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.

So I wonder how he got back from Ireland? Oh, and the Week 1 college football schedule

Posted on August 31, 2022 by guelphbossman

I can’t see the Nebraska team and staff and everyone else who made the trip to Dublin allowing Frosty the Coachman to board the same flight as him. Probably safer for him anyway. He would have been thrown out of the plane over the Atlantic somewhere. All because of a horrible onside kick playcall that was not needed (among other poor coaching decisions). Just a complete fucking disaster for that team and now Frost’s hot seat is basically the surface of the sun.

Finally we have made it! Week One! And a full schedule. Hell, more than a full schedule it feels like. So much football and I will watch as much as I can because come January, it feels bad when it’s all gone. Let’s right to the (true) opening weekend schedule.

Thursday

		US	Canada
West Virginia at #17 Pittsburgh	7:00 PM
Central Michigan at #12 Oklahoma State	7:00 PM
Ball State at Tennessee	7:00 PM
VMI at #22 Wake Forest	7:30 PM
Alabama A&M at UAB	8:00 PM
Louisiana Tech at Missouri	8:00 PM
Penn State at Purdue	8:00 PM
New Mexico State at Minnesota	9:00 PM
Northern Arizona at Arizona State	10:00 PM
Cal Poly at at Fresno State	10:30 PM

As I said during the Week Zero schedule post, I would be including games that most Canadians won’t get up here, even with the specialty packs. I’m doing this because some have switched to an IPTV provider and can get some (or all) of these games. So while the NAU-ASU game might not look exciting (and it probably won’t be), I will still list it.

Nice to see the Backyard Brawl back as WVU and Pitt get a bit of a national spotlight for this one. Also, you have to wonder if Mike Gundy has the last game the Pokes played against CMU in his mind when the Chips won on a Hail Mary play that shouldn’t have even been allowed. Also, FOX will show a Thursday night game on the network to start the season. I wish they did that more often and they honestly could with the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package moving to Amazon Prime.

Friday

		US	Canada
Western Michigan at #15 Michigan State	7:00 PM
Virginia Tech at Old Dominion	7:00 PM
Temple at Duke	7:30 PM
Illinois at Indiana	8:00 PM
TCU at Colorado	10:00 PM

3-hour windows. Good lord. Yes, TSN’s schedule says that the TCU-CU game starts at 10:30 but that’s not true. Stupid ESPN.

UPDATE: If you were planning on watching the WMU-MSU game on ESPN, you will have to move to ESPN2 as ESPN is now showing US Open tennis.

Saturday Early

First full slate of Saturday games. Feels good. Nothing big here. The UNC-App State game could be the most intriguing as you don’t often see Power Five teams travel to Group of Five teams so there is some upset potential there.

Saturday Afternoon

Now we get to the meat of Week One. I am not really a fan of neutral-site games but let’s be honest: we are all watching a good portion of that UGA-UO matchup. Perhaps a College Football Playoff elimination game there (although we know one loss almost never kills a Power Five team’s chances). I’m interested to see what the brand new era of Sooner football will look like with Brent Venables now at the helm. And CBS opens with SDSU’s brand new stadium as they finally left the cavernous Murph for a more intimate viewing arrangement.

Also, you will notice a couple of other things. First, no games on ESPN2. As is usually the case, the U.S. Open tennis tournament is on ESPN2 all Saturday so that’s why there are no games airing there. It’s also why most of the TSNs aren’t available to show games this week. Secondly, the odd timing of the Pac-12 Network games. Well, thanks to the brains of Larry Scott (and others, yes, I know, but he was the commish), the Pac-12 Network has a national feed and regional feeds for all the schools. Each pair of schools shares a region. In this timeslot, the UCD-Cal game is actually only available on the P12N Bay Area feed. The BGSU-UCLA game is the P12N National game. Confused? Yeah it’s dumb.

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Rice at #14 USC	6:00 PM
#7 Utah at Florida	7:00 PM
Illinois State at #18 Wisconsin	7:00 PM
#5 Notre Dame at #2 Ohio State	7:30 PM
SMU at North Texas	7:30 PM
Memphis at Mississippi State	7:30 PM
Utah State at #1 Alabama	7:30 PM
Louisville at Syracuse	8:00 PM
Colgate at Stanford	8:00 PM

Game of the year in the opening weekend? You could argue that. The Irish and the Buckeyes face off in a massive non-conference matchup (I don’t know why I’m even saying that since the Irish will NEVER join a conference, right?). This will hopefully be worth the hype (and boy is ESPN/ABC going to push the hype to the next level for this one). So you could watch that OR you can watch Bama beat the snot out of USU. Your choice. Now watch that game be closer than the ND-tOSU game.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
Idaho at Washington State	9:30 PM
Boise State at Oregon State	10:30 PM
Kent State at Washington	10:30 PM

One of the more interesting matchups of the weekend goes down in Corvallis. I would normally say Boise is the favorite here but the Beavs have been a much improved team as of late. Also, there’s a true Hawaii Test if you can find a way to stream it (it starts at midnight).

Sunday

		US	Canada
Florida A&M vs. Jackson State (in Miami)	3:00 PM
Tuskegee vs. Fort Valley State (in Montgomery)	7:00 PM
LSU vs. Florida State (in New Orleans)	7:30 PM

Speaking of interesting matchups, LSU-FSU is a juicy one down at the Superdome. Both teams are popular picks to improve this year. Let’s see how definitely Southern Brian Kelly fares in his opening contest in the SEC.

I am not sure about the two non-FBS games appearing on the specialty pack. Over the years, these opening Sunday games have been hit or miss so stay tuned.

Monday

		US	Canada
#4 Clemson at Georgia Tech	8:00 PM

Geoff Collins wouldn’t be fired after Week 1 would he?

Big Games O’ The Week

Notre Dame at Ohio State (7:30, ABC/TSN2) – Sure there is another game that’s huge but this is THE big game of the week. I don’t remember the Irish starting with a game like this in recent memory and no, Texas doesn’t count. Now we have to hope ND doesn’t play like shit and makes the game unwatchable in the second half.

Georgia vs. Oregon (in Atlanta) (3:30, ABC/TSN2) – A new head coach for the Ducks up against a team trying to do the toughest thing in sports: repeat as champs. If you want, you can call this Game 1A of the Week (especially if you are a whiny SEC fan). A few questions will definitely be asked here, chief among them being can Bo Nix thrive outside the SEC, because last season he certainly didn’t thrive inside it.

