The SEC’s Week 7 schedule delivered a rough one for Alabama fans, with the two biggest games in the state landing in the same afternoon window.
Auburn’s trip to Georgia in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry is set for 3:30 pm ET/2:30 pm CT on ABC, ESPN, or the SEC Network. At the exact same time, Alabama and Tennessee will meet in the Third Saturday in October.
That alone would have been enough to frustrate fans. The rest of the schedule only made it worse.
The conference’s night slots were filled by Arkansas-Vanderbilt and Kentucky-Oklahoma, a pairing that puts three of the SEC’s bottom-rung teams under the lights along with a Kentucky squad that went from ranked to unranked after beating South Carolina on the road in Week 5.
The setup has people wondering whether the league is basically nudging viewers toward multiview or a public watch spot if they want to keep up with both major SEC rivalry games tied most closely to Alabama.
But the real answer is simpler, and a lot less fan-friendly: money still drives the sport.
The night window that should have gone to Alabama and Tennessee instead belongs to Notre Dame-BYU on October 17. Because that game is in Provo rather than South Bend, ESPN has the rights to the Big 12-hosted matchup and moved it into primetime. NBC only has rights to Notre Dame’s home games.
And when Notre Dame is available, the networks are going to use it. The Fighting Irish’s opener against Wisconsin drew over seven million viewers in Week 1.
Still, it’s hard to miss the way this schedule ignores one of college football’s most loyal viewing markets. Birmingham, for instance, has ranked as the No. 1 highest-rated college football market in the United States for 11 of the last 12 seasons.
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Tillman has a visit to Auburn set for October 24, giving the Tigers a chance to make their case in person and lean on what he has already said appeals to him about the program. He has shown interest in Auburns defensive culture and atmosphere, and those are the kinds of traits that can matter when a recruit is weighing one elite option after another. [Read more 🡒]
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Auburns Georgia Test Just Got Real At A Brutal Time
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For Auburn, the challenge is bigger than just fixing what went wrong against Tennessee. The Tigers are trying to snap a nine-game losing streak in the series, and doing it on the road against a team that has not yet been beaten raises the stakes even further. It is the kind of test that can either steady a season or send it into a much tougher stretch. [Read more 🡒]