ESPN College Basketball on ABC


ESPN College Basketball on ABC is the branding formerly used for broadcasts of NCAA Division I college basketball games produced by ESPN, and televised on the American Broadcasting Company. ABC broadcast select college basketball games during the 1960s and 1970s, before it began televising them on a regular basis on January 18, 1987. As CBS and NBC were also broadcasting college games at the time, this put the sport on all three major broadcast television networks. ABC's final regular college basketball broadcast aired on March 7, 2009. ABC will return to airing college basketball in 2019, with five games set to air on the network, including games featuring all-time NCAA Division 1 men’s college basketball national championship leader UCLA, Big 12 powerhouse Kansas, and ACC powerhouse Virginia.

Coverage overview

1962, 1973, 1978

ABC first broadcast college basketball games in 1962, when the network aired the NCAA Championship Game on a day-behind delayed basis, as part of its Wide World of Sports anthology series. On December 15, 1973, ABC aired what is considered to be the first telecast of a regular season college basketball game by a major broadcast network. ABC televised this game using its former NBA announcing crew of Keith Jackson and Bill Russell.
In the 1977–78 season, C.D. Chesley wanted NBC to televise select ACC games as part of its national package as it had done the previous few years. However, NBC wanted to feature intersectional games. This action greatly upset Chesley, who wound up selling the rights to the ACC Tournament final to ABC. ABC would televise the 1978 ACC Tournament final as part of Wide World of Sports. The game, called by Jim Lampley and Bill Russell, marked the first time Duke University's Blue Devils basketball team played on national television.

1987–2014

When ABC's coverage began in 1987, the network primarily covered the Big Ten, Big 8 and Pac-10 Conferences. By 1991, ABC ramped up its basketball coverage in an effort to fill the void. As a result, the network also started to cover games focusing on teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference. Otherwise, it was essentially, a considerable hodge-podge with an ACC game one week, or a Pac-10 or Big 10 game the next. The games that were broadcast were a hodge-podge of conference matchups even after the ESPN on ABC brand change, with SEC and Big East match-ups occasionally being shown alongside frequent ACC, Big 12 and Pac-10 match-ups.
ABC's early regular season broadcasts were, for the most part, technically time buys from organizations such as Raycom or sister network ESPN. This in return, was a way to avoid union contracts which require that 100% of network shows had to use crew staff who were network union members. During the early 1990s, Raycom paid ABC US$1.8 million for six weeks of network airtime of 26 regional games. The format allowed Raycom to control the games and sell the advertising.
In the 1987–88 season, ABC did not air any college basketball games during the last three weekends of February due to the network's coverage of the Winter Olympics. As previously mentioned, coverage by ABC steadily increased during the early 1990s; by the 1991–92 season, ABC was carrying regional games in many timeslots on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. By 1997, ABC's presenting sponsor was Paine Webber.
Starting in 1997, coverage of the PGA Tour limited the number of games that the network showed; this continued through 2006. Coverage of the NBA further decreased college basketball coverage on the network when ABC Sports acquired the broadcast rights to the league beginning in 2002. Beginning with the 2007 season, all games were rebranded as part of the integration of ABC Sports into ESPN as ESPN on ABC and Sunday games were discontinued. From 2007 to 2009, all games began at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, which was a departure from the differing broadcast times that were previously assigned to the game telecasts. From 2010 to 2013, ABC broadcast the semi-finals and finals of the SEC Men's Basketball Tournament. In 2014, ABC only broadcast the semi-final round of the tournament.

2019 return

For the first time since 2009, ABC will return to airing regular season college basketball games. The network will air 5 games, starting on December 8, when the Texas Longhorns host the Texas A&M Aggies.

Schedules

''All rankings are from that week's Coaches Poll.