Cincinnati at Arkansas (3:30, specialty pack) – If you had said three years ago that this would be the third best game of opening weekend, I would have drove you to the nearest AA or NA meeting. It’s a new college football world, though, and the Bearcats are still the Group of Five’s signature team until they are beaten. And Arkansas is slowly moving up the SEC ranks under possibly the most underrated head coach in the land, Sam Pittman. The Cats lost a lot of talent so this will give everyone a good idea as to what we can expect from them this season.

West Virginia at Pittsburgh (Thursday, 7:00, TSN2) – The Backyard Brawl is BACK! I am sure we will see references to 13-9 up until and throughout the game. Let’s see if the ‘Eers can put a bit of hurt on a Pitt team that believes they can repeat as ACC champs.

Psycho Game of the Week

Temple at Duke (Friday, 7:30, specialty pack) – Every week now instead of listing honourable mentions in the games of the week section, I will list a game that we all can get here but you would have to be a complete psycho to watch the entirety of (or you are a fan of one of the teams and even then). This week we have Temple travelling to the Carolinas to face Duke. Ugh. This feels like it could be a torture device used by the military. Anyway, unless it’s close, just avoid it.

The Degenerate Portion of Our Show

This section is the section for all you gambling degenerates out there and you KNOW WHO YOU ARE! I do bet on the NFL from time to time but I stopped gambling on college games. I think it took the fun out of it to be honest. Also, I sucked at it.

Alright, this season I am going to do something different. I am going to pick AGAINST THE SPREAD. That’s right! Make things a bit more difficult for me and gives all the more reason for you to not use these picks for your own gambling. I’ve warned you. Let’s begin.

Pittsburgh (-7.5) over West Virginia

Missouri (-19.5) over Louisiana Tech

Purdue (+3.5) over Penn State (with the Boilermakers winning outright)

Duke (-7.5) over Temple

TCU (-14) over Colorado

Appalachian State (+1.5) over North Carolina (with the Mountaineers winning outright)

San Diego State (-6) over Arizona

Oregon (+17) over Georgia (with the Bulldogs winning the game)

Florida (+3) over Utah (Gators win outright in upset)

Notre Dame (+17.5) over Ohio State (tOSU wins but game will be close)

Oregon State (-3) over Boise State

LSU (-3) over Florida State

And there you go! We are at Week 1 so rejoice, college football fans! I am so happy we have made it to this point. I will try to keep things updated over the next couple of days (if need be). I will be on Twitter (@TheBauceman) for a good portion of the action so check me there if you wish. And everyone enjoy the games!

OK now that Clay’s gone, who’s next? – Week 4 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on September 22, 2021 by guelphbossman

Clay Helton started the Coaching Carousel for us early this year. Pair that with Randy Edsall’s resignation/retirement/whatever/bonus payment and it’s been a rough start for the Hot Seat coaches. So the question now is, who will be next. Let’s look at the candidates:

Got to start with Manny Diaz. He hasn’t exactly lit things up in Miami and brought back memories of The U. The problem is, it’s not like they have a lot of money to throw around to pay a buyout and bring in another coach. So they may be stuck at least through this season unless things get really bad in south Florida.
Mike Norvell. Good lord have the Noles been awful this year. I wonder when enough will be enough. This program doesn’t need to get back to the Bobby Bowden era but they have to get back to approaching the Jimbo Fisher era or they could have problems for years.
Geoff Collins. I know he needed time to change the team from an option team to run a pro-style offense. But when is it supposed to happen? It feels like it never will and that Collins really doesn’t deserve a chance to continue his quest in Atlanta.
Rod Carey. Let’s get out of the ACC and move to the American. Carey left a good gig at Northern Illinois to replace dental hygienist-in-training Matt Rhule at Temple and it has been an unmitigated disaster. If it wasn’t for USF they would be looking at an easy trip to the AAC basement.
Nick Rolovich. Rolovich’s problems aren’t just on the field where Wazzu has struggled mightily so far. His ideas about the COVID vaccine have rankled a lot of people and I honestly wonder if they will get rid of him just because he has become an annoying pest.
Walt Bell. Are they really going to get anyone great to come to UMass?

As you can see, I haven’t put some of the usual suspects like Frost, Brohm, Babers or Harbaugh. Probably because they have at least not done worse than expectations at this point and, in Harbaugh’s case, has exceeded them (so far). We are only a quarter of the way through the season so now that conference play is slowly beginning we will see how these coaches’ fortunes turn out.

So far after three weeks we have had a damn good season. Like a return to college football, if you will. Here’s hoping this continues. Let’s get to the schedule!

Thursday

		US	Canada
Marshall at Appalachian State	7:30 PM
Alcorn State at Arkansas-Pine Bluff	7:30 PM

Two games. Neither of them really that good. I mean, yeah, App State is still pretty good and could sneak through and cause a lot of problems in the Sun Belt. Marshall just a blew a big fourth quarter lead and lost to East Carolina. Nothing against the Pirates but yeesh that’s bad. But it is still mid-week college football which is always better than no mid-week college football. Especially if the Thursday Night Football matchup is not exactly great. And, how about that, it isn’t. The Panthers, they’re good. The Texans…yes I know they’re 1-1 but they beat the Jaguars so no, they are not good.

Friday

		US	Canada
Middle Tennessee at Charlotte	6:30 PM
Wake Forest at Virginia	7:00 PM
Brown at Harvard	7:00 PM
Liberty at Syracuse	8:00 PM
UNLV at #22 Fresno State	10:00 PM

OK this is better. Five games. And CBS Sports Network is doing a doubleheader with their weird 6:30 start time. It will be interesting to see how badly Fresno State will beat the Rebels, who now have Tate Fucking Martell as their quarterback. I really don’t get how he gets so many opportunities. Anyway, we also have the first look at Ivy League action for the first time since 2019. OK Wake-Hoos could be good so maybe put your focus on that one.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Texas Tech at Texas	Noon
Richmond at Virginia Tech	Noon
Ohio at Northwestern	Noon
Villanova at #6 Penn State	Noon
Boise State at Utah State	Noon
Miami-OH at Army	Noon
LSU at Mississippi State	Noon
Missouri at Boston College	Noon
Bowling Green at Minnesota	Noon
#12 Notre Dame vs. #18 Wisconsin (in Chicago)	Noon
#2 Georgia at Vanderbilt	Noon
CCSU at Miami	12:30 PM

Normally TSN would be just starting to step up with a bit more college football coverage. Not this weekend though. The Ryder Cup will dominate the TSN airwaves for a good part of Saturday so that moves all college football to TSN2 where there will be a quadrupleheader. As for the games themselves, past ND-Wisky, not a whole lot that would be considered must-watch. And you know what happens during weeks like this. So expect one of the following to happen:

Villanova comes close to upsetting Penn State but the Nittany Lions close it late.
Richmond shocks Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
The Red Raiders throw for like 600 yards and beat Texas in a barnburner.
Mizzou and BC go to eight overtimes and maybe, just maybe, the new overtime rules aren’t as bad as I thought (they still are but anyway).

