8:00 Michigan v. UConn now official.

This will be just what the doctor ordered. Get away, travel team only, bad team, night game, disappointing performance...I think (errr hope) we have a focus that we haven't seen all year.

kind of looking forward to watching a game at home in the man cave lol.  will be all the better as my couch now sits underneath a football i got signed by future wolverine all star deshawn hand at the utl game.  hopefully that thing is good luck!

Hubby and I were going to drive over from Albany (less than two hours door-to-door) but late start makes it almost impossible. Even if game is over by 11 ( and given all the stoppages in play/tv ads/halftime reports,etc., that's not at all a guarantee), after getting to the car, fighting traffic, and getting back on road, we won't be home until around 2 AM, at the earliest. A noon start would have been ideal for us. In our college days, that wouldn't have slowed us down at all, but then again, in our college days we would have lived on campus :). I know this is the way things work now, and money/tv rule everything, but unless it's something truly special like UTL (or the equivalent) playing games at night makes life considerably more difficult for anyone who lives any distance from the venue. And waiting until a week or less to announce the time just compounds the problem. We've run into this with other sports, too....we have often talked about driving to NYC or Boston to see a Mets or Red Sox game (an easy day trip for a day game) but have been reluctant to buy tix because even though the game has been scheduled for months for the afternoon, there's always a chance that Fox will pick up the game for a late afternoon start, or even worse, ESPN will pick it up for an 8:00 start on Sunday. No ticket refund, and if we still want to attend, we either have to add a hotel room, if we can find one, arrive home at 3-4 AM on a work night, or eat the cost of the tickets if we can't sell them/give them away. I assume we're the leisure market the leagues/NCAA/ is targeting (two career, no children at home, lots of leisure time, money to spend) but we don't like to waste/needlessly spend money, and we don't live closer than 2-3 hours to a major pro/college sports venue. Also, our lives are complicated enough that we need to know the game time more than a week in advance; unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of sleeping in until noon the next day. All of this fooling around/switching the schedule for TV is madness. If TV must be involved, let the networks/leagues/teams/schools pick the games/matchups they want prior to the schedules being announced and stick to it. I'm not a fool, I know it will never happen, but I do think one of the reasons UTLs I and II were so successful is that the Michigan AD had time to plan to make them, to borrow a phrase, "wow" events. The time/TV coverage wasn't just put together 5-6 days ahead.