Arguably the best game of the week in college football will take place Saturday at 7:30 ET in Provo, Utah when Brigham Young University Cougars host the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs. The Horned Frogs are ranked 8th in the latest BCS standings while the Cougars are ranked 16th.
Beyond the storyline of two ranked and tradition-rich programs meeting with a great deal on the line, there is the topic of media coverage. The game will receive national coverage with ESPN’s College GameDay broadcasting from Provo and Versus airing the game.It will be GameDay’s first appearance in Provo and only it’s fourth all-time at a Mountain West campus. The last time the show broadcasted from a Mountain West game was in 2004 when BYU traveled to Salt Lake City to take on the University of Utah. The other two appearances were in 2001 (Army at Air Force) and 2002 (Notre Dame at Air Force). The network will again visit a Mountain West school when the network broadcasts the Army-Air Force game on Nov. 7 in Colorado Springs to honor Veterans Day.
It will be the first time that the network has visited a MWC campus since the conference formed its own network, The Mtn., after declining to extend its contract with ESPN.
| ESPN GameDay, Games Involving Non-BCS Schools | |
| Nov. 7, 2009 | Army at Air Force |
| Oct. 24, 2009 | TCU at BYU |
| Nov. 15, 2008 | Hampton at Florida A&M |
| Nov. 10, 2007 | Amherst at Williams |
| Sept. 1, 2007 | East Carolina at Virginia Tech |
| Nov. 26, 2005 | Southern University vs. Grambling (Houston, TX) |
| Sept. 1, 2005 | Central Florida at South Carolina |
| Nov. 20, 2004 | BYU at Utah |
| Oct. 25, 2003 | Northern Illinois at Bowling Green |
| Sept. 27, 2003 | South Florida at Army |
| Nov. 16, 2002 | Harvard at Pennsylvania |
| Oct. 19, 2002 | Notre Dame at Air Force |
| Nov. 3, 2001 | Army at Air Force |
The game is being broadcasted by Versus and the network is currently embroiled in a contract dispute with DirecTV, thus subscribers of DirecTV will not be able to see the game. The irony of this is that fans out of the Mountain West region need DirecTV in order to subscribe to the league’s network, The Mtn. These fans along with Utah and Air Force fans, whose game will be aired at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday, will be left out in the cold until the issue is resolved.
Although the whole league will be hurt by this dispute, TCU is probably hurt the most. The Horned Frogs played last weekend’s game against Colorado State on the network and are scheduled to play three more games on Versus this season.
