The 2011 NCAA football season reaches its finale tonight as the Auburn Tigers and Oregon Ducks square off in the 2011 BCS Championship game. The matchup will decide the "national champion," or as I like to call it, 1a to TCU's 1b. While it's a generally slow day otherwise for Bay Area sports, the 2011 national title game should provide plenty of excitement as we get to see Heisman Trophy Winner Cam Newton do battle with the high-flying offense of the Oregon Ducks. The game will kick off around 5:30pm pacific time on ESPN.
Aside from the BCS national championship game, it's otherwise an incredibly quiet day of sports on television, particularly for Bay Area teams. However, there is still some interesting television to be viewed (all times pacific):
CSNBA Programming: The Dan Patrick Show | 12:00 p.m. | CSN Bay Area - CSN added a simulcast of The Dan Patrick Show last week and it continues this week from noon to two.
NCAA Basketball: Notre Dame @ Marquette | 4:00 p.m. | ESPN2 - This game goes head-to-head with College GameDay, the BCS pregame show, and the early part of the national title game. I can't imagine particularly good ratings, although I suppose people might flip over there when they get bored of the buildup.
Golf: Haney Project: Charles Barkley | 3:30-8:00 p.m. | Golf Channel - The Golf Channel is running a marathon of something involving Charles Barkley. According to the show descriptions, "famed golf instructor" Hank Haney is attempting to fix Charles Barkley's swing. If you've never seen Barkley's swing, check it out.
Network Television: Castle | 10:01 p.m. | ABC - Most networks are airing reruns rather than compete with the national title game, but ABC surprisingly is not (considering ABC and ESPN are under the same corporate umbrella). However, if you have not checked out Castle on ABC, I highly recommend taking an hour to check out an episode. It's one of my favorite shows on television.
Baseball/Football/Basketball/Hockey: MLB Network, NFL Network, NBA TV, NHL Network | All Day - If you love sports, then I cannot recommend highly enough the awesome nature of each league's television channel. OK, I suppose my knowledge lies primarily with the MLB and NFL Networks. The two of them are out of sight and really worth the price of expanding your cable. I've seen NBA TV a couple times and enjoyed it and the same goes for the NHL Network. But if only check out one of them, make it the MLB Network or the NFL Network.