Sketching out Week 3 for CFB 2021

Week 3 has none of the conflicts with other sports that the opening two weeks do to my knowledge, so I'll try to plan out how I would schedule the games.

Here is the Week 3 schedule. Posts for Week 2 and Weeks 0 & 1 are also available.

Just the like the other posts - If your team's game isn't listed, assume it will be on streaming at a time friendly to the host school.

Thursday

No games yet have been moved to Thursday.  My choice to move to Thursday would be the Baylor-Kansas game.

7:30pm ESPN: Baylor at Kansas

Friday

8pm ESPN: UCF at Louisville

Saturday

• CBS starts its schedule of SEC games this particular week.
• Typically, BTN will not have a night game when ABC is carrying the Big Ten in primetime, which is why I don't have one as I've placed Auburn at Penn State in primetime on their network.

12pm ABC: Michigan State at Miami (FL)

12pm FOX: Nebraska at Oklahoma

12pm ESPN: South Carolina at Georgia

12pm ESPN2: Mississippi State at Memphis

12pm FS1: Nevada at Kansas State

12pm SEC: Stanford at Vanderbilt

12pm BTN: Northern Illinois at Michigan

12pm BTN: Delaware at Rutgers

12pm CBSSN: UConn at Army West Point

12pm ACCN: Northwestern at Duke

12:30pm ACC RSNs: Furman at NC State

2pm Pac-12: Minnesota at Colorado

3:30pm ABC: Georgia Tech at Clemson

3:30pm CBS: Alabama at Florida

3:30pm NBC: Purdue at Notre Dame

3:30pm ESPN: Virginia at North Carolina

3:30pm ESPN2: Maryland at Illinois

3:30pm FS1: Oklahoma State at Boise State

3:30pm BTN: Tulsa at Ohio State

3:30pm BTN: Kent State at Iowa

3:30pm CBSSN: ECU at Marshall

3:30pm ACCN: Western Michigan at Pitt

4pm FOX: Cincinnati at Indiana

4pm SEC: Georgia Southern at Arkansas

5pm Pac-12: Stony Brook at Oregon

5pm Pac-12 Bay Area: Sacramento State at California

7pm ESPN: New Mexico at Texas A&M

7pm ESPN2: Central Michigan at LSU

7pm FS1: FIU at Texas Tech

7pm CBSSN: Iowa State at UNLV

7:30pm ABC: Auburn at Penn State

7:30pm SEC: Tulane at Ole Miss

7:30pm ACCN: Florida State at Wake Forest

8pm FOX: Virginia Tech at West Virginia

8pm Longhorn: Rice at Texas

8pm Pac-12: Arkansas at Washington

9pm FS2: Utah State at Air Force

10:15pm ESPN2: Arizona State at BYU

10:30pm ESPN: USC at Washington State

10:30pm FS1: Fresno State at UCLA

10:30pm CBSSN: Utah at San Diego State

11pm Pac-12: Northern Arizona at Arizona

11pm Pac-12 Oregon: Idaho State at Oregon State

Midnight PPV: San Jose State at Hawai'i

Sketching out Week 2 for CFB 2021

Similar to the Week 0 & 1 post, let's take a stab at the TV assignments for the 2021 D1 college football season for Week 2.

I am making the following assumptions using these known events occurring

• ESPN carrying the semifinals and finals of the US Open Thursday through Sunday, assuming the following schedule
• Thursday and Friday all day on ESPN
• Saturday mid-afternoon on ESPN
• FOX is scheduled to carry MLB in the evening on 9/11

Just like the previous post - if a game isn't listed, assume streaming.

Thursday

Besides the US Open tennis, ESPN has stayed away from airing CFB on this particular Thursday night for several years as it also doubles as the opening night of the NFL season.

Friday

No games have been moved to Friday yet, so this is pure speculation on my part.

