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the week in sports

The Week In Sports On TV

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And then suddenly there was nothing to do—at least so says the fan whose primary interest is football. For the first time since late August, we have a week with no football on the agenda, making this the lead-in to our sports lives through February, save one brief interlude to watch the Harbaugh Family in New Orleans. But never fear, there’s plenty of good action in college basketball, and some worthwhile games in the NBA and the NHL. Let’s run through the week in sports that lies ahead:

Monday: It’s Martin Luther King Day and for some reason that means we have basketball all day long. The NBA starts in a couple hours, at 1 PM ET with a good game between Indiana-Memphis (ESPN) and then moves to a solid game on NBA-TV at 3:30 PM ET, with Brooklyn-New York. The college games kick off at the same time with Cincinnati-Syracuse (3:30 PM ET, ESPN), starting a run of four straight games, highlighted by Georgetown-Notre Dame at 7:30.

The NBA in prime-time will show one good, underhyped basketball team from the West, when San Antonio visits Philly (7, TNT) and one bad, overhyped team from the West, when the LA Lakers go into Chicago (9:30, TNT). It’s a good time to check in on the Bulls, with Derrick Rose’s return coming soon.

Tuesday: After the flurry of games on Monday, this one’s fairly quiet. Michigan State-Wisconsin is a great game in the Big Ten (7 PM ET, ESPN). Otherwise you have to find interest in Boston College-Maryland (9 PM ET, ESPNU) on the tenuous grounds that it’s the same markets who just played for the AFC Championship. Or you can watch hockey and check out Philly-New Jersey (7:30 PM ET, NBCSN).

Wednesday: Don’t look now, but Miami is undefeated in ACC play. And Duke is coming to town tonight at 7 PM ET on ESPN. Here at TheSportsNotebook we’ll take a closer look at the Hurricanes prior to that game. ‘Canes-Duke is the clearly the focal point of a night that mixes in a couple good NBA-TV games from the Western Conference in Denver-Houston and Oklahoma City-Golden State, with the doubleheader starting at 8 PM ET.

Thursday: In the world of TV sports, Thursday night means the NBA on TNT. And in the world of college hoops, it means the Pac-12 plays most of its weeknight games. Fans reap the benefit of both. UCLA-Arizona is a great college game (9 PM ET, ESPN2) and you can whet your appetite with Celtics-Knicks (8 PM ET, TNT).

Friday: Very quiet tonight, with San Antonio-Dallas (8 PM ET, ESPN) being a game that would have been great two years ago, pretty good last year, and is pretty dull this season. Go catch a movie.

Saturday: The college basketball games aren’t quite as rich as they were last week, when Syracuse’s 70-68 win over Louisville keyed a card that had big conference games all over the board. But the ‘Ville is in action at Georgetown (Noon ET, ESPN) and Duke hosts Maryland (1 PM ET, CBS). But the best game is off the national radar and it’s the Mountain West battle between New Mexico and San Diego State (4 PM ET, NBC Sports Network). The Lobos are in first place, the Aztecs probably have more talent and face a must-win at home.

Sunday: No NFL action means the NBA starts up the run of Sunday doubleheaders that will be a staple, really until the end the conference finals when all action shifts to prime-time. Its two disappointing big-market teams playing at home against the two Finals favorites as Heat-Celtics and Thunder-Lakers tip off in a doubleheader beginning at 1 PM ET. Then cap off the night with Hawks-Knicks (6:30 PM ET, ESPN).

Football is on the way out, but college basketball conference races are heating up and that is what highlights the sports agenda this coming week.

The Week In Sports: College Hoops Appetizers Builds To NFL Feast

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As the week in sports begins here on Monday, we’re still looking back on what happened in the NFL playoffs last weekend and looking ahead to Championship Sunday coming back, as Super Bowl berths will be settled. But in between now and then, don’t let college basketball slip past you. There’s a series of good games with early conference championship implications. Here’s a walk through what to watch on TV this week, building to Sunday’s football finale.

Monday:  A big game in the Big 12 is good start to the week. If anyone’s going to challenge Kansas for Big 12 supremacy it’s Baylor. The Bears have had problems in big games since coming on as a national contender in 2010. It won’t get bigger—at least in the regular season, then tonight’s trip to Lawrence (9 PM ET, ESPN).

