With the start of basketball season in sight, the few remaining holes in the UNC Men’s Basketball calendar are starting to get filled. After learning the approximate dates of their ACC Schedule two weeks ago, fans started to have a better idea about when to plan to watch the Tar Heels. As usual, though, some things continued to be up in the air, but deadlines tend to bring results.

Tomorrow, tickets for the CBS Sports Classic go on sale to the general public and due to this, it seems like the organizers decided it was time to announce when the actual game times for the two matchups would be.

As a reminder, with UCLA and Ohio State now both in the Big Ten, things were juggled around to make sure the two conference foes didn’t face each other. There was some question about how the arrangement would continue going forward, but they were answered when the matchups were revealed in May. UCLA will no longer be a part of the event, and in their place the Big East’s own St. John’s will compete. Sure enough, CBS took advantage of the former Kentucky coach leading the New York City team and paired them up with the Wildcats. Carolina thus takes on Ohio State, a team they haven’t seen in the event since 2022.

The surprise came in the game times. Fans had gotten used to the first game occurring in late afternoon with the second game occurring in the early evening. This year, however, the game times have been moved around.

On Tuesday, CBS announced that the first game will be Kentucky and St. John’s tipping off at 12:30 PM, and then UNC and Ohio State will tip after the conclusion — which will be at approximately 3 PM.

Why the change? Well, while CBS won’t say it, the schedule on this Saturday has dramatically changed. It used to be the first real Saturday that was clear of college football as Championship weekend was done and Army/Navy had been played. Yes, they had to contend with the NFL in some form or fashion, but those games tended to go to cable and CBS would have a marquee event to themselves before the holidays. Now, though, the CFP has picked that weekend to be the first round of the playoffs and in what can almost be seen as spite, the NFL now puts a couple of big Saturday Matchups on broadcast TV. The kickoffs on Fox will be at 4:30 and 8 PM Eastern, so it’s pretty clear that CBS is looking to avoid any sort of overlap with the behemoth that is the NFL.

So, if you are planning on going to Atlanta and for years you had built your schedule around not having to be at the arena until the middle of the afternoon, that has now changed. We’ll see what the new start times do for the ratings, as in this new age of NIL and revenue sharing there’s a feeling that these type of multi-team events are a relic of the past and moving back to home-and-home games — much like the trip Kansas is making to Chapel Hill this fall — is more the direction of where things will go.

This year’s CBS Sports Classic will be played in Atlanta at State Farm Arena, where they played it in 2023.