TCU to play Sunday game

The Mountain West Conference will be featured in a season-opening, national telecast on Sunday — yes, Sunday — Sept. 3.

Surprise! BYU isn't involved.

Fox Sports Net will carry TCU at Baylor at 3:30 p.m. It's not part of the MWC's TV deal with CSTV (obviously).

BYU will actually be seen nationally on a different cable channel on Saturday, Sept. 2 — the Cougars' game at Arizona will be seen at 8:15 p.m. Mountain Time on TBS.

THAT MWC-CSTV DEAL is all about your perspective, apparently. Whereas local fans of BYU (who are accustomed to seeing all the Cougars' games) and Utah (who are accustomed to seeing most of the Utes' games) on readily available TV channels are somewhat dismayed, TCU coach Gary Patterson is thrilled.

For the first time, all of the Frogs' games will be televised, albeit most of them on CSTV or the Mountain West's forthcoming cable channel.

"It is nice," Patterson told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "We're finally getting where we need to be to be a national contending program. You've got to start at the beginning and play your way up the polls. It's great to be on TV if you're playing well."

Just to be clear, however, playing well doesn't have anything to do with being on CSTV and the Mountain West channel. You can be the worst team in the league and still have all your games televised.

I'VE COMPLAINED MORE THAN ONCE about the quality of the local telecasts of Real Salt Lake soccer matches. I'm willing to rethink that a bit in the wake of the June 9 RSL-at-Colorado game that aired on the Denver-based Altitude channel.

Altitude's coverage was so abysmal, the announcing so weak, that you'd have to try (hard) to do worse. I could go on and on (as is my wont), but I'll just point out one move that was so bad it was startling.

Altitude did interviews with the Rapids' coach early in each half. Inane interviews, but that's not the point.

It would be no problem if we just heard what the coach had to say. But we had to see him as well. And not just in a corner of the screen, but he was the only thing we could see while the game was going on.

Astonishingly stupid.

SEVERAL E-MAILERS essentially told me I was stupid to worry about ABC/ESPN's coverage of the World Cup because FIFA controls the camera. Which is true, but ABC/ESPN do direct their telecasts.

(Unless you think the whole world saw an ESPN Dos camera shot of Mexican fans back home celebrating one of their team's goals.)

I just knew that ABC/ESPN would find a way to tick me off. And they have. The huge graphics that sometimes cover about 40 percent of the screen — effectively making it impossible to see the game — are astonishingly stupid.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com