Saturday, window by window
College football is built around TV windows. Roughly, there is a noon ET window, a 3:30 PM ET window, an evening window from 7:00 to 8:00 PM ET and a late window near 10:30 PM ET for games out West. One Saturday can hold more than fifty FBS games. Networks often fix kickoffs only six to twelve days ahead, so a time can change during the week, and our list changes with it.
Weeknights count too. Most weeks have games on Thursday and Friday, and in November the MAC moves to Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
A dozen networks
On a recent Saturday we counted games on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, FOX, FS1, CBS, NBC, Peacock, the Big Ten Network, the SEC Network and the CW. In broad terms, ESPN's channels carry the SEC and the ACC, the Big Ten moves between NBC, FOX and CBS, and smaller conferences turn up on FS1, the CW, CBS Sports Network and ESPN+. NBC shows Notre Dame home games.
The cheapest official setup is a free antenna, which brings in NBC, FOX, CBS and ABC and covers a lot of the marquee games. The conference channels need cable or a streaming TV bundle. If you follow one school, its athletics site names the channel of every game once it is set.
December and January
Rivalry week closes the regular season in late November, conference championships follow in early December, and then the 12-team College Football Playoff begins. First-round games are on campus, bowl games around New Year host the quarterfinals and semifinals, and the title game follows in January. The other bowls fill the second half of December.
Using the list
We show yesterday, today and tomorrow, and live games rise to the top of the day with the score. Not every college game gets a link: ranked teams and national TV games nearly always do, while small games may get one late or not at all. NFL games, including the December Saturday ones, are on the NFL streams page. Our Saturday TV guide explains the windows in more detail.
