The Cincinnati Bearcats football game against the Houston Cougars next Saturday November 7th will air at 3:30 pm on ESPN2, UC announced yesterday.
"The University of Cincinnati football game at Houston on Nov. 7, 2015 will kickoff at 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. CT and air on ESPN2 and 700 WLW AM."
Normally game times and networks are announced 13 days out, if not tabbed during the offseason. But the 5-3 Bearcats and undefeated, 18th ranked Cougars, being the intriguing game that it is, were placed in the 6-day announcement window as it seems the networks wanted to wait and see their respective outcomes from yesterday. Both teams won and as a result the ESPN schedulers deemed them worthy enough for an afternoon slot on one of their major networks.
As such, UC and Houston will kick off at 3:30 pm on ESPN2 nationally along with the likes of TCU-Oklahoma State (Fox), Iowa-Indiana (ESPN), Florida State-Clemson (ABC), and Arkansas-Ole Miss (CBS). That’s certainly quite a bit of competition for the Bearcats and Cougars to fight with during that time slot. But when it comes to expanding the exposure of the American Conference, you can’t get much better than the pairing of the best teams in the league a week after College Gameday visited Temple and aired their game with Notre Dame during primetime on ABC.
So while Cincinnati’s season certainly hasn’t gone the path most of us expected, 2015 couldn’t be going much better for the AAC as a whole. Now, if UC goes into Houston, ruins their perfect season, and knocks a conference team out of the top 25, I’d be perfectly content with that. I’m a greedy Bearcats fan like that.