Finally, the Mountain West finally makes their way to CBS with Boise State who is just somewhat average going to Utah State who suddenly may have a prolific offense again. 1-3 start for the Broncos? Wouldn’t be a total shock.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
Rutgers at #19 Michigan	3:30 PM
Illinois at Purdue	3:30 PM
Kent State at Maryland	3:30 PM
#7 Texas A&M vs. #16 Arkansas (in Arlington)	3:30 PM
Wyoming at UConn	3:30 PM
#9 Clemson at NC State	3:30 PM
Louisville at Florida State	3:30 PM
UTSA at Memphis	3:30 PM
#14 Iowa State at Baylor	3:30 PM
Kansas at Duke	4:00 PM
Georgia State at #23 Auburn	Noon

A good old Southwest Conference showdown highlights the afternoon sked. For once, this neutral site game that Arkansas plays every year at JerryWorld is between two good teams. And Rutgers is on ABC! I was so hoping they would be on in primetime but I’ll take it. Other than that there’s not much of note unless you really need to watch Kansas and Duke play…in football. Oh and how does CBS now think about the UConn contract? This Huskies could be worse than the 2019 version which was one of the worst teams in a long time. To see some of the teams that end up on ESPN+ (or somehow worse) and then know that UConn is getting a national game many weeks is pretty sad (except for Conference USA teams who unfortunately are stuck with horrible TV contracts as it is).

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Tennessee at #11 Florida	7:00 PM
Kentucky at South Carolina	7:00 PM
Navy at Houston	7:00 PM
West Virginia at #4 Oklahoma	7:30 PM
#21 North Carolina vs. Georgia Tech (in Mercedes-Benz Stadium)	7:30 PM
Akron at #10 Ohio State	7:30 PM
Southern Miss at #1 Alabama	7:30 PM
Indiana at Western Kentucky	8:00 PM

Oh man. Feels like such a drop-off from the first two timeslots. WVU-Sooners could be pretty good if the Mountaineers get their offense going early. Navy and Houston, no matter how good or bad they both are, usually put on a great show. As for the rest? Bleh.

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
USF at #15 BYU	10:15 PM
Arizona at #3 Oregon	10:30 PM
Colorado at Arizona State	10:30 PM

Mormon After Dark! If the Cougs play like the Cougs have played so far, that game should be done by halftime. As should the Zona-UO game. The only interesting one could be Colorado, who struggles to score, against Arizona State, who struggles to hold on to the ball. Fun times. Just a reminder, the Arizona-Oregon game will start in progress after Southern Miss-Alabama is done. Thus are the perils of hopping from network to network throughout the day and I always wonder why TSN does this.

Games to set your eyeballs on

Texas A&M vs. Arkansas (in Arlington) (3:30, CBS) – If you thought Arkansas would be in the Top 20 at this point of the season, raise your hand. Now put your hands down, you dirty liars. No one thought the Hogs would be this good. Maybe bowl-eligible. But they have looked seriously good and could put a serious damper on the Aggies’ national title aspirations and it wouldn’t be a total shock if the Razorbacks won. Also good to see Arkansas on CBS since they almost never get on there (except for the Black Friday game against Mizzou).

Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin (in Chicago) (Noon, FOX) – So the first two games on this list are neutral-site games. In late September. I mean they are great games and I am looking forward to them but I find all these neutral-site games usually take away from the pageantry and specialness of games in actual college football stadiums. It’s part of what sets it apart from the NFL. Anyway, the Irish continue their schedule hoping to win a game without struggling…..BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That was a good one. This should be close which will make Irish fans sweat once again.

West Virginia at Oklahoma (7:30, ABC) – Is this the PEW! PEW! PEW! matchup of the week? Considering the Sooners defense and the Sooners offense, I would put the over/under at about 90. One of the worst Top 5 teams I’ve seen in a while. At some point, they are going to either blow a team out and remind them what they are really about or will lose a game they probably shouldn’t have and confirm what many think about them. Don’t count the ‘Eers out of this one as long as their offense plays like they did early against Virginia Tech and not late.

Rutgers at Michigan (3:30, ABC) – Fuck, yeah! Rutgers, baby! They haven’t been 3-0 in so long and haven’t been in a relatively important game on ABC in a long time as well. And they have a challenge because Michigan is also playing better than many believed. The winner stays alive in a seriously competitive Big Ten East. But the way things are going, both teams will be going bowling and maybe, just maybe, all seven teams in the division will be in the postseason as well for the first time ever.

Iowa State at Baylor (3:30, FOX) – No specialty pack games on the Games of the Week list, which is good for many Canadians. Yes, Iowa State was expected to be good and they have been underperforming. And Baylor has not been good since Matt Rhule left. Things, however, are changing in Waco with Dave Aranda in charge as they have started 3-0. And ISU should still have quite a good season so this could be a darkhorse great game.

Honourable mention: Clemson at NC State (3:30, TSN2); Tennessee at Florida (7:00, TSN2); Kansas State at Oklahoma State (7:00, not able to be seen in this country)

You wanna bet?

Eight out of eleven isn’t too bad. I mean it’s not awesome but hey I’ve had much worse weeks. Yes I picked Arizona State. Yes I picked UCF (which most others did) and yeah I also picked Miami (which most others did as well). So really not that bad I think OK fine let’s just get to this week’s picks already:

Michigan over Rutgers

Wisconsin over Notre Dame

Florida over Tennessee

Texas A&M over Arkansas

Clemson over NC State

Iowa State over Baylor

Oklahoma State over Kansas State

Oklahoma over West Virginia

Charlotte over Middle Tennessee

Arizona State over Colorado

Houston over Navy

OK here’s hoping we have another solid weekend of college football action. Enjoy the games everyone!

