Time for some TV schedules for week 2 of the college football season. My PVR survived week one (despite the fact I missed the endings of three different games) so I should be good until bowl season.
First off, let’s look at the cable schedule:
| Day | Game | Time | Channel |
| Thursday | Winston-Salem State at UNC-Pembroke | 8:00 PM | CBSSN |
| Friday | UCF at FIU | 8:00 PM | CBSSN |
| Saturday | Eastern Michigan at Penn State | 12:00 PM | BTN |
| Saturday | Norfolk State at Rutgers | 12:00 PM | CBSSN |
| Saturday | Western Kentucky at Tennessee | 12:00 PM | Peachtree |
| Saturday | Bowling Green at Kent State | 12:00 PM | WNYO |
| Saturday | Utah State at Air Force | 3:30 PM | CBSSN |
| Saturday | San Diego State at Ohio State | 3:30 PM | ABC |
| Saturday | Syracuse at Northwestern | 6:00 PM | BTN |
| Saturday | West Virginia at Oklahoma | 7:00 PM | FOX |
| Saturday | Colorado State at Tulsa | 7:00 PM | CBSSN |
| Saturday | Notre Dame at Michigan | 8:00 PM | TSN2 |
| Saturday | Arizona at UNLV | 10:30 PM | CBSSN |
Hey did you hear Notre Dame & Michigan were playing? If not, you must be deaf. A big game? Sure it is. The last Irish-Wolverines game for a while. And it’s the biggest game on cable this week. However, let’s look at the Super Sports Pack/U.S. College Sports Package schedule and tell me if there isn’t possibly a bigger game on sked:
| Bell Fibe | Bell Sat | Rogers SSP | ||||||
| SD | HD | SD | HD | SD | HD | |||
| Friday | Wake Forest at Boston College | 8:00 PM | 390 | 1464 | 390 | 1537 | 432 | 472 |
| Saturday | USF at Michigan State | 12:00 PM | 392 | 392 | 433 | 473 | ||
| Saturday | Florida at Miami | 12:00 PM | 390 | 434 | 474 | |||
| Saturday | Cincinnati at Illinois | 12:00 PM | 1464 | 391 | 432 | 472 | ||
| Saturday | Oregon at Virginia | 3:30 PM | 1464 | 391 | 432 | 472 | ||
| Saturday | Toledo at Missouri | 3:30 PM | 392 | 392 | 433 | 473 | ||
| Saturday | South Carolina at Georgia | 4:30 PM | 390 | 434 | 474 | |||
| Saturday | UAB at LSU | 7:00 PM | 392 | 392 | 433 | 473 | ||
| Saturday | Texas at BYU | 7:00 PM | 391 | 1464 | 391 | 432 | 472 | |
Do you see it? Ah, now you see it. South Carolina-Georgia figures to be the de facto SEC East title game. Whoever wins is almost assured a spot in the SEC Title game (barring anything crazy happening).
Now, the Bell U.S. College Sports packages aren’t complete with their scheduling yet. Satellite is missing all of Saturday’s HD games, whereas Fibe is missing a good chunk of the schedule. Rest assured all these games are in the package. I just don’t know where yet. I am surprised by the fact the San Jose State-Stanford game isn’t being shown as of right now. Stanford is a dark horse national title contender and San Jose State has made huge strides in the past two years. Would easily be better than at least a few of the Saturday games being shown.
Anyway, I will be updating the Bell schedules when I get the information. That should happen no later than tomorrow afternoon but I’m hoping to find something out this evening some time.
Update (already!): I forgot to add the Middle Tennessee – North Carolina game on WSBK. That starts at 12:30. Can’t believe I forgot that. I have to talk to the editing department about this. Heads are gonna roll!
Another Update: It looks like Fibe won’t have much HD coverage this weekend. I checked it out this morning and nothing is up on the guide or online to say otherwise. Disappointing that they can’t seem to fill the whole three channels they have set aside for HD college football on the U.S. College Sports package. Also, I have seen that in some areas the Oregon-Virginia and SDSU-tOSU games have been switched on the schedules (one has gone from ABC to the sports pack and vice versa). As far as I know, most residents from Ontario east will get SDSU-tOSU on ABC, moving Oregon-Virginia to the sports pack.
Bossman's Blog 
Did Bell Fibe show more HD coverage for today’s college football action? Also, the reason why Stanford’s game probably is not on the schedule tonight is because it’s on the Pac 12 Network. You would think that both Bell & Rogers would add games from the Pac 12 Network, Big Ten Network (on Bell) and Fox Sports 1 (on Rogers).
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According to my Fibe guide, only the three games above were in HD on Saturday. To me (and probably many others) this is pretty bad considering they have three HD channels dedicated to the U.S. College Sports package and chose to only use one all day.
As for the SJSU-Stanford game, I hadn’t updated my list from the previous week. At that time, it had looked like it was going to go on an ESPN network (most likely ESPNU). Of course, it was actually on the Pac-12 Network.
As for what gets broadcast on the specialty packages, I know that they are very picky as to what appears. As of right now, ONLY ESPN network games can appear on there. And when we say ESPN, we mean only ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. Games on ESPNews won’t be shown. The Pac-12 Network is independent, meaning ESPN has no ownership stake in it so it isn’t shown. FOX owns the majority (51%) of BTN.
Depending on how many people watch these games on the specialty packs and where Rogers and Bell can make money will determine what appears on these packages in the future. It has almost come to the point where these specialty packs should show a variety of games from a variety of networks to give college football fans a wide berth of games to choose from. Hopefully that day will come soon (although I wouldn’t count on it yet considering the deals that Sportsnet and TSN have broadcasting college football).
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