8pm CBSSN: Houston at Rice

Saturday

I am assuming that Stadium will carry a handful of Mountain West football games on their over-the-air affiliates, much like they did with men's basketball during the 2020-21 season.

12pm ABC: Florida at USF

12pm FOX: Washington at Michigan

12pm ESPN: Pittsburgh at Tennessee

12pm ESPN2: Appalachian State at Miami (FL)

12pm FS1: California at TCU

12pm ESPNU: Illinois at Virginia

12pm SEC: UAB at Georgia

12pm BTN: Ball State at Penn State

12pm BTN: Howard at Maryland

12pm BTN: Youngstown State at Michigan State

12pm CBSSN: WKU at Army West Point

12pm ACCN: Rutgers at Syracuse

12:30pm ACC RSN: Jacksonville State at Florida State

3pm Pac-12: Portland State at Washington State

3:30pm ABC: Texas A&M vs. Colorado

3:30pm CBS: Air Force at Navy

3:30pm FOX: Iowa at Iowa State

3:30pm NBC: Toledo at Notre Dame

3:30pm ESPN2: Buffalo at Nebraska

3:30pm FS1: Tulsa at Oklahoma State

3:30pm BTN: Indiana State at Northwestern

3:30pm BTN: Eastern Michigan at Wisconsin

3:30pm CBSSN: Purdue at UConn

4pm ESPNU: Kansas at Coastal Carolina

4pm SEC: NC State at Mississippi State

4pm ACCN: Middle Tennessee at Virginia Tech

7pm ESPN: Texas at Arkansas

7pm ESPN2: South Carolina at ECU

7pm FS1: UTEP at Boise State

7pm CBSSN: Vanderbilt at Colorado State

7pm Pac-12: Hawai'i at Oregon State

7pm PPV: Western Carolina at Oklahoma

7:30pm ABC: Oregon at Ohio State

7:30pm SEC: Missouri at Kentucky

7:30pm ACCN: Georgia State at North Carolina

7:30pm BTN: Idaho at Indiana

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

8pm ESPNU: Memphis at Arkansas State

8pm Stadium: NM State at New Mexico

10:15pm ESPN2: Utah at BYU

10:30pm ESPN: Stanford at USC

10:30pm FS1: San Diego State at Arizona

11pm Pac-12: UNLV at Arizona State

Sketching out Week 0 & Week 1 for CFB 2021

I have to admit that I haven't given these a lot of thought, and frankly, I don't know what sports will be having conflicting events.  Normally there might be conflicts with the WNBA, Fireball3, Little League World Series, motorsports, boxing, MLB, US National Team Soccer and the US Open, along with others that I have forgotten about.  Let's try to have fun with this and you tell me where I'm off my on my choices.

I did assume that ESPN2 will be unavailable due to US Open tennis.  FS1 also has MLB on Saturday after 4pm ET.

If I don't list a game, assume it is being streamed through ESPN Digital or the MW Network.  One thing to remember is that the SEC can now place one football game per school on ESPN+ per season and I do expect it to get used early in the season in select cases.

Week 0

4pm FOX: Nebraska at Illinois

8pm FOX: Hawai'i at UCLA

10pm CBSSN: UConn at Fresno State

10pm AggieVision: UTEP at NM State

Week 1

Thursday

I expect one SEC game to move to Thursday night along with an additional Pac-12 game.  Weber State at Utah was already set for this evening.

7pm ESPNU: ECU vs. Appalachian State

7:30pm ACCN: USF at NC State

8pm ESPN: Ohio State at Minnesota

8:30pm SECN: Kent State at Texas A&M

9pm Pac-12: Weber State at Utah

10pm FS1: Fresno State at Oregon 

Friday

An option exists to move North Carolina at Virginia Tech to Friday and I expect it to be used.

