The net­works that tele­vise col­lege foot­ball are adjust­ing to a small­er inven­to­ry of games because many con­fer­ences won’t be play­ing this fall because of the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

They also know there’s no guar­an­tee all the games still on the sched­ule will be played. Cas­es of COVID-19 have spiked on many col­lege cam­pus­es, and con­fer­ences con­tin­ue to for­mu­late test­ing pro­to­cols for play­ers and coaches.

Ilan Ben-Hanan, who over­sees ESPN’s four col­lege net­works, said broad­cast­ers will need to be flex­i­ble about post­pone­ments, can­cel­la­tions and oth­er changes for the fore­see­able future.

“We’ve had day-to-day and hour-to-hour dis­cus­sions with con­fer­ence part­ners. It is real­ly just a mat­ter of being respon­sive and solu­tion-ori­ent­ed. It is up to the leagues and they will do what is best,” he said. “We are a media part­ner. It is up to the schools and the con­fer­ence if they want to stage events.

“We’re excit­ed for it to get going and will keep our fin­gers crossed.”

Tag Gar­son, a senior vice pres­i­dent at Wasser­man Sports, said the biggest sto­ry­line going into the sea­son isn’t about any team or player.

“With all the twists and turns, the sea­son itself is the sto­ry. My pri­ma­ry hope is we can go through it with­out any issues,” he said. “What is dis­trib­uted is like­ly to change from week to week.”

Some oth­er news about how the net­works are han­dling col­lege foot­ball this season:

ESPN ROLLS WITH ACC, SEC

With the South­east­ern and Atlantic Coast con­fer­ences elect­ing to play this fall, ESPN is able to fill most of its Sat­ur­day win­dows and has enough inven­to­ry to dis­perse to ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and the con­fer­ence networks.

The only win­dow that ESPN is still try­ing to fig­ure out is late Sat­ur­day, since the Pac-12 is not play­ing. BYU might be a pos­si­bil­i­ty if ESPN want­ed a live late Sat­ur­day game, but its matchups are not appealing.

“There are less games over­all but we are in good shape for the most part,” said Ben-Hanan, who over­sees ACC Net­work, ESPNU, Long­horn Net­work and SEC Network.

Ben-Hanan said dis­cus­sions are ongo­ing about how the bowl sched­ule might look as well as any pos­si­ble adjust­ments to the Col­lege Foot­ball Playoff.

TIGERS AND TIDE

CBS has stuck to a reli­able for­mu­la for pick­ing its SEC game of the week — make sure either LSU or Alaba­ma is one of the teams.

CBS has select­ed games for six of the first eight weeks and only one of them doesn’t fea­ture the Tigers or Crim­son Tide. Each school will have at least three appear­ances, includ­ing Nov. 14 when they play each other.

FOX SCRAMBLING

With the Big Ten and Pac-12 not play­ing this fall, Fox’s Sat­ur­day “Big Noon Kick­off” could be renamed “Big 12 Kick­off” since all of the network’s announced games so far are from the Big 12. Fox has the first pick of Big 12 games this year until the con­fer­ence reverts to ESPN in 2021.

If Fox was hop­ing to fill spots from the Group of Five con­fer­ences that haven’t post­poned their games, the net­work is out of luck. The Amer­i­can Ath­let­ic and Sun Belt con­fer­ences have deals with ESPN while Con­fer­ence USA’s is with CBS.

LUCK OF THE IRISH

Notre Dame becom­ing a full mem­ber of ACC foot­ball for at least this sea­son is an unex­pect­ed ben­e­fit for NBC, which is mark­ing 30 sea­sons of tele­vis­ing Fight­ing Irish home games.

NBC gets an Oct. 10 game against Flori­da State as well as Dec. 5 against Syra­cuse. The mar­quee game on the Irish sched­ule even before the pan­dem­ic was Clem­son com­ing to Notre Dame Stadium.