It’s back to school this weekend

No surprise here, but college football takes over sports viewing on Saturday, and perhaps topping the list of matchups is Tennessee at California.

The game, which pits the No. 15 Volunteers and the No. 12 Golden Bears, is the only Week 1 matchup of top 25 teams and is the headliner on ESPN on ABC, Channel 7 at 5 p.m.

USC, meanwhile, isn’t expected to have much trouble in its Saturday night opener against Idaho, which may have announcers Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis struggling to hold the audience. The 7:15 p.m. game is being televised on the FSN network and carried in Los Angeles by FSN West. The sideline reporter is Jim Watson.

As will be the case all season, KSPN 710’s pregame radio coverage will begin more than 3 1/2 hours before kickoff. And that doesn’t count three additional hours of repeated USC programming from earlier in the week.

The repeated programming begins at 11 a.m. Saturday and the live programming at 2 p.m. KSPN will be well-represented at the Coliseum, with hosts Steve Mason, Curt Sandoval and Dave Denholm, insiders Harvey Hyde, David Newberry, Darrell Rideaux, Brandon Hancock, Steve Bisheff, Curtis Conway, and tailgate reporter Jason Pullman. Sideline reporter John Jackson joins Mason 90 minutes before kickoff. There will be about an hour of postgame coverage with play-by-play announcer Pete Arbogast and commentator Paul McDonald and then two more hours with Newberry and Rideaux.

Angels games that conflict with any of the USC coverage on KSPN, such as Saturday’s afternoon contest with the Texas Rangers, will be farmed out to KLAA 830, which is expected to become the baseball team’s flagship next season.

UCLA’s opener at Stanford at 12:30 p.m. is an FSN network game, and it will be on FSN Prime Ticket in L.A. The announcers are Matt Delvin and Warren Moon, with Michael Eaves on the sideline.

Chris Roberts, beginning his 16th season with UCLA, and Matt Stevens are back as the radio announcers, along with sideline reporter Wayne Cook. KLAC 570 on game-day Saturdays will have two hours of pregame coverage, plus a call-in show with Tim Cates after the games.

Brigham Young, which is UCLA’s second opponent, plays host Saturday to Arizona at 2:30 p.m. on Versus. That will frustrate some viewers, since only about half of L.A.’s cable households get the network. And it will be worse the following week when Versus televises BYU-UCLA.

There is some good news, however. ESPNU, which has Iowa-Northern Illinois at 12:30 Saturday as well as three other games, launched on Time Warner Cable basic digital channel 251 today. That doubles its distribution nationally from 10 million homes to 20 million, said Burke Magnus, ESPNU general manager. The 2 1/2 -year-old network is also available on DirecTV (channel 609), Dish Network (channel 148), plus Charter and Cox cable.

NBC opens its Notre Dame schedule Saturday at 12:30 p.m. with the Irish playing host to Georgia Tech. Bob Papa, filling in for Tom Hammond, and Pat Haden call the action. Hammond is covering the World Track and Field Championships in Osaka, Japan.

ESPN’s “College GameDay” will originate from Blacksburg, Va., Saturday at 7 a.m. East Carolina and Virginia Tech play there -- 9 a.m. on ESPN.

It’s back

“The Contender,” the highly rated reality boxing series, begins its third season Tuesday at 7 p.m. on ESPN. Last season’s live finale at Staples Center, which drew 2.3 million viewers, was the network’s highest-rated boxing telecast in nine years. The executive producers are Mark Burnett, creator of the “Survivor” series, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks and one of the creators of “The Contender.”

Sugar Ray Leonard, the host of the series, said after a taping in downtown Los Angeles last week, “You have these boxers living together, becoming best friends and then they must square off in the ring. That’s what makes it so intriguing.”

Uncut versions of the fights will air on ESPN2 at various times after the edited shows appear on ESPN.

Short waves

The Golf Channel’s coverage of the Deutsche Bank Championship today begins at noon, not quite two hours after the threesome of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh are scheduled to tee off. The final round on Sunday will be on NBC. . . . Comedian George Lopez will serve as a co-host of the season finale of the Golf Channel’s “Fore Inventors Only” series Tuesday at 7 p.m. . . . Terry Donahue is among the commentators on a new NFL Network show, “College Football Now,” which airs Tuesdays at 3 p.m. . . . Don Barrett’s laradio.com reported that Ross Porter will produce and narrate 90-second vignettes called “Real Sports Heroes” for KLAC 570 that will air weekdays at 5:25 p.m. beginning Oct. 1. Porter says he wants to focus on the positives in sports.

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