ESPN adds more football to revamped afternoon, Sunday lineups

If you have your TV tuned in to either of the ESPN networks in the afternoon, be prepared to see something a bit different. Ditto for those who have either ESPN or ESPN2 on in the background during breakfast or prepping for football on Sunday mornings.

ESPN will debut its long-in-the-works “jock free” NFL studio show NFL Insiders on August 5. Featuring Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter and hosted by Suzy Kolber, the show will be a somewhat atypical football studio show in that it will very rarely feature ex-players. John Clayton, Ed Werder, Mel Kiper Jr., Todd McShay and Bill Polian will all contribute to the show, which airs for an hour every weekday at 3 p.m. ET after its premiere. The show is, ostensibly, replacing last year’s NFL 32.

That hour of programming on ESPN is typically afforded to long-running beacon of journalism Outside the Lines and NCAA studio half-hour College Football Live. In a move that’ll likely ruffle the feathers of OTL’s small but devoted audience who turn to the show for in-depth coverage of various scandals and issues related to leagues and athletes, the show’s weekday edition will move to 4:30 p.m. ET on weekdays over at ESPN2. It’ll be surrounded by the returning two-hour block of Numbers Never Lie and SportsNation, along with Highly Questionable (which has taken Dan Le Betard out of its title).

In the 5 p.m. ET hour, ESPN2 will air the relocated College Football Live as a lead-in to ESPN’s new, half-hour, daily soccer show, ESPN FC. Spawning from the network’s soccer website and expanding from an online show, it’ll be the network’s first daily soccer show.

On Sundays, ESPN will move to a two-hour SportsCenter at 8 a.m. ET leading into the now three-hour Sunday NFL Countdown. ESPN2 will, essentially, be old school ESPN, airing the Sunday edition of Outside the Lines and The Sports Reporters back-to-back at 8 a.m. ET. A new hourlong Colin Cowherd vehicle, Cowherd on Football (wouldn’t Cowherd on Pigskin been catchier?), will debut Sept. 8 at 9 a.m. ET. SportsCenter gets another hour from 10-11 a.m. ET, and the critically acclaimed Fantasy Football Now returns to 11 a.m. ET.