I’m not going to enable the NFL obsession of our national sports media by giving this game any more attention than it deserves, other than to make a pick of Jacksonville (+155) on the moneyline for an outright win.
Thursday is going to be a great night to be a sports fan, as the daily sports TV schedule is awash with great games, and it starts with a big college football doubleheader.
The NFL’s Thursday night package takes deserved hits for some of the bad games it offers, but this week isn’t one of them. The Cincinnati Bengals take their talents to South Beach for a game with the Miami Dolphins (8:25 PM ET, NFL Network) for a matchup that leads our look at what Thursday and Friday night has to offer fans across the sports spectrum.
It’s a Sunday of rivalries, with the NFL schedule highlighted by a battle amongst the brothers and a huge divisional grudge match, baseball’s schedule being marked by its most storied rivalry and a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race that opens under a cloud of bad feeling
The game most college football fans see as the Game of the Year goes today in College Station. ESPN’s Gameday is on the scene for Alabama-Texas A&M, and CBS has the telecast itself at 3:30 PM ET. I’m not sold at all on the Aggies, so I don’t buy the whole Game of the Year thing. But I’ve been known to wrong—quite often in fact, and there’s no denying that if A&M wins, I think they deserve to be ranked #1 in the country.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that the big markets of the East Coast are in the spotlight for Thursday’s daily sports. Whether it’s the NFL or major league baseball, New York is prominent, Boston is heavily involved, and you throw Baltimore in the mix as well.
Wednesday’s a pretty quiet night in daily sports, reminiscent of the days of summer when a single baseball game had to carry the TV load. But at least Wednesday’s showcase is a game with impact—the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays meet in a 7 PM ET start on ESPN. The Sox are looking to secure the division, the Rays are looking to keep in that race, and to give themselves some room to breathe in the wild-card push.
It’s going to be a busy night on the Beltway, from the opening Monday Night Football game, to key playoff race baseball. The patch of I-95 between Washington D.C. and Baltimore should be packed, with the cities of Philadelphia and New York also involved, Monday night’s daily sports amounts to a virtual Mid-Atlantic war.
The first Sunday of the 2013 NFL season is here, with its standard run of an early afternoon where most people watch their local teams, a marquee late afternoon game and then a prime-time battle setting the agenda. The powers of the NFC are the focus today, and the daily sports card is ably filled out with big baseball games both early and late.
The great city of Boston takes the lead in Friday’s TV daily sports agenda, with a mix of high-profile baseball and under-the-radar college football.
The 2013 NFL season finally gets underway tonight, with the cornerstone of Thursday’s daily sports agenda being the battle in the Rocky Mountains. The Baltimore Ravens meet the Denver Broncos in a rematch of last year’s epic second-round playoff game to start the year. Kickoff is at 8:30 PM ET on NBC.
ESPN’s MLB coverage is getting locked in for the playoff drive, as the network will show a rare Wednesday night doubleheader tonight, with fans watching both ends of the race for the AL East title in today’s daily sports TV docket.