Tuesday: Let’s shift to the Big Ten, where Wisconsin seems to have found its footing after blasting Illinois over the weekend moving to 3-0 in the league. The Badgers are tied for first with Indiana, and the two teams square off in Bloomington (9 PM ET, ESPN).

Wednesday: North Carolina State knocked off Duke on Saturday and now the Wolfpack have to show they can keep it going, with a road date against a good Maryland team (7 PM ET, ESPN2). But Wednesday is ultimately the night to stay up late—you can watch UNLV-San Diego State battle at the top of the Mountain West Conference (10 PM ET, CBS Sports Network), and have the NBA as another option, where Miami’s visit to surprising Golden State (10:30 PM ET, ESPN) is one of the week’s pro highlights.

Thursday: Michigan and Minnesota each lost this weekend and both need a bounceback game in Williams Arena (7 PM ET, ESPN). And with this being NBA doubleheader night on TNT, continue to track the Heat on the West Coast, as they visit the Lakers (10:30 PM ET, TNT)

Friday: Good NBA action in the ESPN doubleheader, as the colleges takes the night off. Start with the Bulls’ visit to the Celtics, as Chicago’s close to getting Derrick Rose back and Boston has won five straight. Then Oklahoma City visits Dallas. The twinbill starts at 7 PM ET.

SATURDAY COLLEGE HOOPS FEST

Now college basketball isn’t all that’s going down. The long-awaited opening to the NHL season is also Saturday and here at TheSportsNotebook we’ll have a three-day run of previews later in the week to get you ready for the 48-game regular schedule. But from start to finish, there’s good games in every time slot for college hoops…

MID-AFTERNOON: Star with a big SEC game, as Missouri visit Florida (2 PM ET, ESPN), with the winner having an early leg up in the conference race. If this one gets away, you can check Arizona State’s effort to prove themselves a bona fide Pac-12 contender with a home game against Arizona (2:30 PM ET, Fox Sports).

But it’s the 4 PM ET slot that’s the juiciest one of the week. The Big East battle between Louisville and Syracuse on ESPN is the focal point. Oregon-UCLA on CBS features a pair of top Pac-12 teams. And two of the best midmajor teams, Creighton and Wichita State square off on ESPN2. Get in front of the TV set and have the remote at the ready.

EARLY EVENING: Ohio State got people’s attention again with their win over Michigan on Sunday and now the Buckeyes head to Michigan State (6 PM ET, ESPN). And Marquette is off to a 3-0 start in Big East play and visits Cincinnati (7 PM ET, ESPN). And don’t overlook a key Mountain West game, with UNLV visiting a potential NCAA Tournament team in Colorado State (7 PM ET, NBC Sports Network).

THE LATE SHOW: No two midmajor programs have captured the nation’s attention over the last 15 years like Gonzaga and Butler. They’ll go head-to-head at 9 PM ET on ESPN. And don’t overlook an interesting SEC game on ESPNU at the same time—Kentucky is still trying to find its footing, while Auburn is quietly starting to play good basketball in spite of a mediocre conference record.

That brings us to Sunday. There are no notable games in either college or the NBA. Who wants to go up against the NFL? But while San Francisco-Atlanta (3 PM ET, Fox) and Baltimore-New England (6:30 PM ET, CBS) are the feast for this week in sports, there’s a weeklong spread of appetizers with college hoops.

Christmas Week Sports: What’s Under The Tree For Fans

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Christmas Week sports is always led by the NBA, with the NFL coming in at the end, and then a mix of a few college basketball games and the start of the glut of minor bowls in college football. TheSportsNotebook is here on Christmas Eve morning to sort out what the fans have on tap…

ESPN & ABC have their now-traditional five-game marathon NBA-fest on Christmas Day, and the games are all worthwhile. We start with Celtics-Nets (Noon ET, ESPN), with Boston having dug itself an early hole and needing to turn things around quickly. Then ABC picks up at 3 PM ET with a doubleheader of Knicks-Lakers and Thunder-Heat. We get the league’s two surprise teams (both good and bad) in the first one and the league’s two best teams—with due apologies to San Antonio—in the latter. Then ESPN picks it back up at night with Houston-Chicago and LA Clippers-Denver, a prime-time doubleheader that starts at 8 PM ET.

