The 2009-2010 College Basketball on Multi-Sports Pack Thread

[bschulte]

Purpose: The short-short introduction for this thread is that, using college basketball television information (with permission!) from
Matt Sarz' College Sports on TV site

, I will be documenting
exactly which college basketball games I get this year and which are blacked out


(click the link for my excel spreadsheet) living in Southern Illinois with the Silver 200 package and the Multi-Sports Pack.

Introduction: I'm a lifetime college basketball fan but a brand new DISH subscriber. I've had cable since I graduated college in 2002, so this is a new experience for me. I've never had the opportunity to get many of the regional sports networks around the country, relying instead on the much more restrictive set of three Fox College Sports channels in the past.

I have searched these forums more than once looking for clues on how many extra college basketball games I'd be able to get with the Multi-Sports pack. Well, now I'll know in complete detail, and you'll know too. Depending on how this goes, I hope to continue doing this each year.

Spreadsheet Guide:
The spreadsheet I'll be using


is separated into worksheets along the bottom of the Excel file.

1. The first tab, "TV Channels", goes over the possible channels which might show a college basketball game throughout the year. I've dividied this into the group of channels I get with my DISH Network setup along with channel numbers and into channels I do not get with DISH with an explanation of what they are and where they are located.

2. Week 1, Week, 2, .... Week 18: Each succeeding tab takes the information found on
Matt Sarz' College Sports on TV site


and adds columns for DISH Availability, the channel number(s) the game is available on, and whether or not the game was blacked out where I love in Southern Illinois. Note: I may add a notes/HD section which tells people if the game was available in SD, HD, or both if people want that.

Miscellaneous:

1. If I miss a night or two here and there, I would appreciate it if people following this thread could help me fill in the blanks. In those cases, I'll either ask ahead of time if I know I won't be around or I'll ask after the fact if something comes up.

2. If someone who has DirecTV and their Sports Package would like to participate I'm all for it. I realize sometimes there tend to be E*/D* "wars" here and that is NOT my intention. I just think it would be interesting if college basketball fans knew ahead of time what kinds of trends emerge here as far as blackouts go for both providers.

3. I have been going back and forth this year over whether or not to get ESPN Full Court. I have cable internet, and with it I am lucky enough to get ESPN360.com, which broadcasts all Full Court games online. In addition, many of the games on Full Court may be available through the Multi-Sport pack. My lack of tuners (only 2 in a 722k) to watch games on has me leaning in the direction of NOT getting ESPN Full Court this year. If anyone who IS getting Full Court wants to help with blackout information, I'd be happy to have you.

4. Why am I doing this? I figure a lot of people are probably asking this question. The answer is I really, really like college basketball and I'll be watching these games anyway, I'm interested in how sports are presented on TV, and it'll be interesting to see if I can identify certain "rules" of college sports blackouts on the Multi-Sports Pack.

UPDATE: Spreadsheet last uploaded the evening of November 5, 2009.

[commodore_dude]

I'll go ahead and throw in what was blacked out for me last year:

-Big 12 broadcasts by individual RSNs, except those that were under the Big 12 Network banner - these aren't blacked out for some reason
-FSN Ohio broadcasts

I also believe ACC and SEC broadcasts are blacked out outside of these territories, but I can't really test that

[bschulte]

I'll go ahead and throw in what was blacked out for me last year:

-Big 12 broadcasts by individual RSNs, except those that were under the Big 12 Network banner - these aren't blacked out for some reason
-FSN Ohio broadcasts

I also believe ACC and SEC broadcasts are blacked out outside of these territories, but I can't really test that

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of info I'm looking for while getting started. I'll make sure I'm on the lookout for the Big 12 games and FSN Ohio.

Luckily, living outside of SEC and ACC territory, I CAN test the ACC/SEC blackout rules. After reading several football threads with this new SEC contract and seeing some of the results for myself (i.e. I can get SEC Network games on MSG, Fox Sports Detroit, and others), I'm hopeful I'll get a bunch of SEC games this year. In any case, if some of my findings differ with yours, would you minjhd posting the results from time to time? It would be interesting to see the results from people living in ACC/SEC territory.

I'm not at all hopeful about the Raycom produced ACC games, though, or the SEC games produced by Fox and airing on FS Florida, Sun Sports, and Fox Sports South. We shall see though.

[Fitzie]

Good luck with your effort.

Regards,
Fitzie

[hallrk]

Except for some early season games,the SEC has been black out free this football season. Which is good for me since I'm a Kentucky fan. Also UK's Blue/White basketball game and their exhibition game against Campbellsville was black out free on FSN South. So far the black out isn't on for their next exhibition game friday night against Clarion which is also on FSN South.
I live in the DC area and all of these games have been blacked out in the past from the SEC.

[bschulte]

Fitzie,

Thanks for the support.

