Some Early And Late OSU Football Kickoffs Announced

Kickoff times and tv coverage have been determined, at least partially, for a few of Oregon St.'s football games this fall.

We've known that the 2015 season opener against Weber St., the official beginning of the Gary Andersen era, will be on Friday, Sept. 4, at 5 PM, right at rush hour. We now know that one of departing Athletic Director Bob De Carolis' parting moves, one made to trade attendance and fan convenience in an attempt to garner wider distribution, and get on a nationally distributed channel, has backfired.

The traffic jam bowl will be on the Pac-12 Network, so no additional distribution was accomplished by putting a 2nd home game, and 3rd game overall, onto a Friday.

The Beavers' second game, at Michigan on Sept. 12, in the home debut of Jim Harbaugh as coach of the Wolverines, is still listed as "TBA", but is highly likely to be somewhere on either ABC or one of the ESPN channels, and likely at noon EDT, 9 AM PDT, making attending both halves of the "Oregon-Michigan" doubleheader with Oregon's visit to Michigan St., which will be on ABC at 8 PM EDT (5 PM PDT), a possibility.

Oregon St.'s 3rd game, on Saturday, Sept. 19 against San Jose St., will be a 5 PM PDT game. With 5 Pac-12 games relegated to the Pac-12 Channels that day, the Beavers-Spartans game will be slotted against the Wyoming-Washington St. game, and will start before the Utah St.-Washington game finishes, so it will be on only some of the Pac-12 Channels, for sure Pac-12 Oregon, and possibly only the Bay Area channel, at least in its entirety. Oregon fans have to be just loving an 11 AM PDT start time for the Duck's game against Georgia St.

The best news is that the Beavers' Pac-12 season opener the following Friday, Sept. 25 will be a 7 PM game, and will be on Fox 1.

Kickoff hasn't been specifically set for the Civil War, on Friday, Nov. 27, at Oregon, but the game will be early, at either 12:30 or 1 PM, and Fox will provide the coverage, though its not decided if it will be on FOX or Fox 1. It will depend on other scheduling issues that develop as the season progresses.

One thing that it won't depend on is the Apple Cup, which in recent years has been paired with the Civil War as a nice doubleheader for northwest football viewers. This year, the Washington St.-Washington game from Husky Stadium is also scheduled for 12:30 or 1 PM, and will also be carried by Fox. So the games will compete for an overlapping audience pool in the early afternoon the day following Thanksgiving.

Additional game times will be announced primarily in the 12 day windows preceding game days during the season.

Andy_Wooldridge@yahoo.com