The ALL-NEW Mock NFL Draft Version 2 Dash 2024 along with a look-back

Posted on March 23, 2024 by guelphbossman

That intro sounds like when The (Big Money!) Match Game 1976 would air on Game Show Network. Why did they need to put the year in? When people were watching it live, were they so fucking stoned that they had to be reminded what year it was?

Anyway, I am starting this post a couple days after Selection Sunday. Now I am not an avid college basketball watcher but I know they screwed some of these picks up. And remember, when a conference gets a team in, they get more money. That’s important. The ACC got five teams in and Virginia was one of them and they may be one of the worst at-large choices ever. A few teams that were left out, most notably Oklahoma and Indiana State, were, by most metrics, better choices. But the ACC is THE big basketball brand and only having four teams in would look disastrous. Fully deserved, mind you. But still disastrous. Luckily, I don’t care as much as I do with college football but these tournament committees are fucking terrible in every sport.

Let’s get to the root of this post: the next mock draft. I know…two mock drafts before the end of March? Haven’t done that in quite a while. And, of course, quite a bit changed thanks to the Kreepy Kombine and scouts changing their minds as much as they change their underwear (so about once every four days). Here’s the newest mock draft, now expanded to two rounds for your pleasure.

First Round

1	Chicago	Caleb Williams, QB (USC)
2	Washington	Drake Maye, QB (North Carolina)
3	New England	Jayden Daniels, QB (LSU)
4	Arizona	Marvin Harrison Jr., WR (Ohio State)
5	LA Chargers	Byron Murphy II, DT (Texas)
6	NY Giants	Dallas Turner, EDGE (Alabama)
7	Tennessee	Joe Alt, OT (Notre Dame)
8	Atlanta	Malik Nabers, WR (LSU)
9	Chicago	Rome Odunze, WR (Washington)
10	NY Jets	Olu Fashanu, OT (Penn State)
11	Minnesota	Laiatu Latu, DE (UCLA)
12	Denver	Jared Verse, DE (Florida State)
13	Las Vegas	Quinyon Mitchell, CB (Toledo)
14	New Orleans	Brian Thomas Jr., WR (LSU)
15	Indianapolis	Nate Wiggins, CB (Clemson)
16	Seattle	Bo Nix, QB (Oregon)
17	Jacksonville	Terrion Arnold, CB (Alabama)
18	Cincinnati	Brock Bowers, TE (Georgia)
19	LA Rams	Cooper DeJean, S (Iowa)
20	Pittsburgh	Troy Fautanu, OG (Washington)
21	Miami	Kris Jenkins, DT (Michigan)
22	Philadelphia	Xavier Worthy, WR (Texas)
23	Houston	Jer’Zhan Newton, DT (Illinois)
24	Dallas	Jackson Powers-Johnson, OG (Oregon)
25	Green Bay	Graham Barton, OG (Duke)
26	Tampa Bay	J.J. McCarthy, QB (Michigan)
27	Arizona	Zach Frazier, OG (West Virginia)
28	Buffalo	Tyler Nubin, S (Minnesota)
29	Detroit	Darius Robinson, EDGE (Minnesota)
30	Baltimore	Adonai Mitchell, WR (Texas)
31	San Francisco	Taliese Fuaga, OT (Oregon State)
32	Kansas City	J.C. Latham, OT (Alabama)

Second Round

33	Carolina	Chop Robinson, EDGE (Penn State)
34	New England	Tyler Guyton, OT (Oklahoma)
35	Arizona	Kool-Aid McKinstry, CB (Alabama)
36	Washington	Xavier Legette, WR (South Carolina)
37	LA Chargers	Kamari Lassiter, CB (Georgia)
38	Tennessee	Cam Hart, CB (Notre Dame)
39	NY Giants	Michael Hall Jr., DT (Ohio State)
40	Washington	Payton Wilson, LB (NC State)
41	Green Bay	Amarius Mims, OT (Georgia)
42	Minnesota	Michael Penix Jr., QB (Washington)
43	Atlanta	Ennis Rakestraw Jr., CB (Missouri)
44	Las Vegas	Jordan Morgan, OT (Arizona)
45	New Orleans	Kingsley Suamataia, OT (BYU)
46	Indianapolis	Kamren Kinchens, S (Miami)
47	NY Giants	T.J. Tampa, CB (Iowa State)
48	Jacksonville	Ladd McConkey, WR (Georgia)
49	Cincinnati	Keon Coleman, WR (Florida State)
50	Philadelphia	Chris Braswell, EDGE (Alabama)
51	Pittsburgh	Edgerrin Cooper, LB (Texas A&M)
52	LA Rams	Bralen Trice, EDGE (Washington)
53	Philadelphia	Mike Sainristil, CB (Michigan)
54	Cleveland	Braden Fiske, DT (Florida State)
55	Miami	Troy Franklin, WR (Oregon)
56	Dallas	Paul Patrick, OT (Houston)
57	Tampa Bay	Cooper Beebe, OG (Kansas State)
58	Green Bay	Javon Bullard, S (Georgia)
59	Houston	Roman Wilson, WR (Michigan)
60	Buffalo	T’Vondre Sweat, DT (Texas)
61	Detroit	Christian Haynes, OG (UConn)
62	Baltimore	Ruke Orhorhoro, DT (Clemson)
63	San Francisco	Marshawn Kneeland, EDGE (Western Michigan)
64	Kansas City	Ricky Pearsall, WR (Florida)

Are there some changes? Absolutely? Are they Earth-shattering? Not really. Although you can expect at least one of these current second-rounders to rocket up draft boards for reasons that are sometimes, well, unknown or make no sense. By this point teams should know what they see in a player. So unless that player does something negative, they shouldn’t go from a consensus low-second rounder to a mid-first round pick in a matter of a little over a month. But hey, what do I know.

Also, what is with the sudden J.J. McCarthy hype? It has that feel of some people wanting McCarthy to go higher so they are basically willing it to happen. Any team that would consider drafting McCarthy in the Top 10 is obviously fine with extreme risk. Not saying McCarthy won’t end up being good but his college career has shown nothing that says he will be a top-end starter.

OK so years ago (nine to be exact), I used part of a mock draft post to talk about sites I enjoy. And it was definitely also about helping my blog in a way since I was still pretty green at the time (two years in). Let’s look back and see if I still feel the same way about these sites.

Matt’s College Sports Media Blog – Along with Matt’s College Sports on TV is still the premier site for college football and college basketball TV scheduling news and notes. I think he still likes Formula One racing which is great if you like that. He’s also a Bills fan which is pretty damn awesome.

Phil Steele – Still the best college football preview magazine. There are other good ones out there but nothing comes close. And his site fills in the gaps. I am assuming many hardcore college football fans subscribe to his site to get a lot of great stats and gambling info. I tried it for a couple of years and it was almost overwhelming. Still…worth it just to peruse all the free stuff he does put up, which is a lot.

A Rouge Point – This site does not exist anymore. Actually, it ceased to exist not even a year after I published this original post. It’s too bad since it was a great look at sports media coverage in Canada and posted NFL and NHL schedules for Canadian viewers.

Deadspin – Speaking of sites that are no longer around, this site might as well be. At one point it was one of the great sports sites on the net. It wasn’t long after I made the original post that things started to go downhill. A site that used to be brash and willing to take on all comers became a bunch of writers who thought they were the moral compass of a good portion of the Internet (especially sports fans). Even their best writers became insufferable. Then they all got fired/walked out in late 2019 when a company told them to stick to sports which made the site even worse. Now, it looks like they have been bought out, the staff was fired (again) and they look to be getting into the sports gambling industry. Ugh.

Awful Announcing – A site that used to absolutely skewer announcers (and sometimes athletes and sports organizations in general) has gone away from their bread and butter. They still throw up the occasional great article but aren’t as good as they were in their heyday.

LSUfootball.net – The first site I came upon when figuring out the sheer amount of games available for college football viewing…in the United States. Still a very informative site.

Alright another mock draft and post in the books. I assume most of you have March Madness brackets going. Chances of me going perfect ended at the end of the first game and I’ve already lost one of my Final Four picks. Good times. Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!

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!

ALL. THE. SCHEDULES!!!!

Posted on July 9, 2023 by guelphbossman

OK not all the schedules but quite a few. I mean there’s some I may not even take a guess at.

Just like last year I am going to put all my schedule predictions in one long-ass post. So wait until you have to take an absolute monster of a shit before taking this one into the bathroom to read. Let’s go!

This is a crazy transition year for CBS. Out with the old (SEC) and in with the new (Big Ten). A few sprinkles (Mountain West) and you have a brand new college football sundae. Sorry fans, Gary Danielson, as far as I can tell, is still around. Worst part is we have heard him be one of the best analysts in the business. More often than not, though, he goes off on some stupid tangent that ends up with him declaring he has a college football boner for Bama.

