College football is probably, when you mash it all together, America's second most popular sport, behind ... well, professional football. I think of it as a larger version of soccer's popularity in this country: outside of the national championship (or, to continue the soccer comparison, World Cup), the ratings are not necessarily blockbusters, but it'll draw really solid numbers pretty much no matter what network it airs on, or what conference is airing. While the SEC is king in the castle, the Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12 and Notre Dame are certainly no slouches.
2013 college football pregame TV shows primer
NBC launches a new Notre Dame pregame, and ESPN just throws a plethora of college football at you.
Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports
For that reason, viewers can’t get enough of programming centered around the sport, and the glut of cable sports television can’t force-feed it fast enough. Here’s a primer on the four major college football entities (ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC) and their Saturday pregame shows, which total approximately seven hours per week each Saturday, and even more when you include Thursday and Friday games.
NBC
We start off with a new entry. NBC is announcing on Wednesday that the network will broadcast pregame shows before all Notre Dame home games (as well as the annual Shamrock Series game, this year against Arizona State) and postgame shows following three others. The show (simply called Notre Dame Football Pre-game Show) debuts Aug. 31 on NBC at 3 p.m. ET before the Irish’s season debut against Temple.
After that game, each subsequent pregame show will air on NBCSN. The cable network will also air three post-game shows, starting with the Aug. 31 Temple showdown. Games against Oklahoma (Sept. 21) and BYU (Nov. 23) will also have post-game coverage. Liam McHugh will host live on the field of Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind., with analysts Doug Flutie and Hines Ward. Reporter Alex Flanagan will also contribute.
CBS
The Tiffany Network owns the rights to what is, most weeks, the premiere game: the top SEC contest each week. It also has the Army-Navy showdown and occasional Mountain West action. College Football Today precedes all of CBS’s SEC Game of the Week broadcasts, and it will have a new addition to the cast, along with a rare traveling element to the show.
Host Tim Brando and analyst Spencer Tillman are joined by Brian Jones each week on the series. Tony Barnhart and Archie Manning will also contribute. Brando, Jones and Tillman will be live from Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, on Sept. 14 at 2:30 p.m., when the network’s season begins with Alabama taking on Texas A&M.
Fox
Fox College Saturday launches on Aug. 31, and it’ll air from 10 a.m. to noon each week from the Fox Network Center in Los Angeles. Erin Andrews and Joel Klatt co-host, with analysts Petros Papadakis and Eddie George. Rules analyst Mike Pereira is along for the ride, and lawyer/Outkick the Coverage editor Clay Travis will also serve as a contributor.
The network will also air pregame shows before its Thursday night games. Rob Stone, formerly the face of Fox Soccer Channel, will host that program, along with analysts Coy Wire and Ryan Nece. Stone also hosts the 30-minute pregame show that will lead into the Fox broadcast network’s weekly primetime game.
ESPN
You put the biggest names at the end of the show, and ESPN certainly is the mack daddy of college football. Chris Fowler, one of the best sports studio hosts in the history of that particular job, returns for season 21 of College Gameday on Aug. 31, as the show expands to three hours. He's joined by analysts Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack. Samantha Ponder, Tom Rinaldi, Scott Van Pelt and Gene Wojciechowski bring viewers feature stories and interviews. Van Pelt also hosts ESPN's Thursday night coverage alongside Mark May and Lou Holtz.
ESPN, as it has for many years, will produce ABC's pregame shows (as well as every other sporting event on that network). College Football Countdown usually airs on Saturdays at 3 p.m. Another of the great names in sports television, John Saunders, hosts the show with analyst Jesse Palmer.
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