Dan Margulis flips through his spreadsheet, the puzzle pieces rattling around in his head. It\u2019s early October when ESPN\u2019s senior director of programming and acquisitions nestles into a chair at SEC Basketball Media Day, his job mostly done for the coming season.<\/p>\n
The screen before him includes varying color coding, shades of gray and time slots. There are tweaks to be made, final sign-offs, etc. <\/p>\n
Such is life in piecing together ESPN\u2019s college basketball schedule, which will include around 7,500 games across linear and digital.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like Jenga,\u201d Margulis said. \u201cYou\u2019re putting the pieces in, it\u2019s all set and then you pull one out and everything falls down. You\u2019ve got to go buck up.\u201d<\/p>\n
College basketball is one of the largest programming lifts in sports television. The scale varies by network, but carving out windows that stand out in an increasingly crowded linear landscape is a constant challenge.<\/p>\n
The process begins with meetings at the Final Four in April and concludes in the weeks leading up to the first games come opening night on Nov. 3. By season\u2019s end, thousands of employees stretching from programming to production, to talent and everywhere in between, will have helped put on north of 1,500 linear games across ESPN, Fox and CBS.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s insane. It is. It really is insane,\u201d said Geordie Wimmer, Fox Sports vice president for production. \u201cBut you know what? We\u2019re used to it. We don\u2019t even think of it that way anymore. We really don\u2019t. This is the time of year when you\u2019re going to get a blank spreadsheet and you\u2019re going to have to start filling it in.\u201d<\/p>\n
7,500 games, one calendar<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a flow chart to this whole endeavor.<\/p>\n
Programming is the head of the snake. As it goes, the operations, production and talent go. No one can move forward with planning for any game until programming confirms its slot on the calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like building a puzzle,\u201d said Bess Barnes, CBS Sports\u2019 vice president of programming. \u201cWe have windows that we\u2019re looking to fill, and we do focus first on those high-impact windows.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheer volume of college basketball makes finding viewership-driving windows uniquely challenging.<\/p>\n
ESPN will broadcast nearly 900 games on linear this season (around 630 men\u2019s games and 250-plus women\u2019s contests). Fox\u2019s slate is in the neighborhood of 300 games split between Fox, FS1 and FS2 (most will be on FS1). <\/p>\n
Key broadcast dates and contests for the 2025-26 season<\/p>\n
Nov. 3 \u2014 Opening night<\/p>\n
Nov. 8 \u2014
\n Alabama at St. John\u2019s (Madison Square Garden), noon ET on FS1<\/p>\n
Nov. 18 \u2014 Kansas vs. Duke (Champions Classic), 9 pm ET on ESPN<\/p>\n
Nov. 24-27 \u2014 Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Players Era Tournament (Las Vegas), TNT\/TruTV<\/p>\n
Dec. 2 \u2014 UConn at Kansas, 9 pm ET on ESPN2<\/p>\n
Dec. 13 \u2014 UConn at USC (Women\u2019s), 5:30 pm ET on Fox<\/p>\n
Dec. 20 \u2014
\n St. John\u2019s vs. Kentucky (CBS Sports Classic), 12:30 PM ET on CBS<\/p>\n
Feb. 14 \u2014 South Carolina at LSU (Women\u2019s), 8:30 pm ET on ABC<\/p>\n
Feb. 21 \u2014 Duke vs. Michigan (Washington, D.C.), 6:30 pm ET on ESPN<\/p>\n
March 7 \u2014 UNC at Duke, 6:30 PM on ESPN<\/p>\n
March 15 \u2014 Selection Sunday<\/p>\n
April 3 \u2014
\n Women\u2019s Final Four (Phoenix), 7 pm and 9:30 PM on ESPN<\/p>\n
April 4 \u2014 Men\u2019s Final Four (Indianapolis), 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm ET on TBS<\/p>\n
April 5 \u2014 Women\u2019s national championship game, ESPN<\/p>\n
April 6 \u2014 Men\u2019s national championship game, TBS<\/p>\n
CBS, too, will have more than 300 games spread across CBS, CBS Sports Network and Paramount+, along with teaming up with TNT to broadcast March Madness \u2014 a complex effort in its own right.<\/p>\n
Managing all of this, naturally, takes explicit attention to detail. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of prayers and a lot of Excedrin,\u201d quipped Meg Aronowitz, ESPN senior vice president of production.<\/p>\n
At ESPN, one of the company\u2019s myriad in-house spreadsheets has more than 100 rows and well over 1,000 columns designating varying arms of the operation for each game. Filling it out takes time, conversations with conference partners and bartering between sports leads at the headquarters in Bristol to ensure desired time slots.<\/p>\n
Margulis will tell you programming is an exercise in horse trading. Barnes concurs: There\u2019s an element of shuffling to the process. Derek Crocker, Fox Sports vice president of college sports, notes there\u2019s a persistent push and pull in trying to find the best windows for games.<\/p>\n
Programming is effectively a game of chutes and ladders \u2014 each move might send you sliding down to the beginning, or up a few rungs, before eventually landing at the final schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest piece is just the number of hours that you have to spend looking at a spreadsheet, looking at multiple spreadsheets and making sure you\u2019re tracking everything correctly,\u201d Crocker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we get further into the process on cable,\u201d Barnes said, \u201cit\u2019s more about volume and plugging in windows and putting together a schedule that is consistent throughout the season so that we are a destination for college basketball, really from Nov. 3 all the way through March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nabbing a specific window is also a chore. The NBA and NHL are in full swing this time of year. College football\u2019s postseason now extends well into January. Then there\u2019s the behemoth that is the NFL.<\/p>\n