It’s BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!! Week 0 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on August 25, 2017 by guelphbossman

Yes Week 0. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. We all know what this is. It’s the appetizer for the myriad of main courses the following weekend. OK more like the following Thursday through Monday. But I digress…

You are not going to find marquee games this Saturday. You just won’t. Not gonna happen. But who cares? What this Saturday says is that college football is back! And that’s all that matters right. And it provides me with my first PVR test of the season. See this is the week I hope that, if for some reason my PVR fails, I’m fine with it since the games are mediocre at best. Knowing my luck it will happen during American Thanksgiving Saturday.

Let’s just get to the schedule alright! Just so you know, for this season, if you see the Bell and Rogers logos, it means it goes to the specialty pack. I am sure I will come up with a better logo for it one day but for now we will go with this.

Saturday Early

		US	Canada
Florida A&M vs. Texas Southern (in Tallahassee)	Noon

One FCS game starts it off. They are REALLY easing into things this season.

Saturday Afternoon

		US	Canada
Oregon State at Colorado State	2:30 PM
Portland State at BYU	3:00 PM

Oregon State-Colorado State is touted as the first FBS game of the season. Wouldn’t be a big deal except we see CSU’s brand-new stadium. Basically, the hype is that it will be the jewel of the Group of Five. We shall see. PSU-BYU should be hilariously bad. Considering ESPN picked this one up, you know it’s slim pickins. But still…FOOTBAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Saturday Primetime

		US	Canada
Chattanooga vs. Jacksonville State (in Montgomery)	6:30 PM
Colgate at Cal Poly	7:00 PM
#19 USF at San Jose State	7:30 PM

Back to some FCS action and then one FBS game involving the team I believe will be the Group of Five representative in the New Year’s Six bowl games in USF. If they struggle with SJSU this weekend it could be a sign that my pick was garbage (although I feel OK knowing that many other experts have pegged the Bulls as the G5 pick as well).

Saturday Late Night

		US	Canada
#14 Stanford vs. Rice (in Sydney)	10:00 PM

This is going up against the Mayweather-McGregor fight. That starts at 9:00 but I assume the main event would be around 10:30. So it will be over around the time Stanford should be taking a massive lead on Rice. I guess it’s cool this is in Sydney but remembering last year’s atrocious commentary during the game doesn’t give me a great feeling about this. But still…it’s football.

Sunday

		US	Canada
Richmond at Sam Houston State	~~7:00 PM~~

Hurricane Harvey could put a damper on this one. At this point it is still being played but who knows what will happen between now and gametime. I remember last year two SWAC games on opening Sunday had severe weather issues so it can happen. Luckily for them (and ESPN) they are the only game on the schedule so it can’t screw up anything else if there are delays or it’s postponed.

UPDATE: No more Sunday football. This game has been postponed due to the impending hurricane.

Games to set your eyeballs on

This will be a regular feature this year. And by regular I mean every week. Last year I missed a few weeks. Why? Who knows. Can’t even say I was drunk really.

As for this week, no huge games. It’s football. Hopefully there is at least one close game to whet our appetites for what will begin on Thursday.

Some gambling fun and games

Something else I will do every week this season. For this week however, no…no I won’t.

We finally made it. College football is upon us. Let us rejoice upon this shitty schedule like it was last year’s opening weekend or every time around American Thanksgiving. As of this morning, the new specialty pack channels STILL hadn’t appeared for Bell Fibe. I assume it’s the same with Bell Satellite. The new HD channels will be 1466-1468 now that there are regional CTV channels in the old specialty pack channel spots (and I have gone over the reason why before). Hopefully they don’t wait until late tomorrow morning to do this. Mostly because I will be out-of-town so I would like to set my PVR tonight if I can. And I know I am not asking too much for Bell to do get things done tonight. Or maybe I am. Who knows. As for Rogers they are not showing any of the FCS games in their schedule (which I do enjoy but it becomes a bitch if they get something wrong since I don’t have Rogers). I am under the assumption these games will be added soon but again, it’s like playing roulette. Yes, the odds are that bad.

UPDATE #2: Still don’t see the two FCS games on the Rogers schedule. Compared to Bell customers though, that’s a walk in the park. Right now, the channels that house the U.S. College Sports Package aren’t even appearing on the guide. Makes it kind of tough to PVR the games, no? Not a good sign. Considering I am out of town until early evening this sucks. Great start to the season Bell. Every season they seem to fuck something up. How is this so difficult to them?

UPDATE #3: Finally back in town and still no specialty pack. Seriously upset now. I am assuming Rogers never got the FCS games since I never saw them listed on the schedule. Not impressed at all at the start of the season. If this is a sign of things to come then I may have to figure out another way to get these games.

UPDATE #4: Just got off the phone with Bell, again. Looks like no college football for Bell subscribers today or tonight. Nice. Maybe Rogers can make me a deal.

FINAL UPDATE: Oh, this is a doozy. I get a call back from Bell telling me that the U.S. College Sports Package doesn’t start until Thursday. Why the fuck couldn’t that have been mentioned to me the other times I called? And why is this the case? What a complete fucking joke Bell is.

Anyway, enjoy the games everyone and welcome back!

Well that escalated quickly – Week 1 College Football Recap

Posted on September 6, 2016 by guelphbossman

well that escalated quickly

ESPN hyped the absolute shit out of college football’s opening weekend. So of course everyone, including myself, wondered if the weekend would live up to the hype. To everyone’s glee, it certainly did. College football should take note of this and replicate it as best they can next season. Having Sunday and Monday night games also made it a must-see weekend where I watched almost every minute of it. To be honest, I don’t know how I am functioning right now. But I would have kicked myself if I had missed that weekend-plus of football. It was so crazy and a lot happened in the top 25 that sometimes doesn’t happen in three weeks combined. I would say it was good practice for what the season will bring us but that’s like saying you’re about to learn how to swim without water wings and they drop you in the ocean from a cruise ship.

Anyway, let’s go over what was undoubtedly a great five days of college football. I’ll do the same format as I did with the schedule and see if that works.

Thursday

It all started Thursday night where Appalachian State made many Vols fans shit their pants. What a close game that the Mountaineers probably should have won. Brent Musburger was right in saying the Volunteers survived. Funny thing is, after all that happened, Tennessee may move UP in the rankings.
Indiana started REALLY slowly but showed why they are a solid middle-to-low-end Big Ten team in their win over Florida International.
Guess who is (technically) leading the SEC East right now? If you guessed the Vanderbilt Commodores you’d be wrong…STUPID! You so stupid! Somehow Vandy gacked the game away against South Carolina who won it on a pretty long field goal with almost no time left. This meant that Will Muschamp yelled at his team about 15% less after the game. They deserved it.
I thought if Wake Forest had lost to Tulane then my prediction of them making a bowl game would have gone in the toilet. They won.
Lamar Jackson went ham on Charlotte. Eight first half touchdowns! I know it’s just Charlotte and they really don’t even belong in Conference USA but good lord that’s amazing. Maybe Louisville will have something to say about Clemson and Florida State’s recent ACC dominance.
If you haven’t seen Western Kentucky’s entrance to their opening game, look it up. Except for the one guy that started the pileup. I don’t think he thought it was too funny.
UConn barely got by Maine. I don’t see how that gives the Big XII any confidence in them.

