Saturday starts with Nationwide Series qualifying on SPEED at noon ET. Krista Voda will call the action with Jeff Hammond and Larry McReynolds in the TV booth. Bob Dillner and Wendy Venturini are the reporters.
That TV team continues at 1:30PM with coverage of the first of two practice sessions for the Sprint Cup Series teams. It should be interesting to see who has dialed-in their car after a very dynamic qualifying session on Friday.
ESPN2 has a college football game at noon as most NASCAR fans already know. The good news is that the Nationwide Series telecast does not start until 4PM with the pre-race show. The bad news is that ESPN2 is slated to carry Happy Hour at 3PM.
We all know college football runs 3.5 hours and sometimes longer. It should be interesting to see if ESPN2 slides back and tape delays coverage of Happy Hour or if the live practice is just joined in progress in order to get to NNS at 4PM.
Either way, the legacy of college football directly affecting NASCAR telecasts on ESPN2 has continued for the fourth consecutive season. It's a tragic situation for the struggling Nationwide Series that routinely loses the pre-race TV shows for Saturday afternoon races after September.
This week, it's the Sprint Cup Series that is affected with only two races to go in a ten month season. Should ESPN decide to join Happy Hour in progress they may have missed something that happened on track or in the garage that may well affect the Championship. If they delay the hour, they risk losing the entire NNS pre-race show yet again.
We will use this post for comments about the daytime coverage on SPEED and the situation with ESPN right up to the transition point for the NNS event. We will open our normal live blog for TV coverage comments that that time.
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