SEC on CBS Claims Three Football Games

A lot of the SEC TV focus for this fall has been on the SEC Network, but CBS still gets first pick of games for its game of the week slot. In a press release that went out, CBS announced which games it has claimed thus far.

Its first game of the season will be Georgia at South Carolina on September 13. It always waits until mid-September to run its first broadcast, so there is not much notable about that date. The only other completely in-conference game that week is Kentucky at Florida, so this was an easy choice. There are some non-conference games of note with Tennessee facing Oklahoma and Arkansas going up against Texas Tech, but those are road games and don't fall under the league's TV package.

For the 12th consecutive year, the Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville will be a CBS game as well. The other potentially viable options are Tennessee at South Carolina and Auburn at Ole Miss. The tradition of the Cocktail Party probably outweighs any second year promise from Butch Jones and a sneaky good but not nationally sexy matchup between the Tigers and Rebels though.

CBS gets one doubleheader per year, and it has chosen November 8 as the date of that event. You can probably figure out without looking that the Alabama-LSU game is on that day. There's not much mystery as to which will be the other game. Unless you have a ton of faith in Mark Stoops to give Georgia trouble in Lexington, Texas A&M at Auburn will be the matinee warmup for the Tide and Tigers.

Finally, CBS will broadcast the Arkansas-Missouri game on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It has been picking up the SEC game on that Friday for quite a while now, so there's not much to say here.

There is one change of note, which is that Tracy Wolfson will no longer be on the broadcast team. She's going to be doing NFL work for CBS this year, so Allie LaForce will do the sideline reporting in her place.