I thought there was some sort of commitment to allow Pac-12 schools to play more games earlier than 7 p.m. this year. Is this true? If so, what happened to the commitment?
Yes, that was the news out of the conference before the season. The idea was that they could schedule Pac-12 Network games at either 2:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. local time to overlap with an ESPN or FOX exclusive TV window. The theory was that because they can now use those time slots, they could reduce the PAC-12 NETWORKS night games (start time later than 7 p.m.) by up to four. So it’s a matter of the fine print and the network the games are appearing on.
Many of the late games this year for the conference have been on ESPN or ESPN2, so they don’t fall into that preseason pledge.
The Pac-12 has actually had the same number of late starts (later than 7 p.m.) this year through 12 weeks as last year: 23. There has been one fewer late game on the Pac-12 Networks this year (five this year, six last year) so that part does fall in line with the preseason statement.
If you’re curious about how they build the TV scheduled each week, here’s a relink to an explainer from earlier in the season. Continue reading “Weekly Q&A – USC answers” »