Man, oh man, were there some overreactions this week…oh and the Week 2 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on September 7, 2023 by guelphbossman

Look, did Colorado surprise a lot of people this past weekend? Absolutely. No doubt about it. Deion Sanders is proving, whether you like him or not, that he can flat-out coach. And overhauling the roster like he did was not a bad idea at all. It does suck for the players that had to transfer out but unfortunately it’s football and the name of the game is winning.

Saying that………the amount of people I saw on Twitter that said Colorado will win 10 or 11 games this season was way too much. It should have been zero. Colorado may be better than advertised but they aren’t all of a sudden a New Year’s Six possibility. But hey, that’s the reactions from Week 1 of college football. Every. Single. Fucking. Year.

So let’s do it again on here! It’s overreaction time! Let’s look at some of the other overreactions you may (or may not) have heard after the Week 1 games were complete:

Ohio State is just an average team. Do we expect more from the Buckeyes against a team like Indiana? Sure. But they are bringing in a new quarterback and their best receiver was not 100%. The defense was amazing. Now the offense does have to be ready since in about a week and a half they get Notre Dame and that could get ugly if they don’t produce more points.
Colorado will have not one, but TWO Heisman finalists. What in the fuck? Who are the morons saying this? They are out there for sure. I saw them. Sure, they did great in their opening week win over TCU but calm the fuck down. TCU isn’t the TCU of last season for one and it’s only WEEK ONE. Anyway, moving on…
Gene Chizik has finally got the defense cooking in Chapel Hill. Again, it’s one game. Do the Heels look improved? Sure. But it’s not like South Carolina played well at all because, for the most part they didn’t. That, and the chain gang wouldn’t eat their hot dogs fast enough. Let’s see how UNC does when a top-notch offense is staring them in the face.
Jalen Milroe is already looking like another Alabama Jalen…that being Hurts. My God where do these people come up with this shit? Milroe looked OK but it was Middle Tennessee and he’s playing for Ala-frickin-Bama. We will see how he handles SEC competition before crowning him anything.
Washington has the best offense in the country. Could that end up being the case? Possibly. Michael Penix Jr. has already started his Heisman campaign in style. But let’s slow our roll here. There are at least four teams who looked better on offense (Colorado, Florida State, Oklahoma, Oregon) during Week 1. And I wouldn’t even say any of those teams will be the best offense in the country so why go ahead and put the Huskies at #1?
Book the Sooners for the Big XII Championship NOW! As I said, their offense was on fire but they were playing Arkansas State. We are all waiting to see if Brent Venables can have a Venables-type defense in Norman. If that happens, this could very well happen. But for now, I wouldn’t book any tickets yet if I were a Sooners fan.
Miami is BACK. Ho boy. Pump the damn brakes.

Let’s just put Week 1 behind us, shall we? Let’s move on to Week 2 which…oh my. Well, it’s better than Week 1. That’s really all I can say. But you know what that usually means. That’s right…chaos!

Thursday

Yep, that’s a new logo you see. TSN+ will be showing college football games this year. It kind of mimics the specialty pack but there are a few differences. But if you want to get TSN+ rather than the specialty pack for your college football fix, you are getting close to the same. Not a bad alternative and a good move by TSN to copy ESPN for the 10,000th time.

Friday

		US	Canada
Indiana State at Indiana	7:00
Illinois at Kansas	7:30

It kind of feels like this could be a relatively important game when the Illini travel to Lawrence to face the Jayhawks. Imagine saying that even two years ago. You’d be laughed out of whatever building you were in.

Saturday Early

Is the quality there? Eh, not really. But there’s choice. A lot of it. Can’t ask for much else. Also…MORNING FOOTBAW! The ACC Network’s weird annual Week 2 quadrupleheader hits again with the odd three hour-and-fifteen-minute windows. This will be a lot easier to do next year when Stanford and California join as you know one of them will host the ACC After Dark Week 2 matchup, guaranteed.

Saturday Afternoon

Is the afternoon slate better than the Noon slate? Sure. Not by much though. Some intriguing matchups though. As per the rules, one of Texas A&M or Miami must win their game against each other. Ties were outlawed almost three decades ago. Will CyHawk feature more than 30 points? Can App State and UNC put up ridiculous numbers like last year? And this will be Tulane’s opportunity to get a huge leg up in the Group of Five. A win over Ole Miss would be massive.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Ohio at FAU	6:00
Cincinnati at Pittsburgh	6:30
#11 Texas at #3 Alabama	7:00
#13 Oregon at Texas Tech	7:00
Houston at Rice	7:00
#19 Wisconsin at Washington State	7:30
Eastern Michigan at Minnesota	7:30
Temple at Rutgers	7:30
UCLA at San Diego State	7:30
Grambling at #14 LSU	7:30
McNeese State at Florida	7:30
Charlotte at Maryland	7:30
Arizona at Mississippi State	7:30
Air Force vs. Sam Houston (in NRG Stadium)	8:00
Southern Miss at #4 Florida State	8:30

FIFTEEN GAMES! Holy shit! I think this has to be the most in one timeslot ever on this blog. I don’t feel like checking so let’s just say we have a new record! Plenty of games but most people will be watching one game in particular, that being the Longhorns and the Crimson Tide. If Texas can somehow do what they were robbed of last season and upset Bama, this season turns on its head. This game is so big that they are also showing it on ESPN2 in the US and on TSN+ and the specialty packs. But it’s not the same broadcast. It’s the Pat McAfee Show alternate broadcast. So if you like that kind of thing, have at it.

Also, you will notice we have a new network showing college football. That’s right, the CW, with such hits as 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, Smallville and LIV Golf (well it was a hit with the golfers who got fucking PAID with that Saudi blood money) will be showing ACC football (and later on, ACC basketball) this year. This replaces Bally which, for all intents and purposes, is flat broke. There will be games most weeks and, it looks like, at odd times. 6:30? Weird.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
UC-Davis at #16 Oregon State	9:00
Auburn at California	10:30
Stanford at #6 USC	10:30

FOX quadrupleheader? Don’t mind if I do. TSN2 quadrupleheader? Yes, please. A good week if you are a Canadian as I don’t remember seeing this much college football being shown up here in a while. Maybe things are turning around. Looks like TSN finally gives a shit about things that aren’t the CFL, NFL, and NHL (which they don’t even have the national broadcasting rights to).

Hey, Watch This!

Texas at Alabama (7:00, TSN2/TSN+/specialty pack) – Unequivocally the game of the week and there’s nothing else close. That also means there will be some wild and wacky finishes that might overshadow this game. That is, unless, this is a close one and the Longhorns pull off the upset. Then it will be THE story in college football no matter what else happens.

Ole Miss at Tulane (3:30, TSN+/specialty pack) – As I mentioned above, if the Green Wave pull off a win here in front of what should be a raucous crowd in hot and humid New Orleans, there’s not a whole lot that will prevent them from a perfect regular season and another New Year’s Six spot. Normally I would say this is a lose-lose situation for any Power Five team in this situation but when the Group of Five team is ranked it can count as a big win (as long as that team doesn’t totally shit the bed the rest of the way).

Texas A&M at Miami (3:30, ABC/TSN2) – I made the joke above that one of these teams has to win, as per the rules of college football. We may actually see which one of these teams is back (for the most part) and which team still has some work to do. Now watch it be a 13-10 almost-unwatchable slog.

Nebraska at Colorado (Noon, FOX) – Alright, I’ll bite. Let’s see if the hype matches what ends up happening. Some might have put this higher but that’s crazy. It makes this list because of the talk, not because of the teams involved. And Colorado can’t just win this game by a little. That would prove nothing. If they beat the brakes off the Huskers, then we all have to take notice and maybe think the Buffs could be for real.

Sickos Game of the Week

Temple at Rutgers (7:30, specialty pack) – Look, Rutgers is probably going to start 2-0 which really doesn’t mean a whole lot considering their schedule but still, that’s something right? With everything on at this time, you would have to be a complete psychopath to watch this game. I will make sure to tune in and watch at least a few plays. I feel like I owe it to everyone and myself.

Hubba Bubba Blowout of the Week

Ball State at Georgia (Noon, TSN+/specialty pack) – Time to bring back the blowout of the week segment. And this could be the dictionary definition of blowout. I could see UGA putting up 60 on the poor Cardinals.

Wanna Bet?

Nebraska was actually a good bet. That game ended up exactly how I thought it would (for the most part). Florida, however….well the less said about that one the better. Time for my gambling picks for the second week of the college football season. Use them at your own peril.

Indiana (-30.5) over Indiana State

Purdue (+3) over Virginia Tech (and the outright win)

Ohio State (-41.5) over Youngstown State

Utah (-8) over Baylor

Nebraska (+2.5) over Colorado (and the upset win…definitely going out on a limb with this one)

Michigan (-37.5) over UNLV

Tulane (+7.5) over Ole Miss (but the Rebs will hold on for a close victory)

Texas A&M (-4) over Miami

Alabama (-7) over Texas

Washington State (+6) over Wisconsin (with the Badgers winning a tight affair)

Minnesota (-20.5) over Eastern Michigan

Mississippi State (-9) over Arizona

Stanford (+29.5) over USC (I feel a backdoor cover in this one)

I will be on the Twitter/X machine again this weekend. Even without Tweetdeck I am figuring out how to navigate fairly well. We shall see if I can make it two Saturdays in a row making it all the way to the end. Enjoy the games everyone!

YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

Posted on September 9, 2022 by guelphbossman

It’s COMPLETE OVERREACTION TIME!!!! Yay, I guess. It happens every year and is one of the worst college football traditions in college football. I would say it’s up there with Midnight Yell practice at Texas A&M but that’s not fair. Midnight Yell isn’t bad. It’s just seriously fucking weird. Anyway, let’s begin with the first set of overreactions to the college football season after a crazy Week 1:

Ohio State is not that good on offense! Look, the Irish played damn good on defense all night and kept things close. Plus, the Buckeyes were without Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a good portion of the game. I’m sure when tOSU gets to play Maryland they will aim for a 60-burger.
Stetson Bennett could win the Heisman! I mean, technically he could. But he won’t. Yes he had a good game and it was against a fairly good Oregon team. He’s not on the level of the top 10 quarterbacks in college football, though, and will have at least a couple of games where the UGA defense (and perhaps the rushing attack) has to carry him to victory.
The Pac-12 is toast! Yes, the Oregon and Utah losses look bad. Saying that, USC looked pretty good in their opener (albeit against Rice). And there are a couple of other teams who could do the unthinkable and make a run for it. But don’t count this conference out just yet. Let’s wait until like Week 8 to do that.
The ACC is screwed! Clemson looked pedestrian for most of their game against Georgia Tech. D.J. Uiagelelei doesn’t seem to be the answer at quarterback. Cade Klubnik looked good though and it’s only Week 1. Plus, NC State, Wake Forest and Pitt are undefeated (NC State barely) and you never know what will happen inside the other conferences. Let’s not write off the ACC just yet.
Florida/Florida State/USC is back! We’ve played this game before. At least one of these teams won’t be back really, if not all three. I think all three make bowl games and it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one team enters November with still a legitimate shot at the New Year’s Six. But neither of these teams are back…yet.
Scott Frost is going to be fired soon! OK not everything on this list is an overreaction.

Hey it’s also time for the Week 2 college football TV schedule as well. Which leads us to another unfortunate tradition: the lacklustre Week 2 schedule that we see almost every season. I rank the weeks in terms of how good the games are and Week 2 almost always falls near the bottom. You know what we say about these kinds of weeks, though…we usually get a fantastic finish or five out of them. After last weekend, can we handle it? Yes. Yes we can.

Friday

		US	Canada
Louisville at UCF	7:30 PM
Boise State at New Mexico	9:00 PM

Last year we had undefeated Kansas against undefeated Coastal Carolina in this timeslot. This year we get the molten hot lava seat of Scott Satterfield hoping his team can pull out what might have to be considered an upset over the Gus Bus and a Boise State team that is not the Boise State team we’ve known and mostly loved for the past almost two decades. Fun times.

Saturday Early

An absolute shit-ton of games in this timeslot. I’m not complaining whatsoever.

Bama-Texas is the big game early and FOX is praying that it is at least remotely close. Then maybe they can say “Texas is Back” a bunch of times because you know they are itching to. Big Ten Network goes nuts this week with eight games total throughout the day. So you will see plenty of them in the specialty packs. I wonder if Wake can handle UNDEFEATED VANDY (of course they can) and thanks to reader Dan, I have added the YouTube logo for Pac-12 Network games because they are available there for Canadian viewers. I mean I don’t know if you want to watch Southern Utah against Utah but you can if you want.

Finally, it’s no longer FOX Sports Network regional games for the ACC. Bally now has all those channels. So there’s another new logo for you to remember. As of right now, the CSU-NCST game isn’t showing on the specialty pack guides but it should soon.

Saturday Afternoon

I thought there were a lot of games in the early timeslot. My god. Again, no complaints.

No Week 2 game of the year candidates this season, unlike the previous few years where among the rubble there was one massive matchup that towered over everything else and gobbled up all the hype. CyHawk is relegated to the Big Ten Network along with three other games. Funny thing, Wagner-Rutgers is not showing yet on the specialty pack guides. I don’t get it.

Also, a point about P12N games: only the national feed shows up on YouTube. The regional games do not. Just like the Big Ten this week, there is an overload of Pac-12 games so they get a couple of them on the Pac-12 Network regional feeds. I am still shocked no one told Larry Scott and his crew back then that this regional feed stuff is horseshit.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Syracuse at UConn	7:00 PM
#20 Kentucky at #12 Florida	7:00 PM
Eastern Michigan at Louisiana	7:00 PM
#10 USC at Stanford	7:30 PM
Arizona State at #11 Oklahoma State	7:30 PM
San Jose State at Auburn	7:30 PM
Georgia Southern at Nebraska	7:30 PM
Southern at LSU	7:30 PM
Boston College at Virginia Tech	8:00 PM
Idaho at Indiana	8:00 PM
Hawaii at #4 Michigan	8:00 PM
Eastern Washington at Oregon	8:30 PM

This shows how lacklustre the schedule is. Nothing special here unless you think the USC-Stanford game could be a trap game. The most interesting game here might just be UK-UF. No one is going to catch Georgia in the SEC East but if one of these teams can get to ten wins then a New Year’s Six bowl is in their future. And yes, that is a game on the NFL Network. This week and next there is a college football game on the NFL Network. Kind of odd but I wonder if it’s more of a test run to see if they will get more involved next season.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
#9 Baylor at #21 BYU	10:15 PM
Oregon State at Fresno State	10:30 PM
Mississippi State at Arizona	11:00 PM

Big-time game in Provo and we move to TSN5 for this one because the ABC game won’t be done by the time this one starts. The game in Tucson starts at 11. Not exactly a Hawaii Test but that’s a late start.

