Mountain West Football Title Game Moving To FOX Sports
Mountain West championship game will be moved off of ESPN
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A big change for the Mountain West title game.
The Mountain West has a new media rights partner with the addition of FOX Sports airing games in this league for the first time ever.
Part of the deal is for the Mountain West title game to air on either over-the-air FOX or FS1 and it will be on Friday or Saturday, and with it being early there is no indication of a timeslot.
The Mountain West title game had more recently been on ESPN and previously it spent time on CBS which did not go over well with a late kick in that 10 p.m. ET hour.
Also, in some markets, including Salt Lake City, when Utah State was in the Mountain West title game the broadcast was moved off of its local CBS affilate to MyTV which is a channel that the local CBS affilate owned.
The move to ESPN was obvious a winner for the championship game, when comparing to CBS. Time will tell with Fox Sports but it seems to be somewhere in the middle.
FOX currently airs the Big Ten championship game and every other year they broadcast the Pac-12 championship game. This could give the Mountain West a good time slot on either Friday or Saturday.
If it is on a Friday night it seems likely it would be in primetime at 8 p.m. ET since that is when they broadcast prior Friday night title games, but those games have geen on FOX and not FS1. If the game is on FS1 then it would a 10 p.m. ET kick could make sense.
While we are playing the guessing game, it seems likely that Fox Sports would want to have FS1 carry the Mountain West title game if on Friday but on Saturday being on FOX proper seems to make the mose sense.
Airing a Mountain West football title game Friday night in primetime on Friday night does not seem like the best idea in terms of TV ratings.
Stay tuned to what channel for where the Mountain West title game will air.