As is the norm, I will let you know which games are confirmed. The ones that are not…well, some of them will be right because it makes sense and the rest will be not right because one or both of the teams I predicted to play at that time or not nearly as good as I thought they would be and/or I’m an idiot. So let’s start this bizarrely stupid puzzle and follow it with some It Just Means More Sweet Tea Analysis (which may or may not contain grits):

It Just Means More (Games other than the SEC on CBS) Analysis:

I feel like I shouldn’t have to remind you but in all these tables, a game in bold means it has been confirmed. Not bold? Bossman used his dumb brain to try and figure it out.
The appearance list will look a bit different this time as it will have a few conferences involved so let’s start with the SEC appearances:
- 5 times – Alabama, Georgia
- 3 times – Ole Miss, LSU
- 2 times – Kentucky, Arkansas, Auburn, Tennessee
- 1 time – South Carolina, Mississippi State, Florida, Missouri
- No times – Vanderbilt, Texas A&M
Wait, WHAT? No TAMU on CBS? Wow, I honestly didn’t notice until now when I started breaking out the different schedules. Crazy. I guess they will have to prove it this season to maybe get on late in the year.
Now we have the Big Ten appearance list:
- 3 times – Iowa
- 2 times – Ohio State, Rutgers, Penn State, Nebraska
- 1 time – Indiana, Northwestern, Michigan, Purdue, Maryland, Minnesota
- No times – Michigan State, Wisconsin, Illinois
I look at these numbers and can glean….well, nothing from it. Wisconsin is good and appears no times and Rutgers appears twice. However, tOSU also appears twice and Michigan State doesn’t appear at all. Seems all very random. Which could very well be the case at least for this first season.
I’m not going to get into the Mountain West game count since there aren’t enough games to see any trends.
The Army-Navy game heads to New England for the first time ever. Foxborough gets the game this year and I like this idea. Not saying they have to move it around all over the place but every two or three years to take it out of Philly is a smart move.

What is ABC going to do for this one season without the Big Ten and with the SEC showing up in 2024? They will have to lean heavily on the other three Power Five conferences to carry the load, especially when it comes to the primetime schedule. Don’t worry though: there are enough good teams in these conferences to fill most of these spots where it looks like the network won’t have missed a beat. Then next year, might as well pencil (or pen…or Sharpie) the SEC in for the majority of those primetime games.

But hey we haven’t hit 2024 yet. It’s still 2023 so let’s get to the ESPN on ABC regular season college football schedule for the FBS for this season. I will follow it up with some Power(ful) Two Thoughts:

Power(ful) Two Thoughts

Once again, ABC puts on a mega-matchup on the night before Labour Day. LSU-FSU, if it is anything like last year’s game, should be a massive ratings success. Oh and also a game that could shape the entire college football season.
With the Big Ten saying adios to ESPN/ABC, the primetime slots really opened up. I expect the ACC to pick up most of those times the Big Ten has left behind with the Big XII and Pac-12 coming in just behind. Right now I have 6 ACC primetime games, 5 Pac-12, and 4 Big XII. Even if I’m wrong with which games go where I see this being pretty equitable.
I am not doing a TSN schedule because there is no point right now. TSN struggles to get anything that’s not the CFL scheduled out more than a couple of weeks. Right now I have 23 ABC games that would be simulcast on TSN. That seems high but I am going off of last year’s numbers and it was actually very close to that. So we shall see.
I am calling for three games to be on Black Friday on ABC. Miami-BC at Noon and TTU-UT at 7:30 are set. I think they select an American conference game in the middle so that there isn’t a gap in the middle of the day with nothing to show AND to fulfill the American’s contract. Now watch it not happen at all that way.
First few weeks are confirmed but that’s pretty much it. The rest is a bit of a crapshoot. Also, if you couldn’t tell Week 2 was a pretty bad week, look at the ABC schedule. Woof. Wisky-Wazzu as the primetime game? Ouch. It’s been a while since there has been that poor a game for the ABC Saturday Night game.
Finally it’s time for the conference breakdown. Remember I am doing things slightly differently. Every time a team appears, they get counted as an appearance. So Miami-Boston College, for example, counts as two appearances for the ACC. Here we go:
- ACC – 37 (including conference championship)
- Big XII – 29 (including conference championship)
- Pac-12 – 12 (including conference championship)
- AAC – 5 (including conference championship)
- SEC – 5
- Notre Dame – 4
- FCS – 2
- Mountain West – 1
- Big Ten – 1
The ACC is really picking up the slack here. The Big XII is not all that far behind and, ho boy, is the Pac-12 lagging here. Problem is other than their top five teams I don’t feel right putting the rest of the teams in any of the ABC timeslots and that includes Colorado. Also, I have not included bowl tie-ins here because we know that bowls break them all the time.
Speaking of bowl games, ABC has SEVEN this time! That’s great! A step in the right direction. I still think the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl should move back to ABC as well but that’s just my opinion (and the opinion of a lot of other people).

For quite a long time it felt like there was quite a drop-off in play-by-play prowess after GUS JOHNSON. But now with Jason Benetti cemented as the number two man, you know you have two solidly called games every week on FOX. Tim Brando is the #3 guy and is pretty good although I still think it would be great to hear him back in the studio.

OK so the Big Ten is a bit more in with FOX meaning the Big XII and Pac-12 might suffer because of that. Let’s find out! Here’s the predicted 2023 FOX college football broadcast schedule followed by some Johnsonian rhetoric.

SOME JOHNSONIAN RHETORIC…..WOAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So FOX has abandoned putting a game on Labour Day for putting a game on the Thursday before it. Interesting. Not a bad strategy as they can try and get a jump start on the season. Sure Florida-Utah could get more eyeballs but starting with a Big Ten conference game? That will get their fair share of looks for sure.
With the Big Ten leaving ESPN/ABC, it means most of their big games will land on FOX. That is a huge coup for the network. Couple that with the few huge games out of the Big XII and Pac-12 and you can finally, honestly, put their Big Noon Saturday schedule up against ABC’s Saturday Primetime schedule. Of course that may all change next year when ESPN/ABC gets the SEC. But for one year, let’s savour this.
FOX only going with two Black Friday games again this season and they are both confirmed. And it is two huge games (or could be). TCU-OU could be for a spot in the Big XII Championship. Same with the Civil War game between Oregon State and Oregon. I guess they will be moving WWE Smackdown to FS1 for this night which I’m sure won’t upset wrestling fans in the least.
Conference breakdown time! Remember, a conference game I am counting as two appearances for that conference:
- Big XII – 32
- Big Ten – 30 (including conference championship)
- Pac-12 – 17
Shockingly, the Big XII has moved to the top of the list. Now, this has more to do with the Big Ten moving some games to NBC and CBS than anything but still, it proves that the Big XII carries a bit more weight than the Pac-12 these days.
I have no Mountain West games on the main FOX network. They have quite a few on FOX Sports One, though. I don’t know if FOX’s strategy is to eventually put more than the MWC conference championship on the main network or if they just stay the way they are. I suspect starting next year we will see at least a couple of Mountain West games on the main network, especially when there’s a quadrupleheader.
And speaking of quadrupleheaders, I have a feeling we will see two of them just like last season. One is confirmed for Week 2 and I believe the other will land, just like last year, during Week 11. I love the quadrupleheader idea, especially if you only do it twice since it feels special.
FOX has only one bowl game and it is the only bowl game, at this time, without a confirmed date. The Holiday Bowl, I believe, will end up on December 27th but that is definitely subject to change.
I honestly don’t know what will happen come October with the MLB playoffs. I know during the early rounds, FOX tends not to be used nearly as much as FS1 for their baseball games. Come World Series time though, expect FOX to scale back on college football broadcasting windows.

Alright let’s get to the Notre Dame on NBC sched…WAIT JUST A MINUTE! THAT’S THE BIG TEN’S MUSIC!!!!

For the first time in a loooooooooooong time, Notre Dame will share NBC’s college football coverage with other teams under other contracts. The Big Ten will have games almost every week on the network and usually in primetime going forward. So yeah, this will be the longest NBC schedule I will ever predict unless the network really goes all-in with college football and invites another party (COUGH*Pac-12*COUGH) in to the pool. Let’s get to it!

Touchdown Jesus, Meet Purdue Pete

Look, it’s not like the Irish haven’t seen Big Ten teams before. They play at least one every year and probably will until the Earth explodes. But sharing the entire network with them? I have a feeling this may impact Notre Dame’s next contract talks with NBC which will start soon with the contract ending at the conclusion of the 2025 season.
Only two primetime Notre Dame games this season but they add a game during Week Zero against Navy over in Ireland. I have the Big Ten moving their game to Noon when the Irish are on in primetime.
As for the Big Ten, let’s look at the breakdown:
- 4 times – Penn State, Purdue, Michigan State
- 3 times – Michigan
- 2 times – Maryland, Ohio State
- 1 time – Northwestern, Illinois, Iowa, Rutgers, Indiana, Wisconsin, Northwestern
- No times – Nebraska
I think more so than the CBS breakdown for the Big Ten, the better teams, for the most part, will appear on NBC more often. I believe that will be the case going forward as well.