Friday

Christian McCaffrey made an appearance and, other than highlights, no Canadian got to see it. I sure hope that changes next year. Oh, by the way, he still looks like a really good football player.
Michigan State didn’t look too good against Furman but they too may move up the rankings.
Well there goes one of my winless predictions. Eastern Michigan destroyed Mississippi Valley State.
First FCS-over-FBS upset of the year belongs to the Great Danes of Albany as they upended Buffalo.
Uh-oh. Temple loses to Army. The Black Knights may sneak into a bowl. Temple better hope that was an aberration since it does not look good on the resume. On top of that, the Owls were told they will not be invited into the Big XII. A bad day overall.
The Rocky Mountain Showdown was more like a Rocky Mountain Beatdown. Colorado beat Colorado State pretty damn easily. Hey, maybe the Pac-12 will be really tough this year from top to bottom.
Toledo-Arkansas State ended up only in SD for us. Up until early last week it was showing up on the TSN schedule. Then it was removed. Eventually it showed up on Rogers and Bell schedules but only in SD. Someone dropped the ball.

Saturday Early Afternoon (and Morning)

I caught most of the Georgia Tech-Boston College game from Dublin Saturday morning. Was too busy to watch it all the way through but I did catch the last five minutes which were great. A good start to the day.
Jimmy Harbaugh put a royal beatdown on up-and-coming Tweeter Nick Rolovich and his Hawaii program. Wasn’t even close.
I don’t get the Big Ten Network and it didn’t seem to matter as Ohio State also decided to open up a can of whoopass, this one on Bowling Green.
Well guess who is Rowing The Boat? Western Michigan pulls off the big upset of Northwestern and now I can’t really see how they won’t be at least 11-1 if not 12-0 going into conference championship week.
And speaking of possibly going 12-0, unless Houston coughs one up, they seem destined to make the College Football Playoff Committee’s job difficult after starting their season with a win over #3 Oklahoma. Impressive doesn’t even start to tell how good this win was. Big XII, just invite them already and make this a conference game next season.
Back on the upset conversation, how about South Alabama? They pull off one of the biggest opening day upsets ever, beating Mississippi State when the Bulldogs’ short field goal on the final play doinked off the left upright.
So Navy pulled a quarterback out of the crowd in their game against Fordham. He had to get out of his uniform whites and into his football uniform to get to the sidelines once Tago Smith went down to injury.
The Justin Fuente era started well, I guess. They beat Liberty but it took almost three quarters for them to get going. They won’t get that same leeway in the Battle at Bristol next week.

Saturday Mid-to-Late Afternoon

Thanks LSU. Now my national championship pick looks terrible. Then again, Wisconsin’s defense came to play. They didn’t totally shut down Leonard Fournette but he definitely didn’t look like a Heisman candidate for most of the game. Brandon Harris, however, was terrible. Just didn’t look comfortable at QB and it showed. All the Tigers have to do to make it back to the CFP is run the table. Easy right? Oh, and cue the Fire Les commentary.
The SEC’s Tour de Failure almost continued as Texas A&M blew a pretty big lead to UCLA to allow the Bruins to force overtime. The Aggies won in the first extra period but it shouldn’t have even been that close.
Louisiana Tech almost made it another upset of an SEC team as they came oh so close to beating Arkansas, losing by 1 in the end.
Penn State’s kicker is ridiculously big…for a kicker at least. Hilarious to see him lay out kick returners although it is a distinct Nittany Lion advantage.
Staggered start times work great (a few websites have preached about this). I agree (as long as I am home to watch the games). Georgia-North Carolina got the later afternoon start time on their own and took advantage of it. UGA came back from a deficit to beat the Tar Heels and Nick Chubb looks like an early true Heisman candidate with his second half performance.
The Bronco Mendenhall era started with the worst Power Five loss to an FCS team in recent memory, losing to Richmond and not being even close.

Saturday Primetime

Kentucky was up 25 on Southern Miss. They ended up losing. I think Mark Stoops is done unless a miracle happens. Also, Wildcat fans are already checking out when basketball season starts.
UMass kept it real close with Florida for three-and-a-half quarters. What in the hell was wrong with the SEC this weekend? The highlight of this one was clearly Steve Spurrier’s speech after the field was named after him. Despite what many South Carolina fans think, Spurrier being back as head coach would be great for the game.
You know, early on I thought USC would keep it close with Bama. And the way they were playing, that looked like a good prediction. Then the Tide turned it on, ran away with the game and gave Lane Kiffin a measure of revenge on USC (for his shitty head coaching while he was there).
The class move of the week: Nebraska lines up for their first punt with only ten men. Their punter, Sam Foltz, had been killed in an auto accident during the summer so in his memory they lined up one man short and took the delay of game penalty. Have to give Fresno State credit as well as they declined the penalty. A great and poignant scene.
The night ended (pretty much) with Clemson almost Clemsoning the game away against Auburn. I don’t know what the hell Dabo Swinney was thinking but it tells me that he has no faith in his kicker at all.

Sunday

Notre Dame-Texas basically made it so that every Labour Day Sunday for at least the next decade will have a college football game. That was an absolute thriller of a game. Hell, the Irish even tied it up late and sent it to overtime with a blocked extra point returned for two. The Longhorns sewed it up in the second overtime period on Tyrone Swoopes’ rushing touchdown. Is Texas back? Is Notre Dame going to be not as good? Maybe. It is week one remember.

Monday

Wow, way too many sections here. Won’t have this problem going forward. Anyway…Ole Miss built up a 22-point lead and many thought, at the very least, they would hold on to upset the Noles and give the SEC a much needed boost after a pretty bad weekend. Instead, they blew that lead pretty quickly and ended up losing.

So there you go. Opening weekend in the books and what a weekend it was. To be honest, this coming weekend won’t be nearly as good. It’s almost impossible unless there are some crazy finishes to accompany what is arguably the weakest slate of college football all season. I should have the schedule up tomorrow since it’s almost already set (I am honestly shocked).

