The Big East Announced All The TV Information For 2021-22 Men’s Basketball

Hey, remember when the Big East announced the conference schedule for men’s basketball back on September 23rd? Remember how I pointed out that they didn’t release television assignments or start times for any of it at the time?

Well, on Wednesday, the Big East office fixed that.

We now know the start time for 24 of Marquette men’s basketball’s 32 scheduled games for the 2021-22 season. Three of the times we don’t know are the Charleston Classic. Two more are the road games against Wisconsin and Kansas State that the Big East/Marquette do not control. That leaves three Big East conference games — at home vs Xavier, at home vs Villanova, and at home vs St. John’s — that are not currently locked in place with a tip off time. Xavier is unsettled due to the vagaries of the NFL playoff schedule at this point, and St. John’s isn’t set because it’s the final day of the regular season and Fox Sports is reserving the right to schedule the day as makes the most sense for the biggest drama games when things get down to it. Why a Wednesday night in February start against Villanova doesn’t have a tip time? I have no earthly clue.

All of Marquette’s home non-conference games all have start times and television assignments as well right now. Here’s the breakdown for where you’ll be watching the Golden Eagles this season, at least for the games with broadcast rights owned by Marquette/the Big East:

• Four games on FS2, three in non-conference play with the fourth coming against Georgetown
• Four games on CBS Sports Network, with only Jackson State coming in non-conference action
• 15 games on FS1, your flagship home for Big East basketball
• Two games on big time fancy broadcast Fox, with UCLA and the National Marquette Day game against Butler getting the bump

It would appear that the era of Marquette games getting bumped down to a regional sports provider is over. There were no games on Bally Sports Wisconsin, aka the old Fox Sports Wisconsin, last season but I had attributed that more to weird pandemic scheduling than anything else. There are no Bally games at all on this year’s slate, and broadcasting has definitely returned to normal by now. My best guess for this? Now that Fox sold off those regional sports providers, they would rather keep the broadcasts for themselves instead of farming them out to a regional sports network that they no longer own. When the advertising dollars ended up in Fox’s pocket one way or another, it didn’t matter what channel the games were on. Is it possible that these could come back eventually down the road? Maybe, but I would doubt it.

I do want to point out one thing about the Marquette schedule, and that’s opening night against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. From the Big East press release on the television assignments:

For the first time, FOX Sports will provide whip-around BIG EAST coverage on Nov. 9, the opening night of the college basketball season. The BIG EAST Opening Night Tip-Off will include live look-ins on FS1 of seven non-conference contests. Full game coverage will be available on the Fox Sports App.

Meanwhile, on Marquette’s schedule page, it says that the game is scheduled to tip off at 7:30pm and it will be broadcast on FS2. It’s possible that FS2 will carry regional specific broadcasts for every game while FS1 is doing a RedZone type thing of every game. If you don’t live in Milwaukee or you don’t have tickets to the game, the Fox Sports App streaming option is definitely your safest bet for watching the game from tip to horn right now.

I think I like this idea in concept.... but I also think this is going to result in a lot of people being very upset at not being able to easily watch their team playing........ but also there had to be some way for Fox to broadcast all seven games at one time.

Here’s the entire season as we know it right now in convenient table format.