College Football on USA refers to the USA Network's cable television coverage of the college football regular season. USA's coverage ran from 1980 to 1986.
USA Network began airing college football in 1980. From 1980 to 1982), USA would broadcast several games per week. These games were sourced from regional and national syndicators like Raycom, Mizlou, and Katz. These broadcasts were shown on a tape delayed basis as much as two days later. For USA's final four seasons (1983-1986), they narrowed their coverage to only one game a week. Initially, the games were selected from virtually every conference. However, in the later years, USA would frequently (but not exclusively) air games involving Pittsburgh, Penn State, Notre Dame, Boston College Maryland and the Big Eight Conference. [1] During this time, USA Network broadcast several bowl games, including: the 1981 Liberty Bowl, 1985 Cherry Bowl, 1985 Holiday Bowl, 1985 Freedom Bowl, 1985 Independence Bowl, 1985 Bluebonnet Bowl, 1986 Independence Bowl, 1986 Peach Bowl.
Since 2011, at least two Notre Dame Football games on NBC per-season are played in primetime. These games are often played at neutral venues for the purposes of recruiting and financial benefits for playing at those sites, a high-profile matchup involving a major opponent, or to schedule around conflicts with other NBC Sports or NBC News programming. On occasion, selected games may be shifted to an NBCUniversal-owned cable channel, such as NBCSN or USA Network, or the streaming service Peacock.
Notre Dame's September 19, 2020, game against South Florida was shifted to USA Network due to conflicts with the 2020 U.S. Open on NBC, and co-produced with the school's in-house production arm Fighting Irish Media due to NBC's main production unit already being used for the tournament. [2]
Notre Dame's double-overtime win against Clemson on November 7, 2020, was moved temporarily to USA Network due to coverage of Joe Biden's acceptance speech after being declared consensus winner of the 2020 presidential election. [3]
USA Network, now under the sports division of Versant (USA Sports), announced an agreement with the Pac-12 Conference in November 2025. Beginning with the 2026 season, USA Network will broadcast 22 college football games per season. [4]