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Big game between and TCU and Utah, but few can watch

By BARRY HORN The Dallas Morning News

I

College football's marquee game, which features No. 4 vs. No. 16, is on CBS College Sports Network on Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. CST. It can be seen in approximately 32 million homes across the country. ESPN and ESPN2 can be seen in 99 million. ABC, which is offering the relatively meaningless Texas Tech-Oklahoma State game at 7 p.m. in this part of the country, is in about 113 million.

II

CBSCS remains such a relatively minor player, it currently doesn't subscribe to Nielsen, which means its games don't produce ratings. We may never know how many people watched the game.

III

The Mountain West Conference, home of TCU and Utah, left the ESPN nest in 2006 and struck a deal with College Sports TV, which has evolved into CBSCS.

IV

One of the perks of the conference's deal with CBSCS was more money. Another was no more mid-week night games for Mountain West teams. In the ESPN universe, Mountain West games were scheduled around games from bigger conferences.

V

ESPN, exhibiting no hard feelings, will have its College GameDay crew in Fort Worth for this morning's 9-11 a.m. show. Tune in and see how Lee Corso looks in a Horned Frog helmet.

VI

This marks the third time in the last four weeks that GameDay has been to a Mountain West Conference game. GameDay also set up shop at TCU-BYU and Army-Air Force. That means it is promoting a game that will appear opposite ESPN and ABC games. That's unusual in the ESPN culture.

VII

TCU's biggest TV exposure this season was in its opener against Virginia, which was on ESPNU, available in 55 million homes.

VIII

TCU's final two games are scheduled for the Mountain West Sports Network, which is available nationally only on DirecTV, which has about 18 million subscribers.

IX

Speaking of DirecTV, TCU is coming off four consecutive weeks on Versus, which this season has not been available on the satellite provider. So if anyone subscribed to DirecTV, figuring you could catch all of TCU's games this season, you were out of luck.

X

If TCU does beat Utah and then, as expected defeats Wyoming and New Mexico, all of America should finally get to see the Horned Frogs in one of the January BCS games on Fox.

Rangers, Lewin negotiating

If Josh Lewin, whose contract expires at year's end, wants to return for a ninth season and beyond in the Rangers' television booth, it looks like he will have to walk away from his NFL gig as the radio voice of the San Diego Chargers.

The Rangers apparently are no longer willing to have Lewin miss weekend games in September to call football. Lewin's contract with the Chargers expires at the end of the NFL season.

In an email to Dallas Morning News' Evan Grant this week, Lewin wrote: "We have had a friendly discussion about going forward, and my guess is sometime soon after Thanksgiving there will be some news to report. I'm knee-deep in football and some family things right now, but I'm sure we'll all be talking again fairly soon."

Ernie Harwell update

The Hall of Fame Detroit Tigers broadcaster, who has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer, sits down with Bob Costas on MLB Network on Tuesday at 7 p.m. CST.

In the taped interview, Harwell, 91, says he believes he has seen his last baseball game.

"Back in July, the doctors gave me six months to live, give or take a few months," Harwell told Costas. "I'm hoping to reach my birthday on Jan. 25, but I'm pretty sure I won't make the baseball season. But you never know as the Lord works wonders.

"I'm not overwhelmed by the circumstances. One of the doctors said, 'If you were my father, I'd say, don't do anything, just relax and wait for the inevitable.' But I had great peace about that and closure to it, and I knew God was in charge and whatever happens, happens for the best. I really have a lot of serenity and great support from my wife, family and friends. It's been so far a fairly easy task to accept it."

Talkin' Cowboys and NFL

Troy Aikman and Joe Buck will work Sunday's 3:15 p.m. CST Cowboys-Packers game, which is scheduled to be broadcast to 85 percent of the country. The Eagles-Chargers and Seahawks-Cardinals split the remaining 15 percent.

The Cowboys-Eagles Sunday Night game on NBC drew a healthy 37.1 rating in Dallas-Fort Worth. That made it the week's second-most interested market in its NFL team. In New Orleans, the Falcons-Saints scored a mid-boggling 63.8 rating. That means 63.8 percent of all the homes in the market tuned into the game.

Meanwhile, the NFL continues to crow about viewership this season.

The league is averaging 17 million viewers per game through nine weeks, and ratings are up at CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN.

The 3:15 p.m. Sunday national game that generally alternates between CBS and Fox is television's most-watched program, averaging 23.5 million viewers (up six percent over last year).

NBC's Sunday Night Football is prime time's most watched program, averaging 19.5 million viewers (up 22 percent).

ESPN Monday Night Football is cable's most-watched show, averaging 14.6 million viewers (up 18 percent from last year).

Around the Horn

Mike Patrick and Craig James have drawn Texas Tech-Oklahoma State duty for ABC. Recall James' son, Adam, is a sophomore receiver for the Red Raiders. . . . NBC has the Patriots-Colts on Sunday night. Not surprisingly, their studio analysts are split on two things. Ex-Pat defensive back Rodney Harrison is picking his former team, and he thinks Tom Brady is the best quarterback in the game. Ex-Colts coach Tony Dungy likes his former team and thinks Peyton Manning is the No. 1 quarterback.