SCHEDULEGASM 2.OH!!!!!! | Bossman’s Blog

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• I wouldn’t call it a mega-matchup on Labour Day Sunday but they do have one good fanbase and one REALLY good fanbase and they’re in Vegas for this one. Yeah, this could get out of hand.
• As I mentioned above, the SEC gets all the 3:30 games on ABC. I am sure someone asked about the SEC getting all the primetime games instead but ABC isn’t stupid. It’s bad enough how all-in they are with the SEC, but to give them all the primetime games as well would all but alienate the Big XII and ACC. I mean they are kind of doing it already but this would be a little too much. That is until a few of the ACC teams head to the SEC in a few years.
• I am not even going to try and figure out which games, at this point, will appear on TSN. And now with TSN+, this becomes a much more difficult exercise. I think the scheduling people at TSN would lose their God damn minds if they saw how far out many of these college football games are scheduled. Anyway, the breakdown I have right now is that 25 of the games would be simsubbed on one of the five TSN channels and 23 would be simsubbed on TSN+. I could see even more games going to TSN+ as TSN tries to gain subscribers. I will also monitor what this does with Bell’s U.S. College Sports Package. Don’t be surprised if this goes away in a few years because all these games are on TSN+. Bell owns TSN. You can connect the dots.
• The three Black Friday games are confirmed. Also, the first three weeks are confirmed (as usual) and three other games are confirmed which is somewhat unusual. Two games on September 28th (Kentucky-Ole Miss and UGA-Bama) and the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party on November 2nd between the Gators and Bulldogs.
• I have no games for the American Conference scheduled for ABC other than the conference championship (and that’s on a Friday night). They are one of the “victims” of the SEC’s new contract with ABC. The best they will probably do is ESPN unless there is a game late in the year between two teams that are up for the Group of Five spot in the College Football Playoff. Hell, even the MEAC and SWAC get a game on ABC (two if you include the Celebration Bowl).
• The conference breakdown is pretty skewed but here it is (remember, a conference game will count as two appearances and bowl game tie-ins aren’t counted):
  • SEC – 60 (including conference championship)
  • ACC – 22 (including conference championship)
  • Big XII – 12 (including conference championship)
  • American – 3 (including conference championship)
  • Notre Dame – 2
  • MEAC – 1
  • SWAC – 1
  • Big Ten – 1
• Don’t need to delve into the conference breakdown too much other than to say the SEC: It Just Means More (Games on ABC).
• Five bowl games will appear on ABC. Two less than last season but there is a big reason for that: two of the first round games of the CFP will appear on both ABC and ESPN. The other two were sold to TNT, of all networks. Can’t wait to hear Charles Barkley wax poetic about why his Auburn Tigers didn’t make the playoff, why Bama sucks and other potentially crazy thoughts which will be much more entertaining than any other pre-game personality in televised sports today.

BIG NOON FUCKING KICKOFF, BITCHES! Say what you want but FOX has really pushed their early Saturday coverage. The pregame show that FOX puts on is arguably better than College Gameday (or at least on par with it from the little I’ve watched and what I’ve heard on the Twitter Machine). Big Noon Kickoff is their big game of the week which, other than one time I believe, pushed the Pac-12 to the backburner. And there are times they put very little thought into what either the afternoon or primetime game is. I’m fine with the afternoon game being a bit of a throwaway game but I still believe in this day and age, the primetime game should be somewhat important. What have you done for me lately, so to speak. Or as late as possible. Saying that, they do put games on late night on the main network which is pretty awesome. Kind of wish other networks would do it, even if it was just one time a season.

Anyway, enough of all that, it’s time to get to the schedule. Again, the first three weeks are set. A few other games are set and you will see something VERY new and I will touch on that after the schedule listings. So here we go, followed by some (No) Smackdown Musings (OK I may have given the surprise away):

