Saturday Night Football (currently branded as ESPN Saturday Night Football presented by Capital One for sponsorship reasons ) is an American weekly presentation of prime time broadcasts of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football games that are produced by ESPN, and televised on ABC. Games are presented each Saturday evening starting at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time/6:30 p.m. Central Time during the college football regular season, which has been the case since 2017 (some weeks until 2015 saw no game on ABC, due to Saturday evening Sprint Cup Series NASCAR coverage or to avoid competition with the World Series; ESPN would then carry that week's high-profile game instead, with ESPN2 carrying a secondary game usually seen on ESPN/ABC). The ESPN on ABC Saturday Night Football coverage began in 2006, as both ESPN and ABC are owned by The Walt Disney Company. It is ESPN's biggest game of the week, and in most cases (outside where another networks carries the game), the city and/or campus of that night's game is where that day's ESPN College GameDay had originated. , the primary broadcast team for the majority of the games includes play-by-play announcer Chris Fowler and analyst Kirk Herbstreit, with Holly Rowe as sideline reporter. Kevin Negandhi and Booger McFarland host the halftime show, with Dan Orlovsky joining them for select weeks. Negandhi also provides in game updates throughout the game. Other ESPN broadcast teams may also occasionally appear for regional (and some national) telecasts.

Overview

Saturday Night Football premiered on September 2, 2006, with a game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. While ABC and ESPN have aired college football games on Saturday nights for decades, this program marks the first time that a collegiate sports broadcast has officially been part of any major broadcast television network's primetime schedule. Twelve weeks of regular season games were televised during the three-month college football season in 2006, 2007 and from 2009 to 2011; the Dr. Pepper Big 12 Football Championship Game closing out each season until a conference realignment in which four university football programs left and two others joined the Big 12 Conference resulted in the Championship Game being discontinued after the 2010 event (the Big 12 Football Championship Game returned in 2017, however, it did not return to ABC until 2018, when the network aired the game in the afternoon instead of in primetime). With the college football season being extended by one week, ABC televised thirteen weeks of games in 2008, closing with the 2008 Big 12 Championship Game on December 6. With the loss of the Sprint Cup Series to NBC and NBCSN, Saturday Night Football expanded its seasonal game schedule full-time to 13 weeks beginning in 2015, starting with the Advocare Classic. Games from the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the old Big East Conference, the Big Ten Conference, the Pac-12 Conference, the now-defunct Western Athletic Conference and the American Athletic Conference have aired on Saturday Night Football, as well as non-conference games in which teams from these conferences were either playing at home or a neutral-site game to which ABC holds the television rights. All BCS/CFP and Power 5 conferences have appeared on Saturday Night Football, as the Southeastern Conference has had its teams featured in 23 non-conference games. Boise State, Utah State, BYU, Temple, UConn, UCF, Cincinnati, SMU, Tulsa, and Memphis are the only Group of 5 teams to be featured on Saturday Night Football to date, with the latter four teams being featured when they were members of the BCS-aligned Big East or American Athletic Conference. In recent years, following the loss of some broadcast rights of the Pac-12 Conference to Fox Sports in 2012, the Pac-12's Saturday Night Football appearances have been limited to non-conference games, especially home games against Notre Dame and games against the Southeastern Conference, as well as road games against conferences that still have broadcast rights with ABC. Besides Pac-12 and Big Ten games, ABC makes most of its game broadcast selections or options twelve days prior to the game (with some being made six days beforehand). This allows ABC to 'flex' the most compelling game it has the rights to broadcast into the Saturday Night Football slot. As a result, the Saturday night game is usually ABC's "game of the week". With ESPN's acquisition of its top football package beginning in 2024, Southeastern Conference home games began to be featured on Saturday Night Football on ABC for the first time that season. As with afternoon games, SEC home games on Saturday Night Football utilize the distinct SEC on ABC graphics and theme music. The Cowboys Kickoff Classic had become the opening game for Saturday Night Football beginning in 2011; however in 2013, the matchup between the Georgia Bulldogs and Clemson Tigers served as the opening game with the Classic matchup between LSU and TCU being broadcast on ESPN. The Classic served as the opening game for Saturday Night Football again in 2014, 2015, and in 2016. In 2017, the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, which had served as the opening game for Saturday Night Football from 2008-2010, served as the opening game in 2017, while the Advocare Classic aired in the 3:30 ET timeslot. In 2018, the new Camping World Kickoff served as the Saturday Night Football season premiere, while the Advocare Classic aired the next night in primetime. The Advocare Classic returned to Saturday Night Football in 2019. Since then, each season of Saturday Night Football has started with an on-campus game, the Duke's Mayo Classic in Charlotte, NC in Week 1, or, since 2023, the MEAC/SWAC Challenge in Atlanta during Week 0.

Schedules

All rankings are from that week's AP Poll, and that week's CFP rankings since 2014.

2006 schedule

ABC did not air games on either October 21 or October 28 to avoid competing with the World Series.

2007 schedule

ABC did not air games on either September 8 or October 13 due to broadcasts of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races.

2008 schedule

ABC did not air games on either September 6 or October 11 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2009 schedule

ABC did not air games on either September 12 or October 17 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2010 schedule

ABC did not air games on either September 11 or October 16 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2011 schedule

Notes:

2012 schedule

ABC did not air Games on either September 8 or October 13 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2013 schedule

ABC did not air Games on either September 7 or October 12 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2014 schedule

ABC did not air games on either September 6 or October 11 due to broadcasts of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.

2015 schedule

2016 schedule

2017 schedule

Beginning this season, all games involving Big Ten teams started at 7:30 ET.

2018 schedule

2019 schedule

Beginning this season, all games, excluding the ACC Championship Game, started at 7:30 ET.

2020 schedule

2021 schedule

2022 schedule

2023 schedule

2024 schedule

Beginning this season, all Saturday Night Football games, as well as all games airing on ABC, are simulcast on ESPN+

Broadcast teams

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

Standings

Nielsen ratings

Top 10 Regular Season Games

Seasonal

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Saturday Night Football on ABC.

Theme music

At the time the Saturday night package began in 2006, ABC Sports was integrated with ESPN, resulting in ESPN production concepts being applied to ABC-televised sports events. As a result, during the 2006 and 2007 seasons, the theme music used for the ESPN College Football and College GameDay broadcasts was used on ABC's college football telecasts – including Saturday Night Football – with the exception in both years being the Rose Bowl, during which it used the bowl game version of the network's 1998-2005 sports theme (a cut that had traditionally been used in broadcast intros). Saturday Night Football games began using the bowl version of the 1998-2005 theme as well in 2008, continuing through the 2010 BCS National Championship Game. The intro theme was updated in 2011, with the main theme music being changed to a different cut of the 1998-2005 bowl game theme (one that had usually been used during studio shows in the past). Bowl Championship Series games aired on ESPN during this period were produced identically to Saturday Night Football productions, and used this same theme music arrangement. In 2012, the theme for all college football telecasts on both ESPN and ABC was changed to a heavily updated version of yet another one of ABC's 1998-2005 themes (this one had usually been used for intro teasers in the past). However, unlike previous SNF themes, this theme was a completely new recording, using the tune of the 1998-2005 song as the base. In 2015, ABC began using the same theme used by all ESPN college football productions since the 2014-15 New Years' Six bowl games. The theme was later revamped in 2020. Starting with the addition of the conference in 2024, Saturday Night Football games that feature SEC home games will use the SEC on ABC theme, a modernized version of ESPN's college football theme from the 2000s, composed by Bob Christianson,.