7pm ACCN: Old Dominion at Wake Forest

8pm ESPN: North Carolina at Virginia Tech

10pm Pac-12: Northern Colorado at Colorado 

Saturday

12pm ABC: Oklahoma at Tulane

12pm FOX: Indiana at Iowa

12pm ESPN: Texas Tech vs. Houston

12pm FS1: West Virginia at Maryland

12pm ESPNU: Syracuse at Ohio

12pm SECN: Central Michigan at Missouri

12pm SECN: Bowling Green at Tennessee

12pm BTN: UTSA at Illinois

12pm BTN: Western Michigan at Michigan

12pm CBSSN: Marshall at Navy

12pm ACCN: Colgate at Boston College

12:30pm ACC RSN: Northern Illinois at Georgia Tech

2pm Pac-12: Nevada at California

3:30pm ABC: Alabama vs. Miami (FL)

3:30pm ESPN: Boise State at UCF

3:30pm BTN: Temple at Rutgers

3:30pm BTN: Oregon State at Purdue

3:30pm CBSSN: Holy Cross at UConn

4pm FOX: Penn State at Wisconsin

4pm ESPNU: Akron at Auburn

4pm SECN: Louisiana Tech at Mississippi State

4pm SECN: Rice at Arkansas

4pm ACCN: William & Mary at Virginia

5pm Pac-12: Montana at Washington

7pm ESPN: Stanford vs. Kansas State

7pm CBSSN: Duke at Charlotte

7:30pm ABC: Georgia vs. Clemson

7:30pm SECN: Florida Atlantic at Florida

7:30pm SECN: ULM at Kentucky

7:30pm BTN: Michigan State at Northwestern

7:30pm ACCN: UMass at Pitt

8pm FOX: BYU vs. Arizona

8pm ESPNU: Baylor at Texas State

8pm Longhorn: Louisiana at Texas

8pm Pac-12: San Jose State at USC

10:30pm ESPN: LSU at UCLA

11pm Pac-12: Utah State at Washington State

11pm Pac-12 AZ: Southern Utah at Arizona State

Sunday

7:30pm ABC: Notre Dame at Florida State

Monday

8pm ESPN: Ole Miss vs. Louisville

Admin Item

Hi.  Hope you and your family are safe and healthy.

This season's challenge to keep up with the hourly, and it is hourly, changes to the D1 men's college basketball TV and streaming schedule has been a grind.  Trying to maintain a schedule in Google Sheets so I don't get to far ahead in the number of database rows in use, along with mostly using RSS to track schedule changes as schools would release them, is never ending and also has a self-defeating feeling when you miss a series being added. Or miss a series being added and then the release comes that its been cancelled anyways and you look through a team's releases to find that they never issued anything in the first place that its been added.

The TV schedule changes that are on the fly are tough to keep up with and I do truly appreciate those of you who have sent things over via email or social media.

The other part of this is that I've taken on a new role within my employer this week, and my responsibilities have went up in magnitude by 2x-3x as it is a new area of the company with duties in both tech and day-to-day business decisions.  I'd expect me to be on social media a lot less during the day and updates to the site will probably start once I've logged off from work or when I've ended up doing them lately at 4:30am ET because its when I wake up no matter when I nod off.

I have no clue what the plan is for tracking weekly start times in the FBS conferences later this year or that one big afternoon of early season TV releases, though that afternoon release often was just me tweeting them out without reading them (fun fact: this happens a lot).  

I would ask that you do let me catch up on TV network designations and tip times.  If something has been out there for a few days, or its a change for a game tonight or tomorrow, then send it over.  I suppose that I'm asking for your help in being a little less on-demand for changes, etc.

Take care.

SEC Moving All Rights to ESPN

You might want to read the press release and media call transcript. Also happened to write this post in late December of 2019 when this news started to percolate.

A few takeaways that I have:

* Unless some trading of rights occurs, I'd expect CBS to keep at least a couple years worth of SEC games. There's still a bit of a logjam when it comes to the content they have and shoehorning in 15 more football games is a bit tough. Taking on a few more men's basketball games isn't as hard to do. CBS seems to make money off of it too with the deal's low cost per season and the rating the package generates allowing it to charge a pretty reasonable rate for advertising and sponsorship.