I know I sort of dissed the Spurs by not including them with Oklahoma City and Miami and a title discussion, but that’s nothing compared to what ABC/ESPN did. How are the Spurs not a part of this marquee? Then again, maybe David Stern was worried that head coach Gregg Popovich would choose this day to rest his starters.

Dallas isn’t on Christmas Day, nor should they be, but they get a lot of TV love the rest of the week, with a Thursday night trip to Oklahoma City (8 PM ET, TNT), a home date with Denver on Friday (8:30 PM ET, NBA-TV), and then cap it off with a non-national TV game against San Antonio on Sunday night.

The exposure to the Mavericks is just the warmup in a week where the city of Dallas is going to be in the sports media spotlight, because the Cowboys’ game with the Redskins has been flexed to Sunday night (8:20 PM ET, NBC) and will be winner-take-all for the NFC East. For the Cowboys, it’s win or go home, even for the wild-card, and will likely be the same for the ‘Skins by the time kickoff arrives. Washington would need Chicago to lose to Detroit (unlikely) and Minnesota to lose at home to Green Bay (slightly probable, but hardly a lock) to survive a Sunday night loss and qualify as a wild-card.

Unless you’ve got a favorite NFL team playing early on Sunday, the best action will start late afternoon. The Packers-Vikings game at 4:25 PM ET will likely be in the Fox showcase. Minnesota needs to win to make the playoffs, while Green Bay needs to win to wrap up the #2 seed in the NFC and first-round bye. The NFC West will also be settled in this window, with San Francisco able to clinch if they take care of Arizona t home—and the Niners can pass the Packers for the bye, should Green Bay lose to Minnesota.

If, by some miracle, Arizona beats San Fran, then Seattle can take the division if they win a home game with feisty St. Louis, and the Seahawks could also take the bye in the event of a Green Bay loss. If that’s the scenario that unfolds, it would be an 11-5 Seahawk team getting the drop on an 11-5 Packer team because of a certain head-to-head win on a Monday night back in September. I live in Wisconsin and let’s just say the sadist in me almost wants that to happen, so I can watch a state explode in fury.

Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have what should be easy wins in the 4:25 PM ET window, with the Denver hosting Kansas City and New England hosting Miami. Right now, Denver has the edge on New England for the AFC #2 seed and first-round bye, but the ante could be upped considerably by kickoff if Indianapolis wins a home game with Houston at 1 PM ET. A Texans loss means Peyton and Brady would be playing for the 1-2 spots in the bracket. That makes Houston-Indianapolis the best game on the early part of the Sunday card, with some early intrigue also on Chicago-Detroit, where the Bears need to win and then root for a Vikings loss. The Giants are also alive in a home game with the Eagles, but a lot needs to go right for Eli Manning to get another chance at January magic.  There are no Monday and Thursday night games in Week 17, as the league ensures everyone is on equal footing rest-wise for both these games and the playoffs.

It’s a quiet week on the college sports front. There’s Christmas Eve action from Honolulu with Fresno State-SMU and a Wednesday night game with Central Michigan-Western Kentucky. I’m guessing there won’t be too much tension in households caused by sports fans rushing for the remote. Both of those games were part of TheSportsNotebook’s preview of the bowl season’s first movement that we ran last week.

The volume kicks up in college football on Thursday, with a three-day run involving 11 games. We’ll have previews of all 11 posted here that morning, and the games you should circle are Baylor-UCLA on Thursday (9:45 PM ET, ESPN) and Texas-Oregon State on Saturday (6:45 PM ET, ESPN). And if you like, or are open to liking the midmajors, the UL-Monroe-Ohio game on Friday afternoon (2 PM ET, ESPN) features two great quarterbacks in Kolton Browning and Tyler Tettleton.

College basketball goes for quality rather than quantity, with two Top 20 teams meeting on Thursday night in New Mexico-Cincinnati (9 PM ET, ESPN2) and then the Kentucky-Louisville game on Saturday (4 PM ET, CBS).

Here at TheSportsNotebook we’ll aim for quality and quantity in college basketball, by doing complete previews of the Big East, Big Ten & Pac-12, the three leagues that are the first to begin conference play in the early part of next week. You can look for those previews to appear in the latter part of this week. The post-Christmas part of the week will also include the aforementioned college bowl previews, and our usual Friday look at the entire NFL schedule.