Let’s be honest here: nothing much will change for this network. It’s not like they will all of a sudden be showing Michigan-Ohio State. Saying that, it’s one of the channels you almost need to complete your college football viewing experience. I don’t want to speak for anyone else but I love watching close finishes, regardless of the game, so if Rutgers and Northwestern are going down to the wire, I want to watch that shit. Alright let’s get to my projected schedule:

September 2nd	Fresno State at Purdue	Noon
September 2nd	Towson at Maryland	3:30 PM
September 2nd	Toledo at Illinois	7:30 PM
September 8th	Indiana State at Indiana	7:00 PM
September 9th	Youngstown State at Ohio State	Noon
September 9th	UTEP at Northwestern	3:30 PM
September 9th	Richmond at Michigan State	3:30 PM
September 9th	Eastern Michigan at Minnesota	7:30 PM
September 9th	Temple at Rutgers	7:30 PM
September 16th	Louisville vs. Indiana (in Indianapolis)	Noon
September 16th	Georgia Southern at Wisconsin	Noon
September 16th	Western Michigan at Iowa	3:30 PM
September 16th	Virginia Tech at Rutgers	3:30 PM
September 16th	Bowling Green at Michigan	7:30 PM
September 21st	Louisiana Tech at Nebraska	7:30 PM
September 23rd	Akron at Indiana	Noon
September 23rd	Maryland at Michigan State	3:30 PM
September 23rd	Florida Atlantic at Illinois	7:30 PM
September 30th	Louisiana at Minnesota	Noon
September 30th	Wagner at Rutgers	3:30 PM
September 30th	Indiana at Maryland	7:30 PM
October 7th	Howard at Northwestern	3:00 PM
October 14th	Iowa at Wisconsin	Noon
October 14th	UMass at Penn State	3:30 PM
October 14th	Indiana at Michigan	7:30 PM
October 21st	Rutgers at Indiana	Noon
October 21st	Wisconsin at Illinois	3:30 PM
October 28th	Maryland at Northwestern	2:30 PM
November 4th	Ohio State at Rutgers	Noon
November 4th	Iowa vs. Northwestern (in Chicago)	3:30 PM
November 4th	Nebraska at Michigan State	7:30 PM
November 11th	Northwestern at Wisconsin	Noon
November 11th	Minnesota at Purdue	3:30 PM
November 18th	Michigan State at Indiana	Noon
November 18th	Purdue at Northwestern	3:30 PM
November 18th	Rutgers at Penn State	7:30 PM
November 24th	Indiana at Purdue	3:00 PM
November 25th	Maryland at Rutgers	Noon
November 25th	Northwestern at Illinois	3:30 PM

B1G Country Notes (no, not Bryant Reeves)

The first three weeks are completely booked. After that…nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a few homecoming games that are almost guaranteed to hit BTN but I won’t call them confirmed until, well, they are actually confirmed.
Let’s get right to the appearance list (with the conference and non-conference split) and then some explanations on the numbers:
- 8 times – Indiana (3 non-con, 5 conference)
- 7 times – Northwestern (2 NC, 5 C), Rutgers (3 NC, 4 C)
- 5 times – Maryland (1 NC, 4 C)
- 4 times – Purdue (1 NC, 3 C), Illinois (2 NC, 2 C), Michigan State (1 NC, 3 C), Wisconsin (1 NC, 3 C)
- 3 times – Minnesota (2 NC, 1 C), Iowa (1 NC, 2 C), Penn State (1 NC, 2 C)
- 2 times – Ohio State (1 NC, 1 C), Michigan (1 NC, 1 C), Nebraska (1 NC, 1 C)
Every school must make at least 2 BTN appearances. Plus, one of those appearances has to be a conference game. My predictions satisfy that criteria and I think the amount of appearances will be failry close to what actually happens. I was a bit surprised to see what I had done with Nebraska. Maybe I am drinking a tiny bit of Husker Kool-Aid.

Alright now we have what could be the longest schedule of the bunch. Surprisingly though, it has the most confirmed games, easily. I guess when you have a good portion of the Group of Five stationed here, you will have a lot of games. And if you don’t watch college football on CBSSN? Shame on you. There are some great games on there and you get to see teams you wouldn’t normally see. Time for the huge-ass schedule followed by a few G5 musings:

Gee-Five Musings

Really, CBS Sports Network doesn’t have to lock in over 80% of the games. Nice to see that they do though. Honestly, over the past few years, CBSSN has had their fair share of exciting games so waiting to see what ESPN doesn’t take really doesn’t make sense for them. It won’t change the amount of viewers they get (for the most part). Just scoreboard watch like I do.
CBSSN lands a couple of Black Friday games this season, which seems to be the norm now. One is confirmed and the other is a MAC game. Which leads us to…
The non-confirmed games. Most of them are MAC-controlled games. They will be 12-day selections during the season. The others might not end up happening as those timeslots may be used for something else.
Conference breakdown time!
- Mountain West – 49
- Conference USA – 33
- MAC – 21
- Army – 7
- AAC (other than Navy) – 6
- UConn – 5
- FCS – 5
- Navy – 4
- ACC – 3
- Sun Belt – 3
- Pac-12 – 2
- SEC – 1
- Big XII – 1
- UMass – 1
OK so it was more than conferences but it gives you an idea of what is happening this year versus previous years. During October, Conference USA will have all their conference games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A crazy idea but hey, that’s how MACtion was born. It also means we will go nearly two months with football almost every day! What’s wrong with that?

We made it! Schedule Journey 2023 is over! Christ, that was long. And no, I will not do a TSN schedule. That would be a complete guess. Up next are the season predictions. Expect that post (which will also be a stupidly long one) some time in late July.

Have a fantastic rest of your Sunday and let’s hope for nice weather this coming week…for people who aren’t stuck working in an office. For those people, I am sure you are fine if it rains all week.

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!

It’s OVERREACTION time! Oh, and the Week 2 College Football TV Schedule.

Posted on September 10, 2021 by guelphbossman

Isn’t this almost the worst tradition in college football? When college football media and fans go to ridiculous extremes after one week of college football (shut up, Week Zero). So let’s get right to those reactions that are probably overreactions (at least at this point):

“UCLA is gonna win the Pac-12!” Look it’s quite a good start for the team in sissy blue. But they still have their entire conference schedule to go through. Could they be better than I thought (which was .500)? Absolutely. But to say they will win 9 or 10 games. Let’s just pump the brakes a bit.
“The ACC is terrible!” Yeah, no. They aren’t. Yes, the conference as a whole had a bad first week. But North Carolina lost to what looks like could be a really good Virginia Tech team and Clemson lost to national title contender Georgia. Not much else of note but give them some time. Now if the highest ranked team in the ACC is at like #18 going into October then yes, they should start to panic.
“Cincinnati or UCF is the Group of Five team to go to the New Year’s Six!” Don’t book it just quite yet. Yes, UCF’s victory over Boise State was impressive and Gus Malzahn may have brought something to the program that they slightly lost the past couple years. And Cincy is Cincy. But there are still a bunch of teams that have opportunities and you never know what surprise Group of Five team will be out there.
“Oklahoma has no shot now.” Wait, what? First off, they won. Yes, it was closer than it should have been and it was Tulane but they still won. I can see their defense needs work but if they can figure it out, they have the offense to beat every team on their schedule.
“Well, Indiana sucks again.” One game against what looks like a seriously good Iowa team shouldn’t mar the Hoosiers’ season. Let’s see how they do the rest of the month before saying they are coming back down to Earth a bit (yeah, like Tom Allen is going to allow that to happen).
“Spencer Rattler and Sam Howell aren’t Heisman contenders at all.” Howell has fallen farther than Rattler in many people’s minds but they are still near the top of the Heisman contender list. Remember, some players really have won the Heisman in November so let’s chill here.
“Randy Edsall is going to get shitcanned.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So silly. He quit instead.

Another tradition seems to be a quite bad Week 2 schedule (on paper) that somehow gets one really good Game of the Year candidate. Unfortunately, this is not an overreaction. It happens damn near every year. Oh well, if it sets us up for better weeks, then fine.

Friday

		US	Canada
Kansas at #17 Coastal Carolina	7:30 PM
North Carolina A&T at Duke	8:00 PM
North Dakota at Utah State	9:00 PM

UNDEFEATED KANSAS! UNDEFEATED COASTAL CAROLINA! Irresistible force, immovable object, and all that jazz. If it’s anything like last year’s Chants game against BYU, the crowd will be rocking which is amazing since there aren’t many seats in their stadium. There are also two other games you can watch but really, we all know what you’ll be watching.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Illinois at Virginia	11:00 AM
Western Kentucky at Army	11:30 AM
Youngstown State at Michigan State	Noon
Indiana State at Northwestern	Noon
Pittsburgh at Tennessee	Noon
South Carolina at East Carolina	Noon
Miami-OH at Minnesota	Noon
#12 Oregon at #3 Ohio State	Noon
Kennesaw State at Georgia Tech	Noon
Alabama State at #25 Auburn	Noon
#13 Florida at USF	1:00 PM
Rutgers at Syracuse	2:00 PM