Big Games O’ The Week

Baylor at BYU (10:15, TSN5) – Not to put down either of these teams but this is not the kind of game that usually is the highlight of a week. But here we are. And honestly, it is a big game. It’s the kind of non-conference game that Baylor is not known for scheduling. It’s the kind of game that BYU must win to have a chance at the New Year’s Six (or more). The stakes are high.

Tennessee at Pittsburgh (3:30, ABC/TSN2) – Last year’s game between these two teams was fantastic. And if you had told me a few years ago that this would be one of the big games of this week I would have thought you took a little bit too much advantage of the legal weed here. The winner here could be in for some big things but both teams are going to have to pull off upsets later on in the season (the Vols especially).

Kentucky at Florida (7:00, specialty pack) – As I said above, no one is catching Georgia in the SEC East (probably). But second place in the division could be huge if it means a potential New Year’s Six spot or, at worst, a good New Year’s Day bowl (or more like January 2nd this season). Both teams look better than advertised so far, especially the Gators after their huge win over Utah. Expect a close game.

Arizona State at Oklahoma State (7:30, specialty pack) – It really drops off a cliff after the first three games. I’m sure many would put Bama-UT in this spot but do you really think that game will be close? This might also be not very close but I have faith on either a) Herm rallying his team and getting them to put together a good four quarters or b) the Pokes fucking up left, right and centre and keeping the Sun Devils in the game.

Psycho Game of the Week

Syracuse at UConn (7:00, CBS Sports Network) – Honestly, despite the lack of high-level matchups this week, there aren’t any ridiculously bad games with two teams that almost no one would want to watch. Yes, Syracuse beat Louisville pretty badly but I think the Cards may be a lot worse than I thought they’d be. And UConn is UConn.

Hubba Bubba Blowout of the Week

Arkansas State at Ohio State (Noon, BTN) – Another new segment! Here I will put the obvious blowout of the week that there is really no point in watching. This one is, well, plainly obvious. Butch Jones is going to have a long day. At least they get paid a lot to just show up. Well, the school does.

The Degenerate Portion of Our Show

Hey, who picked Florida to beat Utah? This guy…I’m pointing to myself. Honestly there were quite a few who also picked the Gators so it’s not a massive deal but I am impressed with myself. So on to Week 2’s picks. And remember…I’m picking against the spread. Let’s go!

Notre Dame (-20.5) over Marshall

Memphis (-6.0) over Navy

Pittsburgh (+6.5) over Tennessee (but the Vols win this one)

Boise State (-16.5) over New Mexico

USC (-9) over Stanford

Colorado (+17.5) over Air Force (Falcons still win but it’ll be closer than you think)

UCF (-6.5) over Louisville

Syracuse (-23.5) over UConn

Baylor (+3.5) over BYU (Cougs win by a field goal)

Arizona State (+11) over Oklahoma State (Pokes win but don’t make it easy for themselves)

Alabama (-20) over Texas

Iowa State (+3.5) over Iowa (Hawkeyes will somehow win it 9-8)

OK so from what I can tell, everything is up on the specialty pack other than those two games I mentioned earlier. I assume they will pop up at some point. Even if this week is a bit lacking of big games, I will still be watching as much as I possibly can. I can catch up on sleep sometime in March. Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the games!

You know what time it is? WEEK 1 OVERREACTION TIME! Oh and the Week 2 TV Schedule as well.

Posted on September 5, 2019 by guelphbossman

Who saw that coming for Tennessee last Saturday? What’s Jeremy Pruitt’s future with the team? Should people dump garbage on his lawn because they are upset? Overreaction? Absolutely! But some people think that and are serious about it. Week 1 of the college football season is always chock full of these tasty nuggets. Like these:

UCLA will lose almost every game this season. Not so fast. One game against one of the better Group of Five teams does not a season make. Now if the Bruins lose to San Diego State this Saturday then yeah maybe you can start to panic.
The SEC is terrible! The SEC is a lot like many of the Power Five conferences: the top three-to-six teams are good to great and the rest are mediocre to trash. No difference here.
Boise State has clinched the New Year’s Six spot. Uh, no. I will admit the Broncos are a great contender but UCF is still the favourite and I still have Memphis as my choice.
The Pac-12 has no chance at going to the College Football Playoff. Um, Oregon is not the only good team in the Pac-12. Now apologize to Utah and Washington THIS INSTANT!

Alright Week 1 is in the books and it’s time for Week 2’s schedule and yeah, it’s pretty bad. Sorry guys.

Friday

		US	Canada
WIlliam & Mary at Virginia	8:00 PM
Wake Forest at Rice	8:00 PM
Marshall at #24 Boise State	9:00 PM

A huge Group of Five game starts the week as two New Year’s Six contenders clash on the blue turf of Boise. Still got to favour Boise State in this one but you never know as they always struggle at least once year when they shouldn’t. The Deacs are playing Rice in one of those not-so-odd-anymore Power Five at Group of Five games as well. And yes, there is no Thursday college football. Don’t want to compete with opening night in the NFL since no one would watch the college game (I hate to say that but it’s true).

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Ohio at Pittsburgh	11:00 AM
Cincinnati at #5 Ohio State	Noon
Vanderbilt at Purdue	Noon
UAB at Akron	Noon
#21 Syracuse at Maryland	Noon
West Virginia at Missouri	Noon
Old Dominion at Virginia Tech	Noon
Army at #7 Michigan	Noon
Charleston Southern at South Carolina	Noon
Western Carolina at NC State	12:30 PM

As per usual, a boatload of games in the early timeslot. And yes, one game starts at 11 in the morning. You can thank the ACC Network going with stupid three hour windows in their second week of existence. Ridiculous. So if you are an ACC fan you will miss the first quarter of multiple games almost guaranteed. A few good ones early on with UC-tOSU and Army-UM the two biggest (although the over/under for Cuse-UMD could be seriously high). I am going out on a limb and saying Western Carolina-NC State will appear on the specialty pack although I see nothing yet in any of the guides.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
USF at Georgia Tech	2:00 PM
#12 Texas A&M at #1 Clemson	3:30 PM
Central Michigan at #17 Wisconsin	3:30 PM
Eastern Illinois at Indiana	3:30 PM
Illinois at UConn	3:30 PM
Southern Miss at Mississippi State	3:30 PM
#25 Nebraska at Colorado	3:30 PM
Grambling at Louisiana Tech	3:30 PM
Murray State at #3 Georgia	4:00 PM
New Mexico State at #2 Alabama	4:00 PM
ULM at Florida State	5:00 PM

One of the games of the year right here in this timeslot. The Aggies will make a massive statement and upset the college football apple cart if they can somehow beat Clemson. Here you see the continuation of the weird ACC Network times. If you are using a PVR this may get frustrating but I know it’s because there are so many ACC non-conference games this week, more than any other week by a country mile. The rest of the games are technically college football games so let’s all hope they are at least close going into the fourth quarter. Also we have the debut of the NFL Network as they will be broadcasting Conference USA games this season. Interesting contract but hey, it could work for the conference as they need some sort of quasi-national audience so they don’t fall behind the rest of the Group of Five conferences.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
#18 UCF at Florida Atlantic	7:00 PM
BYU at Tennessee	7:00 PM
#6 LSU at #9 Texas	7:30 PM
Western Michigan at #19 Michigan State	7:30 PM
Tulane at #10 Auburn	7:30 PM
UT-Martin at #11 Florida	7:30 PM
Buffalo at #15 Penn State	7:30 PM
Eastern Michigan at Kentucky	7:30 PM
Arkansas at Ole Miss	7:30 PM
Miami at North Carolina	8:00 PM

Not exactly stacked but this does contain another potential Game of the Year as LSU travels to Austin to play the Longhorns. Again, don’t need to belabour the point but this could lead to College Football Playoff chatter (along with New Year’s Six chatter). Yes, Miami-UNC could be good considering how the Tar Heels have already looked impressive and Miami…not so much. Also the Cougars of BYU travel to Knoxville to face a team with the most frustrated fanbase in college football. Other than that there are a few decent games and some dreck. Can’t win ’em all.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
Minnesota at Fresno State	10:30 PM
#23 Stanford at USC	10:30 PM

Not much of a late night sked but two pretty good games, at least on paper. Clay Helton better pray his new quarterback, true freshman Kedon Slovis, figures things out quick or Helton’s days may be numbered…and by numbered I mean single digits. The other game should be close as Minnesota looked shitty against South Dakota State and should be better against a good Mountain West team in the Bulldogs.

Games to set your eyeballs on

LSU at Texas (7:30, ABC/TSN2) – This is the only game on TSN this week and it’s the game of the week. Honestly this isn’t a huge deal since there is only one other game that could warrant GOTW status. But we know what happens on weeks like this. Usually absolute chaos and/or some fantastic finishes. Anyway, we have to say that this is a huge game that could shape both teams’ seasons. The winner has a leg up on hopefully getting to the College Football Playoff whereas the loser almost has to look at the New Year’s Six (unless more chaos happens later on in the season).

Texas A&M at Clemson (3:30, ABC) – Survive this game and the Tigers don’t have much to stop them from winning the ACC Atlantic Division. Before I continue, can they either make the divisions make more sense geographically or get rid of divisions altogether? That would be great. Don’t think this will be an easy one for the Dangerous Dabos since TAMU might be improved from last year when they took Clemson to the limit. I still think this would be a monumental upset, though, if the Aggies can pull it out.

Cincinnati at Ohio State (Noon, ABC) – Man, does this ever drop off after the first two. But ABC does have the top three games of the week officially. Time to celebrate? I’d say no. Honestly I can’t see this game being close but it does mark the return of Luke Fickell to Columbus. And now the Bearcats are actually a good team. Still though. I won’t regret putting this game on the list since there isn’t much to pick from.

Army at Michigan (Noon, FOX) – Hey, finally a non-ABC game. Fantastic. I hope FOX really doesn’t care about this week since this is not good as their best game. Saying that, remember what the Black Knights did in Oklahoma last season. They almost pulled off the monumental upset of the Sooners. Now if they can somehow finish things off this year it would do two things: have everyone saying Michigan still sucks and putting Army squarely in the New Year’s Six conversation. Actually there will be a third thing. Jimmy Harbaugh will go back to the hot seat list which he is almost never off of anyway.

Stanford at USC (10:30, specialty pack) – Look, USC is an interesting story so far this season. And now they have lost their starting quarterback for the season and will have to start a true freshman. But this is USC so you know they always have a chance. Plus, the Cardinal didn’t exactly look like world-beaters against Northwestern last week. Don’t be surprised if around 1:30 in the morning, many eyeballs are on this game because it’s close.

Honourable mention: Buffalo at Penn State (7:30, FOX); Syracuse at Maryland (Noon, specialty pack); Marshall at Boise State (Friday, 9:00, specialty pack)

Some gambling fun and games

Like last year at this very same time, I will say that Florida State losing wasn’t a bad pick on my part since they should have won. Picking Oregon was also not a bad pick since that was a great again against Auburn. Other than that I did amazing last week. So let’s get to another week of fantastic (or not fantastic) picks that are straight up and not against the spread:

Boise State over Marshall

Penn State over Buffalo

Texas over LSU (upset pick!)

Clemson over Texas A&M

Michigan over Army

Ohio State over Cincinnati

Syracuse over Maryland

USC over Stanford (another upset pick!)

Tennessee over BYU

Arkansas State over UNLV

Wisconsin over Central Michigan

As of now I see nothing on the guide for the specialty pack. Nothing. I know the games are coming but don’t see them yet. Frustrating. Maybe that will change by the time the games start tomorrow. I wonder if it’s due to nothing on tonight for college football. Who the fuck knows. Either way, the schedule I have above (less the one game on FOX Sports Network) should appear as I have said it will.

The reason no college football tonight? The NFL is back baybee! The opening game for this season (which is the NFL’s 100th season) is the Packers and the Bears. We will get a good idea of if Aaron Rodgers can co-exist with new head coach Matt Lafleur. Also we will get a good idea of Vic Fangio was the reason for the Bears’ success last season. The game is on NBC, CTV2 and all the TSNs except TSNs 2 and 5.

I will be on the Twitter machine again this weekend. I made it to the end last Saturday. I felt very proud of myself. It means I know I’m ready for the season. Now I have to hope a late night game doesn’t go to like five overtimes otherwise I will be a brain-dead idiot on Sunday. Enjoy the games everyone!

Well it’s about damn time. The Week 1 College Football TV Schedule Everyone!

Posted on August 29, 2018 by guelphbossman

We made it! OK we made it last week (technically) but this is where things kick into high gear, so to speak. Despite ESPN showing two games last Saturday they are touting this as opening weekend. I get that this is a huge weekend in the sporting landscape but why have Week Zero if this is how it will operate? I’m not complaining. I got the appetizer last Saturday. Now I’m ready for the full Italian five-course meal!

Let’s stop dilly-dallying (not dilly-dillying you Bud Light drinking yahoos) and get to the damn schedule already!

Thursday

		US	Canada
New Mexico State at Minnesota	7:00 PM
#21 UCF at UConn	7:00 PM
Wake Forest at Tulane	8:00 PM
Northwestern at Purdue	8:00 PM
Northwestern State at Texas A&M	8:30 PM

We get right down to it with two of the Big Ten West’s bridesmaids trying to start their season off on the right foot. Honestly, any sort of trip up puts them one step behind Wisconsin this season. It also marks TSN’s first college football game of the season.

