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Lehigh Football Nation
November 28th, 2018, 09:39 AM
I looked at the TV schedule for ESPN3 games and saw two games with 12PM/1PM starts:

J'ville State at Maine 12pm
JMU at Colgate 1pm

I thought that there was a requirement that home playoff games be 2pm EST kickoff or later? Does this only apply to the 1st round????

Lehigh Football Nation
November 28th, 2018, 09:54 AM
My bible for this stuff has all the Round 1 games with 2PM kickoffs:

http://mattsarzsports.com/Schedule/Weekly/football2018/13#.W_657uhKi70

Woffy/Elon, Duquesne/Towson, SBU/SEMO all listed as 2PM kickoffs. Delaware/JMU was 3PM.

Professor Chaos
November 28th, 2018, 10:10 AM
I would guess they relaxed those restrictions or maybe granted Maine and Colgate some kind of exception.

I mentioned this in another thread but I'm pretty sure either the NCAA or ESPN took a more active hand in setting kickoff times for the 2nd round games this year. There's one kickoff per hour from 12PM-5PM ET (except for 3PM ET when there's 2) and then a 7PM ET kickoff. NDSU has always kicked off at their traditional 3:30PM ET time for this 2nd round ESPN3 only game in the past but this year that was moved up to 3PM ET. I don't think it was coincidental that kickoffs are more spread out this year and I like the fact that they're trying to widen the audience a bit by doing that.

Lehigh Football Nation
November 28th, 2018, 11:01 AM
I would guess they relaxed those restrictions or maybe granted Maine and Colgate some kind of exception.

I mentioned this in another thread but I'm pretty sure either the NCAA or ESPN took a more active hand in setting kickoff times for the 2nd round games this year. There's one kickoff per hour from 12PM-5PM ET (except for 3PM ET when there's 2) and then a 7PM ET kickoff. NDSU has always kicked off at their traditional 3:30PM ET time for this 2nd round ESPN3 only game in the past but this year that was moved up to 3PM ET. I don't think it was coincidental that kickoffs are more spread out this year and I like the fact that they're trying to widen the audience a bit by doing that.

The hourly kickoffs are a GREAT idea and I love those. Just wondering why it's not also the case in Round 1. Maybe it's because it butts up against the FBS rivalry games. Certainly JSU's game didn't want to go up against the Iron Bowl, that's completely understandable.

Professor Chaos
November 28th, 2018, 11:06 AM
The hourly kickoffs are a GREAT idea and I love those. Just wondering why it's not also the case in Round 1. Maybe it's because it butts up against the FBS rivalry games. Certainly JSU's game didn't want to go up against the Iron Bowl, that's completely understandable.
Yeah, that's a good question. I would guess with the conflicts you mentioned with FBS games and the fact that Thanksgiving weekend is awful for playoff attendance they just let schools kick off whenever they wanted to in order to maximize on-site attendance.