On the night of January 11, there was a top-15 men’s basketball matchup involving one of TV’s darlings. Iowa State-Kansas was banished to ESPN+. Half an hour before that tipoff, a top-25 women’s basketball game involving the same school started. Iowa State-Kansas State was banished to ESPN+.
At 1 PM on January 15, the Iowa State men and women played at the same time and AGAIN the games were only available on ESPN+.
On January 26, the ISU women AGAIN tipped off half an hour before the men and AGAIN the games were only available on ESPN+.
On January 29, the ISU women tipped half an hour before the men, and only on ESPN+. This time, though, the men’s game was on ESPNU as part of the Big 12/SEC challenge — but the announcers weren’t even in Hilton Coliseum, doing the game remotely instead.
When ISU men’s and women’s games overlap, the men’s game takes precedence on the Cyclone Radio Network. This means that when those games are streaming-only — which a significant portion of the Iowa State fanbase is unable to access at any reasonable price — there’s no radio option, either.
The syndicated Big 12 Network TV package actually offered more coverage of men’s games, at least in the Big 12 footprint. But since then, it’s increasingly hard to define what the Big 12 footprint is. Oh, for the days when the biggest out-of-market issue was the Whataburger trolling. (BTW, Whataburger is now getting into the Kansas City metro area in a big way.)
The sooner you let elementary school teachers schedule games, the sooner this overlapping nonsense will be fixed. We can rearrange an entire day in a heartbeat and still get it all done. Both my school's teams are top 25 and I have to try and watch them simultaneously?NONSENSE.
— Megatron (@Megs_ISU) January 29, 2022