Other features here at TheSportsNotebook that will be up today and Christmas Day include a look back on the NFL futures. In August and early September we went through every team’s Over/Under win total and made a pick on whether they would exceed expectations. With one game left it’s time look at how the teams—and myself—did. And we’ll also complete what’s been a seven-week warmup on the NBA by taking a look at the Miami Heat. You can expect that article, along with links to several other NBA columns, posted on Tuesday morning as part of the Christmas extravaganza.

Everybody have a Merry Christmas, and to our friends in the Jewish tradition, TheSportsNotebook offers a Happy Hanukkah.

The Week In Sports: NFL, Bowls & Buckets

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The city of New York opens the week in sports tonight, with the Jets playing Tennessee in Monday Night Football (8:30 PM ET, ESPN) and the Big Apple comes close to closing it as well, when it’s Giants-Ravens (4:25 PM ET, Fox) in the featured late afternoon game next Sunday. The Jets are unexpectedly in the playoff picture if they win tonight and the Giants are unexpectedly in danger of falling out, having lost control of their destiny in the NFC East and struggling to hold on for a wild-card.

In between Monday night and late Sunday afternoon, there’s NBA basketball action from New York, starting with tonight’s visit by Houston to Madison Square Garden to take on the Knicks. This game gets NBA-TV coverage starting at 7:30 PM ET, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why even New York TV demographics trump a Spurs-Thunder game going down in OkC tonight—the latter two only being the best two teams in the West. The Knicks continue to get love from national television, with their Wednesday tilt against Brooklyn going on ESPN at 7 PM ET, and then another home date with Chicago on Friday (7:30 PM ET, NBA-TV). If you love New York, you can spend the week in MSG and then around it sandwich big football games.

Cincinnati is another city with some prominence this week, although not quite at the same volume. The Bengals’ win at Philadelphia, coupled with Pittsburgh’s loss at Dallas, has given Cincy the lead on the AFC’s final playoff spot and their big battle in the Steel City will be the game CBS shows to most of the country at 1 PM ET on Sunday. The warmup for this game comes in college hoops on Wednesday when Xavier-Cincinnati play for bragging rights in the Queen City (7 PM ET, ESPN2). This game degenerated into a brawl last year and started a series of events that led Bearcats guard Mark Lyons to eventually transfer to Arizona, where he can be a difference-maker on a Final Four team. Looking for that kind of impact of this December’s game might be a stretch, but we can safely say the Bearcats and Musketeers keep things interesting.

TheSportsNotebook will delve deeper into the NFL playoff picture tomorrow when we do our weekly projections, but we do know that both Dallas and Washington control their destiny in the NFC East, where each is 8-6 and tied with the Giants, hold the tiebreaker on Big Blue and play head-to-head in Week 17. To set that up, Dallas has a home game with New Orleans (1 PM ET, Fox) that will go to most of the country as part of the doubleheader that sets the stage for Giants-Ravens. Washington has to take care of business in Philadelphia.

There’s no Monday Night game in the Week 16 schedule since a week from today is Christmas Eve, so it’s Saturday night that gets prime-time action in the NFL. That game is Atlanta-Detroit, a game that looked a lot more interesting in September, and even last week, before Atlanta’s 34-0 thrashing of the Giants yesterday eliminated any doubt about who would be the #1 seed in the NFC. The Sunday night game is another letdown. Had San Francisco simply lost at New England last night, their road trip to Seattle would have been for first place in the NFC West.

As it is, even if the Niners still lose, they still bail themselves out with a win over Arizona in the finale. It’s still important—San Francisco has to hold off Green Bay for the NFC’s #2 seed and first-round bye, but it’s no longer a title fight. TheSportsNotebook will preview all of NFL Week 16 on Friday.