Jesus Christ that is a lot of games in the Noon timeslot. And oh man, morning football! It’s funny: I like morning college football but early morning NFL games in London? Not so much. Probably because I am up until like 2 or 3 into Sunday morning and getting up like six hours or so later to watch NFL football is actually too much for me. And yes, there is a weird start time for the game on ABC. If you have been living under several rocks, you might not have realized that this Saturday is the 20th anniversary of 9/11. So there will be a lot of shows on in the morning about it, which makes a lot of sense considering when that tragedy occurred. ABC is running a special until 1:00 meaning college football is waiting a little bit to start on there. No big deal really and to many Americans it’s a huge thing this day so we can all wait an other for a game featuring…USF? Yeah definitely not a big deal then.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
Purdue at UConn	3:00 PM
Buffalo at Nebraska	3:30 PM
Air Force at Navy	3:30 PM
UAB at #2 Georgia	3:30 PM
California at TCU	3:30 PM
#5 Texas A&M vs. Colorado (in Denver)	3:30 PM
Mercer at #1 Alabama	4:00 PM
#10 Iowa at #9 Iowa State	4:30 PM
South Carolina State at #6 Clemson	5:00 PM

Here is our Game of the Year candidate, funny enough (well the second one after Oregon-tOSU earlier). Would you ever have thought that CyHawk could be Game of the Anything? It’s such a huge game this year that College Gameday is there as well. You will notice that the Notre Dame home game against Toledo is not on NBC. That’s because it’s on Peacock, the streaming app for NBC. Meaning, I am pretty sure none of us will be able to watch it. Slowly, these streaming platforms are getting into the sports game. Soon enough there will be multiple big games every week on like Hulu and will be shit out of luck if you don’t have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Peacock, and whatever else is out there. Two final things here: yes, TSN2 is showing a game featuring the Mercer Bears. And yes, the ACC Network is doing their three-hour broadcast window thing. Stupid, but they can’t have games starting at 10:00 pm locally so they do what they feel like they have to do.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Houston at Rice	6:30 PM
#15 Texas at Arkansas	7:00 PM
Appalachian State at #22 Miami	7:00 PM
NC State at Mississippi State	7:00 PM
Howard at Maryland	7:30 PM
Idaho at Indiana	7:30 PM
Georgia State at North Carolina	7:30 PM
Missouri at Kentucky	7:30 PM
Washington at Michigan	8:00 PM
Jacksonville State at Florida State	8:00 PM

Yeah there really isn’t much here in terms of hugely important games. But see? The ABC started at 1pm “issue” worked itself out and we get the normal-for-about-a-decade 8:00 start in Ann Arbor where Washington might be the underdog? No TSN games in this timeslot which kind of sucks but it’s not like they are going to grab any ratings hits here. Texas-Arkansas might be the most interesting game here although there could actually be a fair amount riding on Mizzou-UK as the winner could actually contend in the SEC East (as long as Georgia falters at least once inside the conference).

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
Vanderbilt at Colorado State	10:00 PM
#21 Utah at BYU	10:15 PM
UNLV at #23 Arizona State	10:30 PM
Stanford at #14 USC	10:30 PM

FOX Pac-12 After Dark? FOX Pac-12 After Dark!!! It’s too bad that Gus Johnson will be calling the Big Noon Saturday game because Gus After Dark would have been tons of fun. It’s unfortunate Stanford looked like shit on opening weekend but, hey, remember what I said about overreactions? Now watch the Trojans blow them out by like 40. Also, we have the Holy War between Utah and the soon-to-be-in-the-Big XII BYU Cougars. TSN is smart to pick up this once since it should be a raucous crowd in Provo.

Games to set your eyeballs on

Oregon at Ohio State (Noon, FOX) – One of, surprisingly, two Game of the Year candidates. And both teams looked, well, a bit off during Week 1. The Ducks struggled with Fresno State and needed a late score to win and the Buckeyes took quite a long time to finally shake off Minnesota and get the victory. This should be good and should be close. This game has been hyped since last year when people were already looking forward to this season. Let’s hope it matches the hype.

Iowa at Iowa State (4:30, ABC) – This has quickly become a massive game and could actually be a big part of the College Football Playoff story. The winner here may vault into the Top 5 depending on what else happens. The loser isn’t out of anything though and could still be in a good spot to get to a New Year’s Six bowl. This is easily the biggest and most important version of CyHawk ever.

Utah at BYU (10:15, TSN2) – OK so it doesn’t drop off too much after the first two. The Holy War is always a hotly contested matchup. College football is always good when rivalries have two good teams playing. Like if Alabama and Auburn are both good or if Michigan and Ohio State are both good. This one is no different. Utes are in the Top 25 and the Cougs are just outside it. This game is in Provo which has arguably the craziest crowd in the Mountain or Pacific time zones except for the one in Salt Lake City. As I said above, TSN was smart to pick up this one and it should be the gem of the late night window.

UAB at Georgia (3:30, specialty pack) – OK now it falls off a cliff. Don’t me wrong. UGA is a fantastic team and UAB has been a great story since reviving their team a few years back. But this probably won’t be close and as the fourth-best game of the week it doesn’t really scream quality to be honest with you.

Kansas at Coastal Carolina (Friday, 7:30, TSN2) – Aw fuck it why not? Kansas is in the Games of the Week list, BAYBEE! Let’s be honest: the Chants will probably mop the floor with the Jayhawks. But what if Kansas keeps it close through three quarters? Man, that would be quite the interesting final segment and bring in a lot of viewers…way more than Kansas football is used to.

Honourable mention: Texas at Arkansas (7:00, specialty pack), Stanford at USC (10:30, FOX), Appalachian State at Miami (7:00, specialty pack).

You wanna bet?

Only the most degenerate of gamblers will bet on these Week 2 games. I mean if it was NFL I’d for sure be doing it but not college. I’ve told you all my reasons, I won’t rehash them here again. Here are the picks!

Oregon over Ohio State

Iowa State over Iowa

Miami over Appalachian State

Coastal Carolina over Kansas

USC over Stanford

BYU over Utah

Texas over Arkansas

Georgia over UAB

Rice over Houston (big upset!)

Nebraska over Buffalo (Upset? Ahahahahahahahahahahaha…no wait….really…….Upset?)

Navy over Air Force (kind of an upset)

From what I can tell, everything is up on the specialty pack. Only thing I haven’t seen anywhere is the second BTN games at Noon and 7:30 but I’m sure that will be sorted out. As for the Pac-12 Network, no it is not on DAZN. Frustrating. So I won’t be listing those games on the schedules since there is no real point to doing so. Hopefully they scrap the current setup and then be smart and pair up with FOX or CBS and set up a proper conference network like the ACC, Big Ten and SEC have. It would be the best thing for that conference for sure and bring in some more money.

I assume by now you’ve heard the news: the Big XII is (finally) expanding. BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF are expected to be voted in to the conference today sometime after they all sent in their applications a couple days ago. The vote is a no-brainer. The question will be when will the teams join and what happens to the American Conference now. The last thing I have heard is that BYU is probably moving for next season. The three AAC teams would then move the following year. Whether Oklahoma and Texas will still be around by then is anybody’s guess although I’d be shocked if they weren’t in the SEC by 2023. As for the AAC, I expect that they will look to expand. They would be down to eight teams with not exactly a murderer’s row of football programs. The schools that have already been bandied about include Marshall, Appalachian State, UAB and even Boise State and San Diego State (although I am sure the Mountain West will do everything they can to hold on to their new spot at the top of the Group of Five). So yeah, realignment news isn’t going anywhere after those four teams officially join.

Once I get back home, hell yes I will be watching football the rest of the weekend (sometime near the end of the Noon timeslot). Will I be watching football past midnight? Does a bear shit in the woods? I’ll catch up on sleep maybe in February. Enjoy the games everyone!

For the first time in two years, it’s time for Grab-Bag Mania! Yeah it really doesn’t have much of a ring to it.

Posted on July 4, 2021 by guelphbossman

I’m sure I could have come up with something better. Give me some time and if I feel like it I will figure it out. Or not. Who knows. Anyway, if you’re looking for an ESPN+ schedule here, you probably don’t live in Canada or have one of those fancy VPNs (and maybe an American credit card for all I know) and even then…why you would care about the damn ESPN+ schedule?