* The mention of more fan-friendly scheduling and noting when games would start is a welcome addition. Along with that, I am curious to know whether the SEC will continue to publish the upcoming season's schedule while the current season is still active. ESPN is known to take an active role in ACC scheduling for some Saturday games and that could apply to the SEC now that they are completely under the Disney umbrella. Maybe we'll see the SEC schedule come out in January or February instead.

* With the restrictions gone as to when a SEC game can air on broadcast TV during the day, I think your over/under number for the amount of SEC games that you should expect on ABC should be 22.  CBS had 15 and ESPN often had good games to air during the 1st two weeks of the season, so tacking those on plus some premium SEC games that aired on ESPN, 20 seems like a reasonable number to start with.

And with that noted, for the next three seasons, I think you'll see a few more premium games from the Big 12, Pac-12,  Big Ten and ACC end up on ESPN instead of ABC, or maybe a marginal game air on ESPN instead of filling an ABC slot. The increase in inventory isn't much, but the quality of the inventory has increased.

* The addition of ESPN+ content isa value add to both the ESPN+ service and, likely, the SEC Network.  SECN often ends up with these games early in the season and sometimes they end up on the alternate feed. If that content gets pulled from SECN and other ESPN linear TV platforms over to ESPN+, it leaves programming holes to fill.  Some of that might be SEC games from other linear TV platforms to bolster SECN and other conferences could benefit from the openings on linear TV to get more coverage. You also might see some cases where SECN doesn't carry a football game because the desire is to get as many viewers to watch a premium SEC game on ABC or ESPN instead.

* A possible loser in this addition is the American, specifically for its football championship game, as it might be the odd man out and slide into a spot on ESPN instead of airing on ABC. Currently it gets positioned to air on ABC opposite the SEC's game on CBS, but the game is guaranteed to air on either ABC or ESPN.

* As correctly noted by a Twitter follower, CBS will lose out on SEC men's basketball and ACC men's basketball disappeared from the network recently.  As far as I know, the Big Ten will be their anchor conference along with some games from the American and Mountain West, and they'll have sublicensed games from the Big 12, Pac-12, Big East plus the championship games from the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley from ESPN.  

ABC is starting to reposition itself in the college basketball space.  They carried five games total last year from the Pac-12, ACC and Big 12 and by adding a few SEC games, they'll have a chance to be back in that game for affiliates.

* And because there's an inevitable question about what CBS does, three Power 5 conferences have their rights agreements expire after consecutive athletic years: Big Ten (2022-23), Pac-12 (2023-24) and Big 12 (2024-25).  At a minimum, CBS would carry three Mountain West football games per season through 2025 and has the Army-Navy game through 2028.

CFB TV Confirmations for 2020 Week 15 (12/12/20)

Games already set for TV

What I guessed

12pm ESPN3: Miami (OH) at Bowling Green

12pm ESPN3: Northern Illinois at Eastern Michigan

12pm ESPN3: Ohio at Kent State

12pm ESPN+: Western Michigan at Ball State

1pm ESPN3: UAB at Rice

2:30pm CBSSN: Akron at Buffalo

3pm ESPN3: Central Michigan at Toledo

3pm ESPN3: UIW at Arkansas State

3pm ESPN+: Coastal Carolina at Troy

3:30pm ESPNU: Texas at Kansas

4pm ESPN3: North Texas at UTEP

6pm ESPN3: Appalachian State at Georgia Southern

7pm ESPNU: Oklahoma State at Baylor

10pm ESPN2: San Diego State at BYU

Six day hold

Notre Dame at Wake Forest

North Carolina at Miami (FL)

Virginia at Virginia Tech

Houston at Memphis

Cincinnati at Tulsa

Oklahoma at West Virginia (12pm or 3:30pm ET on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2)