We get a run of college football bowl games starting on Thursday night, although even as one who likes the midmajors, these games are pretty dry. The BYU-San Diego State game on Thursday (8 PM ET, ESPN) isn’t bad, and I’m interested in Washington-Boise State (3:30 PM ET, ESPN) on Saturday, but games like Ball State-Central Florida (Friday, 7:30 PM ET, ESPN), East Carolina-UL Lafayette (Saturday, Noon ET, ESPN) don’t represent the best the midmajors have to offer. Neither do the two games early next week of Fresno-SMU on Christmas Eve (8 PM ET, ESPN) and Western Kentucky-Central Michigan on Wednesday (7:30 PM ET, ESPN). TheSportsNotebook will preview all these games as a chunk on Thursday.

College basketball is fairly quiet throughout the week, with Stanford-N.C. State on Tuesday (9 PM ET, ESPN2) and North Carolina-Texas on Wednesday (9 PM ET, ESPN2) being the best on the board. College hoops will also be fairly quiet here at TheSportsNotebook. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been checking in on the eight top conferences, plus the mid-majors to examine the top teams. You can check those in the college basketball archive. Since I’ve been griping about top teams being overrated, I’ll get off the fence this week and give four teams I think are worth betting on as true national contenders. Then college hoops will briefly slide off the agenda at TheSportsNotebook, to return after Christmas, as we again return to each conference, this time in more depth, in anticipation of the conference schedules that begin in early January.

The NBA will fill the basketball void over the next several days here, as we build up to Christmas Day feast of five games. Check the pro basketball archive, and you can see that after a broad summary of each conference to start the season, we’ve been checking in on different contenders over the last seven weeks. That process accelerates this week, with 2-3 articles covering several teams. By Christmas, each team will have close to 25 games under its belt and it’s time for the season to begin in earnest.

The games to watch in earnest this week, besides the Knicks games referenced above and the Spurs-Thunder game that only those with a League Pass subscription can watch, will be surprising Milwaukee’s visit to Memphis on Wednesday (9:30 PM ET, ESPN) and the pesky Minnesota Timberwolves, who host Oklahoma City on Thursday (7 PM ET, TNT).

 

The Week Ahead In Sports

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After a weekend of intense college football, with conference championship, debates over the BCS and the final settling of the national title matchup, the time has come for the NFL to take center stage and basketball to get some increased prominence, as TheSportsNotebook takes its Monday morning look at the week in sports ahead.

The Redskins-Giants Monday night battle (8:30 PM ET, ESPN) represents New York’s chance to finally put away the NFC East and that game was looked at as a part of TheSportsNotebook’s overall NFL Week 13 preview on Friday. If we look ahead, Denver and Peyton Manning will be in the Thursday night spotlight when they visit Oakland (8:20 PM ET, NFL). The Broncos are in a three-way tie with New England and Baltimore for the #2 seed in the AFC playoff race.

We’ll look at this more closely in TheSportsNotebook in Tuesday’s NFL playoff projections, but just looking ahead, we see Baltimore with a tough visit to Washington on Sunday and New England hosting a monster Monday night game against Houston (8:30 PM ET, ESPN) on a week from tonight.

Fox has the doubleheader this week in the NFL and the 4:25 PM ET game of Saints-Giants has taken a hit with New Orleans falling to 5-7 and it gets worse if the Giants win tonight and remove any pressure in the division race. But even given that, New Orleans would still be trying to make their last desperate stand and the Giants would join the Packers in being a half-game back of San Francisco for the #2 slot in the NFC bracket and accompanying first-round bye.

Speaking of Green Bay, they’ll be on Sunday night, at home against Detroit (8:20 PM ET, NBC). The Packers are 8-4 and tied with the Bears in the NFC North, with Chicago playing Minnesota in a key game in Sunday’s early window. TheSportsNotebook’s going to take a closer look at the Bears’ slide in recent weeks and see what we can expect of this team down the stretch and into January. You can look for that feature in the middle of the week.  Also of note on Fox’s early Sunday coverage is Dallas’ visit to Cincinnati, with both teams fighting for the playoffs. As always, TheSportsNotebook will do a complete preview of NFL Sunday that will run on Friday afternoon.

The college basketball week starts in earnest on Tuesday with an interesting ESPN doubleheader of Texas-Georgetown and N.C. State-UConn that starts at 7 PM ET. On Wednesday, highly regarded Florida pays a visit to Florida State (7 PM ET, ESPN2). The SEC—Florida and Kentucky in particular—are one of the conferences TheSportsNotebook has not yet done an early season look-in on, and that omission will be fixed in the early part of this week. You can also look for Pac-12 basketball coverage to run over the next few days.

