A year ago, ESPN aired a record amount of college baseball games – over 200 games aired on their family of networks, including ESPN3. This year, ESPN’s college baseball coverage has been stepped up to an insane level – they’re going to be airing more than 675 games. Yes, that’s correct: ESPN is more than tripling the amount of live college baseball games they’ll be airing in 2015.
All of the games will be available for streaming on WatchESPN, and 25 D-1 conferences will be represented. 175 (or nearly a quarter of ESPN’s games) will featured at least one team ranked in the season-opening top 25 rankings. ESPNU will air SEC games on eight consecutive Thursdays, starting on March 26th. Speaking of the SEC, this is the first baseball season since the launch of SEC Network, and ESPN will air more than 100 SEC games in total (including 80 on SEC Network). 350 games involving SEC teams will be streamed online at WatchESPN under the SEC Network + branding.
Longhorn Network, which is still a thing, will air 27 Texas home games exclusively. There will be at least one game aired on an ESPN network on each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from February 20th to May 10th in case you were worried about the coverage being online only.
ESPN also won’t be holding back during conference tournaments and the College World Series. Seven conference champions will be aired on ESPN’s family of networks, though the only conference tournament to be aired in full will be (naturally) the SEC’s, airing on SEC Network.
This is a simply fantastic thing for fans of college baseball. There are so many games that wouldn’t be covered nationally, but ESPN is doing their best to feed the beast and give college baseball fans more options this spring. SEC Network played a huge role in this commitment to coverage too – would ESPN really be airing nearly 700 games if they couldn’t go all-out covering the SEC? I doubt it. The season starts this weekend, and the future for college baseball is bright in large part because of ESPN’s renewed commitment to the sport.
[ESPN]
