The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
UConn men have had odd starting times
The UConn men’s basketball team has had some quirky start times for its games this season, including going up against the AFC Championship game. So is life playing in the AAC.
STORRS>> A 2:30 p.m. game the Friday before Christmas? A 3 p.m. game on a Wednesday? A 5 p.m. game on NFL conference championship Sunday?
UConn has had some strange starting times this season, no doubt. It’ll be back to normal on Wednesday, when the Huskies (10-12, 5-5 AAC) host South Florida (6-16, 0-11) at Gampel Pavilion at 7 p.m. (CBS Sports Network). But a few more 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. starts loom before the regular season is over.
So, why the odd starting times? According to Tom Odjakjian, the AAC’s senior associate commissioner for broadcasting, there are a lot of reasons: TV, arena availability, travel concerns for teams, among many others.
But that doesn’t mean fans can’t still be peeved when a UConn game runs opposite to the Patriots’ AFC championship game, or when the Huskies play a 9 p.m. game at Gampel Pavilion when students are still on holiday break.
“There are so many factors,” said Odjakjian. “I can understand why fans can’t follow it. It’s hard enough for people whose job it is to do the schedule. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time. It’s never easy.”
Indeed, Odjakjian handled similar duties for the Big East for some 20 years before the league morphed into the American. Prior to that, he had worked in various executive roles at ESPN for 13 years, including as director of college sports.
Flip open Odjakjian’s laptop and you’ll find dozens of spreadsheets under numerous different headings, all a product of trying to put together the AAC’s TV schedule. The league runs more than 100 models through its computers each summer before finally arriving at a schedule. The real big games (like UConn-Cincinnati on March 5) are slotted very specifically for the big networks (ESPN and CBS). After that, other key games are run through the computer until the league comes up with what it thinks is a fair schedule.
Usually, fresh out of the computer, the games are slated forWednesdays and Saturdays. At that point, the networks start moving games around to fit their needs, with a fair deal of swapping and negotiating for games that will be televised, for the most part, on ESPN2, ESPNU or CBS Sports Network. The AAC’s ESPN night is Thursday.
“There’s a lot of give and take,” Odjakjian explained. “They may say, ‘ Can you play this one at night?’ I’ll say, ‘ This team’s already played two at night.’ ‘Well, what if we have to switch to a different network?’ We try to balance it asmuch as possible.”
Each summer, league officials sit in a conference room with executives from ESPN and CBS, and the networks go back and forth with which games they want. At times, one network will leave the room while the other picks and chooses which games it wants, and vice versa.
“It’s an exhausting day,” said Odjakjian.
In the end, there are always some quirks. Certainly, there have been a few this year for UConn. For instance, that 6 p.m. game in Hartford against ECU on Sunday, Jan. 22, while the Patriots were playing Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game. How did that happen?
Well, UConn had played at SMU on Thursday, so the league didn’t want the Huskies to play two days later on Saturday. There was also a women’s game earlier on Sunday at Gampel.
“Wanted to give them two games and not conflict with the women,” Odjakjian explained. “Plus, we don’t want the start time too late, to give (ECU) a chance to fly home.”
And, of course, there was no way of knowing over the summer that the Patriots would be playing that day (though it would have been a safe assumption).
How about playing Auburn on Friday, Dec. 23 at 2:30 p.m. in Hartford? Auburn had played at Mohegan Sun Arena two days earlier and wanted to find a time that would give it enough time to recover, but not so late that its players couldn’t get home for the holidays easier. So, Odjakjian went to ESPN.
“We told them we can’t play a night game, do you still want it in the afternoon or do you want us to give it to SNY?”, he recalled. “ESPN decided to take it. It’s still a name opponent, and it’s a pseudoholiday for some people. We asked the network for a favor.”
Less than a week later, UConn was opening AAC play against Houston in Hartford at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, also on ESPN2.
“There are bowl games in primetime that whole week,” Odjakjian noted. “It was a matter of trying to juggle what other games were playing that day. There are often matinees that week, a lot of people are out of school.”
The Huskies have played some late games, though one was in Los Angeles and another in Hawaii. UConn will have played three 9 p.m. league games before the season is over, but that’s actually about par for the course in recent years – and less than in years past.
“We don’t play nearly as many 9 p.m. (games) aswe did in the Big East days,” said Odjakjian. “The contract said each team had to be prepared to play four. Now, we have time zone issues, of course.”
Teams in the Central time zone don’t want to play 11 a.m. local starts and don’t particularly care for 6 p.m. local starts, either. Heck, Houston (which hosts a 9 p.m. game with UConn on Feb. 22) doesn’t like earlier starts because of the city’s notorious traffic.
Obviously, there are a lot of reasons why the AAC schedule ends up the way it does. It’s never going to please everyone, and it sure hasn’t pleased UConn fans this season.
Oh, and don’t worry – it may be even worse next season. Due to renovations at their respective campus arenas, Cincinnati and Houston will largely be at the whim of wherever they call their temporary homes.