With Saturdays finally open for hoops, there’s a series of intriguing college basketball games on the TV docket. I do say “intriguing”, not “dynamite”, because it’s nothing that should keep you from finishing up Christmas shopping (or starting it). But if you want to catch a game, the best ones on the board are a midafternoon ESPN2 twinbill of Temple-Duke and UCLA-Texas that begins at 3:15 PM ET. Earlier in the day on the same network is Illinois-Gonzaga. My podcasting colleague, Greg DePalma over at Prime Sports Network firmly believes this the best Gonzaga team in some time and has a real shot at the Final Four. Greg and I will be on the air again on Monday afternoon at 4 PM ET.

And in the NBA, I think it’s safe to say the nationally televised games will be taken seriously by the competing teams after David Stern hit the San Antonio Spurs with a $250,000 fine for sitting all their key players in a Thursday night TNT game at Miami last week. I understand where the commissioner is coming from, but it’s more than a little arrogant to sanction a team out of the blue. A fairer approach would have been to put a rule in place going forward that would cover situations like this. But David Stern, like Roger Goodell in the NFL, has never chosen fairness when arrogance was within his grasp.

The NBA’s Central Division is stacked right now, with Milwaukee, Chicago and Indiana all hovering around .500 and the Bucks are on NBA-TV tonight against Anthony Davis and New Orleans (8 PM ET). Then it’s Pacers-Bulls tomorrow in a non-televised game. The showcase game of Tuesday is Oklahoma City-Brooklyn (8 PM ET, NBA-TV). The Nets are playing well in their new home and TheSportsNotebook will take a closer look at this team this week.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are the big TV nights in the NBA, and ESPN’s Wednesday coverage is Denver-Atlanta & Dallas-LA Clippers starting at 8 PM ET. Dallas again gets coverage on Thursday when their game at Phoenix is the back end of TNT’s doubleheader that starts with Knicks-Heat at 8 PM ET. After what happened to the Spurs, I think it’s fair to say Dirk Nowitzki will play both games, even if they are back-to-back early in the season and he’s an older player. Friday’s doubleheader on ESPN is Celtics-Sixers followed by Lakers-Thunder, and it all starts at 7 PM ET.

And don’t think college football is forgotten. Later today, we’ll have a complete breakdown of the bowl schedule and then later in the week—likely Friday—TheSportsNotebook will break down the Heisman race, going conference-by-conference, in anticipation of the awards ceremony in New York City on Saturday night (8 PM ET, ESPN). There’s also one more football game, with Navy-Army at 3 PM ET on CBS.

The Week In Sports: Every Game You Need To Know About

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The calendar for the sports fan this week is defined by college football, with six conferences holding championship games, two more holding de facto title clashes and still two more having high-profile games with at least a share of the league title on the line. Thus, it’s the college football schedule that begins TheSportsNotebook’s look at the week in sports for November 26.

Georgia-Alabama is the biggest game of the entire week in any sport, as the SEC Championship Game (Saturday, 4 PM ET, CBS) will decide the opponent for Notre Dame in the BCS National Championship battle on January 7. The Dawgs-Tide game is one of four conference championship games scheduled for December 1.

Saturday starts with Central Florida-Tulsa in Conference USA (Noon ET, ESPN). This matchup comes out of a strange set of circumstances. UCF was on probation and we assumed East Carolina would get their spot in the game. Then the Knights appealed and while it’s being heard they’re eligible to play in this game and a subsequent bowl. All of which is very shady—we’ve had situations with schools like Miami self-imposing bowl bans late in the year because they were going to be heavy underdogs in the league championship game, and now we have Central Florida—curiously enough with a good shot to win this game—pulling the opposite routine. Call me crazy, but it looks like some opportunism on display.

Prime-time on Saturday night features the championship games in the Big Ten & ACC, as Nebraska-Wisconsin (8 PM ET, Fox) play for the Rose Bowl, while Florida State-Georgia Tech (8 PM ET, ESPN) settle an Orange Bowl bid. The Big 12 will also settle its automatic BCS bid, as Kansas State hosts Texas (8 PM ET, ABC). This is the regular season finale in a league without a title game. If the Wildcats win, they’ll clinch a Fiesta Bowl bid. If they lose, that bid is there for Oklahoma—so long as the Sooners beat TCU earlier in the day (Noon ET, ESPN). And let’s not overlook Boise-Nevada (3:30 PM ET, ABC), as the Broncos go for a piece of the Mountain West championship along with San Diego State and Fresno.