Grab-BagCade? No that’s awful. Let’s start with what might be the longest schedule I do most seasons. Why do I not give it its own post? Be honest: would you go out of your way to read a post that’s only about college football games that will appear on CBS Sports Network? I mean I would but I’m not normal. Look, CBSSN always has a few amazing games each season, just not on paper. Remember when Old Dominion beat Virginia Tech three seasons ago? A crazy-good game with a massive upset. And you will see those kinds of games every season on this network which is the home of to three of the Group of Five conferences, most of Navy’s home games, most of UConn’s home games and all of Army’s home games. What they may not have in quality they definitely have in quantity. Let’s get going on this monster followed by some quality comments (games NOT confirmed will have an asterisk):

August 28th	UConn at Fresno State	2:00 PM
August 28th	Southern Utah at San Jose State	10:00 PM
September 3rd	Duke at Charlotte	7:00 PM
September 4th	Holy Cross at UConn	Noon
September 4th	Marshall at Navy	3:30 PM
September 4th	Syracuse at Ohio	7:00 PM
September 4th	New Mexico State at San Diego State	10:30 PM
September 10th	North Dakota at Utah State	9:00 PM
September 11th	Western Kentucky at Army	11:30 AM
September 11th	Purdue at UConn	3:00 PM
September 11th	Houston at Rice	6:30 PM
September 11th	Vanderbilt at Colorado State	10:00 PM
September 18th	UConn at Army	Noon
September 18th	SMU at Louisiana Tech	3:30 PM
September 18th	Utah at San Diego State	7:00 PM
September 18th	Iowa State at UNLV	10:30 PM
September 24th	Middle Tennessee at Charlotte	6:30 PM
September 24th	UNLV at Fresno State	10:00 PM
September 25th	Miami-OH at Army	Noon
September 25th	Wyoming at UConn	3:30 PM
September 25th	Indiana at Western Kentucky	8:00 PM
October 1st	BYU at Utah State	9:00 PM
October 2nd	Army at Ball State*	Noon
October 2nd	UCF at Navy	3:30 PM
October 2nd	Liberty at UAB	7:00 PM
October 2nd	Fresno State at Hawaii	11:00 PM
October 8th	Charlotte at FIU	7:00 PM
October 9th	Miami-OH at Eastern Michigan*	Noon
October 9th	SMU at Navy	3:30 PM
October 9th	Wyoming at Air Force	7:00 PM
October 9th	New Mexico State at Nevada	10:30 PM
October 15th	Marshall at North Texas	7:00 PM
October 15th	San Diego State at San Jose State	10:30 PM
October 16th	Yale at UConn	Noon
October 16th	Toledo at Central Michigan*	3:30 PM
October 16th	Utah State at UNLV	7:00 PM
October 16th	Hawaii at Nevada	10:30 PM
October 21st	Florida Atlantic at Charlotte	7:30 PM
October 22nd	Middle Tennessee at UConn	6:00 PM
October 22nd	Colorado State at Utah State	9:30 PM
October 23rd	Wake Forest at Army	Noon
October 23rd	Miami-OH at Ball State*	3:30 PM
October 23rd	San Diego State at Air Force	7:00 PM
October 23rd	San Jose State at UNLV	10:30 PM
October 29th	UNLV at Nevada	10:00 PM
October 30th	Bowling Green at Buffalo*	Noon
October 30th	Louisiana Tech at Old Dominion	3:30 PM
October 30th	Boise State at Colorado State	7:00 PM
October 30th	Fresno State at San Diego State	10:30 PM
November 2nd	Eastern Michigan at Toledo*	7:30 PM
November 6th	Louisiana Tech at UAB	Noon
November 6th	Colorado State at Wyoming	3:30 PM
November 6th	Boise State at Fresno State	7:00 PM
November 9th	Buffalo at Miami-OH*	7:00 PM
November 10th	Toledo at Bowling Green*	7:30 PM
November 13th	Bucknell at Army	Noon
November 13th	UAB at Marshall	3:30 PM
November 13th	Air Force at Colorado State	7:00 PM
November 13th	Nevada at San Diego State	10:30 PM
November 19th	Southern Miss at Louisiana Tech	8:00 PM
November 20th	UMass at Army	Noon
November 20th	East Carolina at Navy	3:30 PM
November 20th	Wyoming at Utah State	7:00 PM
November 20th	San Diego State at UNLV	10:30 PM
November 26th	Eastern Michigan at Central Michigan*	Noon
November 26th	UNLV at Air Force	3:30 PM
November 27th	Houston at UConn	Noon
November 27th	Western Kentucky at Marshall	3:30 PM
November 27th	Nevada at Colorado State	9:00 PM
December 4th	Conference USA Championship Game*	12:30 PM
December 30th	Arizona Bowl*	5:00 PM

Continue reading →

Week 1 College Football Recap – The future of coaching is here!

Posted on September 4, 2019 by guelphbossman

This is just seriously fucking hilarious. Look, I get that Hugh Freeze is hurt. He has a back injury. I can appreciate that. But you cannot tell me that this whole thing with him in an actual hospital bed in the press box still coaching wasn’t a big rah-rah, toughness in football sort of lesson for his Liberty Flames. Like I get it Hugh…you’re the head coach. It’s your first game at Liberty. However, I don’t think anyone would think lesser of you if you weren’t at the game and let one of the coordinators be the interim coach for one game…much less a game that there was almost no chance you were going to win. Considering why you were fired by Ole Miss, almost nothing you do could be considered more pathetic and/or stupid.

Anyway, welcome back everyone! So happy to have college football back. It felt….right. Not that the action was amazing although some games definitely were great. So let’s get right to the recap!

The game of the week was a barnburner. Auburn and Oregon, while not in mid-season form yet, were hopping right from the opening kickoff. For much of the game it looked like Oregon would be able to hold on for the victory and start the season as one of the Pac-12 favourites. Enter Bo Nix. The freshman starting quarterback for the Tigers looked like a freshman starting quarterback for about 57 minutes. Then came the final three and he may have clinched the job for the season and saved Gus Malzahn’s job for the season since Gus is always on the hot seat. I mean it’s permanently glued to his ass at this point. This was the only game with two ranked teams playing each other which I will admit is kind of weak for Week 1 and the hype that came along with it.
How about those Volunteers? Woof. That could have been the biggest upset of the season and it happened in Week 1 as Georgia State beat Tennessee. Not Georgia. Georgia State. A brutal beginning of the season for a team that is supposed to be improving. Of course they should have seen something coming when a boat basically blew the fuck up on the river outside Neyland Stadium that morning. Who knew it would be a harbinger of something that bad for the program. Oh and congrats to Georgia State of course.
USC held on against Fresno State late Saturday night. Their quarterback was not so lucky. J.T. Daniels is now out for the season with a torn meniscus and ACL. So yeah, the Trojans will have a much tougher time this season and Clay Helton’s hot seat is now lava.
How about those Seminoles? The first half it looked like the Noles were back to being the Noles of old (like earlier this decade). Then halftime hit and something must have happened since Boise State absolutely dominated the second half and came back from 17 down to beat FSU in Tallahassee after the game had been moved there because of Hurricane Dorian. And now we hear from Willie Taggart that dehydration could have been the issue for the Florida State players. Seriously? So the team that is used to playing in freezing temperatures could handle the heat yet the team that plays in that humid area of the country couldn’t? Get the fuck outta here.
It was the Return of the Mack this past Saturday. I mean it wasn’t a huge upset but still and upset that North Carolina beat South Carolina. And they did it by playing good football in the fourth quarter, something they kind of forgot to do under Larry Fedora. And the emotions after the game that Mack Brown showed…that tells you how much this meant to him. It was great to see. Les Miles also won his first game with his new team but Kansas honestly struggled a bit with Indiana State so it could be a tougher slog for the Jayhawks. The Heels could be looking at bowl eligibility if things keep falling their way.
Yes Maryland scored 79 points. Jordan McNair wore #79 before he died. Nice coincidence. Thing is, he was killed due to negligence by some on the Maryland staff. It wasn’t an accident. For ESPN to gloss over that part in a tweet that many people looked at is not a good look for the four-letter network. Call it like it is. D.J. Durkin is an asshole and shouldn’t get a coaching job ever again.
Did you happen to see the stands in Nashville for the Georgia-Vanderbilt game? It was a home game for the Dores but the stands were 90% red. I don’t know if I have ever seen a fanbase take over a stadium like the UGA fans did on Saturday.
By the way, it’s spelled FIGHT ON. Not FIHT ON. Not FIHGT ON. Just so the USC painted fans and Rod Gilmore understand.
Geez Iowa State made things really interested against Northern Iowa. Triple overtime. They came oh so close to being the biggest FCS-over-FBS upset this season but the Cyclones pulled it out. I hope this is a lot like Washington State losing to Eastern Washington and then finishing with eight wins despite that.
I wondered if Houston could keep it close with Oklahoma. In the end, it really wasn’t even close. It shows that Jalen Hurts and the Sooners are for real and are looking at the College Football Playoff again. I wouldn’t put Dana Holgorsen on any kind of hot seat as there was a lot to like about the Cougs and they could be a handful once conference play begins in the American.
The Labour Day ACC game honestly wasn’t that bad despite the fact almost everyone figured it would be. Louisville had Notre Dame fans sweating during the first half as they went blow-for-blow with the Irish. The second half had Ian Book helping Notre Dame pull away but the Cards had a good showing. Maybe they are already getting some of that Petrino stink off of them.
UCLA went to Nippert Stadium and ended up looking…well, not so good. I am still sticking with my assumption that the Bruins can become bowl-eligible but yeesh, that was not a good start. The Fighting Fickells on the other hand look like a team that could cause a lot of problems at the top of the AAC. Don’t be surprised if they are mentioned as a dark horse pick for the New Year’s Six as the season goes on.

OK Week 1 is in the books! Good start. Let us all rejoice in this time considering we know what happens around four-and-a-half months from now.

No Top 25 after Week 1. I will start it next week when there’s two weeks (or so) in the books.

Now we are almost back into the swing of things. Starting Thursday it will be the regular schedule:

College football schedule on Thursday
NFL schedule on Friday
College football recap on Monday

Hope you had as good a time as I did watching Week 1 and let’s hope for a great season. Enjoy the rest of your week.

