33 (?)
Overall	35 of 60

TNT

5 of 13

American

The American has a minimum of 40 games per season on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, excluding the conference championship game.  At least 20 of the 40 are expected to be on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2.  So far, at least 20 games have been guaranteed to air on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2.  Counts below exclude the conference championship game on ABC.

ABC	1
ESPN	7
ESPN2	8
ESPNU	7
ESPNEWS/Other	0
TBD	3
Total	26