Should You Get the 2007-08 ESPN Full Court Package?
Posted by rtmsf on October 30th, 2007If you’re a college hoops junkie like us (and you must be if you’re reading this blog), you’ve probably considered the above question. We’ve purchased the $99 ESPN Full Court package for the last four years running and we plan on doing so again this year. Over the years, we’ve spent countless hours on the phone with Comcast (so you want the NBA League Pass, right?) and searching the espn.com website (as of this morning, we still couldn’t find a list on there) to try to find a complete list of all the games that the Full Court Package was going to have, most of the time to no avail.
Now that we have a little more experience with finding this list, we thought it’d make sense to provide it to you guys so you can make an educated decision as to whether you want to throw some bones toward the rapacious bastards your cable company. Whether you should purchase the 427-game FCP depends completely on the following factors:
1) if you’re unemployed how much free time you have
2) if the MSM hates your team how often your favorite team(s) or conference(s) are shown on the package
3) if you live in a hole whether you live outside the local area from said team/conference
Here are a few tidbits about this year’s FCP:
- Missouri has the most games on the FCP with 22 – here are some of the other high-volume notables:
- 16 – Arkansas, Texas Tech
- 15 – Oklahoma, Seton Hall
- 14 – UConn, Iowa St., Kansas, Louisville, LSU
- 13 – Alabama, Marquette, St. John’s, Texas
- 12 – New Mexico St., South Carolina
- 11 – Kentucky, Miami (FL), Nevada, Oklahoma St., Ole Miss, Providence, Rutgers, South Florida, West Virginia
- 10- Florida, Mississippi St., Pittsburgh, Tennessee
- There will be 115 nonconference games on the FCP this year, most of them obviously occurring prior to Jan. 1. Some of the best of the list are:
- Texas Tech @ Sam Houston St. (11.14.07)
- Clemson @ Mississippi St (11.15.07)
- BYU @ Louisville (11.23.07)
- Nevada @ UNLV (11.24.07)
- Boston U. @ Pittsburgh (11.27.07)
- Missouri @ Arkansas (11.28.07)
- Oral Roberts @ Texas (12.18.07)
- Washington @ LSU (12.29.07)
- Xavier @ Auburn (01.06.08)
- Georgia Tech @ Georgia (01.09.08)
- The remaining games are conference games, and the BCS leagues are well-represented. Here’s the rundown there (notice anyone missing, Big Ten fans??):
- Big East – 69
- SEC – 63
- Big 12 – 56
- ACC – 36
- WAC – 34
- MAAC – 12
- Big Sky – 10
- Colonial – 10
- America East – 9
- Pac-10 – 8
- Missouri Valley – 2
- Northeast – 2
- Southland – 1
- Hey, we’re on board with watching more WAC and Colonial games than another depressing slugfest between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Still, we would have liked to have seen a little more of The Valley and Colonial, but it’s better than last year, and we’re hopeful it will continue to improve.
- Best conference matchups:
- Pittsburgh @ Villanova (01.06.08)
- Vermont @ Albany (01.06.08)
- Texas @ Missouri (01.12.08)
- Notre Dame @ Georgetown (01.19.08)
- George Mason @ UNC-Wilmington (01.26.08)
- Vanderbilt @ Florida (01.27.08)
- Tennessee @ Mississippi St. (02.02.08)
- Nevada @ Utah St. (02.02.08)
- USC @ Washington St. (02.09.08)
- Boston U. @ Vermont (02.14.08)
- Stanford @ Arizona (02.16.08)
- Oklahoma @ Texas (02.23.08)
- Tennessee @ Florida (03.05.08)
Here’s the complete list.
I’ll be buying the Full Court Package for the fourth year in a row this year, but I am extremely worried about what the movement of individual conferences their own TV Networks is going to do to Full Court as we currently know it. I live in St. Louis as an alumnus of the University of Illinois, and I cannot currently get the Big Ten Network on cable. It may be very possible that there will be groups of conferences joining forces and offering their games in a sort of “mini-Full Court” package in the future, but the nightmare of getting cable companies outside of the “region of interest” to carry these packages means I will probably be switching to satellite sooner rather than later.
Brett –
You raise a great point. We don’t have a team to watch in the Big Ten, but it would really suck if we did b/c there’s no way in hell our area would ever provide that network. Same would be true if several other of the conferences started their own network and made everything exclusive. This is something to definitely watch.
RTC
Do you know if you can purchase this to watch on the computer? I’ve been searching ESPN’s site but can’t find anything even related to Full Court. As a Georgia Tech fan in PA I’d love to be able to do that.
We’re not aware of any FC access online, but who knows with this thing? It’s not really advertised or endorsed very well by ESPN, even though they’re the ones administering it.
Spent a ton of time talking to Comcast about where if anywhere I can watch UNC hoops. ESPN full court looks pretty full of games, but only one for the top seeded team…..guess that they’ll be on the networks alot? Does anyone know anything about the Comcast Sports Package (1.99/month on a promo basis)….Are they likely to carry acc hoops? Why don’t they just get honest about what they offer??????
This pacakge is not worth it. UNC will only be shown twice. Grrr!
UNC is always on the regular channels, so if that’s all you want to see, then no, the FC package wouldn’t be for you.
Okay, I’m officially enraged. Despite having it up on their website, Comcast claims that they don’t offer ESPN Full Court in the Miami area, where I live. It’s going to be a long, dark winter.
Thermocaster – ugh, that really sucks. Any chance of getting a dish to make up for it (and really show the cable companies!)?
As a WVU fan and big east fan this is well worth my $109. I actually though the price was extremely reasonable.
Does anybody know if this package includes any confrence or NCAA tourny games?
Thanks!
Brandon:
Did they raise the price since Oct? We paid $99.
Anyway, there are quite a few conf tourney games (Big East/ACC/SEC) on the FC package, but no NCAA Tourney games.
To get all those you have to go through the CBS package.
RTC
RTC,
Thanks for the info. You must have gotten the early bird price. They raised it to $109 on 11/22. It will stay at $109 until January somthing then go down to $79 for the half season rate.
Thanks for the tourny info!
Brandon
I am livid! I bought ESPN FC with the schedule showing my team would be on at least 16 times, probably 17, given their conference tournament. The schedule I saw matched the one above. Now 1/3 of the games have disappeared from the schedule! Including the one TODAY (December 29)! I realize games are subject to change, but that is supposed to be related to moving the game to a network (like a game in January that was moved to FOX Sports). But 5 games completely gone!?
I don’t even know who to complain to. I sent an e-mail after the first no-show, but I didn’t get a response.
I bought FC because I don’t live in my team’s home state any more. But my parents do. Apparently I’d be better off buying a Sling Box and putting it in their home to watch via the Internet. Then I’d get all the games they do, which would have been even more than the 16.
Rick
Thanks for the info.
The only question I have is, “Does FC show NCAA tourney games which aren’t being broadcast by CBS?”
Scott –
No, you can purchase the package through CBS, not ESPN, though.
There’s also the MMOD option on your computer.
Has anyone at this site inquired when or if FC will be telecast in HD? While I enjoy watching my favorite teams, the quality of standard telecasts vs. HD is really poor.
We haven’t heard anything about the move to HD. One of the problems is that a lot of ESPN’s regular college games aren’t even broadcast in HD. We did a Google search and a bunch of people are asking about this, but we couldn’t find any good answers yet. Our guess is that it will be quite a while until they start broadcasting all the games in HD.
As an interesting side note, we have only seen the Big 10 network on TV at one location–JetBlue. So if any of you Big 10 fans want to see games maybe you should book a cheap JetBlue flight on a day with bad weather and hope they keep you on the runway for 8 hours. . .