Week 10 College Football TV Schedule – Sponsored by that Committee thingy with their little fun poll

Man, if you are a college football fan you would have to have been living under ten miles of rock to not know that the FIRST COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF POOL WOULD BE OUT TUESDAY!!!!  I’m surprised among the ten thousand times that it was mentioned this past Saturday that it wasn’t screamed at by someone.  Then again, GUS JOHNSON! doesn’t work for ESPN so that could be the reason.

So now that the first CFP poll is out of the way, people can start bitching about it like they did with the BCS.  All we need is a little controversy and it feels like this season is rushing full-on into a controversy freight train.  Too many possible teams for the final four, especially if Mississippi State and Florida State both lose at some point during the regular season.  Then it will be chaos.  Again, I wouldn’t want to be a member of The Committee.  Maybe next year when the heat dies down and a few of them quit.

Week 10 in college football is upon us.  After this week we will be done two-thirds of the regular season.  The home stretch really starts next week.  Put up or shut up time.  And other college football-related euphemisms that I assume someone at ESPN has already figured out and is just waiting for an on-air personality to use.  Oh, and if Bryn Renner on camera didn’t warn every network that shows college football that the person you put on the air has to be able to, you know, do his or her job, then nothing will at this point.  I’m just glad we haven’t gone back to Craig James in any capacity.  Talk about unbearable (and his book was a piece of shit as well on the level of Warren Sapp’s 300-some odd page tome about how awesome he is, in his own words of course).  Here’s the cable schedule to start you off:

Florida State at Louisville (Thu)	7:30 PM	TSN4
St. Joseph’s-IN at Indianapolis (Thu)	8:00 PM	CBSSN
Air Force at Army	11:30 AM	CBS
Rice at FIU	12:00 PM	WNYO
Northwestern at Iowa	12:00 PM	BTN
UCF at Connecticut	12:00 PM	CBSSN
Wisconsin at Rutgers	12:00 PM	TSN3
Boston College at Virginia Tech	12:30 PM	WSBK
Purdue at Nebraska	3:30 PM	ABC
William & Mary at James Madison	3:30 PM	WNYO
Indiana at Michigan	3:30 PM	BTN
Florida vs. Georgia (in Jacksonville)	3:30 PM	CBS
BYU at Middle Tennessee	3:30 PM	CBSSN
UAB at Florida Atlantic	7:00 PM	WNYO
Colorado State at San Jose State	7:00 PM	CBSSN
Stanford at Oregon	7:30 PM	FOX
Navy vs. Notre Dame (in Landover)	8:00 PM	CBS
Illinois at Ohio State	8:00 PM	ABC
San Diego State at Nevada	10:30 PM	CBSSN

Nothing really stands out other than FSU-UL on Thursday night and the FOX game between Stanford and Oregon, although that game may mean a bit less now than we thought it would have earlier in the season.  I think the most intriguing thing this Saturday may be the first tripleheader on CBS in three years.  It’s just too bad that all three games lack the oomph of a huge college football affair, although I always enjoy watching service academy football; just has a different flair to it than other college football games.  Update: Interesting tidbit now that coverage maps are out.  People who receive ABC out of Detroit will get the Purdue-Minnesota game; however, if you receive ABC out of Buffalo then you get the TCU-West Virginia game with PU-MU relegated to the specialty pack.  Now on to the specialty pack sked:

Troy at Georgia Southern (Thu)	7:30 PM
Cinncinati at Tulane (Fri)	8:00 PM
Tulsa at Memphis (Fri)	8:00 PM
Maryland at Penn State	12:00 PM
Wisconsin at Rutgers	12:00 PM
Duke at Pittsburgh (Bell – SD only)	12:00 PM
ULM at Texas A&M (Bell only)	12:00 PM
Boston College at Virginia Tech (SD only)	12:30 PM
North Carolina at Miami (SD only)	12:30 PM
NC State at Syracuse (SD only)	3:00 PM
Purdue at Nebraska	3:30 PM
Virginia at Georgia Tech	3:30 PM
Kentucky at Missouri (Bell only)	4:00 PM
Auburn at Ole Miss	7:00 PM
Old Dominion at Vanderbilt (Bell – SD only)	7:00 PM
Arkansas at Mississippi State	7:00 PM
Tennessee at South Carolina (Bell – SD only)	7:30 PM
Oklahoma State at Kansas State (SD only)	8:00 PM
Arizona at UCLA	10:30 PM
Wyoming at Fresno State	10:45 PM

As of this morning, four games weren’t appearing on the guide that should appear sometime in the next couple days.  They are denoted by asterisks in the previous schedule.  Two games really stand out as TCU-West Virginia goes to the specialty pack (as the reverse mirror to the Purdue-Nebraska shitfest that we will get on ABC) as well as Auburn-Ole Miss which is the ESPN Saturday primetime game of the week.  I always despise the reverse mirror because usually this area ends up with the crappy middle-of-the-road Big Ten matchup, while others receive a huge matchup from pretty much any other Power Five conference (since this is Big Ten country you know…I try not to remind myself of this point).  Update: So I see that people who receive ABC out of Detroit will not get TCU-West Virginia at all since the specialty packs, as far as I can tell, are showing Purdue-Nebraska for some reason, despite the fact we already get it on ABC.  That might change tomorrow morning but as of right now (Friday night) it is showing PU-NU.  Kind of ridiculous if you ask me.  Also, looks like the specialty pack is picking up the odd primetime reverse mirror game out in Manhattan between Oklahoma State and Kansas State.

As the rest of the week goes along, I will make sure to update the schedule when need be.  Ideally I’d love to put the channel listings in for the specialty packs but both Rogers and Bell don’t exactly make that easy to do, waiting until the very last minute much of the time to put up their finalized schedules.  I have said in the past and I’ll say it again; everything is set up days in advance.  You have channels that are just for college football.  To put together a schedule should take no more than 15 minutes.  I know there’s probably a bit more involved in it but it makes no sense otherwise.  Make one channel the ESPN one, one for ESPN2, one for ESPNU, and one for SEC Network.  Then one can be for others (like the ACC Network alternate games).  Then it becomes easy.  Not the shitshow we sometimes see every week.

Tomorrow I will have the NFL schedule up.  Don’t worry, no morning games for the rest of the season although I guess we can expect that from now on every year.