First PVR Week…Hope it’s a Success – Week 2 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on September 7, 2017 by guelphbossman

First off, after Hurricane Harvey literally obliterated the Houston area, here comes Hurricane Irma to make life difficult for the people of Florida (and possibly other parts of the southeastern United States). There are already some cancellations and games moved to different times or days so this schedule might need some serious updating over the next couple days. Honestly, though, it’s secondary to the shit the people of the Houston area have gone through and what the people of Florida may end up going through. So fingers crossed we don’t see more devastation and the hurricane dies over the Atlantic somewhere.

Alright, this will be the first true week I use my PVR. I have stated this before in the past (many times) but I am just waiting for the day that my PVR craps out on me and I have no college football at all to watch. That would be sad. Reminds me way back during the first year of this blog on the day I moved. It was a Saturday. No cable obviously. Was out at a bar and got to watch a few minutes of Ohio State-Northwestern. That was it. It felt wrong. I don’t want to do that again.

Saying that, with my kids a bit older it becomes easier to watch the games even when they are around. Why? Because like many typical teens and pre-teens they tend to ignore their parents unless they want something (or want to do something or go somewhere or be driven some place). My kids are no different. No I won’t act like the complete ogre I am on gamedays when they aren’t around but I know they will ignore me for chunks of time to the point I will have to go around the house just to make sure they didn’t just up and leave without me knowing. Alright, enough of the family talk, on to the schedule!

Thursday

		US	Canada
Sam Houston State at Prairie View A&M	7:30 PM

One game. It’s an FCS one. This is easy. So far so good.

Friday

		US	Canada
~~Memphis at UCF~~	~~6:30 PM~~
#11 Oklahoma State at South Alabama	8:00 PM

Memphis-UCF was moved from Saturday to today. It’s one of the four (I believe) Florida-based moves thanks to that bitch Hurricane Irma. Why the early start time? It’s probably to allow UCF to get back home to Orlando after the game since the storm, in my view as a non-meteorologist, will hit Florida starting Saturday. We also have a Power Five road trip to a Group of Five team. It’s only South Alabama but remember what the Jaguars did to Mississippi State last year. Oh and remember what Central Michigan did to…OK I’ll stop right there.

UPDATE #2: OSU-USA now finally showing on Bell. Memphis-UCF still not showing anywhere so I am hoping that changes considering the scheduling change.

UPDATE #5: Memphis-UCF is now cancelled. So OSU-USA is the only game on tonight.

UPDATE #7: Oklahoma State-South Alabama not showing as of this moment on the specialty pack. For fuck’s sakes.

UPDATE #8: Finally the game appears…so I can watch the Pokes go up by 17 in the first quarter. Aw man.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Cincinnati at #8 Michigan	Noon
Florida Atlantic at #9 Wisconsin	Noon
Towson at Maryland*	Noon
~~ULM at #10 Florida State~~	~~Noon~~
#17 Louisville at North Carolina	Noon
Iowa at Iowa State*	Noon
Northwestern at Duke	Noon
Eastern Kentucky at Kentucky	Noon
UT-Martin at Ole Miss	Noon
Buffalo at Army	Noon

A boatload of games early in the afternoon. This is partly due to ULM-FSU moving back to Noon from their original 7:00 PM start (which would have been different for the ACC Network anyway). Could be worse though: USF-UConn moved to 10:30 AM. That’s right, AM! Again, my guess is this is all for travel purposes due to the hurricane. Louisville-North Carolina could be a good game here but as per usual, the early slate is more about quantity than quality.

UPDATE #1: Might as well start numbering them now. This really doesn’t affect us in terms of viewing but two more games have been cancelled due to Hurricane Irma. USF-UConn had been moved up to 10:30 AM and has now been completely cancelled due to travel concerns with USF. Also, Northern Colorado-Florida, which was originally at 7:30 on the SEC Network, then moved to Noon (still on SECN) has now been cancelled outright.

UPDATE #4: Four updates and it’s Thursday night. Oh well. ULM-Florida State, which had been moved up from 7:00 to Noon has now been cancelled completely. As of this moment, nothing has been put in its place on the ACC Network. The only games that could probably be moved to that timeslot this late in the game are Jacksonville State-Georgia Tech (which is at 12:30 PM at this point) and Wake Forest-Boston College (which is at 1:00 PM at this point). Whether these games would just appear on the ACC Network or if they would move to Noon is not known.

UPDATE #6: The ACC Network will not have a game this week so there will be nothing on WSBK or WNLO.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
#23 TCU at Arkansas	3:30 PM
Eastern Michigan at Rutgers*	3:30 PM
Western Michigan at Michigan State	3:30 PM
Pittsburgh at #4 Penn State	3:30 PM
Fresno State at #1 Alabama	3:30 PM
Indiana at Virginia*^	3:30 PM
Tulane at Navy	3:30 PM
Indiana State at #25 Tennessee	4:00 PM
Alabama A&M at Vanderbilt*	4:00 PM
Nebraska at Oregon	4:30 PM

Getting better. Nebraska-Oregon is a very interesting affair in the somewhat-late-for-afternoon timeslot of 4:30. Probably smart on FOX’s part to offset some of these games from the games on CBS and ABC. Indiana-Virginia moved to the ESPNU slot here once it was vacated by Miami-Arkansas State which will not be played at all. Pittsburgh-Penn State, as we saw last season, has the potential to be a season-changing game.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
#13 Auburn at #3 Clemson	7:00 PM
South Carolina at Missouri	7:00 PM
Nicholls at Texas A&M*	7:00 PM
Tennessee Tech at Kennesaw State	7:00 PM
#15 Georgia at #24 Notre Dame	7:30 PM
Chattanooga at #12 LSU	7:30 PM
#5 Oklahoma at #2 Ohio State	7:30 PM
Western Kentucky at Illinois	7:30 PM
Mississippi State at Louisiana Tech	7:30 PM
#14 Stanford at #6 USC	8:30 PM

Ho. Lee. Shit. Talk about a stacked lineup. Four huge games. When UGA-ND is maybe the fourth-best game of a timeslot, you know it’s an important set of games. I will have to make some interesting decisions with the ol’ PVR with this one. One thing is for sure: I will not choose to record Nicholls-TAMU.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
Utah at BYU*	10:15 PM
Boise State at #20 Washington State*	10:30 PM
Houston at Arizona*	10:30 PM

A nice late-night spread to end the evening some time into the morning. All three games have the potential for something exciting, especially the Holy War.

Games to set your eyeballs on

Oklahoma at Ohio State (7:30, ABC) – This is the first instance of the Big Ten getting a tiny bit of preferential treatment by getting their ABC primetime games moved up to 7:30. I could say that considering tOSU beat the Sooners pretty bad last year in Norman that this year’s game, in Columbus, will be a cakewalk for the Buckeyes. But it won’t be the case. I think Oklahoma’s offense can keep this one close, at the very least. This is the second “Game of the Year” after the Bama-FSU game which really didn’t feel that close or exciting as it was going on.

Auburn at Clemson (7:00, specialty pack) – Clemson’s first Deshaun Watson-less test of this season. Survive this and they get a leg up on getting deeper into the season unscathed. It won’t be easy for the Tigers with being on the road at Death Valley at night (either Death Valley at night is normally horrifically bad for opponents). At this point, it looks like either them or LSU will be the only teams that can challenge mighty Bama in the SEC West. A loss here wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would leave a bad taste in their mouths.

Stanford at USC (8:30, FOX) – Man, the three biggest games on at pretty much the same time. At least someone had the foresight to put them at slightly different times. It’s horrible for the PVR people (which I am one of at times) but it makes the most sense in the college football world to do this. Otherwise you split the audience like they most assuredly did last Sunday with those two amazing games going on (and finishing) at pretty much the exact same time.

Georgia at Notre Dame (7:30, NBC) – This one would have been the top game in the afternoon timeslot. Oh well. Anyway, this is most definitely a “Prove It” game for both teams. Georgia has to prove they still belong as one of the SEC East’s elite (whatever that means these days) and Notre Dame has to prove that they are Notre Dame again. A loss here might also seal Brian Kelly’s fate as he will need all the wins he can muster this season.

Pittsburgh at Penn State (3:30, ABC) – The only non-primetime game that is must-see is this one. We all remember what happened last season in this game and how it was the biggest part of the College Football Playoff debate almost three months later. I can honestly see this one being the same if Pitt can pull it out again. Won’t be as easy being in front of a packed house in State College.

Honourable mention: Louisville at North Carolina (Noon, TSN2); TCU at Arkansas (3:30, CBS); Boise State at Washington State (10:15, specialty pack)

Some gambling fun and games

Everything was going good last week until my last two picks as North Carolina and Texas both shit the bed. Anyway, I soldier on with some more somewhat-mediocre picks.