All of this above is just the Saturday fare for college football. The championship build-up starts on Thursday night with Louisville-Rutgers (7:30 PM ET, ESPN) in the Big East. This is a regular season finale that worked out to be a title clash. If Rutgers wins they claim the conference crown outright. If Louisville wins, they share the title with the Scarlet Knights and Syracuse, and potentially Cincinnati if the Bearcats beat UConn on Saturday. But when it comes to BCS eligibility, Louisville would hold the tiebreakers so they are playing for what likely amounts to an Orange Bowl date against the ACC champ.

Then on Friday, it’s one of the most exciting games that no one will watch, as Northern Illinois-Kent State (7 PM ET, ESPN2) get set to play for the MAC title. If anyone does watch football on Friday it’s more likely to be the UCLA-Stanford game (8 PM ET, Fox) in the Pac-12 Championship. This game will be in Palo Alto, as the Pac-12 is the one conference that awards homefield advantage for its title bout, and it’s a rematch of last Saturday’s game, where the Cardinal thrashed the Bruins. It should be noted though, that UCLA already had its division clinched, while Stanford had to hold off Oregon for the division crown.

NFL ACTION AHEAD

NFL Week 13 also begins on Thursday and we actually have a pretty good game on the NFL Network, with New Orleans visiting Atlanta. The Saints loss to the 49ers yesterday was a tough blow, but every other leader in the race for the final wild-card spot in the NFC also lost, so New Orleans is still only a game out. Atlanta remains in a tough fight with San Francisco for the NFC’s #1 seed. Then the NFC wild-card race picks up again on Sunday with key games in Seattle-Chicago and Minnesota-Green Bay. The AFC race is a little quieter with all four divisions looking under firm control, but Pittsburgh-Baltimore (4:25 PM ET, CBS) will be the late afternoon money game and the Steelers are now desperate after losing to Cleveland yesterday.

Prime-time pro football is an NFC East feast, starting with Philadelphia-Dallas on Sunday night (8:20 PM ET, NBC) and then NY Giants-Washington (8:30 PM ET, ESPN). Can I ask why the Eagles-Cowboys game isn’t flexed into a 1 PM ET slot and a better game—let’s say Seahawks-Bears—shown on prime-time? On Monday night, RG3 and the Redskins can pull to within a game of the Giants with a win.

WE HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN HOOPS

The early part of the week in college basketball is marked by the Big Ten-ACC challenge. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU will all have doubleheader action. The best games on the board are North Carolina-Indiana on Tuesday and Ohio State-Duke on Wednesday, both tipping at 9:30 PM ET on ESPN. Then attention shifts to the Big East and SEC, who play a series of games against each other starting Wednesday. The game you want to see in this group is Kentucky-Notre Dame (7 PM ET, ESPN2) as the Irish faithful get focused on playing the best in the SEC—a mindset that will soon be carried over to the football field.

Finally, we come to the NBA, still in the sort-out portion of the schedule as teams jockey for some early position. TNT has a juicy matchup for Thursday night in San Antonio-Miami at 8 PM ET, as the defending champs host the team that held the #1 seed in the West and looked like the best in the league. The Spurs are off to a strong start so far this year and will be the subject of a feature here at TheSportsNotebook some time later in the week.

TheSportsNotebook will also have a feature on the best teams in Big East basketball coming, and our early week football coverage will chronicle the latest developments in projecting the BCS bowl matchups (all of them, not just the top game, which is now self-explanatory), and we’re at the point in the NFL season where our exit polling will start showing projected playoff matchups. And our usual preview of NFL Sunday will run late in the week.

Most of all though, this week is about college football. So while TheSportsNotebook will keep you up to date in the NFL and check in with college basketball and the NBA, we’ll be going full steam on all the championship games—both actual and de facto—throughout the week. Come on by TheSportsNotebook.com each day for commentary, historical perspective and predictions you can confidently bet against.