And then we get the NFL starting up as well on Thursday night! I should have the NFL schedule, as usual, up on Friday for Week 1 of the NFL season. Football is back. Finally. It took long enough.

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.

Week 8 College Football TV Schedule – Sponsored by the return of The Committee!

Posted on October 22, 2015 by guelphbossman

We’re BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!

Yes, the College Football Playoff Committee sends out their first rankings on November 3^rd. To me that is entirely too early. Hell, they couldn’t get it done properly after the games on American Thanksgiving weekend. We will have controversy, that is a given. Some team will be ranked too high and another ranked too low and the problem will be “rectified” with some horseshit leap-frogging in the poll to “make things right.” Don’t get me wrong. Should Ohio State have been in the CFP last season? Absolutely. But they shouldn’t have had to leapfrog TCU to get in. They should have been ahead if not VERY close behind. That would have made The Committee’s decision a little more palatable. Oh well, what we should all be not thankful for is that every ESPN employee (except the 350 about to get shitcanned) will get to show their bracket at some point over the next month. I don’t mind debate about the rankings, just don’t show who you want in. Doesn’t matter if it’s Rece Davis or Janitor Bob, their rankings mean sweet fuck all.

Alright, enough of that and on to the task at hand. The TV schedule for this week. Of course this had to be a free weekend for me. One of the worst weeks of the season in terms of game quality. Let’s hope we have some ridiculous finishes so that I don’t feel as bad eating really shitty food and staying up until 2 in the morning…at home.

First off, the cable schedule:

			ROGERS	FIBE	SATELLITE
California at UCLA (Thu)	9:00 PM	TSN4	X	X	X
Clemson at Miami	12:00 PM	ABC/TSN1	X	X	X
Iowa State at Baylor	12:00 PM	TSN2	X	X	X
Pittsburgh at Syracuse	12:00 PM	TSN4	X	X	X
Boston College at Louisville	12:30 PM	WSBK	X	X	X
Tulane at Navy	1:00 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Indiana at Michigan State	3:30 PM	ABC	X	X	X
Ohio at Buffalo	3:30 PM	MyTV	X	X
Wisconsin at Illinois	3:30 PM	BTN	X
Tennessee at Alabama	3:30 PM	CBS	X	X	X
Connecticut at Cincinnati	4:30 PM	CBSSN	X	X
Utah at USC	7:30 PM	FOX	X	X	X
Ohio State at Rutgers	8:00 PM	ABC	X	X	X

As usual, this is set in stone (for the most part). There is a reverse mirror for the 3:30 ABC game. Most of us will see Indiana take on Michigan State but some will get Texas Tech-Oklahoma (like people who can get ABC out of Seattle I presume). I will watch for this for the next day or so as sometimes the coverage maps don’t come out until Friday which is a bit of an annoyance but it is what it is. All in all, this is a really weak schedule. The best cable game is probably Utah-USC which is pretty sad. As I said before…pray for great finishes. Then again, this is college football. We will get at least one. I mean nothing like Michigan State-Michigan last week but it should be alright.

And now to the bane of my (blogging) existence…the specialty pack schedule:

		ROGERS	FIBE	SATELLITE
Temple at East Carolina (Thu)	7:00 PM	X	X	X
Georgia Southern at Appalachian State (Thu)	7:30 PM	X	X	X
Memphis at Tulsa (Fri)	8:00 PM	X	X	X
Utah State at San Diego State (Fri)	10:30 PM	X	X	X
Northwestern at Nebraska	12:00 PM	X	X	X
Pittsburgh at Syracuse (no longer on SP)	12:00 PM
NC State at Wake Forest	12:00 PM	X	X	X
Auburn at Arkansas	12:00 PM		X	X
Boston College at Louisville	12:30 PM	X	X	X
Penn State vs. Maryland (in Baltimore)	3:30 PM	X	X	X
Texas Tech at Oklahoma	3:30 PM	X	X	X
Duke at Virginia Tech	3:30 PM	X	X	X
Virginia at North Carolina	3:30 PM	X	X	X
Missouri at Vanderbilt	4:00 PM		X	X
Texas A&M at Ole Miss	7:00 PM	X	X	X
Florida State at Georgia Tech	7:00 PM	X	X	X
Western Kentucky at LSU	7:00 PM	X	X	X
Kentucky at Mississippi State	7:30 PM		X	X
Wyoming at Boise State	10:15 PM	X	X	X
Washington at Stanford	10:30 PM	X	X	X

Again, it’s like Rogers and Bell can’t stop tripping over themselves. Why in the blue hell is Pittsburgh-Syracuse on the specialty pack when it’s already on TSN4? I can see that changing to Northwestern-Nebraska which isn’t showing up anywhere yet is a game on ESPN2. When this change will happen? I predict late Friday night. There are five other later games not showing up on the specialty pack either but there are spots for them so they should be there soon. Looks like I will be doing updates over the next day or so. Update: All these games have been added. However, Rogers has removed-Pitt-Cuse but Bell has not. Still don’t think it will appear on the specialty pack but I could be wrong. For now it is still there. Update #2: Pitt-Syracuse officially taken off the specialty pack (since it’s already on a TSN station). As for now, any game with an asterisk beside it is NOT confirmed but should be before the games begin. Another weak schedule here, with Texas A&M-Ole Miss as the headliner. Yikes. Pretty bad. No wonder they put College GameDay at James Madison. And saying that, why couldn’t they pick another school that hasn’t hosted it. Here are a few options they could have taken:

Syracuse (for Pitt at Cuse) – There is actually quite a bit of college football history in Syracuse. They could use a full hour to talk about Jim Brown and Donovan McNabb. Kind of amazed they’ve never been there before.
Orlando (for Houston at UCF) – OK, UCF is terrible this year. But they spent the better part of six years before that being really good. Plus, with Houston there at least there is one good AAC team playing.
Tampa (for SMU at USF) – OK, maybe not. I mean they haven’t been here but this is a pretty bad matchup.
Piscataway (for Ohio State at Rutgers) – My guess is ESPN won’t go here because of the fact the Rutgers football program is a dumpster fire right now. Otherwise, this would have been the pick, no doubt about it.

OK so there weren’t that many choices. Not saying James Madison isn’t a good choice since they are historically one of the best FCS programs (and should move up to FBS soon enough). Just thinking the game itself (the Dukes hosting Richmond in the Little Battle for Virginia (Commonwealth Cup Lite?)) should have at least been on ESPNEWS if not ESPNU since this is the weekend it would have been appreciated. I digress.