Ohio State over Oklahoma

Clemson over Auburn

USC over Stanford

Notre Dame over Georgia (is this a mild upset? I don’t really know)

Penn State over Pittsburgh

North Carolina over Louisville (now this would be more of an upset)

Arkansas over TCU

Washington State over Boise State (I think this could be the closest game of the week)

Western Kentucky over Illinois (not an upset)

Oklahoma State over South Alabama

Houston over Arizona (also not an upset)

As of right now, NOTHING after tonight is on the specialty pack (at least for Bell Fibe). Rogers (and other telcos that use the Super Sports Pack moniker) seem to not want to televise FCS games. This isn’t a big deal, really, but it is a game on an ESPN network that isn’t being shown so it feels like a little nickel and diming on their end. I can’t even seem to find a whole lot of information on Saturday for either Rogers or Bell. It’s absurd. It boggles my mind that this occurs in 2017. I wish I didn’t get as worked up as I did but the way they run things (and the poor customer service that goes along with it) bothers me. It’s anti-business really. I mean “the customer is always right” is an old bullshit phrase used by baby boomers. Fair play to them, back in the day (let’s say the last century) that was the case. But in reality, the customer isn’t always right. But the customer pays you so you better give them the service/product they want and do it properly. That’s the bottom line. Ugh. Anyway, enough of that. Just keep tuned here for any updates as I am sure there will be many. I mean we hit 10 of them in Week One alone.

UPDATE #3: I finally see games on Bell and Rogers although some are missing. The ones missing from the Rogers/Eastlink schedule are denoted by an asterisk (*). The games missing from the Bell schedule are denoted by a (^). Again, keep watching for updates. Also, the Rogers SSP seems to show San Jose State-Texas on its schedule which is a Longhorn Network game. Weird. Finally, this is part of the reason I feel no one at Bell (and probably every other Canadian telco) cares about college football. The games on ESPN and ESPN2 are only in SD this Saturday. For some reason, the SEC Network and SEC Network Alternate channels get two of the three HD slots. What a fucking joke.

Also, the NFL is back! Tonight is Opening Night as the Chiefs travel to Foxboro to face the Patriots. So now all football is back. This is a good thing. I will have the full Sunday/Monday schedule up tomorrow. It should be interesting piecing it together with the way it’s being done this season. Enjoy the games everyone!

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!

Where we are headed in college football: Part 4

Posted on June 13, 2016 by guelphbossman

We are at the end of the scenarios. The last one. And arguably the most extreme. The most predicated on what I believe should happen in a mostly ideal scenario. I will be honest here: all this will not happen. Saying that, some of these occurrences may happen but the idea that all of them could is probably a no-go. I’ve seen many “fantasy” conference realignments in the past and many of them are not just improbable (like this one) but also completely dumb and may make no semblance of sense (unlike this one). So let’s jump in, shall we? Spoiler alert: this will be a long post.

Now we all know that there is a distinct divide between the Power Five and Group of Five conferences. Some teams are wanting to sneak into the P5 whereas others are holding on for their Go5 lives. Issues with the Big XII and ACC are going on almost every day.

Because of all this, I am implementing something fairly drastic. First off, the top conferences will be on their own. Their own bowls and they will be the only ones with access to the College Football Playoff. The amount of teams in this “new” Power Five will increase so no real worries there. It allows for more elite-on-elite games throughout the season than there is at this moment. The amount of conferences in the top tier will be eight. The biggest change will be the complete blow-up of the Big XII. Welcome back the Big Eight and the Southwest Conference (golf clap). As much as we hope Texas and Oklahoma want to play and get along and share the sandbox, they really don’t. They want their own sandboxes or bigger portions of a conference sandbox. So might as well split them up. Yes they love their Red River Rivalry matchup but that’s where it ends really.

Here’s the new conference lineup, followed by the steps I took to get there:

SEC	Big Ten	Pac-10	ACC
Alabama	Ohio State	USC	Florida State
Florida	Wisconsin	Oregon	Miami
LSU	Michigan	Stanford	Clemson
Georgia	Notre Dame	UCLA	Georgia Tech
Auburn	Penn State	Oregon State	NC State
Tennessee	Michigan State	Arizona State	North Carolina
Texas A&M	Iowa	Washington	Wake Forest
South Carolina	Minnesota	California	East Carolina
Ole Miss	Purdue	Arizona	USF
Mississippi State	Northwestern	Washington State	UCF
Kentucky	Illinois		Duke
Vanderbilt	Indiana		Memphis


Big 8	SWC	American	Mountain West
Oklahoma	Texas	Virginia Tech	Boise State
Nebraska	TCU	West Virginia	Utah
Kansas State	Arkansas	Louisville	BYU
Oklahoma State	Texas Tech	Boston College	Air Force
Missouri	Baylor	Pittsburgh	Fresno State
Colorado	Houston	Virginia	North Dakota State
Iowa State	Tulsa	Maryland	Colorado State
Kansas	New Mexico	Cincinnati	San Diego State
	Rice	Syracuse	Nevada
	SMU	Marshall	Montana
	UTEP	Navy	Wyoming
	UTSA	Rutgers	Utah State
		Connecticut	San Jose State
		Temple	UNLV

Step-by-Step

I kind of wish I had those terrible IKEA characters to put in here…you know the ones that say lift in pairs, don’t lean certain things against a wall, and don’t stab yourself with the Allen key (or hex key for you people who just want to be insufferable cocks).

Split the Big XII into the Big 8 and the SWC. Oklahoma and Texas each get their own conferences now.
Re-create the Big Eight as it was before becoming the Big XII. I think it wouldn’t be a major issue to get Nebraska out of the Big Ten and Missouri out of the SEC if there wouldn’t be as much of a hit to their per-team revenue.
As for the SWC, all the old members are back except one: Texas A&M. I’m sure they’d rather crawl on broken glass while naked than go back into a conference with the Longhorns. To fill out the conference (but keep the southwest feel), they invite New Mexico, UTEP, and UTSA.
The SEC loses Arkansas and Missouri but does not add replacements for them. Texas A&M isn’t as much of an outlier with LSU next door and now TV revenue is split only twelve ways. The conference is not really hurt by this at all.
To replace Nebraska, the Big Ten grabs Notre Dame. As I’ve said before, Independent Football is probably all but dead with the next major round of realignment.
The Mountain West, now a “major” conference, gets Utah back from the Pac-12. Despite recent success, the Utes (along with Colorado) don’t seem like a program that will ever fully fit in with the Pac-whatever number it is. The only way this would change is if they went on a sustained run of success.
The Pac-12, losing Utah and Colorado, go back to being called the Pac-10. All we need now is Keith Jackson calling their games on ABC and all will be right with the world.
The ACC and American also do a bit of a shuffle. The American becomes more of the northeast conference (think old Big East minus Miami) whereas the ACC goes south of Virginia. Makes sense geographically. So the ACC gets East Carolina, USF, UCF, and Memphis in exchange for Virginia Tech, Virginia, Boston College, Louisville, and Syracuse.
Maryland and Rutgers leave to go to the American. They were never a good fit in the B1G, markets be damned.
Also, the American picks up West Virginia who doesn’t belong in Big 8/SWC world anymore (and rightfully so).
To even things out, The American Conference takes the top team from Conference USA, Marshall who should get an instant boost by moving to a better conference.
Hey the Mountain West (along with The American) are joining the big boys! They get Utah back from the Pac, invite BYU, North Dakota State, and Montana and hopefully cash in at some point.

There you go, the top division (Power Eight?) are set. Now we get to the CFP and bowl setup. Here’s how it would look:

Bowl	Bowl Tie-In #1	Bowl Tie-In #2
CFP Championship	Orange Winner	Cotton Winner
Cotton Bowl	Fiesta Winner	Rose Winner
Orange Bowl	Peach Winner	Sugar Winner
Fiesta Bowl	CFP Poll #1	CFP Poll #8
Peach Bowl	CFP Poll #2	CFP Poll #7
Sugar Bowl	CFP Poll #3	CFP Poll #6
Rose Bowl	CFP Poll #4	CFP Poll #5
Outback Bowl	SEC #2	Big Ten #2
TaxSlayer Bowl	SEC #6	Big Ten #6
Citrus Bowl	SEC #4	Big Ten #4
Music City Bowl	SEC #3	ACC #3
Sun Bowl	Pac-10 #3	SWC #3
Liberty Bowl	SEC #5	ACC #4
Alamo Bowl	SWC #2	Big Eight #2
Belk Bowl	ACC #2	American #2
Texas Bowl	SWC #4	MWC #2
Pinstripe Bowl	Big Ten #5	American #3
Cactus Bowl	Pac-10 #4	MWC #3
Holiday Bowl	Big Ten #3	Pac-10 #2
Armed Forces Bowl	Big Eight #3	American #4
Las Vegas Bowl	Big Eight #4	MWC #4

The bowl tie-ins are pretty easy to figure out. Tried to go as regional as I possibly could. The SEC and Big Ten received five actual tie-ins, the rest of the conferences got three. As for the CFP, it has to be expanded to eight. It’s going to be expanded anyway so why fight it. They can’t go to sixteen since that would be ridiculous but eight probably will work (until the 8-seed wins the title and then all hell will break loose). I bet you think “Oh, eight conferences, eight champions, right?” WRONG! Considering the strength of the conferences now, I have gone this route:

The SEC, Big Ten, and Pac-10 champions get automatic berths.
From the other five conferences, the top 2 conference champions also get automatic berths. This will be settled by the CFP ranking.
The other three spots will be at-large choices.

This makes it so that if one conference (cough*SEC*cough) has two teams in the top four, the worst of the two won’t be penalized.

