football without cable?

For the first time since ESPN took over the college football championship and most bowl games, cord cutters will now be able to legally watch most bowl games this year. With Sling TV offering a legal option to watch 38 of this year’s 40 bowl games, cord cutters can sit back and really enjoy their college football.

Even the playoff games and national championship game will be on ESPN this year, making this the first time cord cutters have legal access to watch the college football playoffs and national championship game.

CBS will carry The Hyundai Sun Bowl national over the air for free. FOX will be carrying the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl free on Fox in the home markets for each team.

This means between Sling TV and free over-the-air television every college football bowl game, playoff, and the national championship game will be available for cord cutters to legally watch.

This is a huge turning point for cord cutters. For years sports was the number one reason people kept paying for cable even when they wanted to leave.

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What about the NFL?  Most games are carried live over the air on Fox, CBS, or NBC.  The Monday night games are on ESPN.  The odd games out are the Thursday night games on NFL Network.  Plus that one game in Europe that was carried by Yahoo.

What about the NBA?  Most games are either on ESPN (or ABC) or TNT.  So Sling TV covers that.  The exception are the games on NBA TV.  And of course you can subscribe to NBA League Pass for the vast majority of the other games (except for the teams blacked out in your area). Here, that would mean the Lakers games, the Clippers games, and the Kings games.  The Lakers are carried on TWCSports available on Oceanic and HawaiianTelcom.  The Clippers are carried on Prime Ticket which is carried on Oceanic but not HawaiianTelcom.  The Kings games are not available in Hawaii as far as I know.  (The DirecTV sales guy at Costco told me you can watch those games on their sports package, but I don't think he knew what he was talking about.)  So you would still need cable to watch most of the Lakers and Clippers games.  I'm wondering though if you could use your Hawaiiantelcom credentials on the FoxSports app and watch the Clippers that way.

Looking up the DirecTV sports pack.  According to this, you can get Prime Ticket as well as CSN Bay Area which covers the Golden State Warriors and San Francisco Giants (whose games are normally blacked out in Hawaii).  So this might (or might not) be wrong.