2006 schedule

DateTimeAwayHomeBroadcast notes
January 211:00Texas Tech 48#25 Oklahoma 60
January 216:00California 55Arizona 60West Coast only
February 113:30Charlotte 56Wake Forest 59Split-national
February 113:30Oklahoma State 44Texas A&M 46Split-national
February 113:30#13 UCLA 67#21 Washington 70Split-national
February 181:00#21 NC State 70Virginia Tech 64Split-national
February 181:00Iowa State 82#19 Oklahoma 83Split-national
February 186:00#5 Gonzaga 79Loyola Marymount 70West Coast only
February 191:30#23 North Carolina 83Wake Forest 72Split-national
February 191:30#6 Texas 60Oklahoma State 81Split-national
February 251:00Wake Forest 61Georgia Tech 76Split-national
February 251:00Texas Tech 63Oklahoma State 74Split-national
February 257:00Stanford 39Washington State 37West Coast only

2007 schedule

DateAwayHomeBroadcast notes
January 13#1 North Carolina 88Virginia Tech 94Split-national
January 13Oklahoma 69#25 Texas 80Split-national
January 20#17 Duke 73North Carolina State 56
February 3#3 North Carolina 79North Carolina State 83Split-national
February 3Kansas State 73#23 Texas 72Split-national
February 10#8 Kansas 92Missouri 74Split-national
February 10Arizona 77#15 Oregon 74Split-national
February 17Connecticut 63Syracuse 73Split-national
February 17Tennessee 64South Carolina 81Split-national
February 17#6 Texas A&M 56Oklahoma 49Split-national
February 24#16 Marquette 73#23 Notre Dame 85Split-national
February 24Georgia Tech 69#19 Virginia 75Split-national
February 24Gonzaga 86San Francisco 79Split-national
March 3North Carolina State 59Maryland 79Split-national
March 3Oklahoma 61Kansas State 72Split-national
March 3Arizona 85Stanford 80Split-national

2008 schedule

DateAwayHomeBroadcast notes
January 19Maryland 82#5 North Carolina 80
February 2Miami 73#3 Duke 88Split-national
February 2#2 Kansas 72Colorado 59Split-national
February 9Virginia 64Wake Forest 80Split-national
February 9#12 Texas 71Iowa State 65Split-national
February 9Southern California 50#17 Washington State 74Split-national
February 16Oklahoma State 59#16 Texas A&M 54Split-national
February 16#7 Stanford 67Arizona 66Split-national
February 23Oklahoma 45#7 Texas 62Split-national
February 23Oregon 65#6 UCLA 75Split-national
March 1#3 North Carolina 90Boston College 80
March 8Georgia Tech 86Boston College 78Split-national
March 8Missouri 66Oklahoma 75Split-national
March 8California 80#3 UCLA 81Split-national

2009 schedule

DateAwayHomeBroadcast notes
January 17#3 Wake Forest 78#9 Clemson 68Split-national
January 17Kansas 73Colorado 56Split-national
January 31#6 North Carolina 93North Carolina State 76Split-national
January 31Stanford 63#16 UCLA 97Split-national
February 7Oklahoma State 67#24 Kansas 78Split-national
February 7Arizona 87Oregon 77Split-national
February 14#16 Kansas 85Kansas State 74Split-national
February 14Florida 86Georgia 88Split-national
February 21#3 North Carolina 85Maryland 88
February 28#7 Duke 72Virginia Tech 65Split-national
February 28#3 Oklahoma 78Texas Tech 63Split-national
March 7Oklahoma State 78#5 Oklahoma 82Split-national
March 7Maryland 63Virginia 68Split-national
March 7Oregon 68#17 UCLA 94Split-national

Commentators

In the early years of ABC's regular college basketball coverage, Keith Jackson and Dick Vitale were the primary announcing crew, while Gary Bender was the secondary play-by-play announcer behind Jackson. Meanwhile, Al Michaels did regional games during this period. When Brent Musburger came over from CBS in late 1990, he started working with Dick Vitale on the main team. Jim Valvano did color commentary on games for ABC for a few years until his death in 1993; Vitale and Valvano were paired as co-analysts on ABC's college basketball broadcasts a few times during the 1991–92 season. In the 1992–93 season, Terry Gannon filled in on a few games for Valvano, who at the time was battling cancer, which would ultimately claim his life in April 1993. Many of the announcers worked for ABC and ESPN, and ABC continued to use ESPN announcers, reporters and commentators until 2009, never quite establishing firm ABC broadcasting teams even after the ESPN on ABC brand switch.