Games of the Week (if you like to change channels all the time)

This is probably one of the many reasons I am not married anymore. I like to change channels when watching live TV. I’m a guy, what can I say? I also pay extra to get the U.S. College Sports Package and CBS Sports Network so I am damn well going to turn the channel there…a lot. I always stick with a game if it’s close in the 4^th quarter but other than that I am all over the map. It’s fun. I’m sure my remote control will die a painful death one day but that’s the price you pay for being a remote control in this day and age.

Texas A&M at Ole Miss (7:00, specialty pack) – This is the de facto game of the week since it’s the only game between two ranked teams. Let’s put this into perspective. Both of these teams lost last week, A&M to Bama, and Ole Miss to Memphis. So neither of them are even top 15. Sad state of affairs. If either team wants a chance at the SEC West title, they have to win here. Loser has to probably run the table to be considered in the New Year’s Six conversation.

Clemson at Miami (Noon, ABC/TSN1) – When a game involving Miami is the second best game of the week, you know it’s not a strong schedule. If Clemson blows The U out of the water, do they fire Al Golden on the field at the end of the game? That would make this game a whole lot more entertaining.

Indiana at Michigan State (3:30, ABC) – Last week’s game between the Hoosiers and Rutgers shows why Indiana still has a LOOOOOONG way to go towards respectability. They had a 20+ point lead on the shitshow that is Scarlet Knights football and they squandered it. Terrible. Knowing the way this season has gone for Sparty, expect them to get out to a three-touchdown lead, take the foot off the accelerator and win by 5 somehow.

Tennessee at Alabama (3:30, CBS) – Is it looking good for the Vols or isn’t it? I can’t tell anymore. They look horrible in allowing Oklahoma, Florida, and Arkansas to come back and beat them. Then they play well and somehow beat Georgia. I don’t get it. I hope we get the Butch Jones lit a fire under their ass Vols rather than the Butch Jones and his coaching staff left their brains at home Vols. Nothing worse than a CBS game that is essentially over by the 5 minute mark of the second quarter.

Western Kentucky at LSU (7:00, specialty pack) – OK LSU should win this game. But if the Hilltoppers’ offense is on their game, LSU better be ready. Brandon Doughty is arguably the best Group of Five quarterback and WKU’s offense is crazy-good. So I expect LSU to win but it will be one of those 55-45 deals where WKU scores a late touchdown to make it look respectable but the game overall gives LSU (and their fans) a bit of a scare.

Utah at USC (7:30, FOX) – OK, I lied. This game isn’t the game of the week on cable but it’s close. Now, if Pat Haden all of a sudden announced he would be filling the college football world in on the next USC head football coach at halftime then this game would rocket up the list. Otherwise it will be watchable because it’s better than the ABC offering that starts half-an-hour later.

Gambling and shit

I have noticed that there is a huge disparity in prizes between the NFL and college football ProLine pools. In the NFL one, the winners share between $400K and $800K which is pretty damn sweet if there’s less than a hundred winners. For the college one, the winners share between $10K and $20K. And people wonder why I don’t gamble on college football. I don’t feel like putting in $20 to get back maybe $500. Not exciting enough. I need that thrill of having almost zero chance of winning a prize of like $100K. Anyway, here are my picks (which have no research or thought behind them):

Ole Miss over Texas

Clemson over Miami

Michigan State over Indiana

Alabama over Tennessee

LSU over Western Kentucky

Utah over USC

Ohio State over Rutgers

Stanford over Washington

Memphis over Tulsa

Oklahoma over Texas Tech

Tomorrow I will have the NFL schedule up (which is a lot easier and a lot less frustrating).

Well, well, well…it’s that time again…COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Week 1 College Football TV Schedule

Posted on September 1, 2015 by guelphbossman

After what felt like an eternity, college football is back on the air. If you were lucky enough (and enjoyed parting with your hard-earned money easily) you saw a fantastic game during the FCS Kickoff this past Saturday. Future Mountain West Conference member North Dakota State lost a close one to other potential Future Mountain West Conference member Montana. These two teams would assuredly be at least in the middle of the standings in the MWC if not near the top.

So we start with some good news. Our friends (and I use that term very loosely) at Rogers and Bell have already come out with their schedules for week one……………………………..ok now that you have woke up from fainting I can continue. Believe me, I was shocked as well. Last year there were times it was Thursday morning and neither had schedules up for that night’s games. In terms of scheduling their respective specialty packs, Rogers usually does a better job than Bell. So, in conclusion, I am impressed…so far. Let’s hope they keep it up.

First off I will start with the almighty cable schedule:

			ROGERS	BELL
FIU at UCF (Thurs)	6:00 PM	CBSSN	X
Duke at Tulane (Thurs)	9:30 PM	CBSSN	X
Colorado at Hawaii (Fri morning)	1:00 AM	CBSSN	X
Fordham at Army (Fri)	7:00 PM	CBSSN	X
Kent State at Illinois (Fri)	9:00 PM	BTN	X
Illinois State at Iowa	12:00 PM	BTN	X
Colgate at Navy	12:00 PM	CBSSN	X
Wofford at Clemson	12:30 PM	WSBK	X	X
BYU at Nebraska	3:30 PM	ABC	X	X
Wagner at Rice	3:30 PM	MyTV	X	X
Auburn vs. Louisville (in Atlanta)	3:30 PM	CBS	X	X
Florida Atlantic at Tulsa	3:30 PM	CBSSN	X
Virginia at UCLA	3:30 PM	FOX	X	X
UNLV at Northern Illinois	7:30 PM	CBSSN	X
Texas at Notre Dame	7:30 PM	NBC	X	X
Alabama vs. Wisconsin (in Dallas)	8:00 PM	ABC	X	X
Ohio State at Virginia Tech (Mon)	8:00 PM	TSN3	X	X

This is Rogers’ bread and butter so to speak. Every possible game on cable this season will be shown for Rogers customers. They get CBS Sports Network and the Big Ten Network while Bell customers do not. Anyway, looking at the games, a pretty good spread over three days. Of course the neutral site games stand out since that’s what week one of any college football season now seems to be about. Plus we get a Monday night treat before the NFL season begins with tOSU and Virginia Tech squaring off. Not bad. And then of course the surprise CBS game during week one. Some good stuff all around.

Update: If you see this on time it looks like due to a weather delay, the Wagner-Rice game was switched to Old Dominion-Eastern Michigan.

