“Bo Jackson Leap Year”: The SEC on CBS gains two more weeks this season

The year 2016 is a leap year, with 29 days in February.

The year 2015, as a college football television year, is a “Bo Jackson leap year” for the SEC and CBS.

What could that term possibly mean, you ask? It’s actually very simple: Just as the calendar gains a day in a leap year, the SEC on CBS broadcast franchise gains two days — and two weekends — this college football season. Because Auburn is involved, it’s a “Bo Jackson leap year.” If Alabama had been involved, it would have been been called a “Major Ogilvie leap year.”

(NOTE: Whenever you have a chance to tuck the name Major Ogilvie into a college football article, you do it. All-time names must be thrown into columns at every opportunity — that’s the first rule of Fight Club for college football bloggers.)

Our cover photo features Bo Jackson from 1982. This photo features Major Ogilvie from 1981. What a time to be alive.

Our cover photo features Bo Jackson from 1982. This photo features Major Ogilvie from 1981. What a time to be alive.

This “leap year” for the SEC on CBS doesn’t have a complicated source or point of origin. What’s noteworthy about this development is that it is relatively abrupt and marks such a profound change from nearly half a century of broadcasting on Black Rock.

For the previous 47 years — 1968 through 2014 — CBS televised the U.S. Open. This meant that on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and on the following Saturday as well, CBS was committed to showing tennis. This limited the extent to which CBS could televise college football when it re-entered the realm of regular season coverage back in 1982, before it began its primary affiliation with the SEC in 1996. When the SEC on CBS was born, this limitation persisted, although once in a while, CBS tried to sneak in a game between a men’s semifinal doubleheader and a nighttime women’s championship match.

Such was the case in 2002, when an Andre Agassi-Lleyton Hewitt second semifinal ran up against a game between defending national champion Miami and a Florida team just beginning to enter the Ron Zook era after Steve Spurrier went to the Washington Redskins:

If you fast forward to the 15-minute mark of the above video, you’ll notice that the Miami-Florida game started with shadows partly covering The Swamp. Yes, that game started a little after 5 p.m. Eastern time — CBS was trying to cram it between different sessions of tennis. However, the nighttime women’s final was Serena Williams versus older sister Venus. The reality of having to fit a long, sprawling college football game into a window and keep various affiliates and sports fans happy was too ambitious on CBS’s part. Sticking a Saturday football game into a championship tennis lineup proved to be unsustainable, and the practice was soon discontinued.

As much as the SEC has benefited from ESPN’s publicity over the years, it has not been able to enjoy coverage in the first two weeks of the season on CBS. Now, that all changes.

*

The 47-year relationship between CBS and the United States Tennis Association is over. ESPN2 will cover all of the U.S. Open on Labor Day weekend, and ESPN will cover the women’s championship match on Saturday, Sept. 12. (The 3 p.m. Eastern start time for the broadcast has forced a South Florida-Florida State football game to start on ESPN at 11:30 Eastern. This will either truncate the College GameDay broadcast that day or amend it in terms of shifting it to another channel.)

This change at the U.S. Open means CBS — with Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson on the call — gets to pick up two extra weeks of SEC football. On Sept. 12, Verne and Gary will cover the Georgia-Vanderbilt game, giving the SEC East an early look-in, but the featured attraction in this “Bo Jackson leap year” comes this Saturday, when Auburn plays former offensive coordinator (and constant coup plotter) Bobby Petrino and his Louisville Cardinals.

Auburn needs to win this game in terms of establishing College Football Playoff legitimacy and eligibility, but let’s say the Tigers do get the result they’re looking for. Enjoying the platform of CBS in week one could lead into a tension point that’s always on the mind of college football fans and pundits: In a close race, could the SEC champion get left out of the playoff?

Many analysts (this one included) think that there’s no truly transcendent team in the SEC this season. The league could be eight or nine deep in terms of really good teams, but there might not be a single great team. Parity and balance could rule the league to the extent that you’ll see a 2007-style situation, with the champion having two losses.

If we get that scenario, and if two-loss Auburn is the SEC champion matched against:

1) two-loss Oregon or two-loss USC as the Pac-12 champion;

OR

2) one-loss Georgia Tech as the ACC champion;

OR

3) one-loss Michigan State as an at-large candidate, having beaten Oregon but lost to Ohio State…

… will the Tigers make the playoff?

A lot of people think that an SEC team is getting into the playoff, no matter what, because… well… for no other reason than it’s the SEC. Plenty of people in the college sports industry think that the College Football Playoff will expand to eight teams the instant an SEC team is left out. For this reason, a considerable subset of pundits think the SEC won’t be left out of the playoff anytime soon.

I would counter with the point that if the other Power 5 conference champions can get into the clubhouse with 11-1 or 12-1 records this season, a two-loss SEC champion (especially if it’s not Alabama) could be in trouble. However, if it’s Auburn, this early-season game on CBS provides just the kind of forum in which an impressive win could leave a positive imprint on others’ minds come early December. If Auburn makes its way back to the Georgia Dome three months after this opener against Louisville, CBS can say, “We were here in Atlanta three months ago, when Auburn began its quest to make the College Football Playoff.”

Will it mean everything to voters on the CFB Playoff Committee? No.

Could it sway one vote in the room in a close call? Possibly.

That’s enough to make one think a little longer about the value of this “Bo Jackson leap year” for the SEC on CBS… and Auburn, should it defeat Bobby Petrino this weekend in Atlanta.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

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