Written by Matt Zemek at Bloguin
This Saturday in college football, it’s impossible to avoid noticing how the nighttime schedule has been shaped.
On the surface, it is exactly as it should be: In the featured ABC game at 8:07 Eastern time, Miami and Florida State — the schools who created college football’s most important game from 1987 through the 2004 Orange Bowl — will get the familiar primetime treatment.
California and Utah — two schools which have occasionally poked their heads into the national spotlight, but have generally remained to the side of the stage over the long march of time — will start their game after 10 p.m. Eastern, and will very possibly kick off on ESPNEWS.
No, Miami-FSU should not have been moved to 10 p.m. on ESPNEWS, but California-Utah darn sure deserved to be the 8:07 featured game, with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call. It’s just another week in the Pac-12, though, where the passion for the pigskin product undeniably fails to match the other regions of the country where the sport is taken more seriously. The UCLA-Arizona game, which occupied the ABC slot just after 8 p.m. a few weeks ago, was a clear ratings disappointment. The name of the game is ratings, and since Cal and Utah aren’t proven needle-movers, one can understand why ESPN/ABC wants to feature Hurricanes-Seminoles…
… even though the game has ceased to be the college football season-shaper it almost always was for a period of nearly 20 years.
California and Utah might be the only two unbeaten teams left in the Pac-12, making their game the biggest of the week in college football. However, even while the lights will be bright in Salt Lake City for a late-night fight of considerable consequence, these Pac-12 teams will stand in the shadows… of Miami-FSU, and of 2004 as well.
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