ESPN has announced the television network designations and start times for the fifth annual Big 12/SEC Challenge Presented by Sonic.
Four of the 10 games will be televised on ESPN, four on ESPN2 and two games will air on ESPNU. All 10 games will also be available on the ESPN app.
ESPN’s College GameDay Covered by State Farm – the Saturday roadshow that discusses the top storylines of the college basketball season – will originate from one of the Challenge games.
All 10 of the Big 12’s teams and 10 of the SEC’s 14 member institutions will participate in this year’s event. Each of the 10 SEC teams that participate in the 2018 Challenge will be a part of the 2019 event.
Eleven participating teams earned NCAA Tournament berths in 2017 with six of the teams advancing to at least the Sweet 16 of the tournament. Additionally, 26 of the ESPN.com Top 100 recruits have signed with SEC schools and nine schools have top 40 recruiting classes.
This will be the third year that a bye in the league schedule for participating teams was created to accommodate the single-day format. The four SEC teams not participating will play each other in conference games the same day. The first two years of the challenge were played over several days in November and December but the 2018 event will be consolidated to one single day in January.
2018 Big 12/SEC Challenge Presented by Sonic (January 27, 2018):
Baylor at Florida, ESPN, 12 p.m. ET
Texas Tech at South Carolina, ESPN2, 12 p.m. ET
Ole Miss at Texas, ESPN2, 2 p.m. ET
Georgia at Kansas State, ESPNU, 2 p.m. ET
Oklahoma at Alabama, ESPN, 2:15 p.m. ET
TCU at Vanderbilt, ESPN2, 4 p.m. ET
Tennessee at Iowa State, ESPNU, 4 p.m. ET
Texas A&M at Kansas, ESPN, 4:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. ET
Kentucky at West Virginia, ESPN, 4:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. ET
Oklahoma State at Arkansas, ESPN2, 6 p.m. ET
by Craig Pinkerton