The lineup of live sports events scheduled for the first weekend of December begins on the college football field with several conference championship games that will help determine the College Football Playoff lineup. 

Top-ranked Georgia will face No. 8 Alabama in the SEC Championship game on CBS, with second-ranked Michigan battling Iowa for the Big Ten title on Fox and fourth-ranked Florida State hosting Louisville in the ACC championship on ABC. Other games include No. 7 Texas battling Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Championship game on ABC. 

On Sunday, ESPN will air the College Football Playoff selection show, which will finalize the postseason matchups.

In Sunday NFL action, CBS and Fox will air regional games throughout the afternoon, followed by NBC’s Sunday Night Football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers. 

On the golf links, NBC and Golf Channel will provide weekend coverage of the PGA Hero World Challenge, while on the soccer field the USA women’s soccer team plays China in an international friendly matchup Sunday on TNT. 

In the octagon, ESPN will stream a UFC Fight Night card headlined by the Beneil Dariush-Arman Tsarukyan bout. In the squared ring, the Ryan Garcia-Oscar Duarte junior welterweight bout headlines a DAZN primetime boxing card.  

In a major college sports TV development, the Big Ten Conference has reached seven-year distribution deals with Fox, CBS and NBC for rights to the conference’s marquee football and basketball games.

The agreement, which goes into effect in 2023 and will pay the conference a reported $1 billion a year, is modeled after the NFL, which offers live games across multiple networks and platforms. As part of the deal, Fox, CBS and NBC will all air Big Ten football games on Saturdays beginning in the fall of 2023. 

The three networks will also split the Big Ten Football Championship game telecasts, with CBS airing the game in 2024 and 2028, Fox in 2023, 2025, 2027 and 2029 and NBC in 2026, according to the Big Ten. Fox and ESPN currently hold Big Ten rights deals.

“The new rights agreements are an incredible achievement for our entire conference and a true testament of what can be accomplished with teamwork,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement.

The deal puts the Big Ten at the forefront of the college sports television landscape. The 14-team conference, which includes high-profile schools Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan, will add Pac-12 schools USC and UCLA to its lineup in 2024. 

TV sports analyst Lee Berke said the Big Ten deal is a huge deal for the conference and the TV sports category. “College football content stirs the TV sports drink and [the Big Ten] offers a lot of it,” he said. “With the additions of USC and UCLA, they will offer more of it in major markets with major audience appeal, particularly during the fourth quarter of the year. That’s a tremendous amount of content that every major network wants to go after, and you’re seeing that with the players involved in this deal."

As part of the agreement, Fox will continue to televise football and men’s basketball games, while the Fox Sports-owned Big Ten Network will continue to televise the conferences' football, basketball, and Olympic sports competition.

"We are proud to expand upon our long-standing partnership with the Big Ten Conference and further bolster our position as the premier rights holder of  the conference," Fox Sports CEO and executive producer Eric Shanks said. 

CBS will offer seven Big Ten football games in 2023, which will ramp up to 15 games beginning in 2024, including an annual Black Friday game in the afternoon. CBS will continue to air Big Ten regular-season and postseason men’s and women’s basketball games, including the Big Ten Men’s semifinals and final games, as well as, for the first time, the women’s basketball tournament final. Paramount Plus will stream the CBS Big Ten basketball and football games.

“The Big Ten has been a valued partner for more than three decades, as we're thrilled to expand that relationship by adding Big Ten football to our portfolio of marquee properties," CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said. 

NBC and its streaming service Peacock will air 14 to 16 college football games as well as up to 47 regular season men’s college basketball games and 30 women’s basketball games. 

"We a re incredibly excited to be partnering with Kevin Warren and the Big Ten Conference on this robust package of sports," said NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua. ■

The plan to bring two West Coast college football powerhouses into the Big Ten Conference has brought Apple back to the TV-rights bargaining table, according to reports.

