CU Buffs Football On The Pac-12 Network - Everything You Need To Know

The Pac-12 Network football television coverage has been announced. Find out how YOUR Colorado Buffaloes figure into the initial TV coverage from ESPN, Fox, and the Pac-12 Network. This is everything you need to know.

I'm going to get right to the point; almost every Pac-12 football game is going to be on TV this fall. Every home game for certain. Many will be carried nationally by the Pac-12 Network, ESPN, or Fox. If you watched the Pac-12 Network video, then you understand how this is being accomplished; with six regional networks that correlate to the conference's 'traveling partners.'

For the Pac-12 Networks, only the first few weeks of coverage have been announced; the complete coverage for weeks 1, 2, and 3, with partial information for week 4. Our first appearance on the conference channel will be against Sacramento State, presumably a winnable game to debut on the Pac-12 Network masthead. The same holds true for most of the other early Pac-12 games.

Fox and ESPN/ABC have also begun to grab up games, including the Thursday night Colorado vs. Arizona St. game on ESPN. Another game that was picked up for national coverage is the CU - CSU game, which you may remember as the Cinch Jeans Rock Mountain Showdown that was moved to Sunday-after-church to avoid being carried by Root Sports...again. Well, now it's back on Saturday. At 2pm, exactly where it should be.

Mike Bohn had this to pat himself on the back,

"The kickoff time set for Saturday afternoon is the most traditional one for college football and we believe will be attractive to fans of both programs across the state, especially for those who plan to drive over from the Western Slope or up from the south," Bohn continued. "Both institutions are honored that FOX selected this game as its first college broadcast of the 2012 season, and the game will now be featured in over 100 million homes and reach fans of both the Buffaloes and the Rams nationwide."

The rest of the CU schedule is after the jump...

Granted, the CSU game is on FX, but at least the game-time atmosphere doesn't have to suffer...

2012 COLORADO FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

Date Opponent Site Time (MT) TV

Sept. 1 Colorado State Denver 2:00 p.m. FX

SEPT. 8 SACRAMENTO STATE BOULDER 1:00 p.m. P12N

Sept. 15 at Fresno State Fresno 6:00 p.m. CBS-SN

Sept. 22 at Washington State Pullman TBA TBA

SEPT. 29 UCLA BOULDER TBA TBA

Oct. 6 —BYE—

OCT. 11 ARIZONA STATE BOULDER 7:00 p.m. ESPN

Oct. 20 at Southern California Los Angeles TBA TBA

Oct. 27 at Oregon Eugene TBA TBA

NOV. 3 STANFORD BOULDER TBA TBA

Nov. 10 at Arizona Tucson TBA TBA

NOV. 17 WASHINGTON BOULDER TBA TBA

NOV. 23 UTAH BOULDER 1:00 p.m. FOX/FX

Nov. 30 Pac-12 Championship Game TBA 6:00 p.m. FOX

You've likely noted all the TBA's in the CU and Pac-12 schedule. Like any other network, the Pac-12 Networks will choose which games to televise with a 6 and 12 day advance warning. Remember though every home game is televised. So instead of the CU game possibly not being televised at all, now it's merely a question of how big the footprint is.

Fun fact about the Pac-12 Network? It is the first conference network owned fully by a conference without support from outside groups. That's what you get when your conference includes people who actually know how to do this. Other things you get from that are storylines about televising this new coach or that new stadium.

"We are extremely excited about the upcoming football season and the slate of Pac-12 games that we will feature throughout the season," Pac-12 Enterprises President Gary Stevenson said. "In the first four weeks, we will have at least one game from all 12 teams, will feature some very intriguing matchups like Oklahoma State at Arizona and Cal at USC, and will televise the home debuts of new coaches Todd Graham at Arizona State and Mike Leach at Washington State. It's a great start to what we expect to be a very competitive Pac-12 season."

The Pac-12 Networks will kick-off its 35-game football schedule with six games during the opening week (August 30-September 1), including two on Thursday, Stanford's home opener on Friday and three more on Saturday.

The University of Utah will host the first football game on the Pac-12 Networks when Northern Colorado visits Rice-Eccles Stadium Thursday, August 30. Kickoff is set for 5:15 p.m. MT. The Pac-12 Networks targeted the Utes home opener as their historic first football game and requested a special start time to make it happen.

We don't really figure into most of those storylines, which isn't surprising, but also isn't permanent. If we play well, I fully expect the conference to drum something up in a way the Big-12 never did; and still doesn't. As of now our external press coverage amounts to serving as a dual-thursday stumbling block for Arizona State, per Ted Miller. This too, will change.

I'll leave you with the aggregate; the totality of television tastiness in store for us:

The Pac-12 Networks, along with Pac-12 Conference television partners ESPN and FOX will provide complete coverage of the entire Pac-12 home football schedule during the 2012 season. The Pac-12 Networks will air 35 Pac-12 home games, while ESPN and FOX will combine to televise 45 games from Pac-12 sites, including the Pac-12 Championship Game.

Which is really just a fancy way of saying this:

At worst, we're talking about 4-5 fball games that won't be on TV sets nationally. Those will be available on mobile devices

— Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) June 15, 2012

Damn, I love this conference! Go Buffs!