ABC/FOX/NBC/ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 Can Do Better for College Football

Good evening college football fans.  Hope you all had a great weekend.  We here at All Sports Discussion are already looking forward to college football next weekend.  The subject of this evening’s blog post will be college football scheduling (because it absolutely needed improvement the weekend of September 22, 2012).

Somehow gurus at ABC thought it was a good idea to show a Penn State team (who had a 1-2 record at the time) take on Temple (who had a 1-1 record) in a prime time 3:30 PM EST TV slot.  This was a bad idea.  There were several nationally relevant games that were on TV all day (particularly in the 7:45 PM EST to 8 PM EST time slot).  For example:

1. UAB at Ohio State at 12 PM EST on the Big 10 Network
2. Miami at Georgia Tech at 3 PM EST on the ACC Network
3. Oregon State at UCLA at 3:30 PM EST on ABC
4. Michigan at Notre Dame 7:00 PM EST – NBC
5. Vanderbilt at Georgia 7:45 PM EST – ESPN2
6. Kansas State at Oklahoma 7:50 PM EST – FOX
7. Clemson at Florida State 8:00 PM EST – ABC
8. Arizona at Oregon 10:30 PM EST – ESPN

At the bare minimum, ABC should have selected the UAB – Ohio State game as its 3:30 PM EST game.  And the Big 10 Network should have had last choice in these media arrangements (like it usually does), so the Penn State – Temple game should have been there.  This would have met the east coast requirements for demographics, ratings, etc.

If NBC, ABC, FOX, ESPN, and ESPN2 had the college football fan in mind, sans demographics, here would have been my proposed schedule for last week:

1. Penn State – Temple would take an ESPN3.com time slot.
2. The UTEP at Wisconsin game and the UAB-Ohio State game would both be on the Big 10 Network at 12 PM EST.
3. Vanderbilt at Georgia would be the 12:00 PM EST game on ESPN.
4. Miami and Georgia Tech would have the 12 PM EST ESPN2 time slot.
5. Kansas State at Oklahoma would be the 12 PM EST game on FOX (the top billing on a broadcast network during lunch).
6. Michigan at Notre Dame would be a 3:30 PM EST slot on NBC.
7. Arizona at Oregon would take the ABC 3:30 PM EST nationwide slot (similar to the treatment Michigan vs. Ohio State gets – as compensation, Oregon will get nationwide prime time 8 PM EST slot when they play Stanford or USC).
8. LSU at Auburn would be the 7:45 PM EST game on ESPN.
9. Clemson at Florida State would take the ABC 8 PM EST nationwide slot.
10. Oregon State at UCLA would get the 10:30 PM EST ESPN time slot.

My point here is that there were far too many nationally relevant college football games with nationally ranked opponents on September 22, 2012 in the 7:45 PM EST to 8:00 PM EST (there were four!!!) – and this cannot happen in the future.  It’s okay to have two really good games on in the same time slot – but not four!!!  Penn State becomes my TV casualty here at 3:30 PM EST.  Tell me what you would do better