Wisconsin at Iowa

Minnesota at Nebraska

Illinois at Northwestern

Purdue at Indiana

Rutgers at Maryland

Michigan State at Penn State

Fresno State vs. New Mexico (FS1 or FS2)

Washington at Oregon

Oregon State at Stanford

USC at UCLA

California at Washington State

Some SEC games, because they're going to change the schedule again

CFB TV Guesses for 2020 Week 15 (12/12/20)

This will be the last set of guesses for 2020. I'm not going to bother with 12/19 as we're not sure of many of the games in the Big Ten and Pac-12, plus several conferences are working on their schedules on a weekly basis to get as many relevant games in as possible. Frankly, I think you'll see six day holds used for a lot of this week and for whatever games outside of conference championships are played on 12/19 too.

Here are the games already set for television and/or webcast. Here are the known available telecast windows. 

I have done my best to list what TV windows are out there. Every listing service has a little different schedule for these networks. It is also possible that a window could be eliminated or the time of a window could shift slightly to accommodate a network's needs.

Considerations (you might want to read these instead of skipping past them)

* CBS schedules for 12/12/ show that they will not air a SEC game in primetime after Army-Navy. All of the games that are presently scheduled for that Saturday were originally scheduled to air on ESPN operated networks.

* Michigan at Ohio State has been pre-selected to air on FOX at 12pm ET and the MLS Cup will be airing on the network in primetime, so there's only one FOX window open.

* BTN doesn't a 7:30pm ET window listed at this time. Just 12pm & 3:30pm.

* RSNs are not showing any ACC football windows for 12/12, which might be why Pitt at Georgia Tech is airing on Thursday 12/10 instead. Assuming two RSN selections on 12/5, the game on 12/10 would be the RSN package's 17th game, so it would have met its contract requirement.

* ACC Network is scheduled to carry at least four, possibly five, college basketball games starting at 12pm and no college football. Network listings have five games but only four were listed when the ACC released its schedule.

* I'm attempting to follow the California curfew guidelines. Yesterday, rules were added specifically in Santa Clara county which would affect Stanford on Saturday and San Jose State on Friday night as they are scheduled to play Nevada at 10pm ET / 7pm PT on CBSSN.

* "Missing" TV windows on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU are due to the following:

• Top Rank Boxing (ESPN late evening)
• UFC PPV Prelims (ESPN2 evening I *think*)
• Men's college basketball (ESPNU - 2 games starting at 7pm)

12pm ABC: Cincinnati at Tulsa

12pm ESPN: Oklahoma at West Virginia

12pm ESPN2: Virginia at Virginia Tech

12pm FS1: Texas at Kansas

12pm ESPNU: Coastal Carolina at Troy

12pm SECN: LSU at Florida

12pm BTN: Rutgers at Maryland

12pm BTN: Purdue at Indiana

2:30pm CBSSN: Akron at Buffalo

3:30pm ABC: North Carolina at Miami (FL)

3:30pm ESPN: Illinois at Northwestern

3:30pm ESPN2: San Diego State at BYU

3:30pm FS1: Washington at Oregon

3:30pm ESPNU: Oregon State at Stanford

3:30pm BTN: Michigan State at Penn State

3:30pm BTN: Minnesota at Nebraska

4pm FOX: USC at UCLA

4pm SECN: Auburn at Mississippi State

7pm ESPN: Wisconsin at Iowa

7pm FS1: Oklahoma State at Baylor

7:30pm ABC: Notre Dame at Wake Forest

7:30pm SECN: Texas A&M at Tennessee

10:30pm FS1: Fresno State vs. New Mexico

10:30pm ESPN2: California at Washington State

ESPN3 or ESPN+

North Texas at UTEP

UAB at Rice

Houston at Memphis

UIW at Arkansas State

Appalachian State at Georgia Southern

Central Michigan at Toledo

Northern Illinois at Eastern Michigan

Western Michigan at Ball State

Miami (OH) at Bowling Green

Ohio at Kent State