(Written by kencraw)

Well, the first set of TV scheduling announcements is out. The first set comes from ABC (which also means ESPN). In a few weeks Fox Sports and Versus will make their picks. Finally, during the season the networks will chose games based on “reserved” times they selected when they made their picks. They make those picks 12 days before the day of the “reservation”.

The big winner is, and it’s no suprise, USC. ABC scheduled 12 games and reserved time slots for 8 other games. Of those 12 games picked, fully half of them are USC games. Of the remaining 6 games, only 2 are conference games. Both of those included Oregon (versus Cal and Oregon State). The final 4 games are non-conference games. Washington (versus LSU), Oregon (versus Utah), Stanford (versus Notre Dame) and Cal (versus Maryland) each got 1.

Cal doesn’t come out bad with 3 games total (Maryland, USC and Oregon) which is 3rd behind USC’s 6 and Oregon’s 4. Washington and Oregon State are the only other teams with more than 1, with 2 each, and Washington State and UCLA were the 2 teams left out in the cold (boy, I wouldn’t want to be on the Bruin Nation website this week if I was an ABC exec).

Speaking of which, I’m somewhat suprised the Cal versus UCLA game didn’t get picked up. It has a history of being a close game in the Rose Bowl and you’d think they’d throw UCLA one bone. Here’s betting that the game gets picked up as ABC’s 12 day selection that they reserved for 10/17 at 12:30 PM. You’ll notice that minus USC games, ABC was very reluctant to pick up games midway through the season and the back end of the schedule is very “reservation” heavy. That says to me that ABC doesn’t have a lot of confidence about which teams will rise to the top and wants to hold out on their picks.

Other games that I wouldn’t be surprised being picked up by ABC for a reserved game are the Arizona State game (reservation is for 10/31 @ 12:30 PM) and perhaps the Big Game (reservation is for 11/21 @ 12:30 PM) although it tends not to attract the big networks because it’s mostly unrecognized outside of the Bay Area. I’d add the Oregon State game but there’s no open reservation for that day.

Of course many of these plus others could be picked up by Fox Sports and Versus who tend to grab games that have the potential to be big ones if the chips fall certain ways. As I said before we’ll see their early picks a little later this spring.

What is somewhat interesting is that the Maryland game will be a 7:00 PM game. Usually that timeslot is the domain of Fox Sports. But I guess ESPN2 is wanting to compete for that slot early in the season anyway. FWIW, that means I’ll be selling all but one of my tickets for the Maryland game because the boys are too young for games that late and somebody has to stay with the kids, so my wife is out too. That means I’ve got 5 tickets to sell. Let me know if you’re interested in buying some of those tickets from me ($60 each). You’ll get the privilege of seeing me in my native environment. I’m FAR less level headed in the stands. If I don’t get any bites here at least some of them will end up on ebay/stubhub/whatever (any suggestions for the best site for this?)

Click here to see the TV announcement on the Cal Bears website.