Seven SEC football games added to Fox Sports South

By Tim Tucker

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The proliferation of SEC sports on television continues.

Fox Sports Net said Wednesday it has reached a deal with ESPN that will put 91 SEC sporting events per year on FSN regional cable networks in the Southeast, including Atlanta-based Fox Sports South.

The package will include seven football games, expected to air on Saturday nights, as well as 20 men’s basketball games, 24 women’s basketball games, 16 baseball games and 24 other events per year.

The package comes from the massive inventory of events ESPN controls under its new contract with the SEC. Since there is not enough room on the various ESPN networks for all of the programming, some is being sold off to other outlets.

One place or another, all SEC football games and all non-conference home games involving SEC teams will be televised this fall.

The deals will mean an increase in the number of SEC games played at night. The seven Fox Sports Net games likely will kick off between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Fox Sports South general manager Jeff Genthner said. He said there might be as many as three other SEC games televised elsewhere on any given Saturday night.

Genthner said selections of FSN’s first two or three matchups should be finalized next week.

He said Bob Rathbun will be the play-by-play announcer on the football games, with Dave Archer as analyst, Jenn Hildreth as sideline reporter and Fred Hickman as halftime host.

FSN also plans a live one-hour SEC football show on Wednesday nights this fall, “SEC Gridiron Live,” airing from the network’s Atlanta studio. The show will debut at 10 p.m. Sept. 2 and run for 12 weeks.

Genthner said the studio show’s cast will include Charles Davis (host), Randy Cross (analyst), former Georgia star David Pollack (analyst) and Cassidy Hubbarth (“social media reporter”). Hubbarth’s role will be to facilitate live interaction with fans via sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Genthner said.

Fox’s SEC programming will air on Fox Sports South in seven states, Sun Sports in Florida and Fox Sports Southwest in Arkansas and Louisiana. The programming will be available in more than 24 million cable and satellite households.

FSN had direct TV deals with the SEC for the past 18 years, but those did not include live football games except on rare early-season occasions.