CFB TV Guesses (Take 2) on 2019 Weeks Two

Taking a 2nd crack at figuring out the Week Two CFB TV schedule.  What have we learned since late February?  A few things:

• The Mountain West national TV schedule has been announced
• One game has changed dates across this particular week
• UFC 242 has been set for Saturday, September 7th.

Here's the original guesses

Friday

7pm ACCN: William & Mary at Virginia
8pm CBSSN: Wake Forest at Rice

9pm ESPN2: Marshall at Boise St. (confirmed)

10pm Pac-12: Sacramento St. at Arizona St.

Saturday

Still don't know whether the ACC Network will have alternate feeds for football games or not.  When reaching out to contacts who may know, they said those details were still being worked out.  

I'm assuming CBS continued its sublicense agreement with ESPN for a pair of SEC games.  North Carolina vs. South Carolina in Week One & Arkansas at Ole Miss this week.  In prior years, since these are sublicensed, ESPN can air SEC games concurrently on ESPN, ESPN2 and/or ESPNU during these two games.

Per multiple reports, UFC 242 is set for September 7th in Abu Dhabi, UAE.  Don't know if/how that affects when the fight schedule would be broadcast.  For those doing time zone math, 12pm ET = 8pm local time in the UAE, so for the time being I've cleared out the 12pm ESPN window for airing any PPV prelims.  ESPN would also carry the US Open women's final in mid-afternoon, so I don't have the channel carrying a game until 7pm ET.

The three Big 12 games on FS2 are not member retained games.  I just don't know where to place these without knowing when Sinclair will take over the formerly FOX owned RSNs.  I suppose the other platform FOX could use is Caffeine, the streaming platform they have invested in and are moving some Big East Digital Network to.  This particular weekend also has a FIFA international play break, so I think FS2 would be free from Bundesliga duty in the early afternoon.

12pm ABC: Syracuse at Maryland

12pm FOX: Army at Michigan

12pm ESPN2: Buffalo at Penn St.

12pm FS1: UTSA at Baylor

12pm ESPNU: Old Dominion at Virginia Tech

12pm SEC: West Virginia at Missouri
12pm SEC Alt: Murray St. at Georgia
12pm BTN: Western Michigan at Michigan St.

12pm CBSSN: UAB at Akron

12pm FS2: Coastal Carolina at Kansas

12:30pm ACCN: Ohio at Pittsburgh

2pm Pac-12: Nevada at Oregon

3:30pm ABC: Cincinnati at Ohio St.

3:30pm CBS:  Arkansas at Ole Miss

3:30pm ESPN2: New Mexico St. at Alabama

3:30pm ESPNU: Illinois at Connecticut

3:30pm CBSSN: North Texas at SMU

3:30pm BTN: Rutgers at Iowa
3:30pm BTN: Eastern Illinois at Indiana
4pm FOX: LSU at Texas

4pm SEC: Eastern Michigan at Kentucky
4pm SEC Alt: Charleston Southern at South Carolina

4pm ACCN: Miami (FL) at North Carolina

4pm FS2: Bowling Green at Kansas St.
5pm Pac-12: San Diego St. at UCLA
5pm Pac-12 Washington: Northern Colorado at Washington St.

7pm ESPN: BYU at Tennessee
7pm ESPN2: USF at Georgia Tech

7pm CBSSN: UCF at FAU (time confirmed)

7pm Stadium: Western Kentucky at FIU (time confirmed)

7pm FOX PPV: South Dakota at Oklahoma

7:30pm ESPNU: Southern Miss at Mississippi St.

7:30pm SEC: Tulane at Auburn
7:30pm SEC Alt: UT Martin at Florida

7:30pm ACCN: UL-Monroe at Florida St.

7:30pm BTN: Vanderbilt at Purdue
7:30pm BTN: Central Michigan at Wisconsin
8pm ABC: Texas A&M at Clemson

8pm FOX: Stanford at USC

8pm Pac-12: Northern Illinois at Utah
8pm FS2: UTEP at Texas Tech

10pm ESPN: California at Washington

10pm FS1: Nebraska at Colorado

10:30pm CBSSN: Minnesota at Fresno St. (confirmed)

11pm Pac-12: Northern Arizona at Arizona
12am Spectrum PPV: Oregon St. at Hawai'i

