The ideal college football schedule is just that: an ideal, far off in the distance.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, UGH!
It’s that kind of a college football schedule this Saturday, a real gut-punch for fans of the sport on a national level.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself, just so you get a sense of why this column exists, and why its main issue — differentiated time-slotting in college football — is such a big deal to me.
I grew up in Phoenix. The Arizona-Arizona State game was my local rivalry. Yes, this game affected the Rose Bowl every now and then, but not often. Neither school has been good enough for a long-enough period of time to make that a central national event.
I came to love college football by watching Keith Jackson and Frank Broyles call Sugar Bowls and Iron Bowls and Texas-Oklahoma games on the second Saturday of October. Those Texas-OU games, held on the Texas State Fairgrounds, happened to coincide with my Catholic grade school’s annual carnival, our big fund-raiser. I’d have to do some necessary ticket-selling, but whenever I got a break, I’d go to the TV room, snag a hoagie with some carnival tickets, and join the 40-year-old parents who wanted to watch the big games of 1984, 1985, 1987.
I fell in love with this sport because of its national events: Michigan-Ohio State with Brent Musburger on the call for CBS; the Rose Bowl with Dick Enberg and Merlin Olsen; the Notre Dame-Miami series; the Florida State-Miami rivalry. I was — and am, and always will be — a national college football fan.
In the past 20 years, we have seen the sport emerge on television as something which is blessedly available for 15-hour periods on dozens of channels. Last week’s slate ended at roughly 2:30 a.m. Eastern time, when Washington State’s win over UCLA finally hit triple-zero on the clock in Pasadena. The whole of the sport (at least for the Power 5 conferences plus The American) is now accessible in ways it never was. It is truly a great time to be a college football fan: The packaging of events can use some work. The announcers aren’t as good (or they’re relegated to the SEC Network, COUGH, BRENT MUSBURGER, COUGH!). Yet, being able to see so many games creates a far better viewing experience than the 1980s, even though the individual broadcasts on ABC and CBS were such television gems on many levels.
Today, the focus of a national college football fan is, “How and where can I watch all the really important games?”
This is why differentiated time slots matter. If we love the sport, we should have a reasonable chance of being able to see the conclusions of as many big games as possible. Some big games might become blowouts, which enables us to watch the ends of other huge contests, but that’s a lucky break created by circumstances.
Utopia, for a national college football fan, exists when networks plan games to start and end at appreciably different times.
This Saturday’s schedule is 180 degrees different from that utopian ideal.
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In the noon Eastern window, there isn’t too much competition. Memphis-Temple, North Carolina-Virginia Tech, and Michigan-Penn State are the showcase games, with No. 5 Iowa hosting Purdue. We can live with that and move on with our lives.
However, the 3:30 window is a nightmare. So many games that are either good, important or both will compete against each other.
Here are the featured games in the 3:30 window on Saturday:
Michigan State-Ohio State. LSU-Ole Miss. USC-Oregon. UCLA-Utah. Northwestern-Wisconsin.
Five very significant games, all starting at the same time. That’s pathetic.
Just to be clear, these five games are spread across three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, FOX) and three larger umbrellas (Big Ten Network is operated by Fox Sports; ABC/ESPN is another umbrella, and CBS is the third). As always, ESPN’s collection of greater volume and inventory makes it easier and more acceptable for the WorldWide Leader to occupy the traditional time slots. For CBS and FOX/BTN to not budge in this regard is simply quite unfortunate for fans.
Big Ten fans who want to focus on Sparty-Brutus in The Horseshoe would not mind having Northwestern-Wisconsin start at 1:30 Eastern. National fans also intent on seeing the Spartans and Buckeyes wouldn’t mind if LSU-Ole Miss started at 4:30 Eastern, finishing when the night’s huge Big 12 games are just starting. Pac-12 fans have to wear our their remotes between USC-Oregon and UCLA-Utah. As much as the late 10 Eastern or 10:45 Eastern kickoff reduces the Pac-12’s exposure to Eastern and Central time zone viewers, that slot comes in handy on a day like this.
Alas, too much product is crammed together, counterintuitively reducing exposure to the whole of the sport in the midst of the unparalleled breadth of television outlets.
In the night window, the two Big 12 games — TCU-Oklahoma and Baylor-Oklahoma State — compete against each other. That’s understandable. However, I’m sure that Big 12 and Pac-12 fans would like a trade-off in which one league game moved to 3:30 so that people in each region (the South Central Plains and the West) could see Game 1 at 3:30 Eastern and Game 2 at 7:30 or 8.
Nope — we can’t have that.
On one of the final and most consequential Saturdays of its season, college football is not going to be as visible as it could or should be for a full nation of fans.
There’s only one utterance fit for all of this:
UGH!