UPDATE #2: The Northwestern State-Texas A&M game is not showing on the Bell Fibe guide so don’t know if it is appearing on other guides either. But the game is appearing. So no need to worry about that.

Friday

		US	Canada
Syracuse at Western Michigan	6:00 PM
Utah State at #11 Michigan State	7:00 PM
Army at Duke	7:00 PM
Western Kentucky at #4 Wisconsin	9:00 PM
Colorado at Colorado State	9:30 PM

The best game of the night might end up being that Army-Duke matchup. Pretty closely matched right there. A couple years ago I would have said the two games with the Big Ten teams would be big ones but USU and WKU aren’t what they used to be. Colorado State has to play better than they did last week or this could be a long season (and make my prediction for them look like absolute trash).

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Houston at Rice	Noon
Oregon State at #5 Ohio State	Noon
Kent State at Illinois	Noon
Texas State at Rutgers	Noon
Ole Miss vs. Texas Tech (in Houston)	Noon
James Madison at NC State	Noon
Coastal Carolina at South Carolina	Noon
Florida Atlantic at #7 Oklahoma	Noon
Furman at #2 Clemson	12:30 PM

A lot of games here. I would say two of them are relatively important (I guess). Ole Miss-Texas Tech is a weird neutral-site game although it was scheduled a few years back when both teams were probably much better. FAU-OU should be something. Don’t be surprised if the Lane Train puts a scare in Boomer Sooner (although I still honestly can’t see the Owls winning).

UPDATE #3: Alcorn State-Georgia Tech has been added to the specialty pack. It will start at 12:30.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
Washington State at Wyoming	3:30 PM
#17 West Virginia vs. Tennessee (in Charlotte)	3:30 PM
Appalachian State at #10 Penn State	3:30 PM
Northern Illinois at Iowa	3:30 PM
#9 Auburn vs. #6 Washington (in Atlanta)	3:30 PM
Austin Peay at #3 Georgia	3:30 PM
Central Michigan at Kentucky	3:30 PM
North Carolina at California	4:00 PM
UT-Martin at Missouri	4:00 PM
Eastern Illinois at Arkansas	4:00 PM

OK looks like things get better here, especially with what I believe is undoubtedly the game of the week in Atlanta. Auburn-Washington will definitely shape the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six pictures and is the first mega-matchup of the season. I’m glad to see ESPN isn’t doing the 3-hour window thing today since it is completely dumb and like 0.1% of games finish before the 3-hour mark. A lot of good options other than AU-UW with CMU-UK, UNC-Cal, WVU-Tennessee and App State-Penn State.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Indiana at FIU	7:00 PM
Cincinnati at UCLA	7:00 PM
#14 Michigan at #12 Notre Dame	7:30 PM
Middle Tennessee at Vanderbilt	7:30 PM
Charleston Southern at Florida	7:30 PM
Stephen F. Austin at #18 Mississippi State	7:30 PM
Akron at Nebraska	8:00 PM
#1 Alabama vs. Louisville (in Orlando)	8:00 PM

Honestly it’s not a ton better in the primetime schedule than in the afternoon sked. And that’s A-OK with me. Michigan-Notre Dame is usually a great game with a loss definitely hurting either program (considering the schedules they are dealing with this season). Bama should beat Louisville easily but you never know, right? FOX gets a pretty bad schedule opening week and I am sure they don’t care. They get some fantastic games later in the season. Just be happy they have a tripleheader and move on.

UPDATE #4: Cincinnati-UCLA also appearing now on the specialty pack. This is odd but it is what it is.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
BYU at Arizona	10:45 PM
Navy at Hawaii	11:00 PM

Unlike last year, this year as some late night fare opening weekend. And I mean REALLY late night fare. The Navy-Hawaii game starts at 11 so won’t end before 2:30 probably for certain. Especially if the Fighting Roloviches toss the ball over the field like they did last week. BYU shows how far back they really are and Khalil Tate gets to start his Heisman campaign after most normal people have gone to bed (which excludes me obviously).

Sunday

		US	Canada
NC Central vs. Prairie View A&M (in Atlanta)	Noon
#25 LSU vs. #8 Miami (in Arlington)	7:30 PM

Part of me was surprised when FOX decided against having a Sunday night affair since last year’s Texas A&M-UCLA game was bonkers. Then I looked at what was available and immediately understood the issue: there just aren’t enough good games out there to put in this timeslot. And going up against LSU-Miami is a different animal than going up against Virginia Tech-West Virginia (which was the ABC game last season).

Monday

		US	Canada
#20 Virginia Tech at #19 Florida State	8:00 PM		(JIP)

OK. We know what has happened before with the Monday night college football opener and TSN. It’s usually a shitshow. I don’t understand how TSN can’t figure this out but they seemingly can’t. So this is what I can determine at this point:

The Toronto Argos-Hamilton Ti-Cats game is a Labour Day NIGHT game and on most of the TSN stations.
That game ends at 8:30.
It appears that TSN3 would pick up the game in progress at that point. This would mean viewers would miss the first quarter perhaps.
TSN2, the only TSN station not showing the Labour Day Classic, is showing US Open Tennis as per usual this time of year.

So there you go. Looks like we will get to see the final three quarters of this game on TSN3. Let’s pray that this ends up being the case.

UPDATE: Remember what I said about updates? Scratch that…for now. After seeing the guide, it looked like the game was going to the specialty pack AS WELL AS TSN3 joined in progress. Thanks to reader Cam, this looks to be the case since TSN is, one hand, promoting the Megacast with like 10,000 feeds but is basically allowing this to also show on the specialty pack since otherwise no one would be able to see it on TV in its entirety. Supposedly, you can see the game in its entirety on TSN.ca as well, probably on Feed #1 (of like a million).

Games to set your eyeballs on

Auburn vs. Washington (in Atlanta) (3:30, ABC/TSN2) – I believe this is the game to watch for Week 1 and many agree. A must watch for even a casual college football fan. Also it puts one program into the “Instant Contender” category and one into the “Maybe It’s The New Year’s Six For Us” category. We also get to see if we get the Jake Browning of a couple years ago or the Jake Browning of last season.

Michigan at Notre Dame (7:30, NBC) – A game between two programs with coaches who many think should be on the hot seat but in reality aren’t because they’ve actually done fairly well although not compared to the legendary programs of the past. Yeesh. Should be intriguing though and usually games between these two teams produce exciting finishes. This is the second of two ranked vs. ranked games this week by the way.

LSU vs. Miami (in Arlington) (Sunday, 7:30, ABC/TSN3) – Two teams that really haven’t faced each other much (12 times, last time in 2005) play in an ACTUAL NEUTRAL-SITE GAME! Not this Auburn basically playing next door type of thing. I am not really fond of those since they feel like cash-grabs (and probably are). Cue the Ed Orgeron takes since I am sure we will hear a boatload of them. Also a (probable) return of ESPN’s favourite inanimate object, the Turnover Chain!

Virginia Tech at Florida State (Monday, 8:00, TSN3 (kind of)) – This is a MEGACAST game so it’s good TSN3 has the game (even if it is joined in progress). Otherwise they would have all the MEGACAST feeds but not the actual game and you wouldn’t be able to get it on the specialty pack either because TSN technically has the game and it would just be a big giant game of Fuck the Consumer. Still waiting for a feed that has coaches at an all-you-can-eat restaurant where all the drinks are being comped. Would be good to see Dana Holgorsen half in the bag singing Take Me Home, Country Roads and then vomiting all over Brian Kelly and Jim Harbaugh.

Florida Atlantic at Oklahoma (Noon, FOX) – I debated putting either WVU-Tennessee in NASCAR Country or Bama-Louisville here but went with the non-neutral-site game instead. The announcers (who will definitely be Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt) will gush all over Lane Kiffin and Lincoln Riley like everyone else seems to be doing. Gus will go apoplectic over some crazy play and Joel will do his best Abercrombie + Fitch model smoldering look while breaking down the keys to the game. Good way to start a Saturday.

Honourable mention: Alabama vs. Louisville (in Orlando) (8:00, ABC/TSN3); West Virginia vs. Tennessee (in Charlotte) (3:30, CBS); Northwestern at Purdue (Thursday, 8:00, TSN2)

Some gambling fun and games

Back to this bullshit. And just a reminder, I don’t pick against the spread. My picks are bad enough as is. Here we go:

Alabama over Louisville

Notre Dame over Michigan

Texas over Maryland (which we can’t see)

Auburn over Washington

West Virginia over Tennessee

Florida State over Virginia Tech

LSU over Miami (upset pick of the week I guess)

Duke over Army

Oklahoma over Florida Atlantic

Purdue over Northwestern

Boise State over Troy (can’t see this one either)

Again we are back to the opening salvo of five straight days of college football! And I am ready for it. I think. Everything, amazingly enough, is scheduled and in the guide except for the mystery of Monday night. But I do think what I have above is correct for the VaTech-FSU game. For this reason I probably don’t need to do many updates if any at all. That would be nice to be honest with you. I will be on the Twitter machine (@LikeABauce1978) on Saturday for sure. Maybe at other points but definitely that day. Don’t know why I put in the 1978 since I am sure no one else had that Twitter tag. Oh well. I think I mentioned this before too. Always bugs me like twice a year.

Soon enough we will get back into the same old college recap-NFL recap-college schedule-NFL schedule rotation. Actually it will be next week. So enjoy the games all you crazy Canadian college football fans. I know I will.

OK it looks to be one of those weeks – Week 6 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on October 5, 2017 by guelphbossman

One of the, um, lesser weeks of the college football season is upon us. No it’s not SEC Sleepwalk Saturday but it’s still not exactly chock full of big-time games on paper. Usually you know what this means right? Almost every time we have a week that doesn’t look to be big we end up with some crazy finishes that reaffirm our love for college football and show us that the games still have to be played. The opposite is not true although sometimes we have had “big” weeks end up being colossal letdowns (see: American Thanksgiving weekend 2015).

Alright it’s on to the schedule. No opening song and dance like the Emmys or Oscars or any other crappy awards show (don’t even get me started on the ESPYs). Just pure information. Smooth, hot, nasty information.

Thursday

		US	Canada
Alcorn State at Alabama State	7:30 PM
#17 Louisville at #24 NC State	8:00 PM

This should be a very intriguing Thursday night game. Both teams are trying desperately to get close enough to Clemson in ACC Atlantic pecking order (since they’ve pretty much caught Florida State). Winner still has some semblance of a shot at a division title (with NC State having the advantage of not playing Clemson yet). Loser can’t even make the New Year’s Six. It’s pretty much that simple.

Friday

		US	Canada
Memphis at UConn	7:00 PM
Morgan State at South Carolina State	7:30 PM
Boise State at BYU	10:15 PM

I find it odd that TSN2 has the early ESPN game but not the late one that the early one will certainly flow into thanks to the three hour and fifteen minute timeslot. Nothing too special here especially since BYU has completely shit the bed early on.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
#4 Penn State at Northwestern	Noon
Illinois at Iowa	Noon
#5 Georgia at Vanderbilt	Noon
Wake Forest at #2 Clemson	Noon
Temple at East Carolina	Noon
Iowa State at #3 Oklahoma	Noon
Ole Miss at #12 Auburn	Noon
Eastern Michigan at Toledo	Noon
Duke at Virginia	12:30 PM

FOX Tripleheader. FOX TRIPLEHEADER!!!! I hate the fact we don’t get FOX Sports One and hopefully that changes next season. But it’s always a good thing that FOX is doing more college football on the main network. I get it: people love to hate on FOX. Some of the hate is fully warranted. But some of it is not at all. And listening to GUS JOHNSON! and retired Abercrombie & Fitch model Joel Klatt is a treat as they do a very good job (top three announce team now). Lots of choice. A couple games on TSN stations. Good times. Fall has officially arrived with this kind of schedule!

UPDATE #3: Pitt-Syracuse has been added for Bell at 12:30. I don’t know if other telcos are showing it since it hasn’t showed up on any guide I have seen.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
LSU at #21 Florida	3:30 PM
Charleston Southern at Indiana	3:30 PM
#21 Notre Dame at North Carolina	3:30 PM
#13 Miami at Florida State	3:30 PM
Minnesota at Purdue	3:30 PM
Air Force at Navy	3:30 PM
Western Michigan at Buffalo	3:30 PM
Tulsa at Tulane	~~4:00 PM~~
Arkansas at South Carolina	4:00 PM
Maryland at #10 Ohio State	4:00 PM

Pretty good afternoon schedule here. Funny thing is that Miami-FSU didn’t show up on the specialty pack this morning, at least a full day after every other game had shown up. My guess is this was an issue with the game being moved from mid-September to this upcoming weekend thanks to Hurricane Asshole (or was it Hurricane Fuckface, I can’t remember). If it hadn’t shown up yet, I would have been under the assumption this would have shown up by Saturday morning. Or, as Bell reps tell me, it may not but the game will still appear because Bell may not get the information in time. That still floors me. How the fuck is that even possible? So the game just appears on a channel that your telco creates and operates? Like magic? And you have no info about it? You must have something. It makes it sound like ESPN has full control over what appears, what channel, whether we get guide information or not, etc. So I guess I should go ahead and blame them for the bullshit earlier in the year of using two of the three Bell Fibe HD SP channels for the fucking SEC Network all god damned day!

UPDATE: Tulsa-Tulane has been moved to Noon and will air on ESPN3. This is due to possible issues surrounding Tropical Storm Nate. Man, the weather is wreaking havoc all over the schedule this season. Nothing has been put in the 4:00 ESPNU slot as of yet and I have a feeling there won’t end up being anything there. Stay tuned.