Expanding the Midwest-rooted Big Ten from its current 14 schools to 16 would create a national footprint stretching from Rutgers in New Jersey and Maryland to California, making its TV rights and its Big Ten Network (BTN) more valuable.

This has been noticed by Apple, which after dropping out of the bidding for a package of Big Ten football games, has reengaged, according to Sports Business Journal.

Apple's Apple TV Plus streaming platform has developed an appetite for sports. It already has a Friday-night doubleheader package of Major League Baseball games and struck a deal with Major League Soccer. It is also reportedly among the leading contenders for the NFL Sunday Ticket package of out-of-market games.

The vote by Big Ten school presidents to add UCLA and USC lead to the conference delaying the deadline for completing its media-rights negotiations. Those rights are now expected to top $1 billion, a record for college football.

Fox Sports, which helped launch BTN, reportedly already has a deal to carry half of the Big Ten’s games. A second package appeared to be going to CBS, which is losing its top-rated Sunday SEC college football franchise to ESPN in 2004.

Amazon Prime Video, ESPN and NBC were reportedly competing for a third package before Apple’s re-entry into the bidding.

College football is rapidly changing into a two-conference sport, with the Big Ten competing with the SEC, which has added Texas and Oklahoma.  

Notre Dame, which has long been independent with a contract with NBC paying the bills, may have to become part of one of the major conferences to maintain its status as a top-tier program. ■

The National Football League has postponed the Oct. 4 Tennessee Titans-Pittsburgh Steelers game after several Titans players tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, according to ESPN. 

The league Wednesday said in a Tweet that the game would be rescheduled “to allow additional time for further daily COVID-19 testing and to ensure the health and safety of the players, coaches and game day personnel." Four Titans players as well as five team personnel members tested positive for the virus this week, according to ESPN.

In its statement, the NFL said the Titans-Steelers game could be played as early as Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, the Titans have closed their team facilities through Saturday, according to ESPN. 

The postponement marks the first game affected by the COVID-19 outbreak since the league launched its season four weeks ago. The postponement comes as college football looks to ramp up play on the field. Last week the Pac-12 voted to play a seven-game, conference only season beginning Nov. 6, joining the Big Ten in reversing initial season cancellations due to the pandemic.  

 The Big Ten Conference said Wednesday it will now play its 2020 season beginning in October, nearly a month after initially announcing it would postpone all fall athletics to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The 14-team Big Ten will begin an eight-game season the weekend of Oct. 24, with a Big Ten championship game set for Dec. 19, said officials from the conference, which includes such teams as Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State. Players and coaches will be required to undergo daily antigen testing, with results needing to be completed and reported prior to each practice and game, according to bigten.org

The decision comes more than a month after the conference officially  postpone its fall sports program, including its college football schedule, due to the pandemic.

The Big 10’s move leaves the Pac-12 as the only "Power Five" conference not playing football this fall. Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said Wednesday the conference is not planning to return to the field in the near future. 

"At this time, our universities in California and Oregon do not have approval from state or local public health officials to start contact practice,” Scott said in a statement. “We are hopeful that our new daily testing capability can help satisfy public health approvals in California and Oregon to begin contact practices and competition. We are equally closely monitoring the devastating fires and air quality throughout our region at this time. We are eager for our student-athletes to have the opportunity to play this season, as soon as it can be done safely and in accordance with public health authority approvals." 

The Big Ten Conference has decided to postpone its fall sports program, including its college football schedule, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to published reports.

"The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” said Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren in a statement. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall."

The Big Ten's decision to postpone the college football season until at least Spring 2021 comes after a morning meeting with the conference’s presidents. The conference, which includes such schools as Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, becomes the first of the "Power Five" conferences -- which also includes the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big 12 Conference, Pac-12 Conference, and Southeastern Conference (SEC) -- to postpone the 2020 college football season, striking a major blow to prospects for a college football season this fall. 

Other conferences that have decided to cancel fall sports play include The Mountain West, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and the Mid-American Conference.