The most highly anticipated regular-season game in college basketball next season is the SEC/ACC Challenge matchup between Duke and Florida in Gainesville. It will pit the projected No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the preseason against one another in what could ultimately be a preview of the National Championship Game in April.
Thanks to ESPN and all its infinite wisdom, a large chunk of the East Coast will be too tired to stay up and watch it.
You’d think a matchup between arguably the two best teams in the country would be given primetime treatment. Nope. Duke and Florida are set for a ridiculous 9:30 pm ET tip-off on ESPN on Tuesday, December 1st. It’s the second game of a doubleheader, with North Carolina and Arkansas grabbing the 7:30 pm ET start. Of course, considering no college basketball game ever ends in the two-hour time slot given, you can bet the tip-off gets delayed closer to 10 pm ET. Absurd.
Duke and Florida deserved a better tip-off time for marquee regular-season meeting
Who makes these decisions? How is this not in the primetime slot? This is the biggest regular-season college basketball game of the year, and you’ve placed it at 9:30 pm ET? On a Tuesday? There’s a large section of the East Coast, and even stretching into the Central Time Zone, depending on whether the game gets delayed for TV, that won’t be able to stay up and watch.
Why would you intentionally tank your own TV ratings?
Make it make sense. Maybe you can, because I certainly cannot.
Obviously, fans of both Duke and Florida will stay up to watch the game. The die-hard college basketball fans will, too. It’s worth losing a little sleep over. But you are going to lose a lot of neutral observers. The casual basketball fans who make up a large swath of your viewership.
This is a game that will likely determine who takes over the No. 1 ranking. The Blue Devils and the Gators appear to be head and shoulders ahead of the field, at least on paper. It’s two of the best teams and two of the best coaches going head-to-head. It’s the type of game you build your entire TV schedule around. Instead, it is being treated like an afterthought.
The two teams will still put on a show, but the fans and players have been robbed of the appropriate slot to showcase the talent on the court.
