Football on TV

Football may not have the distinction of being the great American pastime, but it certainly should and with good reason. The game play is exciting, it’s a way to get family together, team spirit in high schools, Colleges, Universities and Communities rooting for a particular team sets their respective campuses and neighborhoods ablaze with team colors, tail gating parties and gatherings.  Following your favorite team by attending each and every game can get expensive. With plane tickets for out of state games, plus the cost of season tickets if your team goes all the way to the finals will cause you to rack up a pretty hefty fan tab (and we haven’t even gotten to the cost of memorabilia). It is also impossible to get tickets to major events such as the Super Bowl. Following a team or just catching up with local and out of state games gets much easier and a whole lot cheaper when you’re able to watch football on TV.

Football TV schedules

The first thing you’ll need to know are the local schedules for games you’re interested in. For professional games, NFL.com has the most comprehensive listing of all Pre, Regular and Post season games as well as yearly matchups.  NFL.com lists the shows by date time and channel so that you will never miss a game.

A little well known resource that is growing in popularity is the506.com. It gives maps that show the game areas and football TV schedules for the NFL season for FOX and CBS. It was created by a fan who gets the data from titantv.com, tv.yahoo.com and zap2it.com and foxsports.com. The maps are updated on Wednesday night or Thursday afternoon for that weekend’s games. With updates and corrections on Friday if needed.

ESPN is of course a one stop resource for all things football related. The only drawback to visiting their website is that they will only list the schedules for their own network. Their site conveniently lists game outcomes, game highlights, articles and bios on stars and up and comers as well as the all important schedules. There are fun features such as countdown clocks to the NFL draft and contests and special sections that let fans win tickets to various games.

Outside of ESPN, College football teams get a little harder to follow on TV, especially if you are in a different state from your home team and can’t get regular updates from local radio and stations and papers. Games from smaller schools may be broadcast on local college stations while fans of popular universities such as Louisiana State, Penn State, and Ohio State can follow games on major network stations such as ESPN, COX and CBSC.  Game schedules can be found on the each particular teams’ website, usually listed by Time, Network and the in some instances the replay schedule in case you miss the live broadcast. ABC, NBC, TBS and FOX will also broadcast college games; their schedules are also available on their respective websites.