Musings from a Complete Lack of Smackdown

• You’re not seeing things. Friday night college football comes to FOX! September 6th will be the final episode of WWE Smackdown on FOX. The following week, the first game of FOX’s new set of Friday night college football games begins. Honestly, I am loving it even if some of the games defy logic. The time isn’t the same every week. So yes, more than half the time the games start at 8:00 but a few start at 9:00 and one starts at, brace yourselves, 11:00 at night. Rutgers and USC no less! That is insane and I will so watch it.
• FOX will try, much of the time, to get great games in their Noon timeslot but it doesn’t work every week that way. When they get the top selection, it’s pretty obvious. UM-tOSU, Bama-Wisky, UT-UM, tOSU-PSU. Yeah, some of the top games of the year. Then there are some weeks when they won’t be as good. Like Houston-Cincy or ASU-KSU. OK, let’s be honest: almost every Big XII game in this timeslot pales in comparison to the Big Ten Big Noon Kickoff games.
• Black Friday will see the typical two FOX games. This year, Boise State gets a Black Friday home game, AT NOON, on the main network. I guess if you want to be on FOX, sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit. This will be one of only two games on FOX for the Mountain West. And they both have Boise State at home. And they contain both teams from the Pac-2. Yeah, other than Boise, FOX doesn’t think much of that conference.
• So the Friday games are confirmed as are the first three weeks of the season. They start with a Thursday nighter in Week One. UNC-Minny goes up against ESPN’s choice of NDSU-Colorado. Should be an interesting ratings battle.
• Conference breakdown and you might be a tiny bit surprised at the results:
  • Big XII – 48
  • Big Ten – 46
  • Mountain West – 4 (including conference championship)
  • Pac-2/Wazzu & Oregon State – 4
  • SEC – 2
  • ACC – 1
  • Conference USA – 1
• If you are surprised by this, you shouldn’t be. The Big XII dominates the afternoon and primetime timeslots. 30 of their appearances land here compared to 11 for the Big Ten. It is pretty similar to where things stood last year.
• FOX has only one conference championship this year, the Mountain West Championship. In odd numbered years they also get the Big Ten Championship. And with just one bowl game, they are almost entirely shut out of everything that would be considered the college football postseason.
• October can be odd with scheduling for FOX, especially with the MLB playoffs going on the entire month. A lot of inventory does move to FOX Sports One. Saying that, if it matches last year, there was only one Saturday in October that didn’t have a primetime game on FOX and that’s late in the month (along with early November…man the baseball season is WAY too long). I believe FOX tries their best to put as many college football games and work it around the baseball playoffs. They also sometimes use FOX Business (which we don’t have up here) for college football if MLB games go long.

Yeah it’s not just Notre Dame on NBC anymore. The Big Ten has moved into the basement apartment and is racking up the hydro bill. And can they get their dog to stop barking in the middle of the night? For now, this is a peaceful union, mostly because the Big Ten doesn’t automatically get the primetime spot every Saturday. This agreement lasts through 2030. After that, I could honestly see the conference flexing their muscle and basically demanding all primetime games. What could that do to Notre Dame? Who knows since they always get at least a couple of primetime affairs and I can’t see them giving that up anytime soon.

Should be interesting but that’s six years away. For now, let’s look at the brand-spanking new NBC schedule:

Overrated Tirico Thoughts

• OK before you get pissed off, calm down and let me explain. I do think Mike Tirico is good at all the announcing and studio jobs he has had in the past. The idea, though, that he is one of the greatest announcers out there is a bit far-fetched. And now with Noah Eagle doing the Big Ten games, there’s no need to find anyone better. I mean we all remember the medicore Notre Dame days of Tom Hammond. And don’t get me started on the Jac Collinsworth experiment. One of the worst, in my opinion.
• The Irish get two primetime games this season. Florida State was an easy choice since that could very well be a College Football Playoff Elimination Game. The Army game was a bit of a surprise although looking at the rest of the schedule it’s not like the Irish have a lot of tough teams coming to South Bend.
• Number of appearances for Big Ten teams:
  • 3 appearances – Iowa, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, Washington
  • 2 appearances – Ohio State, Nebraska, UCLA
  • 1 appearance – Indiana, Illinois, USC, Minnesota, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Northwestern
  • No appearances – Purdue, Rutgers, Maryland
• This is fairly well spread out which I believe is a good idea to do with these Big Ten broadcasts. If you start showing one team more than the others, regardless of how good they are, the brand starts becoming too attached to that team. Kind of like how for years the SEC on CBS was the Alabama Show.
• Again, first three weeks of the schedule are set, as are all the Notre Dame games. Just like with the Big Ten on CBS, this is a total guess since the order is a bit up in the air and I have no idea what this will look like over a full season. We will know, in about five months’ time, how this CBS/NBC/FOX Big Ten partnership will work (for the most part) going forward.

CBSSN has a seriously long schedule. Longer than the rest. But, they also make sure at least 75% is set before the season begins. Holy shit, scheduling most of the games already? TSN doesn’t even know what to think of that statement. Anyway, there are always a handful of great games that air on this network and this year will be no different. Plus, they share in MACtion with ESPN so got to give them props for that. Alright, here we go with the schedule:

Little Brother Thoughts

• As I’ve said above, damn near all the games are confirmed. The only ones that aren’t are MAC-controlled games. So, it might not necessarily be the game I listed but it will be a MAC game and, depending on the week, there might not be a ton of options.
• CBSSN gets one conference championship, and it’s on a Friday night. Unfortunately, two other conference championships are on at the exact same time. That’s too bad since they used to get the C-USA Championship on and would get at least the first half on its own. Meaning if it was a close game they could keep much of the audience rather than lose it to, usually, the Pac-12 and their championship that they would stupidly put on at 6:00 local time in Santa Clara.
• The Black Friday tradition continues as they get two games that day: a MAC affair at Noon and what could be a huge game for Liberty during the afternoon.
• Here is the conference/team appearance breakdown for y’all:
  • Mountain West – 46
  • Conference USA – 35 (including conference championship)
  • MAC – 18
  • American – 11
  • UConn – 6
  • Army – 5
  • Navy – 4
  • Pac-2 – 4
  • Sun Belt – 3
  • FCS – 3
  • Big XII – 2
  • UMass – 2
  • ACC – 1
• CBSSN has 69 regular season games. Nice.
• Also, the American shows up eleven times because Army has joined Navy in the American conference starting this season.
• C-USA is widening the gap between themselves and the MAC and are closing the gap on the Mountain West. More MAC games are going to ESPN and more MWC games are going to the FOX family of networks. This is a far cry from before COVID when Conference USA would barely get into the double digits in appearances.

BTN might be a bit bulked up this season. More teams means more games have to come their way. Also…BTN AFTER DARK. Oh my.

Late-Night Big Ten Action and Shenanigans

• OK so there are only two instances of BTN After Dark. But still…that’s two more than we used to have.
• You will also see a few instances of two games on at the same time. I think I have discussed this before but here is the rationale I see behind this. The more marketable game of the two would be on the main Big Ten Network channel. The other game would be on the BTN Alternate channel which no one in Canada gets. So you miss one of the games. To use an example, on August 31st there are two games on at Noon: Illinois State-Iowa and Indiana State-Purdue. In terms of the two FCS schools, one is not wildly better than the other so consider that a wash. Between Iowa and Purdue, most would rather watch the Hawkeyes. So, chances are, Illinois State-Iowa will get the main network. Rogers, at least as of last year, was still showing the BTN alternate games in the specialty pack. Until I see otherwise I will continue to believe this is happening.
• Amount of appearances for B1G schools:
  • 8 appearances – Indiana
  • 7 appearances – Rutgers
  • 6 appearances – Illinois, Purdue, Northwestern, Minnesota
  • 5 appearances – Maryland, Nebraska
  • 4 appearances – Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan
  • 3 appearances – Penn State, USC
  • 2 appearances – Iowa, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, UCLA
• So the rule is every Big Ten team has to appear on the Big Ten Network twice a season, with one of the games being a conference game. That’s why you will see a game like Northwestern-Washington on here rather than on FOX or FS1. There has to be enough inventory to satisfy that rule. It feels like almost every season there is at least one pretty good game that falls to BTN.
• From the list here, it feels like most of the teams with at least five appearances are teams that many think will be near the bottom of the B1G standings and that will probably very well be the case. No one believes Indiana will be any good this year, thus two-thirds of their games appear here.

A newcomer to the schedule lists. The CW is very new at this and has already had some wacky games, all in the ACC so far. Well, brace yourselves because they add the Pac-12 Pac-2 this season! Most of Wazzu and Oregon State’s home games appear here as well. So let’s get right to the schedule:

The Darn C-Dub, Y’all!

• Most of Oregon State and Washington State’s games are set. Well, the dates are set, and they are on the CW…it’s just the times. They may end up switching spots on the days they both are on the network.
• There are some Saturdays where I have three games on the CW. I will be interested to see if that actually happens but looking at the schedule it may be difficult to avoid it.
• The reason for that? Hmmm…maybe this should have been part of the last point. Oh well. Anyway, the ACC gets 13 games on the CW. Almost one a week. And there’s no game on Week 1 so I assume the rest of the weeks get one ACC game each. Call it a hunch. Now watch me be wrong and instead there’s one week where there’s somehow a quadrupleheader.

Alright that’s it and that’s all. The final schedule post before we get close to Week Zero. And remember…the college football season is a mere 56 days away. Soon, my friends.

Next up will be all the conference predictions. I will have to figure out how to break them up this year since it’s not really a super nice split like it has been with the Power Five and Group of Five. Also, I haven’t even started looking at predicting the games so, yeah, don’t expect this post anytime soon. In the meantime, watch some CFL. It’s like 57 minutes of pretty good football followed by 3 minutes of absolute insane chaos almost every game. It’s to the point where you can almost honestly say that a three-possession lead with about five minutes to go is not necessarily safe. Believe me, it will get you through the hard times. More than NFL preseason football ever will. Have a great Canada Day weekend everyone and, for the love of everything that is holy, don’t start the fireworks tonight. Do them on Canada Day. That’s it. I am honestly shocked I haven’t heard any yet. Maybe I’m just not paying attention.