Big East Announces Television Assignments For Men’s Basketball

Back on September 15th, we got the Big East conference schedule for men’s basketball.

Today, finally, we get the television assignments for the entire 2023-24 Marquette men’s basketball calendar.

It’s, uh, pretty neat. Here’s the counter for TV station appearances this year:

FOX: 6
FS1: 17
CBS Sports Network: 3
CBS, America’s Most Watched Network, The Network Of Stars: 1
An ESPN Channel Of Some Sort: 3 (all in the Maui Invitational)
FS2: Absolutely zero

I think the FS2 thing is a combination of factors. First, Fox Sports wants Noted Reigning Champion And Nationally Prominent Program Marquette in as many good spots as they can get them. That means never on FS2. The other part of it is the seven national over the air broadcasts on Fox and CBS. With so many games going up to those channels — and it’s an all-time conference record of 25 games with that national broadcast — there just wasn’t a need to make use of FS2 to get games in a broadcast window.

The reason why there’s six games on Fox and another on CBS for Marquette? The networks need programming. The Writers Guild strike only just ended, and who knows how long it’s going to be before the Screen Actors Guild strike ends. It’s the end of September now, there won’t be scripted shows on Fox and CBS before January at the earliest at this rate, and probably longer. They’ve got the space to put hoops on TV, and they’re doing it. Just lucky by Marquette to be in a position to be one of the 10 or 15 most nationally relevant teams heading into the season and thus get consistently put into the big spotlights.

Things To Note about the schedule:

• The Big East press release notes that Opening Night will feature the same whip-around coverage as last year as there are seven games scheduled for that night. There’s just not hours in the day to put seven games on without overlapping, so this is what they’re doing. It’s fine. The Marquette/Northern Illinois game will be available in its entirety streaming on the Fox Sports app, or just buy a ticket and watch in person.
• We actually don’t have a locked down time or station for the Wisconsin game, but that’s because the Big Ten is in charge of announcing it. I’d guess Big Ten Network, as that’s the same day as the Big Ten football championship game, and that would make it an early afternoon start, but who can say for certain?
• The Notre Dame home game has an 8pm start time on a Saturday. Make your plans accordingly.
• The Villanova home game on Monday, January 15th, is a Martin Luther King Day matinee, scheduled to start at 1:30pm on FOX. Make your plans accordingly.
• National Marquette Day against St. John’s is scheduled to start at 5pm on a Saturday. Make your plans accordingly.
• The Xavier home game on Sunday, February 25th, is scheduled to start at 4pm. Make your plans accordingly.
• We don’t have a start time for the regular season finale on the road against Xavier, but FOX has a quadrupleheader scheduled that day with Georgetown/St. John’s going off at 11am Central for sure. Options are, roughly speaking: 1:30pm, 4pm, and 6:30pm.

Here’s the full 2023-24 schedule as up to date as we can possibly make it right now!