UPDATE #2: I have really got to learn to be patient. Stop being so TMZ with these updates. Anyway, Western Michigan-Buffalo has moved into the ESPNU afternoon slot and the time has been pushed back to the normal afternoon start time of 3:30. UCF-Cincy stays at 8:00.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Army at Rice	6:30 PM
SMU at Houston	7:00 PM
Texas Southern at Kennesaw State	7:00 PM
#1 Alabama at Texas A&M	7:15 PM
#16 Virginia Tech at Boston College	7:15 PM
Missouri at Kentucky	7:30 PM
Michigan State at #7 Michigan	7:30 PM
#25 UCF at Cincinnati	8:00 PM
#9 Wisconsin at Nebraska	8:00 PM
#11 Washington State at Oregon	8:00 PM

I am not quite understanding the ESPNU broadcast windows on Saturday. Are they doing 4-hour windows for a reason? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless it’s some sort of a test run for something at a later date. I mean it makes more sense than three-hour windows but still. Just seems weird. And yes, the ESPN and ESPN2 games start at 7:15. Let’s see how well that goes. Finally, Big Ten ABC Primetime game means the game starts at 7:30 which I am a fan of.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
Hawaii at Nevada	10:30 PM
California at #6 Washington	10:45 PM
#19 San Diego State at UNLV	10:45 PM

Your normal average late night fare, highlighted by some Pac-12 After Dark with Washington who doesn’t want to be on Pac-12 After Dark anymore. I really do believe the Pac-12 should only have one game on this late…maybe two when conference season really kicks in. More than that means the Pac-12 does stay out of much of the viewing public’s eyes. There are very few people here in the central part of the country that would stay up until 2 or so in the morning like the maniac running this blog. And remember, this includes Pac-12 Network and FOX Sports One games as well. Give the Pac-12 some love! As for the Mountain West they should take what they can get. I get their point more with the Thursday and Friday late night games. A lot of people do not watch those at all (last week’s USC-Wazzu supermatch notwithstanding).

Games to set your eyeballs on

West Virginia at TCU (3:30, FOX Sports One………) – OK this feels like trolling. One of the games of the week and it’s on FOX Sports Fucking One? My god. Next year’s specialty packs better include this channel. It has gotten out of hand and will not get better and we all know it. Anyway, the Mountaineers and Horned Frogs will face off in a game we can see in highlight packages later on in the day. Ugh.

Louisville at NC State (Thursday, 8:00, specialty pack) – After last week’s big Friday matchup, we have a huge Thursday matchup this week. Much like the above game, this is a play-in and play-out game. Loser has no shot at basically anything, even the New Year’s Six. Winner still has a shot to do something special but they will need to beat the front-runner (Clemson in this case, Oklahoma in the above case) to really become a dark-horse contender.

Alabama at Texas A&M (7:15, specialty pack) – Again, it feels like a game Bama may destroy their opponent. But this isn’t the same Texas A&M from that epic comeback loss to UCLA. Kevin Sumlin has saved his job (for now) and a loss to the Tide wouldn’t derail that but keeping it close (or winning) would do wonders for this possibilities of returning to Aggieland in 2018.

LSU at Florida (3:30, CBS) – This doesn’t feel like the SEC game of the week. But it is. Only because they don’t want Alabama’s maximum appearances to hit before the Iron Bowl. Well, two relatively disappointing teams (one way more disappointing than the other) are going to butt heads in a game with a lot of animosity after the shitshow last season with the game being moved due to a hurricane to later in the season and LSU having to have it at home and Florida being dicks early on and all that jazz. Let’s hope it shows this Saturday…as long as it’s not a plethora of targeting penalties.

Washington State at Oregon (8:00, FOX) – I sincerely hope Wazzu doesn’t shit the bed here. The last part of the FOX Tripleheader has a great game that should end up 61-60 and knowing our luck will be 28-27. But if it’s close, let’s call it a win. Plus, as long as the Cougs keep on winning, the better the chance ESPN College Gameday goes to Pullman in November for their game against Stanford.

Honourable mention: Michigan State at Michigan (7:30, ABC); Maryland at Ohio State (4:00, FOX); Wake Forest at Clemson (Noon, TSN4)

Some gambling fun and games

My picks were only so-so last weekend which is better than most weekends. Thank god I don’t put real money down on these games. I hope you take these picks with a grain of salt…more like a chunk of salt. Like a salt lick for a zoo animal.

NC State over Louisville (mild upset?)

Oklahoma over Iowa State (the only question is whether the Sooners will go over the 60 mark or not)

Oregon over Washington State (yes this would be considered an upset)

Alabama over Texas A&M

Michigan over Michigan State

UCF over Cincinnati

BYU over Boise State (I think the Cougars finally get back on track with this upset)

Florida over LSU

Florida State over Miami (would this be considered an upset? I don’t know anymore)

Auburn over Ole Miss

Washington over California

The schedules are up. Can you believe it? Again, I still can’t believe, at least on Bell Fibe, that the SEC Network continues to operate one of their three HD channels. Why they don’t have more HD channels I don’t know. It’s probably ESPN’s choice for them not to, right? Bullshit.

Hey, hey some Thursday Night Football again. I am making it sound way more exciting than it usually is. Saying that, it is obvious the NFL is putting way higher quality matchups on that night than they ever have. Part of it, for sure, is the partnership with CBS and NBC. Part of it has to be their realization that the ratings had sucked and people weren’t watching. Tonight we have New England in Tampa Bay. A good game involving two playoff-calibre teams. Well, a good game on paper. Let’s see how it turns out first.

For a second weekend in a row I will be live-tweeting most of Saturday (@LikeABauce1978). Still trying to piece together why I added the numbers at the end since I have a funny feeling the rest of the Twitter handle isn’t being used by anyone. Should be another fun day of college football. Enjoy the games everyone!

Ok THIS is the week it really begins – Week 1 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on August 31, 2017 by guelphbossman

After last weekend’s debacle, I am positive (POSITIVE I SAY!) that it won’t be nearly as bad this week. Hey I can even see that the specialty pack channels are appearing for Bell and that there are games on them (at least for Thursday). So there’s progress. Not nearly enough for me but I have exquisite tastes.

We have made it everyone! College football truly begins this Thursday night (OK I know it started this past Saturday…I choose to forget that). And, despite the fact the Week 1 schedule never stacks up against a few of the weeks later in the year, it still offers some tasty morsels for us rabid fans. So let’s get started shall we? Remember, the Bell/Rogers logos mean it’s a specialty pack broadcast so let’s pray that they get it right so we start the season on the right foot (since the first start went horribly wrong):

Thursday

		US	Canada
Presbyterian at Wake Forest	6:30 PM
Buffalo at Minnesota	7:00 PM
#2 Ohio State at Indiana	8:00 PM
Florida A&M at Arkansas	8:00 PM
ULM at Memphis	9:15 PM

As of this point, this is what I know about this schedule:

PC-WF is on Rogers’ Super Sports Pack but I can’t see it for Bell yet. That may change although it’s the first of those odd games that don’t fit anywhere that kind of just appear on either or both of the specialty packs.
Bell subscribers don’t get BTN at all so no UB-UM for them.
Some Rogers subscribers (and Bell Satellite subscribers) don’t get CBSSN so no ULM-Memphis for them.
tOSU-Indy will also be on TSN GO as ESPN is doing the Megacast again. I think it’s a test run to see how well it does for an early regular season game. So if you want to see coaches discussing the game as it goes on or random guests who may know less football than you do discussing the game or perhaps Paul Finebaum allowing callers to discuss the game, this is for you. Otherwise, specialty pack.
Rogers customers now get the SEC Network. Good for them.

And this is just for the Thursday night. Ho boy this is going to be an interesting season to say the least. I can just feel it.

UPDATE #2: Well I’m an idiot. I totally forgot that FIU and UCF were starting at 6:00 on CBS Sports Network. Not a good start, Bossman.

UPDATE #3: Looks like Presbyterian-Wake Forest is not appearing anywhere here. I have a feeling this will be a long few days. Don’t get why there are still bugs to work out but there seems to be. Also, according to some readers, tOSU-Indy STILL not appearing on Rogers SSP guide. Seriously, Rogers?

UPDATE #4: So Rogers is also deciding to get into the fuck-uppery game early on. No Ohio State-Indiana. The major game of the night. Ridiculous. Reader mike has mentioned that there is a possibility that this has to do with the rest of the Megacast being on TSN GO and maybe its presence there has taken it off the Super Sports Pack for Rogers. Don’t know why that would be the case but this is Rogers so anything is possible.

UPDATE #5: Rogers just sent me a series of tweets stating that “due to changes from the broadcaster” they cannot show the game on the SSP. Then they pointed me to TSN.ca. So reader mike might be right on with his theory. Which is completely dumb. Smells like another fun Bell-Rogers pissing match.

Friday

		US	Canada
Fordham at Army	6:00 PM
Navy at Florida Atlantic	8:00 PM
Utah State at #9 Wisconsin	9:00 PM
Boston College at Northern Illinois	9:30 PM

TSN has their first game of the college football season with USU-Wisky (which is a bit of an odd pick but anyway). I am very intrigued with the Navy-FAU game since it’s Lane Kiffin’s first game as head coach for the Owls. This could be insight into whether the turnaround in Boca Raton will start now or if it will be the Kiffin Shitshow that some people love to watch. Nothing showing up yet for the Navy-FAU game on Bell. I assume that will happen soon enough.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Akron at #6 Penn State	Noon
Wyoming at Iowa	Noon
Ball State at Illinois*	Noon
California at North Carolina	Noon
Kent State at #5 Clemson*	Noon
Bowling Green at Michigan State	Noon
Missouri State at Missouri	Noon

All this should appear on the specialty packs. When it happens, who knows. Right now KSU-Clemson is not appearing on the SSP Guide. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, not the greatest Noon selection of games ever but it is another appetizer to the main course(s) later on. It’s also the reason why Week 1 is vastly overhyped compared to some weeks later on in October and November. I have just put down ACC Network for Cal-UNC. You might get it on WSBK or on WNLO. Doesn’t matter. That’s the game you get.

UPDATE #6: So of course Kent State-Clemson shows up on TSN5. It feels too early to give up but man they are not making this easy.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
NC State vs. South Carolina (in Charlotte)	3:00 PM
Nevada at Northwestern	3:30 PM
#17 Florida vs. #11 Michigan (in Arlington)	3:30 PM
UTEP at #7 Oklahoma	3:30 PM
Temple at Notre Dame	3:30 PM
Troy at Boise State	3:45 PM
Kentucky at Southern Miss	4:00 PM
Charleston Southern at Mississippi State	4:00 PM

Now we get into some good games. The obviously huge one is Florida-Michigan where who knows what will happen. Also NC State-South Carolina starts at 3 because ESPN still believes 3-hour windows are a thing in college football. Sneaky-good games include Temple-ND, Troy-Boise and Kentucky-Southern Miss. So a lot of good options during the afternoon.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Appalachian State at #15 Georgia	6:15 PM
South Alabama at Ole Miss	7:30 PM
#16 Louisville vs. Purdue (in Indianapolis)	7:30 PM
Georgia Southern at #12 Auburn	7:30 PM
#1 Alabama vs. #3 Florida State (in Atlanta)	8:00 PM
Arkansas State at Nebraska	8:00 PM
Vanderbilt at Middle Tennessee	8:00 PM

Now this is what we’re talking about. Bama-FSU is one of the best opening weekend games in years. And the loser may not even be out of the national championship picture because these two teams are so high up in the rankings to start the season. Georgia should be on upset alert against App State. I see FOX got the short end of the stick this Saturday. That is obviously on purpose since some of their games later in the season are the best all year. Also, a note that TSN1 and TSN4 will join the Bama-FSU game in progress at about 9:00.

UPDATE #7: Two updates here. Bama-FSU will just be on TSNs 3 and 5. TSN1 and TSN4 now get BYU-LSU. Also, Appalachian State-UGA not showing up anywhere, at least for Bell, yet. Hopefully that changes.

UPDATE #9: Had a conversation on Twitter and someone mentioned that AppState-UGA is appearing in SD only on Bell. Should be fine on Rogers. Should be. This is why each channel should mirror one of the American channels it picks games from. One could be ESPN, one ESPN2, etc. This would be efficient though which is a big no-no.

Saturday Late Night

Canada

BYU vs. #13 LSU (in New Orleans)

9:30 PM

Originally, this game was in Houston but we all know what has happened there. Hurricane Harvey has devastated that city/region with more rainfall than many areas get in an entire year happening in the span of one week. I am glad they just made all these sports decisions (including the BYU-LSU game) days in advance to avoid any unnecessary problems. Should be interesting now though since LSU will have a definite home-field advantage kind of feel to this one.

UPDATE #8: As per the update above, BYU-LSU goes to TSN1 and TSN4.

Sunday

		US	Canada
South Carolina State at Southern*	2:30 PM
#21 Virginia Tech vs. #22 West Virginia (in Landover)	7:30 PM
Texas A&M at UCLA	7:30 PM

After last year’s incredible Notre Dame-Texas game, this year there are two big Sunday night games. ABC and FOX go head-to-head for viewers and this will be a tough call. Both games should be really good and all four have some dark horse contender type teams for the New Year’s Six…well, except West Virginia in my opinion. So watch the Mountaineers destroy the Hokies just to make me look bad.

UPDATE #10: Double digits and it’s just the first weekend. Man. Anyway, VT-WVU is also appearing on TSN3. Doesn’t really matter since I am sure most of us do get ABC but anyway, figured I would update it even though the game has been on for over an hour.

Monday

		US	Canada
#25 Tennessee vs. Georgia Tech (in Atlanta)	8:00 PM

The final day of five college football days in a row pits the Champions of Life against the Ramblin’ Wreck. Hopefully I’m not worn out by this point. Hahahahahaha, of course I won’t be.

As of right now, there are no games past tonight for Bell’s specialty pack and a few games aren’t appearing on Rogers’ specialty pack. That should rectify itself soon enough but never assume with these things. The missing games for Rogers are denoted with asterisks (*).

UPDATE: Games are appearing on Bell for tomorrow night. Or more like game. As in the singular. Since there’s only one on the specialty pack.

Games to set your eyeballs on

Alabama vs. Florida State (in Atlanta) (8:00, ABC, almost all the TSNs at some point) – This is THE game to watch in Week 1. The hope is that the Noles will show up and keep this game competitive since we know what Bama has done in the past to high profile teams in Week 1. Should be a good one and a must watch even for casual fans.

Florida vs. Michigan (in Arlington) (3:30, ABC/TSN5) – After Florida has suspended a bunch of players, who knows what this game will look like. At one point, this looked like it would be the best game of the weekend but maybe not anymore. Still a must watch but I will be very intrigued to see how Jim Bob McElwain gets his team going for this one. Maybe he could just fuck a shark in the locker room.