Now let’s take a wee gander at the specialty packs:

			ROGERS	BELL
South Carolina vs. North Carolina (in Charlotte) (Thurs)	6:00 PM	SP	X	X
Oklahoma State at Central Michigan (Thurs)	7:00 PM	SP	X	X
Western Kentucky at Vanderbilt (Thurs)	8:00 PM	SP		X
TCU at Minnesota (Thurs)	9:00 PM	SP	X	X
Charlotte at Georgia State (Fri)	3:30 PM	SP	X	X
Baylor at SMU (Fri)	7:00 PM	SP	X	X
Michigan State at Western Michigan (Fri)	7:00 PM	SP	X	X
Washington at Boise State (Fri)	10:15 PM	SP	X	X
Stanford at Northwestern	12:00 PM	SP	X	X
Richmond at Maryland	12:00 PM	SP	X	X
ULM at Georgia	12:00 PM	SP		X
Penn State at Temple	3:30 PM	SP	X	X
UTEP at Arkansas	3:30 PM	SP	X	X
Bowling Green at Tennessee	4:00 PM	SP		X
Arizona State vs. Texas A&M (in Houston)	7:00 PM	SP	X	X
UL-Lafayette at Kentucky	7:00 PM	SP	X	X
New Mexico State at Florida	7:30 PM	SP		X
South Carolina State vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (in Orlando) (Sun)	3:30 PM	SP	X	X

And now we see Bell’s strength. Bell customers (like myself) will get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and SEC Network games (and the odd FOX Sports Network ACC game). Rogers customers do not get SEC Network games which, on some weeks is fine and on others really sucks. TSN ended up showing a couple of noon SEC Network games last season so not all hope is lost. A boatload of Thursday and Friday action along with a healthy dose of Saturday games here. Highlight is probably the ASU-TAMU game in Houston which I see being a great one. Surprisingly, no late games really anywhere that we can see. Latest game will be Bama-Wisky on ABC for everyone. That changes starting next week I’m sure.

Games o’ the Week

Alright I did this in an earlier post so my choices haven’t changed. All I will do is list them here in order of importance:

Alabama vs. Wisconsin (in Dallas)
Ohio State at Virginia Tech
Arizona State vs. Texas A&M (in Houston)
Texas at Notre Dame
Auburn vs. Louisville (in Atlanta)
TCU at Minnesota
Michigan at Utah
South Carolina vs. North Carolina (in Charlotte)
Washington at Boise State
BYU at Nebraska

All in all, Rogers customers will receive 31 games from Thursday through Monday and Bell customers receive 27. That’s about on par with what we can expect each and every week (if you have one of the specialty packs). I’ve said it before but at least for Bell customers, the specialty pack is worth it. $100 for the year and you get all these extra games. I am waiting for them to jack the price and who knows what will happen once pick n’ pay is implemented but for now….WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Rogers is a little different since (as far as I know) they group all sports together in one huge premium package, which is ridiculous. Obvious money grab since I know very few people who will watch all sports. And by very few I mean none.

One last note. When I don’t have my kids (which works out to a little over half the weekends), I can be seen on the Twitter machine doing that live-tweeting thing. I spend all day watching college football and usually eat really shitty (health-wise) but tasty food. Good times. I pay for it Sunday but many people have that as a recovery day for various reasons. Anyway, where was I…oh yeah. My twitter handle is @LikeABauce1978. I know Twitter isn’t everyone’s thing. Some like Facebook. Some like that Instagram thing. Some just prefer browsing websites. I don’t think there is anyone (at least under 50) that doesn’t do one of these four. And if you say you are then how come you are on this site right now? OK this is getting way to philosophical (I think). Just enjoy the games this weekend and for the next four months. I’m looking forward to it.

Update #2: Well I knew it wouldn’t last. Checked my guide (Bell Fibe) this morning and the tOSU-VT game tonight is not on TSN, replaced with Canada playing in the FIBA Americas tournament on multiple channels. As of right now, it looks like it is still on TSN3 for Bell Satellite customers. Rogers also looks like it has been replaced with the basketball game. I’m not quite sure what to make of this because it also is not appearing on the specialty packages. If this is the case I will have to talk to customer service because it is supposed to be on either one. That’s the deal I (along with anyone else who has signed up for a specialty pack) signed up for. Not impressed. I will keep you posted as the day goes on.

Update #3: Ok now I am pissed off. Talk to a CSR from Bell. She says that it’s the NCAA that is saying this game can’t be shown in this area. I asked her why it was taken off TSN in the first place and she said the NCAA has the right to remove the game from a specific viewing area. I called bullshit on that and said that makes no sense. One of the biggest games of the year and the NCAA (of all organizations) takes it off Canadian television (at least for Fibe customers from what I can tell). She goes on to say the NCAA has control of the specialty pack. Seriously? Do you think I’m a fucking moron? Bell has no control over the contract they have with ESPN as to what they put on the specialty pack? If that’s the case, that’s like saying the NCAA has chosen not to allow FOX Sports One games in this area but allow ESPN games to air. So basically the NCAA is colluding with ESPN to keep FOX out of Canada. Uh, no. There is no fucking way that is the case. Basically this CSR is a dipshit (which most of them are due to complete lack of training) so I will try again later on this afternoon and hope things change. FUCK!

Update #4: Finally. FINALLY! Someone with a bit of brains (and possibly training) has somewhat answered my question. I finally decided to call in and ask what was going on. The CSR that answered told me she saw it in the guide for tonight and double-checked. Lo and behold it was there for her so it should be shown tonight. She said sometimes with updates (especially modem updates), they don’t come out quick enough to update everything on time and that includes the guides. So, from what she has told me, the Virginia Tech-Ohio State game SHOULD appear tonight. My guess is that it is the same for Rogers and Bell Satellite customers. Let’s hope that this is the case. Fingers crossed. Now unfortunately this does mean that it will definitely not appear on a TSN network tonight which sucks for anyone who doesn’t have a specialty pack.

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: Richmond

OK now that Clay’s gone, who’s next? – Week 4 College Football TV Schedule

Thursday

Friday

Saturday Early

Saturday Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Saturday Late Night

Well that escalated quickly – Week 1 College Football Recap

Thursday

Friday

Saturday Early Afternoon (and Morning)

Saturday Mid-to-Late Afternoon

Saturday Primetime

Sunday

Monday

Well, well, well…it’s that time again…COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Week 1 College Football TV Schedule