What does this all mean for our friends in Conference USA, the MAC, and the Sun Belt? Well, they would form the new Tier Two (Group of Seven? Wait, no that’s been used before…) that would look like so:

Conference USA	MAC	Sun Belt	Missouri Valley
Southern Miss	Toledo	Appalachian State	South Dakota State
Louisiana Tech	Northern Illinois	Troy	Youngstown State
UAB	Bowling Green	Arkansas State	Illinois State
Middle Tennessee	Northern Iowa	UL-Lafayette	Southern Illinois
Western Kentucky	Western Michigan	South Alabama	Western Illinois
Tulane	Miami-Ohio	ULM	South Dakota
North Texas	Ohio	Texas State	Missouri State
Florida Atlantic	Central Michigan	Georgia State	North Dakota
Old Dominion	Ball State	Furman	Indiana State
FIU	Army	Wofford
Charlotte	Akron	Coastal Carolina
Georgia Southern	Kent State	Jacksonville State
	Buffalo
	Eastern Michigan

Colonial	Big Sky	Southland
Villanova	Hawaii	McNeese State
James Madison	Eastern Washington	Central Arkansas
Massachusetts	Idaho	Sam Houston State
Richmond	New Mexico State	Stephen F. Austin
New Hampshire	Cal Poly	Northwestern State
Delaware	Northern Arizona	SE Louisiana
William & Mary	Montana State	Abilene Christian
Maine	Portland State	Lamar
Elon	UC-Davis	Nicholls State
Towson	Weber State	Incarnate Word
Rhode Island	Southern Utah	Houston Baptist
Albany	Sacramento State
Stony Brook	Idaho State
	Northern Colorado

Tulane and Hawaii move down from previous conferences since, well, they just wouldn’t fit in with the new money maker conferences. Army is invited into the MAC and there are a few changes to the rest of the conferences (call-ups if you will). This new tier will not have bowl games but will inherit the FCS Playoffs. 16 teams instead of 24. I think it would work well with some better programs than they currently have now in the FCS (no five-in-a-row dynasty stuff then).

As for the new bottom tier of D-1, it consists of eight conferences where half of them don’t even compete in the playoffs. The Ivy League doesn’t do the playoffs at all and the MEAC and SWAC do their own fun-time HBCU championship. The other five conferences might as well join D-2 at this point. To be honest, they are probably so low on the food chain that myself (along with a lot of others) wouldn’t care unless you were an alumnus of that school.

Alright, now to broadcasting info since this breaks into what my blog is all about (for the most part):

CBS would still get the SEC game of the week.
FOX would get either the Big Ten or Pac-10 game of the week.
NBC, with Notre Dame going to the Big Ten, would probably get the ACC or American game of the week.
ABC would get the Big Eight, SWC, or Mountain West game of the week.
CBS would most likely show a doubleheader. With ESPN’s hold on the rest of SEC football, I see them picking up another conference, most likely the Big Eight or SWC.
FOX would probably move to tripleheaders on the main network as long as they didn’t interfere with Major League Baseball. My best guess is they would have one Big Ten and one Pac-10 game and then one more from either conference.
NBC would show a doubleheader I’m sure, with one game each from the ACC and American.
ABC would get their normal tripleheader with the best game from the three conferences above getting the primetime 8:00 pm slot.
ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, FOX Sports One, and FOX Sports Net would pick up most of the rest of the games (anywhere from 18-24 each week).

Again, this renders the conference networks moot at this point. The only other way they could possibly survive is if they overpay to get their selection of games past the game of the week in their respective conferences. So basically it would be like Tier Two rights. I can’t see that happening, especially with ESPN having a finger in the pie with the SEC Network.

Saying all this, live sports on TV might cease to exist like it is now a decade later. We may be watching all college football games through the various conference networks online by then. This would affect my media prediction here as well as the previous three scenarios. But until that starts to take shape, we have to assume the networks (and ESPN) would have some semblance of control over live broadcasts.

So there you have it. All four scenarios. Guaranteed none of them are correct but you never know what insanity will befall us over the next few years. No one, back in the late 80s, would have ever thought the Southwest Conference would be dissolved around the middle of the next decade. This despite the fact that we had the SMU death penalty and almost every team mired in some sort of controversy. So my predictions are always with the idea that none of this at all may happen and it may be steady as she goes as we head into 2026.

Next up is the biggest games of the college football season. No CFL post this season since I have less knowledge than ever about the CFL. I was shocked to see how much tickets were going for for Ti-Cats games. I think that’s absurd but that’s just me I guess. Following the biggest games posts will be the various network predictions and then we get into conference predictions. Finally getting back into posting on a regular basis so I better get myself organized. That’s always a fun exercise. And by always I mean never.

August 26th	UTEP at Jacksonville State	5:30 PM
August 26th	FIU at Louisiana Tech	9:00 PM
August 31st	NC State at UConn	7:30 PM
September 1st	Stanford at Hawaii	11:00 PM
September 2nd	Bowling Green at Liberty	Noon
September 2nd	USF at WKU	3:30 PM
September 2nd	Washington State at Colorado State	7:00 PM
September 2nd	Idaho State at San Diego State	10:30 PM
September 9th	Delaware State at Army	Noon
September 9th	Wagner at Navy	3:30 PM
September 9th	Air Force vs. Sam Houston (in Houston)	8:00 PM
September 15th	Utah State at Air Force	8:00 PM
September 16th	Liberty at Buffalo	Noon
September 16th	FIU at UConn	3:30 PM
September 16th	Vanderbilt at UNLV	7:00 PM
September 16th	Kansas at Nevada	10:30 PM
September 22nd	Delaware State at Miami-OH	7:00 PM
September 22nd	Boise State at San Diego State	10:30 PM
September 23rd	Tulsa at Northern Illinois	Noon
September 23rd	Duke at UConn	3:30 PM
September 23rd	Appalachian State at Wyoming	7:00 PM
September 23rd	Kent State at Fresno State	10:30 PM
September 28th	Middle Tennessee at WKU	7:30 PM
September 29th	Louisiana Tech at UTEP	9:00 PM
September 30th	Utah State at UConn	Noon
September 30th	USF at Navy	3:30 PM
September 30th	San Diego State at Air Force	8:00 PM
October 4th	FIU at New Mexico State	9:00 PM
October 5th	Sam Houston at Liberty	7:00 PM
October 7th	Boston College at Army	Noon
October 7th	North Texas at Navy	3:30 PM
October 7th	San Jose State at Boise State	8:00 PM
October 10th	Louisiana Tech at Middle Tennessee	7:00 PM
October 11th	Sam Houston at New Mexico State	9:00 PM
October 13th	Fresno State at Utah State	8:00 PM
October 14th	Kent State at Eastern Michigan	Noon
October 14th	Troy at Army	3:30 PM
October 14th	Wyoming at Air Force	7:00 PM
October 14th	San Diego State at Hawaii	11:00 PM
October 17th	Middle Tennessee at Liberty	7:00 PM
October 18th	FIU at Sam Houston	7:00 PM
October 21st	Akron at Bowling Green	Noon
October 21st	USF at UConn	3:30 PM
October 21st	Utah State at San Jose State	7:00 PM
October 21st	Colorado State at UNLV	10:30 PM
October 24th	New Mexico State at Louisiana Tech	7:00 PM
October 25th	Jacksonville State at FIU	7:00 PM
October 28th	UMass at Army	Noon
October 28th	Miami-OH at Ohio	3:30 PM
October 28th	Air Force at Colorado State	7:00 PM
October 28th	New Mexico at Nevada	10:30 PM
November 3rd	Colorado State at Wyoming	8:00 PM
November 4th	Army vs. Air Force (in Denver)	2:30 PM
November 4th	Louisiana Tech at Liberty	6:00 PM
November 4th	Boise State at Fresno State	10:00 PM
November 7th	Central Michigan at Western Michigan	7:00 PM
November 8th	Akron at Miami-OH	7:00 PM
November 11th	Holy Cross at Army	Noon
November 11th	UAB at Navy	3:30 PM
November 11th	San Diego State at Colorado State	7:00 PM
November 11th	Fresno State at San Jose State	10:30 PM
November 14th	Akron at Eastern Michigan	7:00 PM
November 18th	Coastal Carolina at Army	Noon
November 18th	UNLV at Air Force	3:30 PM
November 18th	Boise State at Utah State	7:00 PM
November 18th	San Diego State at San Jose State	10:30 PM
November 24th	Ohio at Akron	Noon
November 24th	Utah State at New Mexico	3:30 PM
November 25th	Northern Illinois at Kent State	Noon
November 25th	Liberty at UTEP	3:30 PM
November 25th	Wyoming at Nevada	9:00 PM

Bossman's Blog

A lot of college football (and perhaps a bit of miscellaneous crap that I think warrants a post)

Tag Archives: Indiana State

The ALL-NEW Mock NFL Draft Version 2 Dash 2024 along with a look-back

First Round

Second Round

YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Week 1 College Football Recap – The future of coaching is here!

First Round

Second Round

Thursday

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Hey, Watch This!

Sickos Game of the Week

Hubba Bubba Blowout of the Week

Wanna Bet?

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon​​

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Thursday

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Saturday Afternoon