Friday, July 26, 2013

Looking for TV Real Estate



The kickoff times for all of Columbia’s games now appear on the athletic department's website. But there is a discrepancy. We have the kickoff time for the week three game at Princeton as 12:30 and Princeton has it as 1pm.

Since the game is AT Princeton, I’m going to go with the Princeton site on this one… BUT there is a wildcard here: the NBCSN schedule.


Because while there is still no word on the Ivy schedule, NBC Sports Network has announced the 2013 slate of CAA games it will televise:

Saturday, Sept. 14: Rhode Island at UAlbany 7 p.m

Saturday, Sept. 21: Stony Brook at Villanova 3 p.m. and Rhode Island at William and Mary 7 p.m

Saturday, Sept. 28: Maine at Richmond 4 p.m. and James Madison at Delaware 7 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 5: New Hampshire at Towson Noon 

Saturday, Oct. 12  UAlbany at Delaware Noon 

Saturday, Oct. 19: Villanova at New Hampshire Noon 

Saturday, Oct. 26: Towson at Richmond Noon 

Saturday, Nov. 2: Villanova at James Madison 2:30 p.m. 

Saturday, Nov. 9: William and Mary at Delaware 3 p.m. 

Saturday, Nov. 16: Stony Brook at James Madison 3:30 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 23TBD: Rivalry Week Game Noon

The above schedule leaves me, and probably many of you, scratching your heads about exactly WHEN and WHERE the Ivy games will be squeezed onto the air.

It’s not that there isn’t room in other hours on the dates above, it’s just that just about every Ivy home team would have to reschedule its usual kickoff time to find its way on the air.

If I had to guess, I’d say we should see an Ivy game at 1pm on 9/28, (but it won’t be the premiere game of the day, Brown at Harvard, because that’s a much-hyped night game at Harvard Stadium), most likely Cornell at Yale.

The following Saturday, Oct. 5th, we could see another Ivy game IF the home team reschedules it to 3pm or later.  So, if the Columbia-Princeton game is an Ivy game NBCSN televises on 10/5, then BOTH Columbia and Princeton would be understandably wrong about their posted kickoff times.

October 12, 19, and 26 all have noon CAA game times, so any one of those weeks could feature a 3:00 or 3:30 Ivy game if the home team reschedules. That includes the 10/19 1:30 kickoff for Columbia’s homecoming game against Penn and the 10/26 1:30 game for the Lions at Dartmouth.

The list of possibilities go on and on, but all we do know for sure is that the CAA is out and whatever games and times the Ivy League gets on NBCSN will have to work around the CAA’s real estate.

One curious start time for the Lions is the noon kickoff for the 10/12 home game against Lehigh. It's possible that one of the regional networks that covers Lehigh has requested that start time, but I am not sure. Sure enough, the Lehigh website has this game scheduled to start at 12:30, so confusion abounds. 

I just hope that we get the NBCSN Ivy schedule sometime soon. Again, remember that it was released in early June last year. So we're almost two months late right now. 

Of course, we should be able to see just about any game we want by signing up for the league-wide digital coverage pass.


Moment #57: Eddy the Ice man

After Luke Eddy's 40-yard FG tied Columbia's crucial week five game against the Quakers midway through the 2nd quarter, the two teams traded three-and-outs, (two for Penn, one for CU), before the Lions got possession again at their 41 with 2:38 left in the half.

Just four plays. two nice passes and one run each from Marcorus Garrett and Sean Brackett, is all it took for Columbia to get to the Quaker 20, but then things started to slow down for the Lions.

The three next plays, sandwiched between four time outs, netted Columbia negative one yard... and so it was time once again to call on Eddy to make a pressure kick from 38 yards out with just six seconds remaining. 

And once again, Eddy showed no ill effects of the pressure as he nailed the kick to give the Lions a 6-3 halftime lead. 

Optimism was growing in the visitors' stands. 








6 comments:

oldlion said...

Reading #93 tweets should be required reading. I expect a dominating season from Niko Padilla based at least upon his tweets about his readiness for the upcoming season. I think he can have the type of career that Owen Frazier would have had were he not chop blocked.

Anonymous said...

Really weird about the Ivy NBCSN lack of news. I'm starting to get a little worried for the league.

RedTiger61 said...

... anyone think they would tape-delay Ivy games ???

Jake said...

I think NBCSN has two problems: 1) Notre Dame is reportedly giving them the runaround about which games it will allow NBCSN to broadcast. and 2) The new Ivy Digital Network may be angering them considering exclusivity rights. I expect that whatever games appear on NBCSN will be "blacked out" on the digital network, but who knows?

Anonymous said...

Can't imagine the Digital thing being a huge problem. Most (all) Ivy games were avaiable on streaming last year as well, bt NBCSN didn't seem to care. And as a practical matter, the NBCSN broadcasts were 1,000 times better than the streaming.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the poster immediately above that the Ivy digital network does NOT dismay NBC. After all, NBC gets first pick of the games they want. The digital network just develops viewer demand in general. Sure, NBC will lose some viewers to their computers, but that is the way the modern television business now works. NBC can't fight that and they sure don't waste any time worrying about it.

Of course, we're all excited that our conference now has a network television contract. And this is part of that deal: NBC tells us when games start, not vice versa.

That's the way it works, so we might as well get used to it. Do you think the SEC tells ESPN what time to start games or the other way around? Exactly.