Virginia Tech vs. West Virginia (in Landover) (Sunday, 7:30, ABC) – For the first time in a dozen years, the Black Diamond Trophy will be up for grabs between these two. It would have been nice if the Mountaineers had ended up in the ACC rather than the Big XII but hey, realignment is almost never about logic. Anyway, two under-the-radar teams who are hoping to make a lot of noise to start their seasons.

Ohio State at Indiana (Thursday, 8:00, specialty pack) – Oh I can’t forget that this is a MEGACAST so there are seventeen other options (I think) to watch this game. Watch it with the coaches. Watch it with other analysts. Watch it in Spanish. Watch it with celebrities. Watch it with people taking a massive shit in the ESPN bathroom in Bristol. Good times. It will be very interesting to see if the Hoosiers can scare the Buckeyes a bit in this one.

BYU vs. LSU (in New Orleans) (9:30, specialty pack) – Yes LSU now gets home-field advantage pretty much in this one. It might not matter. If the Cougs can somehow pull this off (and finish the game before midnight when they all turn into pumpkins), Ed Orgeron will go from feel-good coach of his home state team to HOT SEAT SUPREME!

Honourable mention: Appalachian State at Georgia (6:15, specialty pack); Texas A&M at UCLA (Sunday, 7:30, FOX); Tennessee vs. Georgia Tech (in Atlanta) (Monday, 8:00, specialty pack)

Some gambling fun and games

Here are my usually pretty bad straight-up picks. I don’t do against the spread. Otherwise this section would be pretty pointless.

Alabama over Florida State (but it will be close)

Michigan over Florida

Virginia Tech over West Virginia

LSU over BYU

Notre Dame over Temple

UCLA over Texas A&M

Ohio State over Indiana

Kentucky over Southern Miss (this won’t be easy for the Wildcats though)

North Carolina over Cal

Texas over Maryland

So. We are here. Finally. Week 1. Five straight days of college FOOTBAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! I am happy it’s here. I really am. I will not let Bell and Rogers (and other telcos) off the hook for not being able to make easy decisions with a cable package that many of us pay a premium for. I will be updating this throughout the next few days as updates come along since I am expecting many of them especially with most of the specialty pack for Bell not even being on the guide yet. I will also be live tweeting at times (@LikeABauce1978). I look back now and wonder why I even included the number. Would a lot of people have that Twitter handle? Who knows. Besides, Twitter can be a shithole anyway. I like it but I shy away from the stupid areas (for which there are many). And I have been in arguments online which, in hindsight, looked pretty silly. Oh well, it is what it is. Enjoy the games everyone and keep tuned to this post.

It is now time for the dog’s breakfast portion of our show…

Posted on July 17, 2017 by guelphbossman

Hey, hey! (I say that in my head in Krusty The Clown’s voice). This will be the second year in a row I take a (probably totally inaccurate) stab at the schedules for the SEC Network, Big Ten Network, ACC Network, Notre Dame on NBC, and even the TSN schedules for this college football season. Remember, Bell subscribers (which I am one of) will not get BTN this season. But hey, Rogers customers get the SEC Network games now! Good for them (and good for Rogers for coming to their senses on something that made no sense to begin with). And for the first time ever, I will include the CBS Sports Network schedule as well. I know, I know…you are so excited to hear that (I wanted the “Dripping Sarcasm” font for this part but couldn’t find it). Alright, here we go with Round 1!

As I mentioned above, Rogers subscribers (including other smaller telcos that I tend to forget) now get the games from the SEC Network. Good stuff. Unfortunately you juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust missed hearing Big Game Brent doing less-than-big games on the Ocho (You are looking live at…wait, Sam Houston State? Good lord. Hey Joe, find the ten hottest girls in the crowd so I can ogle them throughout the game alright?). So here we go with the projected schedule since I think not a single game has been confirmed yet:

August 31st	Florida A&M at Arkansas (confirmed)	8:00 PM
September 2nd	Missouri State at Missouri	Noon
September 2nd	Charleston Southern at Mississippi State	4:00 PM
September 9th	Indiana State at Tennessee	Noon
September 9th	Eastern Kentucky at Kentucky	Noon
September 9th	Northern Colorado at Florida	4:00 PM
September 9th	Alabama A&M at Vanderbilt	4:00 PM
September 9th	Chattanooga at LSU	7:30 PM
September 9th	UT-Martin at Ole Miss	7:30 PM
September 16th	Purdue at Missouri	Noon
September 16th	Samford at Georgia	Noon
September 16th	UL-Lafayette at Texas A&M	4:00 PM
September 16th	Mercer at Auburn	4:00 PM
September 16th	Kentucky at South Carolina	7:30 PM
September 23rd	Louisiana Tech at South Carolina	Noon
September 23rd	UMass at Tennessee	4:00 PM
September 23rd	Auburn at Missouri	7:30 PM
September 30th	Eastern Michigan at Kentucky	Noon
September 30th	Troy at LSU	Noon
September 30th	New Mexico State at Arkansas	4:00 PM
September 30th	South Carolina at Texas A&M	7:30 PM
October 7th	Georgia at Vanderbilt	Noon
October 7th	Missouri at Kentucky	4:00 PM
October 7th	Ole Miss at Auburn	7:30 PM
October 14th	Vanderbilt at Ole Miss	Noon
October 14th	Missouri at Georgia	4:00 PM
October 14th	BYU at Mississippi State	7:30 PM
October 21st	LSU at Ole Miss	Noon
October 21st	Idaho at Missouri	7:30 PM
October 28th	Tennessee at Kentucky	Noon
October 28th	Vanderbilt at South Carolina	3:30 PM
October 28th	Mississippi State at Texas A&M	7:15 PM
November 4th	Western Kentucky at Vanderbilt	Noon
November 4th	Coastal Carolina at Arkansas	4:00 PM
November 4th	UMass at Mississippi State	4:00 PM
November 4th	Southern Miss at Tennessee	7:30 PM
November 11th	Tennessee at Missouri	Noon
November 11th	New Mexico at Texas A&M	3:30 PM
November 11th	Kentucky at Vanderbilt	7:30 PM
November 18th	Missouri at Vanderbilt	Noon
November 18th	Mercer at Auburn	Noon
November 18th	ULM at Auburn	4:00 PM
November 18th	Wofford at South Carolina	4:00 PM
November 18th	Mississippi State at Arkansas	7:30 PM
November 18th	UAB at Florida	7:30 PM
November 25th	Louisville at Kentucky	Noon
November 25th	Vanderbilt at Tennessee	3:30 PM
November 25th	Texas A&M at LSU	7:30 PM

OK I lied. As of right now, one game is confirmed. The first three weeks are confirmed in terms of the games that will appear on the SEC Network (and thus, the specialty pack up here). The times are all TBA. And as per usual, September is kind of garbage and then it picks up significantly starting in October with more conference play.

Just like last year, here is my opportunity to ask the stupid CRTC to just offer a package that includes all college football games from as many channels as possible and charge for that. I would gladly pay more than what I am paying now for the U.S. College Sports Package. But alas, they won’t because we don’t get nice things up here (except the health care system which is pretty damn sweet I must say).

Alright so here is the BTN schedule for this season which may or may not be a bit lighter due to the B1G signing up with FOX. Rogers/Eastlink and I assume Shaw customers get this channel. Bell subscribers do not. Oh well. The (alternate) means this will appear on the specialty pack for people who get BTN.

August 31st	Buffalo at Minnesota (confirmed)	7:00 PM
September 2nd	Wyoming at Iowa (confirmed)	Noon
September 2nd	Ball State at Illinois (alternate) (confirmed)	Noon
September 2nd	Nevada at Northwestern (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 2nd	Arkansas State at Nebraska (confirmed)	8:00 PM
September 9th	Towson at Maryland (alternate) (confirmed)	Noon
September 9th	Florida Atlantic at Wisconsin (confirmed)	Noon
September 9th	Eastern Michigan at Rutgers (alternate) (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 9th	Western Michigan at Michigan State (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 16th	Air Force at Michigan (confirmed)	Noon
September 16th	FIU at Indiana (alternate) (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 16th	Morgan State at Rutgers (alternate) (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 16th	Middle Tennessee at Minnesota (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 16th	Bowling Green at Northwestern (confirmed)	7:30 PM
September 16th	Georgia State at Penn State (alternate) (confirmed)	7:30 PM
September 23rd	Rutgers at Nebraska	3:30 PM
September 23rd	UNLV at Ohio State	7:30 PM
September 30th	Ohio State at Rutgers	7:30 PM
October 14th	Purdue at Wisconsin	3:30 PM
October 14th	Rutgers at Illinois	7:30 PM
October 21st	Purdue at Rutgers	Noon
October 21st	Illinois at Minnesota	3:30 PM
November 4th	Maryland vs. Rutgers (in the Bronx)	Noon
November 4th	Illinois at Purdue	3:30 PM
November 4th	Wisconsin at Indiana	7:30 PM
November 11th	Indiana at Illinois	Noon
November 11th	Purdue at Northwestern	3:30 PM
November 11th	Michigan at Maryland	7:30 PM
November 18th	Rutgers at Indiana	Noon
November 18th	Purdue at Iowa	3:30 PM
November 18th	Maryland at Michigan State	8:00 PM
November 25th	Indiana at Purdue	Noon
November 25th	Michigan State at Rutgers	3:30 PM

Just like the SEC Network, the Big Ten Network mandates that every team appear at least once during a season. And also just like the SEC Network the bottom two or three teams appear much more often than the top two or three teams. Makes sense, right? I mean other than Wisconsin at Indiana (at this point), there aren’t any fairly huge games on this network although I think that will change over the course of the season. Besides, do you really want Rutgers on a big-time network more than once or twice this season?

This used to be easy. WSBK out of Boston was pretty much everyone’s go-to for the ACC Network game of the week. Now WNLO out of Buffalo is in the mix as well and we saw this come up when there were two ACC Network games at the same time. This will actually work out so much better when the true ACC Network begins in 2019 (as long as it follows the format of the SEC Network up here in the Great White North). We will just get the games throughout the day on the specialty pack and everyone will be happy (who actually orders the specialty pack).

And this year we have a slight wrinkle early on which may rear its head later on in the season as well (although for now I don’t foresee it). This actually may make it more PVR-friendly to be honest with you. Schedule followed by a couple thoughts:

September 2nd	California at North Carolina (confirmed)	12:30 PM
September 9th	ULM at Florida State (confirmed)	7:00 PM
September 16th	Furman at NC State (confirmed)	12:30 PM
September 23rd	Boston College at Clemson	12:30 PM
September 30th	Rice at Pittsburgh	12:30 PM
October 7th	Pittsburgh at Syracuse	12:30 PM
October 14th	Virginia at North Carolina	12:30 PM
October 21st	Wake Forest at Georgia Tech	12:30 PM
October 28th	Louisville at Wake Forest	12:30 PM
November 4th	Syracuse at Florida State	12:30 PM
November 4th	Georgia Tech at Virginia	12:30 PM
November 11th	Virginia at Louisville	12:30 PM
November 18th	Syracuse at Louisville	12:30 PM
November 25th	Duke at Wake Forest	12:30 PM

Primetime ACC Network game. PRIMETIME ACC NETWORK GAME! Normally this kind of game would go to the regional FOX network and we might get it on the specialty pack in poverty Standard Definition. Instead, this game goes to primetime which is nice and I think it’s almost a test run for primetime games on the brand-new ACC Network in a couple seasons. My guess is that they will go to an SEC Network type schedule then: three games a week (on average). Does this mean no games on ESPNEWS starting then? Wouldn’t surprise me since I can’t see them finding value in more Group of Five games on the family of networks.

I have this feeling one day NBC will add something on weeks when Notre Dame doesn’t play at home or at a neutral site. Notre Dame could still have exclusivity on days they are on NBC but otherwise NBC could expand their portfolio (especially now when everything in the world of college football broadcasting seems to be in flux). Here’s the FULLY CONFIRMED ND on NBC schedule for this season:

September 2nd	Temple at Notre Dame	3:30 PM
September 9th	Georgia at Notre Dame	7:30 PM
October 21st	USC at Notre Dame	7:30 PM
October 28th	NC State at Notre Dame	3:30 PM
November 4th	Wake Forest at Notre Dame	3:30 PM
November 18th	Navy at Notre Dame	3:30 PM

It seems like the norm that two primetime games occur every year for Notre Dame on NBC. I am positive I saw somewhere that it is supposed to be three in a two-year span but I am guessing the two-year spans are not revolving in this case. Also, this season we go back to having a game on NBC Sports Network which we, of course, do not receive. Notre Dame hosts Miami-OH so it’s not like we are missing much there. Plus it’s at the odd time of 5PM. Weird.

