2026 Conference TV Requirements, Six Day Holds and Likely First Picks

Instead of cluttering up the weekly picks for 2026, 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.

Six Day Holds Used

ACC (3 remaining): 10/3

American (4 remaining): 

Big Ten (4 remaining): 

Big 12  (4 remaining): 

MW: 

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 0-3 and 13 were known in advance of the early season selection release. 

08/29	NBC: SJSU at USC
09/05	CBS: Boise State at Oregon
09/12	FOX: Oklahoma at Michigan
09/19	FOX: Kent St at Ohio State
09/26	NBC: Oregon at USC
10/03	CBS: Ohio State at Iowa
10/10	NBC: USC at Penn State
10/17	FOX: Ohio State at Indiana
10/24
10/31
11/07	CBS: Oregon at Ohio State
11/14
11/21
11/28	FOX: Michigan at Ohio State

Each school is supposed to appear on BTN twice each season with at least one appearance against another Big Ten school.  Here's the remaining requirements for each Big Ten school.

Illinois	Complete
Indiana	Complete
Iowa	One Big Ten opponent
Maryland	Complete
Michigan	One Big Ten opponent
Michigan State	Complete
Minnesota	One Big Ten opponent
Nebraska	Complete
Northwestern	One Big Ten opponent
Ohio State	One Big Ten opponent
Oregon	One Big Ten opponent
Penn State	One Big Ten opponent
Purdue	Complete
Rutgers	Complete
UCLA	Complete
USC	One Big Ten opponent
Washington	One Big Ten opponent
Wisconsin	Complete

127 regular season games are available to the Big Ten's rightsholders.  NBC Sports has received an extra regular season selection as part of the transaction for selling the Big Ten Championship game to FOX.  Whether that game is being spent on Peacock or NBC is unknown at the moment.

Here's the known selections used by each rightsholder, and I hope to know more about how many games each rightsholder should have later in the summer:

FOX/FS1	NBC	CBS	Peacock	BTN
26 of 46	6 of ??	7 of 14	6 of ??	26 of 43

Big 12

Assumed top Saturday choice each week.  

08/29	ESPN: UNC vs. TCU
09/05	FOX: BC at Cincy
09/12	ESPN: Oregon at OK State
09/19	FS1: ASU vs. Kansas
09/26	ESPN: CU at Baylor
10/03	ESPN: BYU at TCU
10/10
10/17
10/24
10/31
11/07
11/14
11/21
11/28

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.  I believe their number for the Big 12 will be 34 this season base on FOX Sports sending out a count of 137 games.  137 subtracting two conference championship games, 89 Big Ten  regular season games for FOX, FS1, and 12 regular season MW games = 34 Big 12 games.

* ESPN will carry (at least?) 27 games across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2.  Initially, gaames were not expected to air on ESPNU, but some will air there.

* TNT will carry 13 games.  Ten games will be intraconference games.  

* 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	9
FS1	5
Total	14 of 34

ABC	0
ESPN	10
ESPN2	4
ESPNU	6
TBD	2
Linear TV	22
ESPN+	15
Overall	37 of 61

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.  Counts below exclude the conference championship game on ABC.

ABC	0
ESPN	7
ESPN2	5
ESPNU	6
ESPNEWS/Other	0
TBD	7
Total	25