CFB TV Guesses (Take 2) on 2019 Weeks Zero & One

Taking a 2nd crack at figuring out the Week Zero (really nothing to figure out here) and Week One CFB TV schedules.  What have we learned since late February?  Lots:

• Houston at Oklahoma has moved to Sunday night
• Miami (FL) vs. Florida has moved to Week Zero
• The Mountain West national TV schedule has been announced
• A handful of games have changed dates across this particular week

Here's the original

Week Zero

It is essentially finalized from a FBS perspective, provided someone doesn't pull some shenanigans and move a game.  Villanova at Colgate will also be slotted for national TV at some point (Stadium or CBSSN?).  The only sticking point I see in the schedule right now is the schedule of BIG3 basketball on CBSSN and whether that would be played on Saturday or Sunday.

Week One

Here's the deal: If the game isn't listed, assume it will be streamed by whatever the home conference's streaming arrangements are (ESPN3, ESPN+, Stadium online, etc.).  This now includes the member retained games for Baylor, Kansas, Kansas St. and Oklahoma St.

If you're curious about the two FS2 games, here's the deal: These two games are what I believe will be the member retained games for these two Big 12 schools as their content does not transfer over to ESPN+ until 2020.  I can't tell you what happens to those games because I don't know when operations for the former FOX RSNs will transfer over to Sinclair in 2019 as the sale does need regulatory approval.  The belief is the 3rd quarter.  I suppose the other platform FOX could use is Caffeine, the streaming platform they have invested in and are moving some Big East Digital Network to.

Thursday

7pm ESPN: UCLA at Cincinnati (network confirmed)

7:30pm ACCN: Georgia Tech at Clemson (network confirmed)

7:30pm SNY: Wagner at Connecticut
8pm CBS Sports Network: FIU at Tulane
8pm BTN: South Dakota St. at Minnesota

8:30pm SEC: Texas St. at Texas A&M (confirmed)

10:15pm ESPN: Utah at BYU

10:30pm Pac-12: Kent St. at Arizona St.

Friday

6pm CBSSN: Rice at Army (network confirmed, time guess based on MW confirmation)

7pm ESPN: Wisconsin at USF (network family confirmed)

7pm ACCN: Utah St. at Wake Forest

7:30pm BTN: Massachusetts at Rutgers

8pm FS1: Tulsa at Michigan St.

9pm Pac-12: Colorado St. vs. Colorado

9:30pm CBSSN: Purdue at Nevada (confirmed)

10:15pm ESPN: Oklahoma St. at Oregon St.

Saturday

12pm ABC: FAU at Ohio St.

12pm ESPN: Georgia St. at Tennessee

12pm ESPNU: Virginia at Pittsburgh

12pm SEC: Toledo at Kentucky

12pm BTN: Idaho at Penn St.

12:30pm ACCN: Virginia Tech at Boston College

1pm AT&T SN Pitt: James Madison at West Virginia

2pm Pac-12: Eastern Washington at Washington

3:30pm ABC: Duke vs. Alabama

3:30pm CBS: North Carolina vs. South Carolina

3:30pm FOX: Middle Tennessee at Michigan
3:30pm ESPN: Ole Miss at Memphis

3:30pm ESPNU: Akron at Illinois

3:30pm CBSSN: Holy Cross at Navy (network confirmed)

3:30pm BTN: Howard at Maryland

4pm ACCN: East Carolina at NC State

4pm SEC: Portland St. at Arkansas

4pm FS2: UAPB at TCU

5:30pm Pac-12: UC Davis at California

7pm ESPN: Georgia at Vanderbilt

7pm FS1: Northwestern at Stanford

7pm ESPNU: Mississippi St. vs. UL-Lafayette

7:30pm FOX: South Alabama at Nebraska

7:30pm ACCN: Boise St. vs. Florida St.

7:30pm SEC: Georgia Southern at LSU

7:30pm BTN: Miami (OH) at Iowa

7:30pm CBSSN: Missouri at Wyoming (confirmed)

8pm ABC: Oregon vs. Auburn

8pm Longhorn: Louisiana Tech at Texas

8pm FS2: Montana St. at Texas Tech 

8pm CyclonesTV: Northern Iowa at Iowa St.

9pm Pac-12: New Mexico St. at Washington St.