Yes the CBS Sports Network schedule for the first time this season! And now that I pay less for the channel itself (like $2/month) it makes sense rather than the $7/month I started paying before (which I hated). So if you love AAC and MWC football (with a sprinkling of MACtion) this is the channel for you. It really has become the de facto Group of Five major network with the sheer amount of games they have. So here we go (this will be a looooooong list):

August 26th	Oregon State at Colorado State (confirmed)	2:30 PM
August 26th	USF at San Jose State (confirmed)	7:30 PM
August 31st	FIU at UCF (confirmed)	6:00 PM
August 31st	ULM at Memphis (confirmed)	9:00 PM
September 1st	Fordham at Army (confirmed)	6:00 PM
September 1st	Boston College at Northern Illinois (confirmed)	9:30 PM
September 2nd	Kentucky at Southern Miss (confirmed)	4:00 PM
September 2nd	Vanderbilt at Middle Tennessee (confirmed)	8:00 PM
September 9th	Buffalo at Army (confirmed)	Noon
September 9th	Tulane at Navy (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 9th	Mississippi State at Louisiana Tech (confirmed)	7:30 PM
September 16th	Iowa State at Akron (confirmed)	Noon
September 16th	Virginia Tech at East Carolina (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 16th	Oregon at Wyoming (confirmed)	7:00 PM
September 16th	Stanford at San Diego State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
September 22nd	Florida Atlantic at Buffalo	7:30 PM
September 23rd	Army at Tulane	Noon
September 23rd	Cincinnati at Navy (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 23rd	San Diego State at Air Force (confirmed)	7:00 PM
September 29th	BYU at Utah State (confirmed)	8:00 PM
September 30th	Akron at Bowling Green	Noon
September 30th	UTEP at Army (confirmed)	3:30 PM
September 30th	Air Force at New Mexico (confirmed)	7:00 PM
September 30th	Northern Illinois at San Diego State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
October 5th	Western Michigan at Buffalo	8:00 PM
October 6th	Fresno State at San Jose State	10:00 PM
October 7th	UCF at Cincinnati	Noon
October 7th	Air Force at Navy (confirmed)	3:30 PM
October 7th	Central Michigan at Ohio	7:00 PM
October 7th	Hawaii at Nevada (confirmed)	10:30 PM
October 13th	Wyoming at Utah State	10:00 PM
October 14th	Eastern Michigan at Army (confirmed)	Noon
October 14th	Toledo at Central Michigan	3:30 PM
October 14th	Navy at Memphis	7:00 PM
October 14th	Boise State at San Diego State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
October 20th	Western Kentucky at Old Dominion	6:00 PM
October 20th	Air Force at Nevada (confirmed)	9:30 PM
October 21st	Temple at Army (confirmed)	Noon
October 21st	UCF at Navy (confirmed)	3:30 PM
October 21st	SMU at Cincinnati	7:00 PM
October 21st	Fresno State at San Diego State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
October 26th	Toledo at Ball State	7:00 PM
October 27th	Tulane at Memphis (confirmed)	8:00 PM
October 28th	Buffalo at Akron (confirmed)	11:30 AM
October 28th	Air Force at Colorado State (confirmed)	3:00 PM
October 28th	Cincinnati at USF	6:30 PM
October 28th	Boise State at Utah State (confirmed)	10:00 PM
November 2nd	Ball State at Eastern Michigan	6:00 PM
November 3rd	Marshall at Florida Atlantic	6:00 PM
November 4th	Houston at USF	Noon
November 4th	Army at Air Force (confirmed)	3:30 PM
November 4th	Colorado State at Wyoming (confirmed)	7:00 PM
November 8th	Kent State at Western Michigan	7:30 PM
November 9th	Ball State at Northern Illinois (confirmed)	7:00 PM
November 11th	Duke at Army (confirmed)	Noon
November 11th	SMU at Navy (confirmed)	3:30 PM
November 11th	UConn at UCF	7:00 PM
November 11th	Boise State at Colorado State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
November 15th	Eastern Michigan at Miami-OH	8:00 PM
November 16th	Buffalo at Ball State (confirmed)	7:00 PM
November 17th	Middle Tennessee at Western Kentucky (confirmed)	8:00 PM
November 18th	UCF at Temple	Noon
November 18th	San Jose State at Colorado State (confirmed)	3:30 PM
November 18th	Boston College vs. UConn (in Fenway Park) (confirmed)	7:00 PM
November 18th	Nevada at San Diego State (confirmed)	10:30 PM
November 24th	Northern Illinois at Central Michigan	Noon
November 24th	New Mexico at San Diego State (confirmed)	3:30 PM
November 25th	USF at UCF	Noon
November 25th	Boise State at Fresno State (confirmed)	3:30 PM
November 25th	BYU at Hawaii (confirmed)	9:00 PM
December 16th	Cure Bowl (confirmed)	2:30 PM
December 29th	Arizona Bowl (confirmed)	5:30 PM

What did I tell you? Such a huge schedule. It’s ESPN-esque! Anyway, you will see gratuitous AAC and Mountain West fare here along with a sprinkling of MAC and Conference USA with NO SUN BELT ANYWHERE. Poor Sun Belt. Also nice is that the majority of the schedule is confirmed. Much different than the SEC Network pile o’ games.

Speaking of long schedules, let me take a crack at the potential TSN schedule. I know I will be wrong. Almost guaranteed. But I will try. That’s what’s important. Right?

None of the games are confirmed yet (although some are confirmed on American networks) and none will be until mid-August when maybe the first week will be set up. Not as bad as the specialty packs (which still amazes me…it can’t be that difficult to do schedules for those) but still bad. So here we go and let’s get on with the carnage!

DATE	GAME	TIME	TSN NETWORK	US NETWORK
September 2nd	Kent State at Clemson	Noon	TSN1	ESPN
September 2nd	Florida vs. Michigan (in Arlington)	3:30 PM	TSN2	ABC
September 2nd	Alabama vs. Florida State (in Atlanta)	8:00 PM	TSN2	ABC
September 2nd	BYU vs. LSU (in Houston)	9:30 PM	TSN1	ESPN
September 9th	Louisville at North Carolina	Noon	TSN3	ABC
September 9th	Cincinnati at Michigan	Noon	TSN4	ESPN
September 9th	Utah at BYU	10:15 PM	TSN1	ESPN2
September 9th	Boise State at Washington State	10:30 PM	TSN3	ESPN
September 16th	Oklahoma State at Pittsburgh	Noon	TSN2	ABC
September 21st	Temple at USF	8:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
September 23rd	Alabama at Vanderbilt	Noon	TSN3	ESPN
September 23rd	Mississippi State at Georgia	Noon	TSN2	ESPN2
September 23rd	Louisiana Tech at South Carolina	Noon	TSN4/TSN5	SEC Network
September 30th	Florida State at Wake Forest	Noon	TSN4	ESPN
September 30th	Syracuse at NC State	Noon	TSN3	ESPN2
October 4th	Arkansas State at Georgia Southern	8:00 PM	TSN3	ESPN2
October 5th	Louisville at NC State	8:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
October 7th	Notre Dame at North Carolina	Noon	TSN5	ABC
October 7th	Penn State at Northwestern	Noon	TSN3	ESPN
October 7th	Illinois at Iowa	Noon	TSN4	ESPN2
October 7th	LSU at Florida	7:00 PM	TSN1/TSN5	ESPN
October 14th	NC State at Pittsburgh	Noon	TSN5	ABC
October 14th	Oklahoma vs. Texas (in Dallas)	Noon	TSN3	ESPN
October 14th	Michigan State at Minnesota	Noon	TSN1	ESPN2
October 19th	Memphis at Houston	8:00 PM	TSN3/TSN5	ESPN
October 21st	Louisville at Florida State	Noon	TSN4	ABC
October 21st	Indiana at Michigan State	Noon	TSN1	ESPN
October 21st	USF at Tulane	Noon	TSN2	ESPN2
October 28th	Georgia Tech at Clemson	Noon	TSN4	ABC/ESPN2
October 28th	Wisconsin at Illinois	Noon	TSN2	ESPN
November 9th	North Carolina at Pittsburgh	8:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
November 10th	Temple at Cincinnati	7:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN2
November 11th	West Virginia at Kansas State	Noon	TSN3	ABC/ESPN2
November 11th	Rutgers at Penn State	Noon	TSN1	ABC/ESPN2
November 11th	Alabama at Mississippi State	Noon	TSN4	ESPN
November 11th	UL-Lafayette at Ole Miss	Noon	TSN2	ESPNU
November 11th	Florida State at Clemson	3:30 PM	TSN1	ABC
November 11th	Iowa at Wisconsin	3:30 PM	TSN4	ESPN
November 11th	Virginia Tech at Georgia Tech	3:30 PM	TSN3	ESPN2
November 14th	Ohio at Akron	7:00 PM	TSN3	ESPN2
November 17th	UNLV at New Mexico	9:30 PM	TSN2	ESPN2
November 18th	Virginia at Miami	Noon	TSN3	ESPN
November 18th	California at Stanford	3:30 PM	TSN3	ESPN
November 18th	NC State at Wake Forest	7:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
November 18th	UCLA at USC	10:30 PM	TSN2	ESPN
November 23rd	Ole Miss at Mississippi State	7:30 PM	TSN1/TSN3/TSN4	ESPN
November 24th	Miami at Pittsburgh	11:00 AM	TSN1	ESPN2
November 24th	West Virginia at Oklahoma	3:30 PM	TSN5	ABC
November 24th	Boston College at Syracuse	3:30 PM	TSN1	ESPN2
November 24th	Notre Dame at Stanford	8:00 PM	TSN1	ESPN
November 25th	Penn State at Maryland	Noon	TSN1	ABC
November 25th	Clemson at South Carolina	Noon	TSN5	ESPN
November 25th	Washington State at Washington	3:30 PM	TSN1	ABC
November 25th	Wisconsin at Minnesota	3:30 PM	TSN5	ESPN
November 25th	North Carolina at NC State	3:30 PM	TSN2	ESPN2
November 25th	UTSA at Louisiana Tech	7:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN2
November 25th	Florida State at Florida	7:30 PM	TSN5	ESPN
November 25th	Georgia at Georgia Tech	8:00 PM	TSN4	ABC
December 2nd	AAC Championship Game	Noon	TSN4	ABC
December 2nd	Conference USA Championship Game	Noon	TSN1	ESPN
December 16th	New Orleans Bowl	1:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 16th	New Mexico Bowl	4:30 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 16th	Camellia Bowl	8:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 19th	Boca Raton Bowl	7:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 22nd	Bahamas Bowl	12:30 PM	TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
December 22nd	Idaho Potato Bowl	4:00 PM	TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
December 23rd	Dollar General Bowl	7:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 26th	Cactus Bowl	9:00 PM	TSN3	ESPN
December 27th	Independence Bowl	1:30 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 27th	Pinstripe Bowl	5:15 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 27th	Texas Bowl	9:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 28th	Camping World Bowl	5:15 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 28th	Alamo Bowl	9:00 PM	TSN2	ESPN
December 29th	Cotton Bowl	8:30 PM	TSN3/TSN5	ESPN
December 30th	TaxSlayer Bowl	Noon	TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
December 30th	Fiesta Bowl	4:00 PM	TSN1/TSN5	ESPN
December 30th	Orange Bowl	8:00 PM	TSN5	ESPN
January 1st	Outback Bowl	Noon	TSN2	ESPN2
January 1st	Peach Bowl	12:30 PM	TSN1/TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
January 1st	Rose Bowl (CFP Semi-Final)	5:00 PM	TSN1/TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
January 1st	Sugar Bowl (CFP Semi-Final)	8:45 PM	TSN1/TSN4/TSN5	ESPN
January 8th	National Championship Game	8:00 PM	TSN1/TSN3/TSN4/TSN5	ESPN

Good lord that’s a long list. That’s not a bad thing and I am not complaining. I will say that many of these will be slightly incorrect where I chose the wrong TSN network or something like that. I only have one SEC Network and one ESPNU game being broadcast by TSN and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was one too many for both.

Finally done. This took way too long to do but it’s getting me organized and giving you a glimpse of what you may be looking at this late Summer, Fall, and very early Winter. We are now exactly 40 days away from the start of the college football season and I am way behind on my posts. Coming up it’s prediction posts and then some other tidbits about the season. It’s right around the corner. Finally!

And now for the letdown week – Week 2 College Football Schedule

Posted on September 8, 2016 by guelphbossman

And yes it’s a letdown. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes I understand that it’s still college football and we will still watch it and that’s all true. However, It’s still a pretty shitty week. I ranked it the bottom of all the college football weeks. It’s always Week 2, the SEC Shitbag week before American Thanksgiving, and one weekend in October that are ALWAYS the bottom three. Amazingly enough, to put things in perspective, opening week, despite being the best opening week probably ever and there being some fantastic games, I ranked 9^th out of 13 because, let’s be honest; as much as there are fun non-conference games opening week, conference action is where it’s at. Sad but true. But hey, all that means is that there are better college football Saturdays upcoming. Just not this week. So let’s get to the games.

Friday

			ROGERS	FIBE	SAT
Maryland at FIU	7:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X
#13 Louisville at Syracuse	8:00 PM	SP	X	X	X

Yep. No Thursday nighter which makes sense with the NFL starting that night. So Friday gets two games. Eh, it’s college football. I’ll watch it.

Saturday Early Afternoon

			ROGERS	FIBE	SAT
UCF at #5 Michigan	12:00 PM	ABC/TSN4/SP	X	X	X
Cincinnati at Purdue	12:00 PM	BTN	X
Howard at Rutgers	12:00 PM	SP	X
Rice at Army	12:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Penn State at Pittsburgh	12:00 PM	TSN3	X	X	X
Wyoming at Nebraska	12:00 PM	SP	X	X	X
NC State at East Carolina	12:00 PM	SP	X	X	X
Prairie View A&M at #20 Texas A&M	12:00 PM	SP*		X	X
Nicholls State at #9 Georgia	12:00 PM	SP		X	X
Troy at #2 Clemson	12:30 PM	WSBK/SP	X	X	X
Charleston Southern at #3 Florida State	12:30 PM	SP*	X	X	X

Not too bad but seriously lacking some star power so to speak. Remember there are no games between ranked teams this week. This is the first time in four years that this has happened. And it shows. PSU-Pitt has to be the highlight here. Also, for some reason, UCF-Michigan is showing up on one of the Rogers guides I see, but on the others it isn’t there. It won’t end up there because it is on TSN4 so I wonder when all the schedules that I observe will be in sync. Probably never.

UPDATE: I just noticed that TSN has switched the PSU-Pitt game with the UCF-Michigan game. So PSU-Pitt is now on TSN4 and UCF-Michigan on TSN3.

Saturday Mid-Afternoon

			ROGERS	FIBE	SAT
Tulsa at #4 Ohio State	3:30 PM	ABC	X	X	X
Old Dominion at Appalachian State	3:30 PM	MyTV	X	X
Akron at #10 Wisconsin	3:30 PM	BTN	X
Illinois State at Northwestern	3:30 PM	SP	X
Kentucky at Florida	3:30 PM	CBS	X	X	X
UConn at Navy	3:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Wake Forest at Duke	3:30 PM	SP	X	X	X
Western Kentucky at #1 Alabama	3:30 PM	SP	X	X	X
Nevada at #18 Notre Dame	3:30 PM	NBC	X	X	X
Wofford at #19 Ole Miss	4:00 PM	SP		X	X
Middle Tennessee at Vanderbilt	4:00 PM	SP*		X	X
Morgan State at Marshall	5:30 PM	beIn Sports	X	X	X

A lot of choice here. That’s about the best thing I can say about this. And actually a decent amount of specialty pack selections (throughout the entire day). This coming after a reader who wondered if the specialty pack was worth it. If you’re a true fan it is but week one is never a barometer for the value of the specialty pack. Anyway, I believe WKU-Bama could be a sneaky good game…as long as the Hilltoppers don’t allow Alabama to get out to too big of a first half lead (just ask USC).

