TV contracts in college sports have been crazy in the last few years. There have been a lot of musical chairs going on with the conference contracts. Things are finally settled as far as which conferences are found on which networks. The Louisville football team is on the ESPN family of networks along with every other ACC team.
The first Cardinals game was on ACC Network, which is owned by ESPN. Most of the games they play this weekend will be on either ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2, or ACC Network. If you have DirecTV and use that to watch all of the Louisville games, that could be a problem.
DirecTV has pulled all of Disney's family of channels from its platforms. That includes all of the channels I just mentioned. They do so right as the college football season is getting started because of a contract dispute with Disney. It seems every year these TV providers get into a dispute before football season starts.
Louisville football fans might need an alternative way to watch Cardinals games
There's no telling how long this dispute will last. They usually get resolved fairly soon because fans get mad at the carriers and there is a resolution found. But DirecTV lost Sunday Ticket last year and lost a ton of subscribers. They are trying to find a way to increase revenue so this could go on for a bit.
So how can you watch the Cardinals during this uncertain time if you own DirecTV? There are a few ways you can still see them. If the Cardinals end up playing on ABC, you can always watch them using an antenna or a Leaf that you can use to get all of the basic channels.
For other games on the family of networks, you can stream them live on FuboTV. That's a great option since your log-in to stream via DirecTV no longer works. There are some other ways you can watch the games for free via some other sites, but I'll let you Google that on your own.
Hopefully, this dispute is figured out soon so that everyone can enjoy the Louisville Cardinals.