7.4 /10 1 Votes
Country of origin United States No. of seasons 12 First episode date 2 September 2006 Number of episodes 112 | 7.4/10 IMDb Original language(s) English No. of episodes 112 Number of seasons 12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Also known as Saturday Night Football on ABC Genre College football telecasts Network American Broadcasting Company Presented by Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Samantha Ponder Cast Brent Musburger, Kirk Herbstreit, Chris Fowler, Samantha Ponder, Lisa Salters Similar ESPN Major League B, Monday Night Countdown, SportsCenter, ESPN Megacast, ESPN College Football o |
Saturday Night Football (branded for sponsorship purposes as Saturday Night Football on ABC presented by Walmart) is a weekly presentation of prime time broadcasts of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football games that are produced by ESPN, and televised on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Games are presented each Saturday evening starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time during the college football regular season (however until ESPN/ABC lost the NASCAR television rights to NBC Sports Group in 2015, games were not broadcast during weeks when ABC was scheduled to carry a Saturday nighttime Sprint Cup Series race).
Contents
- Overview
- 2006
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2010
- 2011
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- Schedules
- 2006 schedule
- 2007 schedule
- 2008 schedule
- 2009 schedule
- 2010 schedule
- 2011 schedule
- 2012 schedule
- 2013 schedule
- 2014 schedule
- Nielsen ratings
- Seasonal
- Theme music
- References
As of 2017, the primary broadcast team includes play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler and analyst Kirk Herbstreit, with Samantha Ponder as sideline reporter. Stan Verrett, Mack Brown and Mark May host the studio halftime show, as well as brief pre-game and post-game shows. Other ESPN broadcast teams may also occasionally appear for regional (and some national) telecasts.
Overview
Saturday Night Football premiered on September 2, 2006, with a game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. While ABC and ESPN have aired college football games on Saturday nights for decades, this program marks the first time that a collegiate sports broadcast has officially been part of any major broadcast television network's primetime schedule.
Twelve weeks of regular season games were televised during the three-month college football season in 2006, 2007 and from 2009 to 2011; the Dr. Pepper Big 12 Championship Game closing out each season until a conference realignment in which four university football programs left and two others joined the Big 12 Conference resulted in the Championship Game being discontinued after the 2010 event. With the college football season being extended by one week, ABC televised thirteen weeks of games in 2008, closing with the 2008 Big 12 Championship Game on December 6.
The Advocare Classic (formerly the Cowboys Classic) became the opening game for Saturday Night Football beginning in 2009; however in 2013, the matchup between the Georgia Bulldogs and Clemson Tigers served as the opening game with the Classic matchup between LSU and TCU being broadcast on ESPN. The Classic served as the opening game for Saturday Night Football again in 2014 (that year, involving the Florida State Seminoles and Oklahoma State Cowboys), in 2015 (Alabama Crimson Tide and Wisconsin Badgers) and in 2016 (Alabama Crimson Tide and USC Trojans.
Games from the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the Big East Conference, the Big Ten Conference, the Pac-12 Conference the now-defunct Western Athletic Conference and the American Athletic Conference have aired on Saturday Night Football, as well as non-conference games in which teams from these conferences were either playing at home or a neutral-site game to which ABC holds the television rights. Only North Carolina State and Virginia (from the ACC), Indiana (from the Big Ten) and Utah (from the Pac-12) have not appeared on Saturday Night Football. All BCS and Power 5 conferences have appeared on Saturday Night Football, as the Southeastern Conference has had its teams featured in 13 non-conference games. Boise State, Temple, UCONN and Cincinnati are the only Group of 5 teams to be featured on "Saturday Night Football" to date, with the latter two teams being featured when they were members of the BCS-aligned Big East or American Athletic conference.
In recent years, following the loss of some broadcast rights of the Pac-12 Conference to Fox Sports in 2012, the Pac-12's Saturday Night Football appearances have been limited to non-conference games, especially home games against Notre Dame and games against the Southeastern Conference, as well as road games against conferences that still have broadcast rights with ABC.
Besides Pac-12 and Big Ten games, ABC makes most of its game broadcast selections or options twelve days prior to the game (with some being made six days beforehand). This allows ABC to 'flex' the most compelling game it has the rights to broadcast into the Saturday Night Football slot. As a result, the Saturday night game is usually ABC's "game of the week". With the loss of the Sprint Cup Series to NBC and NBCSN, Saturday Night Football will expand its seasonal game schedule full-time to 13 weeks beginning in 2015, starting with the Advocare Classic.
As of the 2016 college football season, all games on ABC are broadcast in the 16:9 letterbox format on both the SD and HD feeds.
As ESPN has signed new contracts with various conferences to produce college football coverage, the network has begun branding its coverage of select conferences to which it has rights. This branding was first seen on SEC broadcasts in 2011, which became the "SEC on ESPN". ACC broadcasts followed suit in 2012 becoming the "ACC on ESPN". Despite the fact that ACC games also air on ABC, the games remain branded as the "ACC on ESPN" regardless of network. In 2016, a new contract brought conference branding to Big Ten telecasts as well, which air on both ESPN and ABC. While Big Ten games that air on ESPN cable channels are branded as the "Big Ten on ESPN", games airing on ABC are now branded as the "Big Ten on ABC". While the program is still officially part of ESPN College Football which is reflected when talent appears on screen, the Big Ten on ABC logo and branding is used for intro, program IDs, and replay wipes. This is the first time any regularly schedule sporting event outside of the National Spelling Bee has carried any ABC branding since 2006.
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Schedules
All rankings are from that week's AP Poll.
2006 schedule
ABC did not air games on either October 21 or October 28 to avoid competing with the World Series.
2007 schedule
ABC did not air games on either September 8 or October 13 due to broadcasts of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races.
2008 schedule
ABC did not air games on either September 6 or October 11 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
2009 schedule
ABC did not air games on either September 12 or October 17 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
2010 schedule
ABC did not air games on either September 11 or October 16 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
2011 schedule
Notes:
2012 schedule
ABC did not air Games on either September 8 or October 13 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
2013 schedule
ABC did not air Games on either September 7 or October 12 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
2014 schedule
ABC did not air games on either September 6 or October 11 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
Nielsen ratings
Series high: 14.6 million viewers (11/25/2006); Series low: 3.7 million viewers
Seasonal
Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Saturday Night Football on ABC.
Theme music
At the time the Saturday night package began in 2006, ABC Sports was integrated with ESPN, resulting in ESPN production concepts being applied to ABC-televised sports events. As a result, during the 2006 and 2007 seasons, the theme music used for the ESPN College Football and College GameDay broadcasts was used on ABC's college football telecasts – including Saturday Night Football – with the exception in both years being the Rose Bowl, during which it used the bowl game version of the network's 1998-2005 sports theme (a cut that had traditionally been used in broadcast intros). Saturday Night Football games began using the bowl version of the 1998-2005 theme as well in 2008, continuing through the 2010 BCS National Championship Game.
The intro theme was updated in 2011, with the main theme music being changed to a different cut of the 1998-2005 bowl game theme (one that had usually been used during studio shows in the past). Bowl Championship Series games aired on ESPN during this period were produced identically to Saturday Night Football productions, and used this same theme music arrangement.
In 2013, the theme for all college football telecasts on both ESPN and ABC was changed to a heavily updated version of yet another one of ABC's 1998-2005 themes (this one had usually been used for intro teasers in the past). However, unlike previous SNF themes, this theme was a completely new recording, using the tune of the 1998-2005 song as the base.
In 2015, ABC began using the same theme used by all ESPN college football productions since the 2014-15 New Years' Six bowl games.