Good luck finding a stand-alone time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re working on NFL, you walk in and say \u2018Get the hell out of the way,\u2019\u201d Margulis joked. \u201cSometimes there\u2019s a misconception that because of the tonnage, if we lose a [basketball] game here or there, it\u2019s no big deal. But it adds up and there are certain matchups that just cut through and certain periods that cut through. \u2026 It\u2019s really picking the battles where it makes the most sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
A crowded calendar, however, isn\u2019t the only battle networks face in driving viewership. Consumers are paying increasingly less attention. That means networks have even less opportunity to capture an audience.<\/p>\n
Fox Sports Executive Vice President Jordan Bazant noted during a Big East roundtable in New York last month that the network\u2019s research suggested there are 75 college basketball games per week on linear. By contrast, fans on average consume parts of only two games per week.<\/p>\n
![\"Fox’s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/6QRDF6LH25E3BCI3IM7F6DLCRU.jpg\")
Fox\u2019s college basketball broadcast schedule will feature approximately 300 games split between Fox, FS1 and FS2. Film director, producer and screenwriter Spike Lee (center) got in on the action last season as he huddled with Fox analyst Jim Jackson (left) and play-by-play announcer Gus Johnson. Getty Images <\/p>\n
Those trends have since seen Fox add two college basketball windows on Friday night and Saturday in prime time in recent years in hopes of better developing a captive audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is, how do you make sure that those games really stand out besides two great brands playing together?\u201d Bazant said. \u201cYou try and give great lead-ins, but it\u2019s really a competitive environment. We have really great colleagues in the space with ESPN, CBS, NBC and TNT. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s, how do you deliver a high-quality product with a high-quality matchup? That\u2019s the competitive landscape we\u2019re dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018We consider ourselves ducks\u2019 <\/p>\n
ESPN\u2019s Tonya Alleyne starts to smirk.<\/p>\n
How do you best characterize this time of year? Ducks. Yes, like the bird.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe consider ourselves ducks,\u201d Alleyne explained. \u201cOn the surface, we look smooth, but underneath that, we are paddling our little butts off to just get the season up and running.\u201d <\/p>\n
Once programming sets the schedule and irons out time slots, production staff, talent and every other peripheral part of any given broadcast are set to start booking their travel and coordinating prep.<\/p>\n
Alleyne, a former Seton Hall basketball captain who\u2019s been on the production side at ESPN for over a decade, notes there are built-in ways to keep everyone\u2019s schedule straight or to recruit help anywhere it might be needed. <\/p>\n
For example, ESPN keeps an archive of anyone who has ever been hired by the network. So, if there were a need for a makeup artist in Idaho, there\u2019s a person for that already in the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re watching it at home, you don\u2019t know and you\u2019ll never see them,\u201d Alleyne said. \u201cBut they\u2019re an essential part of making sure that our shows run smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each broadcast also takes different forms operationally. In essence, the networks scale production to balance cost, technology and talent, while also attempting to deliver consistent quality across thousands of live broadcasts.<\/p>\n
Wimmer characterizes it as a sliding scale that determines if games are shot in-person, remotely or in some hybrid fashion. <\/p>\n
\u201cA third of games are kind of done different ways [operationally],\u201d Wimmer said. \u201cBut our talent \u2014 and everyone\u2019s going to say the same thing \u2014 we feel like we have the best talent in the business. They\u2019re always going to be on-site. You can\u2019t replicate that feeling of being at courtside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aronowitz puts the talent portion of the planning in football terms: It\u2019s like a depth chart. Teams of on-air and behind-the-camera staff are shuffled into a hierarchy that allows ESPN to plug its best teams into the biggest games.<\/p>\n
How that\u2019s all worked out, however, comes in the offseason.<\/p>\n
Aronowitz rolls countless hours of talent tape outside the season on the hunt for potential promotions and possible changes to her talent depth chart.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlay-by-play is an art that evolves,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like jeans \u2014 one year you\u2019re a skinny jeans person, and the next year you\u2019re a wide-leg pants person. We\u2019re always looking for the next iteration of play-by-play.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"ESPN](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/UNKJ2QOZNJGGPEV4CBBIK6QUUQ.jpg\")
ESPN reporter Holly Rowe interviews Connecticut\u2019s Paige Bueckers after she led UConn to the national title last April in Tampa. Bueckers has moved on to the WNBA, but ESPN has six high-major women\u2019s basketball matchups scheduled for ABC this season. Getty Images Women\u2019s basketball becomes a priority play<\/p>\n
Programming women\u2019s college basketball has its own quirks.<\/p>\n
Viewership for the sport has grown exponentially. How networks capitalize on that in scheduling is evolving.<\/p>\n
ESPN has six high-major matchups set for ABC this season, including South Carolina at LSU at 8:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 14, along with Texas-Tennessee and UNC-Duke the following day at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., respectively. <\/p>\n
Fox\u2019s efforts include slotting a rematch of last season\u2019s title game with a matchup between No. 1 South Carolina and No. 5 UConn at 4:30 p.m. on FS1 to lead its Thanksgiving week coverage. CBS and TNT also have women\u2019s matchups slotted for later this season.<\/p>\n
There have already been massive postseason returns. The women\u2019s national title game recorded 8.5 million viewers across ABC\/ESPN last season after hitting a Caitlin Clark-fueled 18.9 million viewers the season before. No previous women\u2019s title game had topped 6 million viewers from 1996 (when ESPN began airing the title game) to 2023.<\/p>\n
In looking for the best windows, Margulis makes it a point to push ESPN teams to think less about tentpole franchise names like \u201cBig Monday\u201d or \u201cSuper Tuesday,\u201d and more about maximizing whichever window features a women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s really pushing hard to make sure that we\u2019re doing that in the women\u2019s space,\u201d Aronowitz said. \u201cIt\u2019s displacing some men\u2019s games in some ways, but that\u2019s how you grow a sport and he has the courage to do it, and our bosses are all on board for that because women\u2019s basketball is well on its way to being on the rise, if not there already.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond this shuffling of windows, networks have the conferences to consider. They share preferences on certain games, windows, etc., and the networks work to fill those needs. These days, that requires significant cohesion.<\/p>\n
The Big Ten\u2019s media rights deal includes Fox, NBC and CBS. The Big 12 has deals with ESPN, Fox, CBS, Peacock and TNT. The ACC has relationships with ESPN and The CW. The Big East is slated to be on Fox, TNT, NBC and ESPN. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll leagues that have multinetwork deals now are going to have to sort of work their way through being all over the place and [be discoverable],\u201d Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said. \u201cIf you\u2019re all over the place, you\u2019ve got to find a way for the networks to cross-promote you, or have a really active social media operation, so that fans know where they can find you.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a longer game playing out in the networks\u2019 efforts to bolster their basketball capabilities.<\/p>\n
The early 2030s are primed for mass disruption. The bulk of the major conference media deals are up during that timeframe. The rights to the NCAA men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball tournaments each expire in 2032, as well.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, building out the broadcast capability to potentially take on those rights is paramount.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there ever was an opportunity for ESPN to get the men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournament at the same time \u2014 both contracts are up in \u201932 \u2014 we need to be prepared by \u201932 to be able to do the men\u2019s tournament,\u201d Aronowitz said, noting it\u2019s no guarantee ESPN would bid. \u201cAnd whether we get it or whether we don\u2019t, that would be foolish of us to not be prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preparation today means piecing together the 2025 season. But with those games largely programmed and scheduled, the \u201cfun,\u201d as Margulis puts it, is slated to begin.<\/p>\n
\u201c[College basketball\u2019s] fun,\u201d Margulis said. \u201cWe spend all our time talking about NIL and all the things \u2014 and I get it, it\u2019s not Archie and Jughead at Riverdale High anymore. But we tend to forget that it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
College basketball on TV by the numbers <\/p>\n
1,500+ \u2014 Total linear broadcasts<\/p>\n
630 \u2014 ESPN men\u2019s games <\/p>\n
300 \u2014 Fox games<\/p>\n
300 \u2014 CBS games<\/p>\n
250 \u2014 ESPN women\u2019s games<\/p>\n
75 \u2014 Games per week on linear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Margulis flips through his spreadsheet, the puzzle pieces rattling around in his head. It\u2019s early October when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,3871,724,794,3738,10490,48702,85,152885],"class_list":["post-259560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-cbs","tag-college-basketball","tag-espn","tag-fox-sports","tag-in-depth","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-tnt-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}