10:30pm ESPN: Fresno St. at USC

Sunday

12pm ESPN2: Jackson St. vs. Bethune-Cookman

7:30pm ABC: Houston at Oklahoma (confirmed)

Monday

8pm ESPN: Notre Dame at Louisville

Mid-April CFB TV 2019 Notes

* The Big 12 signed a deal with ESPN for three football conference championship games and eight schools pledged their member-retained content for ESPN+.  A couple things not covered in my original post on the topic:

• The Big 12 didn't get the value in the market that they were expecting for the three football conference championship games.  The number quoted by Sports Business Journal was $40 million for the three games, or slightly north of $13 million per game.  FOX Sports ended their deal for paying around $20 million per game and the conference seemed to believe they would be able to get that number on the open market.  The conference previously said they had multiple suitors for the games, which would, in theory, create a bidding war for the content.
  
• I'm curious who now makes the call as to which game is designated as a school's member retained football game.  FOX Sports had that option previously & if a school elected not to utilize their own platforms, the game had to be offered back to FOX Sports.  I suppose I could see FOX Sports continuing to dictate these choices as to not adversely affect the games available to their own Big 12 content package, but I would think that ESPN now has a greater say, or all of the say, in the matter.  Maybe it will end up being a joint decision by both networks with the conference or individual school having the final say.  Could it end up being a intraconference game?  The conference said this was a possibility several years ago, but I believe there had to be extenuating circumstances for this option.
  
• For that member retained content, I have no idea how ESPN is paying that to the schools.  Each of these deals were previously negotiated with FOX or another media partner, so I don't know if those eight have agreed to pledge this content in return for a guaranteed minimum payout or some other formula is going to be applied to compensate the schools.

* NBC has set start times for their Notre Dame home games.

* Conference USA came out with a handful of start times for games, along with a few date changes.  This could end up being nearly the entire schedule of linear TV games on CBS Sports Network (all times Eastern).  Nine games are listed here and a tenth would need to be finalized

• Friday 9/6 - Wake Forest at Rice, 8pm
• Saturday 9/7 - UCF at FAU, 7pm
• Saturday 9/14 - Texas vs. Rice, 8pm
• The Mountain West only has games vs. FCS opponents that day.  East Carolina at Navy should be at 3:30pm ET.  Maybe another American Athletic Conference game at 12pm ET.
• Friday 9/20 - FIU at Louisiana Tech, 8pm
• Friday 10/18 - Marshall at FAU, 6:30pm
• Look for a potential doubleheader with the Mountain West.  Nevada at Utah St. could be scheduled for 10pm ET based on Marshall at FAU's start time
• Friday 11/15 - Louisiana Tech at Marshall, 7pm
• The Jamaica Classic is moving to a week later in the college basketball schedule, so it would not clash with this game's date
• Saturday 11/23 - Miami vs. FIU, 7pm
• Saturday 11/30 - FIU at Marshall, 12pm
• Saturday 12/7 - Conference USA Championship, 1:30pm

Two of the three CBS produced Facebook games could be Cincinnati at Marshall (9/28, 5pm) & Marshall at Middle Tennessee (10/5, 3:30pm) based on the start times & other potential CBS Sports Network conflicts.

* One last item on Conference USA.  They came out with their season preview, basically a spring prospectus (not a media guide), and beIN Sports was absent from the list of TV partners.  At the moment, I take their absence as being a strong signal that they will not be returning as a C-USA television partner.

Quick Note on Big 12 content deal for ESPN+

Breaking my own rule regarding taking April off, but I saw some comments on the Big 12 ESPN+ deal that I think will need clarification by the schools.

Per Sports Business Journal, the Big 12 and ESPN have completed an agreement for three Big 12 football championship games that would have been attached to FOX Sports (2019, 2021 and 2023).   FOX Sports still is maintaining its presence televising regular season football, women's basketball and other events not covered by the existing deal that ESPN has with the conference.

The other part of the deal involves content that the schools have retained outside of agreements with ESPN and FOX Sports.  Each school gets to keep a group of events to monetize for themselves, which includes a football game, some men's & women's basketball, baseball, softball and other sports.  Sometimes they're called third tier agreements, sometimes they are notated as member retained content.  Much of this content aired regionally, and sometimes nationally if the school was contracted to FOX Sports RSNs:

• Baylor: FOX Sports
• Iowa St: Cyclones.TV from Mediacom
• Kansas: Jayhawk TV Network (distributed to linear TV stations & ESPN+)
• Kansas St.: K-State HD TV (distributed to FOX Sports MW & ESPN3)
• Oklahoma: FOX Sports
• Oklahoma St.: FOX Sports
• TCU: FOX Sports
• Texas: Longhorn Network
• Texas Tech: FOX Sports
• West Virginia: Nexstar (distributed through AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh)

My initial thought is that the sale of the FOX Sports RSNs allowed for this mostly encompassing deal for this member retained content, while Texas will remain on Longhorn Network and Oklahoma (may?) stay with FOX Sports.

