College football set its New Year’s Day playoff lineup this weekend as more post season bowl games were cancelled due to concerns revolving around the pandemic.

Top-ranked Alabama will face fourth-ranked Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl and second-ranked Clemson will battle third-ranked Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl. The winners will play in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Jan. 11. ESPN will air all three games.

The weekend playoffs announcement comes as several other college bowl games were cancelled, as a number of teams from major conferences have chosen not to play in the postseason due to concerns surrounding the pandemic.

ESPN Events Sunday cancelled the upcoming TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl, one of 16 post season college football bowl games now canceled. Currently, 28 bowl games are scheduled to be played beginning tonight (Dec. 21) with the Myrtle Beach Bowl featuring North Texas against Appalachian State.

“We have made the difficult decision to cancel the TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl,” said Mark Meadows, executive director in a statement. “As the inventory of available teams lessened, our ability to stage the game was compromised. We will direct our focus to next year’s bowl, and look forward to staging the game in the 2021 season.”

The TV sports lineup for the first weekend of December will feature some of the top ranked college football and basketball teams as well as a major pay-per-view boxing event. 

College football will enter the final leg of its regular season with several key matchups, including a primetime matchup between top-ranked Alabama and LSU (CBS) and afternoon games featuring fifth-ranked Texas A&M at Auburn (ESPN), fourth-ranked Ohio State (pictured) at Michigan State (ABC), and third-ranked Clemson at Virginia Tech (ABC).

Boxing will once again take center stage in the pay-per-view combat sports ring with Fox Sports’ Errol Spence-Danny Garcia welterweight championship fight. The fight, which will retail at $74.95, will pit two of the top welterweight fighters in the sport.

The NFL will look to complete its week 13 Sunday schedule without any major COVID-19-related postponements outside of moving its Baltimore Ravens-Dallas Cowboys Dec. 3 Thursday Night Football game to Tuesday (Dec. 8) and Sunday's Washington Team-Pittsburgh Steelers games to Monday (Dec. 7.)  NBC’s primetime Sunday Night Football game features an AFC West matchup between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs.

College basketball will feature an early matchup of top-ranked teams as number one Gonzaga plays second-ranked Baylor Saturday afternoon (CBS), while 12th-ranked Villanova travels to play 17th-ranked Texas (ESPN). 

NBC and NBCSN will continue its coverage of Premier League soccer games on Saturday and Sunday, while ESPN on Sunday will televise the Sakhir Grand Prix Formula One auto racing event.

College football takes the field this weekend at full strength as the PAC-12 kicks off its 2020 season, highlighting a busy TV sports weekend.  

The college football schedule is led by NBC’s primetime matchup between top-ranked Clemson and fourth-ranked Notre Dame. The Tigers will be without its star quarterback Trevor Lawrence for a second straight game due to a positive COVID-19 test.

The Pac-12 on Saturday gets back on the field for the first time this season with Arizona State facing off against 20th-ranked USC on Fox. The conference last month approved a seven-game schedule after initially cancelling the season this past summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference however, has already canceled two games this weekend -- Washington-California and Arizona-Utah -- due to pandemic concerns.

Other big college football matchups include fifth-ranked Georgia at eight-ranked Florida on CBS and No.7 Texas A&M at South Carolina on ESPN.

DAZN will jump into the boxing ring Saturday night with a lightweight fight between top contender Devin Haney and former world champion Yuriorkis Gamboa. 

On Sunday NBC will telecast NASCAR’s The Season Finale event, the final race of the 2020 season from Phoenix Raceway. 

The NFL enters its 9th regular season week with a full slate of games leading up to NBC’s Sunday Night Football game featuring veteran quarterbacks Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In other sports, horse racing’s Breeders’ Cup takes place on Nov. 6 and Nov. 7 on NBCSN. 

ESPN’s coverage of the LSU-Clemson college football championship game helped the network top the primetime cable weekly ratings charts last week, while the continuing Impeachment proceedings were ratings gold for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

ESPN averaged 4.3 million viewers in primetime during the week of Jan. 13-19 to top all cable networks, according to Nielsen. The sports network was paced by its coverage of the Jan. 13 College Football Playoff National Championship game -- won by LSU over last year’s champs Clemson -- which drew more than 25 million viewers.

Fox News (2.8 million viewers), MSNBC (1.9 million) and CNN (1.5 million) occupied the next three spots on the primetime chart, buoyed by their respective coverage of the ongoing Impeachment proceedings.

TLC finished fifth for the week with 1.1 million viewers, followed by HGTV, A&E and Hallmark Channel (all tied with 1 million viewers), History (955,000) and Discovery Channel (884,000).

On the total day ratings front, Fox News dominated the pack with 1.6 million viewers, followed by ESPN, MSNBC, CNN and HGTV, according to Nielsen. 

ESPN’s thriller Clemson-Alabama College Football Playoff National Championship game telecast drew 24.3 million viewers, slightly below last year’s matchup between the two schools.

While the game fell short of the 25 million viewers who tuned into the 2016 CFP Championshp contest, the Clemson-Alabama rematch was arguably more exciting than last year’s gripping game, with the Tigers pulling off the 35-31 upset over the Crimson Tide with a touchdown in the final seconds of the game.

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With additional TV feeds and streaming, the network said it reached 26 million viewers. In addition, the network said it averaged 16 million viewers for all seven New Year’s eve telecasts as well as the national championship game, up 15% from last season’s seven game total.