The ideal college football schedule, week six

College football television viewers — at least those who are interested in the sport on a national level and consume the sport with a national emphasis — got lucky this past weekend.

With blowouts in all four major game windows — Michigan-Maryland in the noon window; Alabama-Georgia and Texas Tech-Baylor at 3:30 (among others); Ole Miss-Florida in the 7 p.m. window; and Arizona Stanford at 10:30 — a lot of high-profile contests didn’t really clash with each other.

However, the tension point remains: When games in the same window are close on the scoreboard — Purdue-Michigan State and Iowa-Wisconsin provided the foremost example from week five — it’s very hard if not impossible to keep up with the action if you don’t have a multi-monitor setup in your room.

With this in mind, we once again set out to create the ideal college football schedule in terms of time-slotting and the rearranging of game windows. Let’s measure the reality of week six against its possibilities (which weren’t sought by the networks):

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We start in the noon window, where Oklahoma-Texas — often a staple as a day-starter on the second weekend of October — returns to 11 a.m. at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. That game should rightly anchor the main window and not be re-slotted to 1 or 1:30 Eastern.

The game or games which should be re-slotted to 1 or 1:30 are the Big Ten’s triple stack of Illinois-Iowa, Maryland-Ohio State, and Indiana-Penn State. Surely, at least ONE of those three games should move off the noon dime and migrate to a less crowded time slot, such that everyone would be able to see the end.

Yes, it could very well be that Iowa and Ohio State will win in blowout fashion, but that still leaves Indiana-Penn State as a mystery game which could go down to the wire. Even a modest stagger of 30 minutes — with a 12:30 kick — would make all the sense in the world for Big Ten viewers.

Alas, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen (yet) in college football broadcasting.

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We move to the 3:30 window, where a very familiar problem arises.

NBC and CBS both show one game per weekend (with CBS occasionally dipping its toes into doubleheader waters). These networks, as we’ve noted in the past — and will continue to point out in the future — aren’t constrained the way ESPN and Fox Sports 1 are. They don’t have to fit in several college football games in one day. Yet, the Peacock and Black Rock both slap their games in the 3:30 window, alongside all the ESPN/ABC family games.

This week, Georgia-Tennessee is not a headline-grabbing SEC on CBS game. It’s meaningful, but it’s not a showcase-level attraction. CBS keeping that game at 3:30 is reasonable.

However, Navy-Notre Dame is a major attraction, with the Midshipmen being unbeaten and Notre Dame still in the playoff hunt with only one loss. That’s precisely the kind of game which should move to 4:30 or 5 Eastern, separating from the rest of the 3:30 crowd. No dice, but in the future, NBC’s gotta roll and create its own Notre Dame window if the game is sexy enough.

Broadly viewed, the 3:30 window is the traffic jam it typically turns out to be. Northwestern-Michigan on Big Ten Network occupies this window. So do Georgia-Tennessee, Navy-Notre Dame, and Wisconsin-Nebraska. Those games offer different levels of competition in terms of quality and stature, but all of them feature high-visibility programs people want to follow. With all of them parked in the same window, however, their exposure is collectively reduced. Moving one game to 4:30 and another to 5 would improve exposure, but college football wants none of that.

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As has happened in previous weeks this season, Pac-12 Network is a friend of the differentiated game window. Washington State-Oregon comes on at 6 Eastern this weekend. However, that contest is relatively isolated in terms of having a stand-alone window removed from the crowd. Pac-12 Network then has Colorado-Arizona State at 10 p.m., all while ESPN comes on at the very same time with the game of the week: unbeaten California at unbeaten Utah, the Pac-12’s showcase of the week.

Surely, Colorado-Arizona State or any other Pac-12 game should not be kicking off at the same time as Cal-Utah.

(Side note: Yes, it should be said that with Arkansas-Alabama starting at 7, there’s no way Cal-Utah will start at 10 on ESPN. If the game starts on time, ESPNEWS will very likely pick up the first several minutes while Arkansas-Alabama concludes. The more likely scenario is that Cal-Utah might start around 10:13 to 10:21 — the beginning will still move to ESPNEWS, but the precise start time should be delayed a little bit. This concludes our side note.)

Even if Cal-Utah starts at 10:21, Colorado-Arizona State should begin at 11 Eastern, so that viewers could see a quarter or a quarter and a half of that contest after Cal-Utah ends. As an alternative move, Pac-12 Network could have started Washington State-Oregon at 5 Eastern and begun Colorado-ASU at 9.

Sigh.

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The night window — 7 to 10:30 p.m. — is unusual this week in that the ABC game at 8 is a dud. Miami looks awful, and Florida State hasn’t set the world on fire. The more attractive games in prime time lie elsewhere… and they’re stacked together.

TCU-Kansas State and Florida-Missouri might be aesthetically ugly games, but the matchups are interesting and loaded with significance. (To be fair to Miami and Florida State, that matchup is significant as well. The point of emphasis, though, is that for an ABC Game of the Week, it doesn’t pack a lot of punch.) However, with Frogs-Cats and Gators-Tigers both at 7:30, you’re going to have to wear out your remote control instead of being able to stay with one game at the start and then move to another one later.

At 7 Eastern, you will have to use your remote control as you switch between a name team in the South (Alabama, playing Arkansas on ESPN) and a name team in the West (Boise State, playing Colorado State on CBS Sports Network).

If there’s one good thing about Boise State playing at 7 and not 10:30, it’s that the Broncos won’t interfere with Cal-Utah, the game which really should have been in the ABC slot at 8 and deserved that kind of national platform.

Why did Bears-Utes not receive such treatment? ESPN/ABC might feel burned after a UCLA-Arizona showcase turned into a blowout which pulled in comparatively low ratings.

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College football television, in September, offers a lot of time-slot differentiation. Such was the case this year, at any rate. In October, time slots have become more cookie-cutter in nature. Fans don’t generally win in such situations.

Maybe, as in week five, viewers will get lucky, due to blowouts which reduce clutter in a given time slot.

Don’t count on that being a regular occurrence.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

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