Except for some early season games,the SEC has been black out free this football season. Which is good for me since I'm a Kentucky fan. Also UK's Blue/White basketball game and their exhibition game against Campbellsville was black out free on FSN South. So far the black out isn't on for their next exhibition game friday night against Clarion which is also on FSN South.
I live in the DC area and all of these games have been blacked out in the past from the SEC.

hallrk, Thanks for the info! I've noticed that too. Obviously we are both probably wondering if they are not blacked out only because they are exhibition games. I agree that the blackout free SEC football season definitely gives us cause for hope, at least for SEC Network produced games. I'm more worried about the FSN and CSS produced SEC games on FS Florida, Sun, and FS South. I'm thinking those are probably still blacked out and I'll have to watch on ESPN360.com.

[htls]

i imported the xcel spread sheet into google docs so people can calaborate on this also.


http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...OakpFY2c&hl=en

Purpose: The short-short introduction for this thread is that, using college basketball television information (with permission!) from
Matt Sarz' College Sports on TV site


, I will be documenting
exactly which college basketball games I get this year and which are blacked out


(click the link for my excel spreadsheet) living in Southern Illinois with the Silver 200 package and the Multi-Sports Pack.

Introduction: I'm a lifetime college basketball fan but a brand new DISH subscriber. I've had cable since I graduated college in 2002, so this is a new experience for me. I've never had the opportunity to get many of the regional sports networks around the country, relying instead on the much more restrictive set of three Fox College Sports channels in the past.

I have searched these forums more than once looking for clues on how many extra college basketball games I'd be able to get with the Multi-Sports pack. Well, now I'll know in complete detail, and you'll know too. Depending on how this goes, I hope to continue doing this each year.

Spreadsheet Guide:
The spreadsheet I'll be using


is separated into worksheets along the bottom of the Excel file.

1. The first tab, "TV Channels", goes over the possible channels which might show a college basketball game throughout the year. I've dividied this into the group of channels I get with my DISH Network setup along with channel numbers and into channels I do not get with DISH with an explanation of what they are and where they are located.

2. Week 1, Week, 2, .... Week 18: Each succeeding tab takes the information found on
Matt Sarz' College Sports on TV site


and adds columns for DISH Availability, the channel number(s) the game is available on, and whether or not the game was blacked out where I love in Southern Illinois. Note: I may add a notes/HD section which tells people if the game was available in SD, HD, or both if people want that.

Miscellaneous:

1. If I miss a night or two here and there, I would appreciate it if people following this thread could help me fill in the blanks. In those cases, I'll either ask ahead of time if I know I won't be around or I'll ask after the fact if something comes up.

2. If someone who has DirecTV and their Sports Package would like to participate I'm all for it. I realize sometimes there tend to be E*/D* "wars" here and that is NOT my intention. I just think it would be interesting if college basketball fans knew ahead of time what kinds of trends emerge here as far as blackouts go for both providers.

3. I have been going back and forth this year over whether or not to get ESPN Full Court. I have cable internet, and with it I am lucky enough to get ESPN360.com, which broadcasts all Full Court games online. In addition, many of the games on Full Court may be available through the Multi-Sport pack. My lack of tuners (only 2 in a 722k) to watch games on has me leaning in the direction of NOT getting ESPN Full Court this year. If anyone who IS getting Full Court wants to help with blackout information, I'd be happy to have you.

4. Why am I doing this? I figure a lot of people are probably asking this question. The answer is I really, really like college basketball and I'll be watching these games anyway, I'm interested in how sports are presented on TV, and it'll be interesting to see if I can identify certain "rules" of college sports blackouts on the Multi-Sports Pack.

UPDATE: Spreadsheet last uploaded the evening of November 4, 2009.

[bschulte]

i imported the xcel spread sheet into google docs so people can calaborate on this also.


http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...OakpFY2c&hl=en

If people want to add their own two cents there that is fine, but I'm unable to access Google spreadsheets from work, so I'd also appreciate comments in this thread to alert me to any changes there.

Edit: Another issue I've thought of is that the basketball schedule, even for the first few weeks, isn't finalized yet. I'll be posting a lot of changes in the days to come as Matt's College Sports on TV site makes those changes. You might want to update that Google spreadsheet file periodically, if possible.

[bschulte]

UPDATE: Spreadsheet last uploaded the afternoon of November 8, 2009.

Since the games are now only a few days away, I have been able to check out the listings through next week Friday. It appears that pretty much every game I've listed in the spreadsheet as available in my area is so far showing up as available. Only the Maryland-Charleston Southern game on Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic on Friday, November 13 is showing up as not available in my area.

[bschulte]

Matt Sarzyniak's blog about College Sports on TV has
an interesting post today talking about how coverage has changed from last year to this

. The portion about the SEC is the most encouraging news:

SEC - SEC coverage will be wider in many areas of the country. The SEC games that ESPN has sublicensed to FSN and CSS won't be seen just in the southeast, but virtually any FSN region that decides they want to clear the game. No idea how blackouts will go, but if football is any indication, these games should be more viewable too those out of market using satellite sports packages than the old FSN package.

The conference will also have a new home for its championship, with the semifinals and final moving to ABC.

Good news there. I had already written off any games labeled as "SEC on CSS" or "SEC on FSN", but it looks like anyone with the Multi-Sports Pack outside of the SEC will get these games in the clear.

UPDATE: Spreadsheet last uploaded the evening of November 9, 2009.