What I didn't see in this post from SBJ is whether the content will remain regionally distributed for the eight schools via linear TV and also through ESPN+ or if ESPN+ will become the exclusive distribution outlet for this content.  Hopefully that will be clarified.  I would think that since Texas maintains its linear TV presence, the other schools could be allowed to maintain theirs or continue to strike local TV deals for the content while maintaining the ESPN+ "outermarket" presence.  This would also allow for those who don't get content from a RSN affiliated with FOX Sports to be able to get this content on a regular basis.

EDIT: ESPN release says this content will be exclusive to ESPN+.  One way to look at this as a positive is that some schools didn't have a good way to get access to this content outside of their region or state.  Here's the ESPN release.

EDIT: Oklahoma's content deal with FOX Sports is a longer term deal than the other schools' deals.  It runs through 2022, so if it were to join up with other Big 12 schools in this venture, it would be at that time and not over the two year "phase-in" that is occuring for the eight schools pledging their content.

Also, Iowa St. spelled out exactly what will occur with their Cyclones.TV channel.  Live games will go to ESPN+, but the channel can continue to show press conferences and replays of live events.

A few notes on new American Athletic Conference rights agreement

A quick comparison of the number of games each season vs. the new minimums announced in the new 12 year agreement with ESPN.

Football

The conference championship game is not counted in this table below.

So the new minimum of 40 games across the four primary networks is more than each of the previous five seasons.  The even numbered seasons also had games where Navy "hosted" Notre Dame, so you could add one more to each year, then take one more Navy home game to each season started with 2015 (2014 didn't have Navy nor a conference championship game) to get a more true apples to apples comparison.

With that said, if you add in the CBS Sports Network games of around 14 games per season, you'll likely get close to the planned minimum in at least 2015 & 2016.  2017 & 2018 would be well above the minimum.  In my opinion, this is where the American would be taking advantage of some ACC content moving over to the new ACC Network.

Men's Basketball

The conference tournament games are not counted in this table below.

The first thing I would caution is that the 2018-19 season had one more week available for games to be played compared to the other four years.  Also, Wichita St. joined for the 2017-18 athletic year, which gave the conference more available games for television.

CBS Sports Network received 30 games per season via sublicense.  The minimum increasing will help out a little, but ESPN+ is more likely to be the platform receiving the bump in content as I don't see those 30 games being added to both ESPNU and ESPNEWS.

Networks in use

ESPN+ was added as a platform, but ESPNEWS, ESPN3 and CBS Sports Network were not mentioned.  I get the feeling from the language of the release that CBS Sports Network could be out, though it is not confirmed by anyone with knowledge of any of the agreements.  ESPN3 and ESPNEWS weren't mentioned either with the exception of the "About ESPN" section, so I don't know the status of using those two linear TV channels.  If anything, one could make a reasonable leap that the ESPNEWS content could be what ends up adding to the new contract minimums, and the content that was on ESPN3, CBSSN and some schools' streaming packages become the ESPN+ package.  ESPNEWS carried six football games in 2018 and 15 men's basketball games in the 2018-19 regular season.

I should also mention that ESPN allows conferences like the Ivy League, SoCon and others to regionally televise ESPN+ games, unless schools were counseled not to sign new regional television deals, such as the deal UConn has with SNY.

EDIT: A transcript of the media call announcing the agreement has details that sublicensing could continue and that ESPN would need to sit down with relevant parties to gauge their interest in continuing these arrangements.

A Guess At The Remaining Thursday & Friday Night CFB Schedules for 2019

Thursdays

ESPN (main channel) has mostly set its Thursday night schedule with the ACC & American taking up nearly every Thursday night, but there are some holes.  The holes happen to already have available games for those dates

8/29: UCLA at Cincinnati
9/5: No game (US Open tennis)
9/12: North Carolina at Wake Forest
9/19: Houston at Tulane
9/26: Navy at Memphis
10/3: Temple at East Carolina
10/10: Syracuse at NC State
10/17: No game yet
10/24: SMU at Houston
10/31: No game yet
11/7: Temple at USF
11/14: North Carolina at Pittsburgh
11/21: NC State at Georgia Tech
11/28: No game yet

Here's what I think ESPN will end up for a schedule, with additions in red.