Saturday Primetime

			ROGERS	FIBE	SAT
Northern Illinois at USF	7:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
South Carolina at Mississippi State	7:00 PM	SP*	X	X	X
Arkansas at #15 TCU	7:00 PM	SP	X	X	X
Point at Kennesaw State	7:00 PM	Peachtree	X	X	X
Iowa State at #16 Iowa	7:30 PM	BTN/SP	X
North Carolina at Illinois	7:30 PM	SP
Jacksonville State at #21 LSU	7:30 PM	SP	X	X	X
BYU at Utah	7:30 PM	FOX	X	X	X
Eastern Michigan at Missouri	7:30 PM	SP*		X	X
Arkansas State at Auburn	7:30 PM	SP		X	X
#17 Tennessee vs. Virginia Tech (in Bristol)	8:00 PM	ABC	X	X	X

Finally some good games. Arkansas-TCU should be good. Operative word being should. Same with the Battle at Bristol between Tennessee and Virginia Tech. Should. But these four teams didn’t exactly shoot the lights out last week. Let’s just hope at least one of these games is close. Watch BYU-Utah for an underrated game that could surprise a lot of people.

A few oddities here:

USC-MSU is only showing in SD. It’s an ESPN2 game. Why is it only in SD? That could change by Saturday morning but it is a bit perplexing.
CyHawk shows up on BTN and in the specialty pack for Rogers while the other BTN game, UNC-Illinois shows up nowhere. My guess is that the latter game will show up on the specialty pack at some point but this is the issue that comes up when BTN has multiple games in the same timeslot and they are regional coverage.

Saturday Late Night

			ROGERS	FIBE	SAT
Washington State at Boise State	10:00 PM	TSN1	X	X	X
California at San Diego State	10:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Virginia at #24 Oregon	10:30 PM	TSN3	X	X	X

Well what do you know? TSN has picked up not one, but TWO late night ESPN games. Wazzu-Boise should be a good game although I expect the Broncos to keep their season rolling. Virginia-Oregon doesn’t exactly move the dial but it’s still an offering.

This is the perfect weekend for me to have the kids since I can PVR a bunch of games and not be disappointed in the least that I missed anything. Having late night games on TSN poses a tiny bit of a problem since it breaks up the broadcast cycles of the games. The best is when the specialty pack has, say, ESPN2 from noon all the way to 2 in the morning. That way there’s no overlap. With the archaic way PVRs work here, if a game goes long then I miss the ending. However, if I add time to the end I can’t put another game to start on time. I guess with Rogers you can record more programs at the same time (with Bell I get 3 HD and 1 SD at any one time) but still. You’d think they would see what’s happening in other parts of the world and get their act together with this.

Picks O’ The Week

I didn’t do this during week one because, well, I just flat out forgot. So here we go. A few picks for you college football gamblers out there (in no particular order):

Oregon over Virginia…big

Utah over BYU

TCU over Arkansas

Tennessee over Virginia Tech

Mississippi State over South Carolina

Pittsburgh over Penn State

Iowa over Iowa State

Boise State over Washington State

Remember folks, tonight the NFL season begins! Denver hosts Carolina in a Super Bowl rematch. Tomorrow I will have the first week of the NFL schedule up. Good to have football back!

It’s the Roger Goodell Variety Hour!

Posted on August 24, 2016 by guelphbossman

Guests tonight include Johnny Manziel…James Harrison…Tom Brady…Mark Davis…Ray Rice…and the city of St. Louis. And herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre’s ROGER!

To be honest I wouldn’t put it past the man to create this show on the NFL Network.

It’s about that time for NFL predictions for the 2016 season. To start, let’s take a trip in the way-back machine and look at last year’s predictions….OK maybe we shouldn’t. Holy crap did I ever shit the bed on those. Miami over New England? I must have been drunk at the time. Then again the Dolphins shouldn’t have been THAT bad. So let’s move on to this year. Here’s my predicted order of finish followed by some notes on the season (* denotes wild-card team):

AFC		NFC
East		East
New England		Dallas
NY Jets		NY Giants
Buffalo		Washington
Miami		Philadelphia

North		North
Pittsburgh		Green Bay
Cincinnati*		Minnesota*
Baltimore		Chicago
Cleveland		Detroit

South		South
Houston		Carolina
Indianapolis		New Orleans
Jacksonville		Atlanta
Tennessee		Tampa Bay

West		West
Denver		Arizona
Oakland*		Seattle*
Kansas City		Los Angeles
San Diego		San Francisco

Notes

OK no crazy AFC East bullshit this year. Despite the fact Tommy Touchdown will be absent for the first four games, I am sure Jimmy G and the Pat-tones can hold the fort until he comes back. Other than the opening week trip to Arizona, it’s not a tough schedule so they should be 2-2 at worst when all of Massachusetts blows its wad and Gisele’s hubby comes back to save the day.
I could see Pittsburgh and Cincinnati really being the class of the AFC so it will suck when one of them has to be the #5 seed and playing on the road the entire playoffs. I wish the division winners were only guaranteed a top-5 spot. Keeps these 9-7, 8-8, or, dare I say it, 7-9 teams from getting a home playoff date.
The two worst divisions in football, yet again, will be the two South divisions. Houston and Indy will actually have a battle and Jacksonville will be much improved but I kind of see a 9-7 division champ there. As for the NFC South, Carolina should clinch the division sometime around Thanksgiving…our Thanksgiving.
Yes I have Dallas winning the NFC East. No I am not drunk or high. Other than Philly, it should be a bit of a dogfight but I can’t see Washington repeating last season and I just don’t trust the Giants offense enough.
Arizona, Green Bay, Minnesota, and Seattle will be the four of the five best teams in the NFC (Carolina fits in somewhere there) which again outlines the poor NFL playoff structure. Wait until they put a third Wild-Card team in for each conference. I’m sure Commissioner Gingerhammer will fuck that up as well.

And now the playoff outlook. I have Pittsburgh and Arizona nabbing the top seeds in their respective conferences. Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Baltimore will be just on the outside looking in with the rest of the AFC teams not really having much of a shot at anything. In the NFC, the aforementioned Redskins and Giants, along with Chicago and Detroit will be close but no cigar (the NFC North should be extremely tough this season). Finally, I am struggling to figure out where Tennessee and Cleveland will get more than two wins this season. And they play each other week six so one of them will at least get one win unless they tie which would be hilarious, especially if one of the teams went 0-15-1.

AFC Wild Card

Cincinnati (5) def. Houston (4) – As I mentioned above, the Bengals should be really good this season. Unfortunately they have the Steelers in their division so they get relegated to the Wild-Card round. This should be easy pickins for them.

Oakland (6) def. Denver (3) – You could consider this an upset if you like. However, the Raiders should be quite good and Derek Carr could be eyeing some MVP votes. Also, I am not quite sold on what will happen with Denver’s QB situation. Their schedule is easier than the Raiders and that’s why I gave them the AFC West title but it wouldn’t surprise me to see them not make the playoffs at all. For that reason, I can’t have them advancing beyond this round.

NFC Wild Card

Green Bay (3) def. Minnesota (6) – No matter where this game would be played, it would be bitterly cold. The Vikings will not get to right the wrongs of last season’s playoff heartbreaker as I think Green Bay is just a bit better team. The issue here is all about home-field advantage. Whoever ends up winning the NFC North should be able to win this game.

Seattle (5) def. Dallas (4) – Three out of four away teams winning in the Wild-Card round. I am sure this isn’t something new. But instead of being lazy I will check on the last time this happened. What am I talking about, I don’t need to check. Last year, ALL FOUR AWAY TEAMS won the Wild-Card round games. So this isn’t unprecedented. Also, Dallas will easily be the worst NFC division champ of the bunch (and may be the worst NFL playoff team period this season).

AFC Divisional Playoffs

Pittsburgh (1) def. Oakland (6) – Many might say this would be a Steelers rout. I am not so sure. I think the Raiders (yes, the Raiders!) have set themselves up to be quite a good team over the next few years as long as they can keep all their key cogs. So I believe this would be a very close affair but playing in Pittsburgh has to be considered a huge advantage to the Fighting Tomlins.

Cincinnati (5) def. New England (2) – OK hear me out here. Cincinnati has done their best to do horrible things in the playoffs. And when they win, they usually sneak by another snake-bitten team like the Texans. This may be their year though. Andy Dalton will look like a million bucks and become a quasi-God (in southern Ohio) if he pulls this out. I think he will but it will be very close. Plus they have to contend with Brady and the massive chip that will be on his shoulder thanks to the early season suspension.

NFC Divisional Playoffs

Arizona (1) def. Seattle (5) – There may not be a more complete team than the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL this season. Gone are the days of 56-49 victories because their defense suck-diddly-ucked. They should be able to handle the Seahawks pretty easily here.

Green Bay (3) def. Carolina (2) – In what should be another close game, I think the extremely easy schedule the Panthers should face this season will come back to bite them as I can’t see them being prepared enough for a Packers team who will have gone through a grind just to get to this point. Home field advantage means nothing here really and the Pack should move on.

AFC Championship

Cincinnati (5) def. Pittsburgh (1) – I can honestly say there will probably be nobody out there picking these two teams to make it to the AFC Championship. And if they somehow did, 11 out of 10 people would pick the Steelers to win because the Bengals in the Super Bowl without Boomer Esiason? No chance. But I think it will happen. Dalton will play out of his ever-loving mind and somehow get this team to the promised land, much to the chagrin of the NFL since Cincinnati isn’t exactly a huge market.

NFC Championship

Arizona (1) def. Green Bay (3) – Speaking of getting to the promised land, not since the long ago days of Kurt Warner (just kidding it was about a decade ago) have the Cards been in the situation where they have a truly legitimate chance to make it to the Super Bowl. Well Cardinals fans rejoice since I think your team has got what it takes to make it to the Big Dance by knocking off the pesky Packers in the NFC Championship game.

Super Bowl (Jet) LI

It will be interesting if the NFL goes with numbers instead of Roman numerals again this season. Or a mathematical equation. Who knows. Anyway:

Arizona (1) def. Cincinnati (5) – I think it’s the Cardinals’ year this year. Finally. First Super Bowl win. You know, the one they should have got over the Steelers if it wasn’t for that ill-fated pick six at the end of the first half that ended up being EXTREMELY important at the end when the Steelers won by 4 on a last-minute touchdown.

Alright there you go. All done for another season. Wait, no I will have schedules as well once the NFL season commences. But before that…

This Friday is the first college football game of the season. Cal faces Hawaii in Sydney, Australia for some unknown reason. Anyway, for specialty pack subscribers, this should be on there. I haven’t seen it yet (as of about 7 this morning). If it doesn’t show up by tomorrow night I might have to start my 12-times yearly ritual of contacting Bell to see what the hell is going on. That is followed by the FCS Kickoff game the next night as Charleston Southern travels to the Woodchipper to face Future Mountain West Conference member North Dakota State. Then finally (FINALLY!) the season really kicks into gear next Thursday and goes into the best opening weekend possibly ever in college football history. We have finally arrived! Our long national nightmare of no college football is over once again.

Bowl Game TV Schedule

Posted on December 9, 2015 by guelphbossman

2016 national championship

It’s that time of year. It’s BOWL GAME SEASON! But I totally agree with the fact that there are too many bowls. The fact that there are three 5-7 teams in bowl games is bad enough. The worst has to be the fact that there are forty bowl games and one is stuck with an inter-conference matchup. They couldn’t figure out a way to not have this happen with about 60% of the teams involved? That’s insane. I wish they would take an objective look at this (they being the NCAA and most importantly, ESPN) and do the following:

Take anywhere from 5-10 bowls away. There are too many. My reasoning is not because there are 5-7 teams involved (although that’s a small part of it). It more has to do with the fact that some games are on at stupid times. To have a game on a weekday a few days before Christmas in the middle of the afternoon is beyond asinine. During the week (except for Christmas Day), if a bowl game is on a weekday, it should start no earlier than 5:00 on the east coast. Fuck the people of the west coast and being three hours behind. You guys get to watch the late, late games and have them done around 11:00 while us suckers on the east coast are up until 2 in the morning. This is our payback.
Only allow bowl tie-ins in the following ways: for Power Five conferences, they have four tie-ins; for Group of Five conferences, they have three. Beyond that, everything is at-large. On Selection Sunday (we didn’t get it here in Canada but it sounded boring as shit), have representatives from all the bowls with no tie-ins (or only one tie-in) go through a random draw a la the NBA Draft. Then once the order is determined, each spot gets five minutes to make their team selection. Talk about adding a bit of excitement to the proceedings. All of a sudden, a ton more eyeballs may be on the Cure Bowl because they somehow nabbed USC and Georgia, for example, rather than what they have now (no offense to San Jose State and Georgia State).
Put more games on network television. I know ESPN is the KING OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL but it would be nice to spread the wealth around. Having a game on American Sports Network (MyTV out of Buffalo) is a good thing because it spreads things around. I wish they had another game or two on ABC and another game on CBS. Just a few. And for fuck’s sake, if CBS is doing the Sun Bowl can you please make it so an SEC West team has to go there. Send a Big XII team there as well. Or a Conference USA team. Having an ACC vs. Pac-12 match matchup there makes no sense in El Paso on the network that shows the SEC Game of the Week. Did no one think this through?

I have more issues but those are the major ones that, I believe, would help immensely with the cash-grab known as bowl season. Don’t even get me started with all the swag the students get. How in the hell is that OK, yet any other time if a student-athlete accepts four French fries he’s banned for life from the NCAA? What a joke.

