CFB 2017, Bowl Week 3, UKTV Guide part 2

A word of warning in advance – this is gonna be epic. There are fourteen, yes FOURTEEN, bowls in three days, and ThorpesSportingThoughts is giving you at least one thought on each of them. This “part two” of Bowl Week 3 will treat both semi-finals as “bowl of the week” (obviously), a paragraph on the rest of the NY6, and then a bit on the other eight.

With the week’s biggest games happening on Monday (my usual publishing date) our “full listings” section will also give you next Tuesday’s listings ahead of the National Championship Week listings coming out on Tuesday.

CFB 2017, Bowl Week 3, UKTV Guide part 1

Merry Christmas! If you’re reading this on posting day, I hope you’re having a fabulous day. As we roll into the sharp end of Bowl Season, I’m splitting my weekly posting in two this week (look out for the second half on Thursday).

Part 1 of the Bowl Week 3 preview essentially contains the Power Five teams that missed out on the New Year’s Six. Over the next three days there will be eleven bowl games (nine of which are on ESPN channels) including three all-ranked matchups on Thursday.

CFB 2017, Bowl Week 2, UKTV Guide

Following on from last week’s five Saturday games, we get football every day this week (counting the NFL on Christmas Day) with the Group of Five’s better teams getting their chance to shine in on a national stage. Not only that, there are games on the islands to enjoy with the Bahamas and Hawai’i Bowls, usually a visual treat.

Bowl of the Week: Dollar General Bowl – Appalachian State vs Toledo
(Midnight Saturday, BTS ESPN, ESPN Player)

There were a couple of options for Bowl of the Week this week, but in the end a matchup between two conference champions wins the day, with the best of the MAC and the best of the Sun Belt squaring off at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. This is a bowl game that lists LaDanian Tomlinson, Ben Roethlisberger and Kareem Hunt among its past MVPs.

CFB 2017, Bowl Week 1, UKTV Guide

And so this is Christmas… or something like that. No, not Crimbo day itself, but something like College Football’s equivalent thereof, as bowl season starts this week.  We have five bowl games on Saturday, as well as DII and DIII championship games and FCS semi-finals.

Bowl of the Week: Las Vegas Bowl – #25 Boise State vs Oregon
(8.30pm Saturday, BTS 2, ESPN Player)

Just one ranked team plays in the first two weeks of bowl action, and that’s the #25 Broncos. A couple of years ago, a game between these two would have been a New Year’s Six bowl, but Oregon are “stuck” in a bowl against a Group of 5 champion this year. In reality, both programmes are in a down year, and playing this early in bowl season will feel like a slight.

CFB 2017, Week 15 UKTV Guide

A quiet week for college football, with “just” the Army-Navy game in the FBS this week. Elsewhere, the playoffs continue in the lower divisions, with the FCS quarter-finals getting some airtime on BT Sport (and ESPN Player, obviously), and semi-final games in DII and DIII. TST’s full breakdown returns next Tuesday for Bowl Season.

CFB 2017, Week 14 UKTV Guide

It’s Championship week in the world of the FBS, and ThorpesSportingThoughts’ TV listings blog is switching to its postseason pattern. There’s no more “Game of the Week”, no more “Best of the Rest”, and no more “What we Miss”. ALL of these games are big games, and you do what you can to watch (yes, even “alternative means”).

As a result, here are all of next week’s championship games, chronologically (sorry, Sun Belt):

CFB 2017, Week 13 UKTV Guide

We got here in a hell of a hurry… the final week of the college football regular season (sorry Sun Belt, you don’t count), AKA Rivalry Week. If the season so far hasn’t had enough chaos for you so far (you mad person), then Rivalry Week can usually be counted upon for one big shocker.

And it’s a football-heavy week for us watchers too, with the traditional thanksgiving NFL programme on Thursday acting as the appetiser for the real fun football that starts on Black Friday with eight live games in two days for BT subscribers (compared to seven in 2016 and ten in 2015).

CFB 2017, Week 12 UKTV Guide

Sadly to say, Week 12 of the college football schedule has become something resembling an additional bye to most teams ahead of Week 13’s Rivalry Week and, if they’re lucky, Week 14’s Championship Week.

With Rivalry Week also being Thanksgiving, and a lot of teams playing Black Friday, teams are reticent to schedule a tough opponent ahead of a shorter week. As a result, after back-to-back weeks with seven all-ranked games, we have just the one to look forward to this week, and even that’s on Fox.

CFB 2017, Week 11 UKTV Guide

We are lucky to be in incredibly rare times of college football, with back-to-back weeks with seven all-ranked (AP) games for us to enjoy. Not only that, after a couple of weeks where the week’s best games have been on Fox (and seriously, how awesome were those games), we get the week’s best games (bar one) available in the UK.

We get a live game every day of the week, all of GameDay from Miami, a double-header at both 5pm and 8.30pm on Saturday, a couple of top-10 match ups. Heck, even the midweek MAC games are intriguing this week, but the biggest game is almost a no-brainer:

CFB 2017, full Week 10 UKTV Guide

ThorpesSportingThoughts is back in the UK, and we’re into November when the college football season clicks up yet another gear on the final straight of the regular season. We’ve had a couple of enormous games in the past few weeks, and those games keep on coming… on Fox.

Yeah, bummer. But on the plus side, baseball is over and BT subscribers get a definite uptick in coverage this week with nine total games live including four on Saturday with two in the primetime slot. And all-in-all there are seven all-ranked games on the slate this week.