8/29: UCLA at Cincinnati & Utah at BYU

9/5: No game (US Open tennis)

9/12: North Carolina at Wake Forest

9/19: Houston at Tulane

9/26: Navy at Memphis

10/3: Temple at East Carolina

10/10: Syracuse at NC State

10/17: UCLA at Stanford

10/24: SMU at Houston

10/31: West Virginia at Baylor

11/7: Temple at USF

11/14: North Carolina at Pittsburgh

11/21: NC State at Georgia Tech

11/28: Ole Miss at Mississippi St.

C-USA and the Mountain West hasn't yet set its weeknight schedule, which would primarily impact CBS Sports Network.  For the games currently set for Thursdays not included here & not set for television, here's where I think they'll end up:

8/29
ESPN3/+: South Carolina St. at UCF (if it remains on Thursday night), three MAC games, Alabama St. at UAB, Wagner at UConn (also probably on SNY)
CBS Sports Network: FIU at Tulane
BTN: South Dakota St. at Minnesota
MW Network: Northern Colorado at San Jose St.
Pac-12: Kent St. at Arizona St.

Fridays

Fridays should have more variance when it comes to networks.  I think you'll see the ACC Network involved for a few Fridays along with FS1 & CBSSN.

I decided to go with a table to cover all the potential networks.  Anything in red is a guess for either the network or possibly the game itself.  You'll need to click on the image to read it likely.

I left Black Friday off the table (day after Thanksgiving).  Keep reading for that.

Back to Black Friday, here's how I think it will go (not necessarily in the order of the games being played):

ABC: One American Athletic game, one ACC game
CBS: Missouri at Arkansas
FOX: One Pac-12 game, Iowa at Nebraska
ESPN: One Big 12 game
FS1: One Pac-12 game, one Big 12 game
ESPNU: One MAC game
CBSSN: One American Athletic game, one MAC game

A passing thought or two on WarnerMedia: Why not the Mountain West?

I want to make sure off the top that you, the reader, know that there's no informed, behind the scenes thought behind this topic.

So the wheels are turning at WarnerMedia at the executive level & my first thoughts about regular season collegiate content they could acquire stopped at one place where they have a foot in the door regionally: The Mountain West, whose rights agreements with CBS Sports & ESPN expire at the end of the 2019-20 athletic year.  The conference has had a small package of football & men's basketball games on the AT&T Sports RSNs for several years.

This got me to thinking that this could be a worthwhile partnership. The Mountain West hasn't been thrilled about some of the slotting of their games, specifically in the areas of start times. Meanwhile, the linear TV channels of TNT, TBS and TruTV have a decently open canvas on weekends for live sports.  I believe the channels also have enough subscribers to support any requirements Boise St. home football games would have as they have a slightly separate deal for themselves.

Beyond those linear channels, B/R Live has gained traction through their coverage of UEFA championships, limited live NBA games, a small set of AAF games & other niche properties. The platform did have the failure of the PPV purchasing system for the Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson golf event, but the stream seemed to hold up.  The conference has experimented with current partner Stadium for events on Facebook when linear TV wasn't an option. I realize the "free vs. pay" option is another hurdle, but it has gained a level of acceptance.

Regional games on AT&T Sports & Spectrum Sports PPV could stay & use B/R Live out of market, assuming there is some location services component to protect the in-market rights.  Maybe leverage Audience Network for some additional carriage of those games on DirecTV & AT&T UVerse or partner up with AT&T's telecom resources.

One quote that got to me and also leads me to believe that WarnerMedia wouldn't need to be the sole distributor of this content comes from the head of WarnerMedia, John Stankey.  While he was talking about entertainment content, I see no reason that it couldn't apply to sports as well:

...Well, look, we invest as much in WarnerMedia as Netflix does every year. In some cases we keep it for ourselves and in some cases we license it to them. Our ability to build content of scale and quality is really second-to-none in terms of an in-house production capability. And now Bob will make the decision about how much we should hold on our own platforms and how much we should license to third-party distributors....

There's no reason to believe that they couldn't seek out other distribution partners while maintaining control of rights.

Would like to hear your thoughts.