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- College Football on NBC Sports is the de facto title used for broadcasts of NCAA college football games produced by NBC Sports. The title is rarely used on-air, as NBC's college football telecasts have presently been limited to its coverage of Notre Dame Fighting Irish home games—which are billed as Notre Dame Football on NBC—and its coverage of selected games highlighting historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), such as the Bayou Classic. Via its experimental station W2XBS, NBC presented the first television broadcast of American football at any level on September 30, 1939, between the Fordham Rams and the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets. NBC held rights to the NCAA's regular-season game of the week package from 1952–53, 1955–59, and 1964–65. From 1952 to 1988, NBC was the broadcaster of the Rose Bowl Game. In 1990, NBC first acquired the rights to Notre Dame Fighting Irish home games, as well as the Bayou Classic—agreements that have continued to this day, and have most recently been renewed through 2025. After Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, Versus—later renamed NBC Sports Network (NBCSN)—was merged into the NBC Sports division in 2011; by then, the network's coverage of Division I FBS football (billed as College Football on NBC Sports Network) was limited to a contract with the Mountain West that ended in 2012, and a package of Pac-10 games that had been sub-licensed by the Fox Sports Networks. NBCSN subsequently acquired packages of Division I FCS games from the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) and Ivy League; both contracts ended in 2017. The Bayou Classic moved from the NBC broadcast network to NBCSN in 2015, but will move back to NBC in 2022. From 2015 to 2020, NBCSN also broadcast selected Notre Dame home games not televised by NBC; since 2020, NBC Sports has preferred using Peacock or other NBCUniversal channels (such as USA Network and CNBC) to carry college football games not aired by the main network. In August 2022, NBC Sports announced that it had acquired a share of the Big Ten's football rights beginning in 2023, which will include Big Ten Saturday Night games in primetime on NBC, and a package of games on Peacock. (en)
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