COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on sports. This week saw tons of issues in men’s and women’s college basketball and the NFL, and college football has faced quite a few problems as well this year. The latest college football postponement comes from Oklahoma (#11 in the CFP rankings, #14 in the AP poll) against West Virginia, which had been set for ABC’s Saturday night game showcase at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. That game was postponed Wednesday thanks to COVID-19 issues with the Oklahoma team (QB Spencer Rattler is seen above after last week’s game against Kansas):
Saturday night's primetime ABC game, Oklahoma-West Virginia, has been postpone to Dec. 12. OU has temporarily paused activities due to recent positive COVID-19 tests and contact tracing.
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) November 25, 2020
It’s unclear at the moment what ESPN will sub in to fill that ABC slot. Other games set to air on their networks around that time include a wave set for 7 p.m. Eastern kickoffs: LSU-Texas A&M (ESPN), Kansas State-Baylor (ESPN2), and Duke-Georgia Tech (ESPN3). At 7:30 p.m. Eastern, there’s No. 13 (CFP) Georgia at South Carolina (SEC Network, ESPN Radio). And at 8 p.m. Eastern, there’s Troy-Appalachian State on ESPNU and Virginia-Florida State on ACC Network. The Duke-Georgia Tech game is probably going to a linear channel, but it’s not clear if that will get put on ABC or if it will go to a smaller channel and everything else will shift up a level. Last week, when the noon ET game (Clemson-Florida State) set for ABC was suddenly called off Saturday morning, the Florida-Vanderbilt game was shifted there from ESPN.
It’s also unclear what this means in terms of announcers. The typical ABC primetime crew of Joe Tessitore, Greg McElroy and Holly Rowe was set to call Oklahoma-West Virginia. We’ll see if they get another assignment this week.
[Photo from Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports]