The presidential race has overshadowed live sports for months and on Saturday will preempt one of college football’s premier matchups.
NBC Sports announced Saturday that it plans to shift Saturday’s #1 Clemson-#4 Notre Dame college football game from NBC to USA Network during a scheduled victory speech by former vice president Joe Biden, the projected winner of the presidential election. The speech is expected to begin at 8 PM ET, about a half-hour into the game. NBC will return to the game after the speech is done.
According to Mark Skol, Jr. of South Bend NBC affiliate WNDU, USA Network will begin simulcasting the game at 7:55 PM ET.
Eight years ago, NBC shifted a Sunday Night Football game from its broadcast network to NBCSN during a speech by then-President Obama at a memorial for victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
ABC will similarly break away from its Stanford-Oregon Saturday Night Football game to air the speech, with game coverage available on ESPNEWS and the ESPN app. Beyond football, FOX plans to start its scheduled Premier Boxing Champions coverage on FS2 before moving it back to FOX after the speech concludes.
Due to the length of time it took to count mail-in ballots in several key states, it took until Saturday morning before the major networks projected the presidential race (Decision Desk HQ had previously projected the race Friday morning, more than 24 hours before the networks or the Associated Press).
With the projections coming down shortly before the Noon ET college games kicked off, the networks found themselves in the position of having to balance live sports and breaking news. ABC bumped its West Virginia-Texas game to ESPNEWS, informing viewers of the switch via an intermittent graphic on its news coverage. CBS bumped a rebroadcast of last year’s Army-Air Force game (this year’s game, which was supposed to begin at 11:30 AM ET, was postponed). FOX broke into its Big Noon Saturday pregame show, but aired its Arizona State-USC game in its entirety.
[News from NBC Sports PR, Skol Jr./Twitter 11.7, ESPN PR, Fox Sports PR/Twitter 11.7]