Anyway, here is the schedule. I will do a little explaining on it below:

December 19	New Mexico Bowl (Arizona vs. New Mexico)	2:00 PM	TSN2
December 19	Las Vegas Bowl (BYU vs. Utah)	3:30 PM	ABC
December 19	Camellia Bowl (Appalachian State vs. Ohio)	5:30 PM	TSN2
December 19	Cure Bowl (Georgia State vs. San Jose State)	7:00 PM	CBSSN
December 19	New Orleans Bowl (Arkansas State vs. Louisiana Tech)	9:00 PM	TSN2
December 21	Miami Beach Bowl (USF vs. Western Kentucky)	2:30 PM	SP
December 22	Idaho Potato Bowl (Akron vs. Utah State)	3:30 PM	TSN2
December 22	Boca Raton Bowl (Temple vs. Toledo)	7:00 PM	TSN2
December 23	Poinsettia Bowl (Boise State vs. Northern Illinois)	4:30 PM	TSN*
December 23	GoDaddy Bowl (Bowling Green vs. Georgia Southern)	8:00 PM	TSN*
December 24	Bahamas Bowl (Middle Tennessee vs. Western Michigan)	12:00 PM	TSN4/TSN5
December 24	Hawaii Bowl (Cincinnati vs. San Diego State)	8:00 PM	SP
December 26	St. Petersburg Bowl (Connecticut vs. Marshall)	11:00 AM	SP
December 26	Sun Bowl (Miami vs. Washington State)	2:00 PM	CBS
December 26	Heart of Dallas Bowl (Southern Miss vs. Washington)	2:20 PM	SP
December 26	Pinstripe Bowl (Duke vs. Indiana)	3:30 PM	ABC
December 26	Independence Bowl (Tulsa vs. Virginia Tech)	5:45 PM	TSN2
December 26	Foster Farms Bowl (Nebraska vs. UCLA)	9:15 PM	TSN2
December 28	Military Bowl (Navy vs. Pittsburgh)	2:30 PM	SP
December 28	Quick Lane Bowl (Central Michigan vs. Minnesota)	5:00 PM	SP
December 29	Armed Forces Bowl (Air Force vs. California)	2:00 PM	SP
December 29	Russell Athletic Bowl (Baylor vs. North Carolina)	5:30 PM	TSN2
December 29	Arizona Bowl (Colorado State vs. Nevada)	7:30 PM	MyTV
December 29	Texas Bowl (LSU vs. Texas Tech)	9:00 PM	TSN2
December 30	Birmingham Bowl (Auburn vs. Memphis)	12:00 PM	SP
December 30	Belk Bowl (Mississippi State vs. NC State)	3:30 PM	SP
December 30	Music City Bowl (Louisville vs. Texas A&M)	7:00 PM	SP
December 30	Holiday Bowl (USC vs. Wisconsin)	10:30 PM	TSN1/TSN3
December 31	Peach Bowl (Florida State vs. Houston)	12:00 PM	SP
December 31	Orange Bowl (Clemson vs. Oklahoma)	4:00 PM	TSN*
December 31	Cotton Bowl (Alabama vs. Michigan State)	8:00 PM	TSN1/TSN4/TSN5
January 01	Outback Bowl (Northwestern vs. Tennessee)	12:00 PM	TSN4/TSN5
January 01	Citrus Bowl (Florida vs. Michigan)	1:00 PM	ABC/TSN2
January 01	Fiesta Bowl (Notre Dame vs. Ohio State)	1:00 PM	TSN1/TSN3
January 01	Rose Bowl (Iowa vs. Stanford)	5:00 PM	TSN*
January 01	Sugar Bowl (Oklahoma State vs. Ole Miss)	8:30 PM	TSN*
January 02	TaxSlayer Bowl (Georgia vs. Penn State)	12:00 PM	SP
January 02	Liberty Bowl (Arkansas vs. Kansas State)	3:20 PM	TSN2
January 02	Alamo Bowl (Oregon vs. TCU)	6:45 PM	TSN*
January 02	Cactus Bowl (Arizona State vs. West Virginia)	10:15 PM	TSN*
January 11	National Championship Game (Orange winner vs. Cotton winner)	8:30 PM	TSN*

You’ll notice some games have TSN with an asterisk beside it. At this point, TSN has not given out information on which of the five stations they will put these games on. Here is what I believe will happen:

December 23^rd – I assume both the Poinsettia Bowl and the GoDaddy Bowl will end up on TSN2.
December 31^st – The Orange Bowl will probably end up on the same stations as the Cotton Bowl afterwards, namely TSNs 1, 4, and 5.
January 1^st – The Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are both on ESPN in the States. So is the Fiesta Bowl earlier in the day. That game is on TSN1 and TSN3. My best guess is that the Rose and Sugar will end up there as well.
January 2^nd – The Liberty Bowl is on in the middle of the afternoon on TSN2. The Alamo Bowl and Cactus Bowl follow and should follow suit (TSN2 as well).
January 11^th – With nothing else up against it, the national championship should be on at least three TSNs if not four.

I will update the actual schedule once these stations are announced and confirmed.

As for this weekend, we still have some action. The Army-Navy game is on CBS this Saturday, starting at 3:00. Also, we have two FCS quarter-final games on the specialty packs. Charleston Southern faces off against the #1-ranked FCS team, Jacksonville State (who almost upset Auburn earlier this season). That game is Friday night at 8:00. Saturday at noon it’s Northern Iowa playing the four-time defending champion North Dakota State Bison. Update: Colgate-Sam Houston State has been added at 8:00 Saturday night on the specialty packs. As far as I can tell it is in SD only. Update #2: Colgate-SHSU is already over. It was played at noon. So I don’t know why this is appearing at 8:00 on the guide. If it does show, it’s a replay. So yes, a bit of a lull this weekend before we get hit with bowl game madness starting the following Saturday.

Week 12 College Football TV Schedule – Sponsored by “That” week in the SEC schedule

Posted on November 19, 2015 by guelphbossman

sec-football-03

I have harped on this before but I feel that every year I should help pile on to the vitriol that the SEC gets for the schedule the week before American Thanksgiving. It is such a god-awful schedule, it boggles the mind. I truly believe that there should be no FCS games in November at all. I even hate them in October but the way scheduling can be, sometimes they have to be that way. However, in my opinion, pretty much all FBS vs. FCS games should be in September (or August if the season starts then). From here on, until this changes, I hope the best SEC team at the time blows a gasket and either loses against an FCS team or barely wins, making The Committee drop them in the CFP rankings. It will serve them right for this horseshit. I don’t care about the whole “Well, the SEC has the toughest schedule in the land.” Overall, perhaps. But this type of scheduling doesn’t help their cause. So the motto should be “Say no to scheduling FCS teams (in November).”

Alright, this is a good week to have to PVR the games. The worst week of November (and most of October as well) considering the quality of games goes down the shitter (in some conferences…except the Big XII and their backloading craziness). I don’t understand how it is always like this but it is. I am not saying there aren’t a few big games (because there are a few huge ones and I will get to that in a moment) but compared to next week (or last week) it is definitely lacking.

Let’s begin with the easy part…the cable schedule:

			ROGERS	FIBE	SATELLITE
East Carolina at UCF (Thu)	7:30 PM	TSN2	X	X	X
Cincinnati at USF (Fri)	8:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
#12 Michigan at Penn State	12:00 PM	ABC/TSN4	X	X	X
Princeton at Dartmouth	12:00 PM	MyTV	X	X
Indiana at Maryland	12:00 PM	BTN	X
Rutgers at Army	12:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Purdue at #5 Iowa	12:00 PM	TSN2	X	X	X
Syracuse at NC State	12:30 PM	WSBK	X	X	X
#9 Michigan State at #3 Ohio State	3:30 PM	ABC/TSN4	X	X	X
#20 Northwestern at #25 Wisconsin	3:30 PM	BTN	X
#15 LSU at #22 Ole Miss	3:30 PM	CBS	X	X	X
Buffalo at Akron	3:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Wake Forest at #1 Clemson	3:30 PM	TSN2	X	X	X
UCLA at #13 Utah	3:30 PM	FOX	X	X	X
#16 Navy at Tulsa	7:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Mississippi State at Arkansas	7:00 PM	TSN4	X	X	X
#10 Baylor at #6 Oklahoma State	7:30 PM	FOX	X	X	X
#18 TCU at #7 Oklahoma	8:00 PM	ABC/TSN3	X	X	X
San Diego State at UNLV	10:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X

Quite a few games again as TSN is stepping up. The only thing that irks me a bit is the fact they tend to simsub ABC games a lot. Saying that, I am still glad they show their fair share of games. The biggest games seem to also be on the cable schedule this week as well so that should make non-specialty pack people very happy (as this is not always the case).

And herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre comes the shitshow (specialty pack schedule):

		ROGERS	FIBE	SATELLITE
ULM at Texas State (Thu)	9:30 PM	X
Air Force at Boise State (Fri)	9:30 PM	X
#17 North Carolina at Virginia Tech	12:00 PM	X	X	X
#21 Memphis at Temple	12:00 PM	X	X	X
Florida Atlantic at #8 Florida	12:00 PM		X	X
The Citadel at South Carolina	12:00 PM		X	X
Georgia Tech at Miami	12:30 PM	X	X	X
Chattanooga at #14 Florida State	3:00 PM		X	X
#24 USC at #23 Oregon	3:30 PM	X	X	X
#19 Houston at Connecticut	3:30 PM	X	X	X
Idaho at Auburn	4:00 PM		X	X
Charleston Southern at #2 Alabama	4:00 PM		X	X
Georgia Southern at Georgia	7:00 PM	X	X	X
Tennessee at Missouri	7:15 PM	X	X	X
Charlotte at Kentucky	7:30 PM		X	X
Texas A&M at Vanderbilt	7:30 PM		X	X
California at #11 Stanford	10:30 PM	X	X	X
Colorado at Washington State	10:45 PM	X	X	X

Shitshow is probably putting it mildly. They don’t even have slots open for some of the games this weekend. Ridiculous. OK let’s go through the carnage here:

The two SEC Network games at 4:00 are not shown on either of the Bell guides (Fibe or Satellite). However, the slots are there so they will be put in eventually (hopefully not Saturday morning). The same goes with the SEC Network Alternate at 7:30 (Charlotte-Kentucky) but I can see it not airing as well.
The Noon, 3:30, and 10:30 ESPN games are not showing up anywhere, but again, there is a slot open for them. The same cannot be said for the Noon ESPNU game between Memphis and Temple. Mysteriously, it is nowhere to be found. I just don’t get it.
The same thing can be said for the ACC Network alternate game and the FOX Sports Net ACC game in the middle of the afternoon. These are two games that are not anywhere on the guides and may never show up at all. We may not know this until Saturday morning (or even into Saturday afternoon since they “don’t get the guide info on time”…yeah right).

UPDATE: All games are appearing (for the most part) on the guides. UTC-FSU still not appearing on Rogers guide as of now. Also, with Fibe there are some issues with the HD channels. No guide information for the 3:30 games. No issues with the games on the SD channels.

The GOTW

#9 Michigan State at #3 Ohio State (3:30, ABC/TSN4) – I’d love to say this is the game that decides the Big Ten East. But it’s not true. Michigan (and technically, Penn State) are lurking in the weeds, waiting for the results of this one. Penn State needs a lot of help but Michigan basically has to win this week, then beat Ohio State and they are going to Indianapolis and will put the CFP on its ear again. I still think tOSU will win this one (being at The Shoe and all) but it should be a close affair.

#10 Baylor at #6 Oklahoma State (7:30, FOX) – Another game in the Big XII Round-Robin Backload Extravaganza Party. This conference better hope one team emerges from this demolition derby. I have this bad feeling that the Big XII’s conference champion will have one loss. Well, bad for them. Good for the 47 expansion candidates.

#18 TCU at #7 Oklahoma (8:00, ABC/TSN3) – Another game in the Big XII Round-Robin, oh you know the deal here. Basically, if Oklahoma wins here and the Pokes win down the road in Stillwater, Bedlam becomes a MASSIVE game and will, in all likelihood, be the ABC Saturday Night game. This means Oklahoma will have three consecutive appearances on ABC Saturday Night. That has to be a record.

#15 LSU at #22 Ole Miss (3:30, CBS) – Two teams who have taken big steps backwards, allowing Alabama to control its own destiny (Bama plays the mighty Charleston Southern Buccaneers on Saturday by the way). The winner still has a slim chance of getting into the New Year’s Six. The loser may be lucky to go to the TaxSlayer Bowl.

#20 Northwestern at #25 Wisconsin (3:30, BTN) – Everyone is basically looking up at Iowa in the Big Ten West. The chances of either of these teams catching the Hawkeyes is almost none. They have to hope for chaos above them to even make the New Year’s Six. Tough times for two teams that, for the most part, have done very well this season but hiccupped at the absolute wrong time.

#24 USC at #23 Oregon (3:30, specialty pack) – The only game of the week on the specialty pack. This could still be big if Stanford falters against Cal and the Ducks pick up the win here. USC still fighting for the Pac-12 South which would be crazy if they ended up winning. If they do, I have a feeling Clay Helton moves up the list of potential permanent head coaches for the Trojans next season.

If I Threw Down Some Money

I would probably be broke. Here are my picks for this week:

Ohio State over Michigan State

Baylor over Oklahoma State (commence the Big XII chaos)

Oklahoma over TCU

Ole Miss over LSU (LSU’s first three-game losing streak in a loooooooong time)

Wisconsin over Northwestern (mini-upset)

Oregon over USC

North Carolina over Virginia Tech (I think Tech may keep the Heels under 50)

Michigan over Penn State

Houston over Connecticut

UCLA over Utah (another mini-upset)

As you will have noticed, Boston College-Notre Dame in Fenway Park is nowhere to be found. That’s because it has been relegated to NBC Sports Network which no one gets in this area (and why the hell would you get it? It looks like a really shitty sports channel). Why was this moved there? NBC wanted to put one Irish game there and figured this was the worst of the bunch (I would have moved the Wake Forest or UMass game myself but anyway). Watch it be an awesome game and BC take Touchdown Jesus to the wire.

Alright, two games tonight, two games tomorrow night. And the worst uniforms in NFL history tonight (which is saying a lot).