SEC fans in Alabama got handed a brutal viewing conflict for Week 7, and there’s no sugarcoating it: Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee were placed in the same afternoon window, leaving one of the sport’s best Saturdays already mangled before kickoff.
The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry will air on ABC, ESPN, or the SEC Network at 3:30 pm ET/2:30 pm CT, right alongside the Third Saturday in October game between Alabama and Tennessee. For fans in the state of Alabama, that overlap is the kind of scheduling decision that makes no sense at all.
The irritation only grows when you look at what got shoved into the night slots. Arkansas-Vanderbilt and Kentucky-Oklahoma were chosen for the late windows, a pairing that means three of the conference’s bottom-rung teams are taking up prime real estate. Kentucky, meanwhile, had just gone from ranked to unranked after beating South Carolina on the road in Week 5.
“Putting AUB-UGA and UA-TENN at the same time is… dumb. Throwing those in with a top-25 matchup in MIZZ-OM is even dumber. It was a bad call when they revealed the time windows months ago. https://t.co/t6CAT3KC7W”
There’s also the separate frustration of the ABC night slot, which went to Notre Dame-BYU instead of Alabama-Tennessee. Because that game is in Provo and not South Bend, ESPN owns the rights to the Big 12-hosted matchup and flexed it into primetime. NBC only controls Notre Dame’s home games, which helps explain why the Fighting Irish keep getting featured.
And, well, they get featured because people watch. Notre Dame’s opener against Wisconsin drew more than seven million viewers in Week 1, which makes the TV logic easy to follow even if it leaves Alabama fans fuming.
Still, it’s hard not to see how little consideration was given to one of the country’s most reliable college football audiences. Birmingham, after all, ranked as the No. 1 highest-rated college football market in the United States for 11 of the last 12 seasons.
Add in the fact that the UFL already left Protective Stadium behind, and it’s fair to say the Yellowhammer State isn’t exactly feeling the love from the people making these calls.
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The pressure point is the October 19 deadline, which gives both sides only a short runway to get a deal done before the conversation shifts to next summer. If Wallace goes unsigned past that date, the Thunder would be staring at a more complicated path with a player they clearly value, and the salary-cap implications of waiting could ripple through the rest of the roster decisions coming ahead. [Read more 🡒]