ESPN Goal Line & ESPN Bases Loaded was a gametime-only

cable channel Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

operated by

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

which operated from the start of the 2010 college football season until the end of the 2019 college football season. The channel was active during two

college sports College athletics encompasses non- professional, collegiate and university-level competitive sports and games. World University Games The first World University Games were held in 1923. There were originally called the ''Union Nationale de ...

seasons; during

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

season as ESPN Goal Line and through the NCAA Division I Softball Championship for

college softball College softball is softball as played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education, predominantly in the United States. College softball is normally played by women at the Intercollegiate level, whereas college baseball is nor ...

and NCAA Division I Baseball Championship for

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

as ESPN Bases Loaded. In both cases, the coverage provided live look-ins and analysis of multiple games in progress. The coverage switched between games to show interesting defensive plays and scoring drives, such as offensive teams entering the red zone (football) or with

runners in scoring position In the sport of baseball, a baserunner is said to be in scoring position when they are on second or third base. The distinction between being on first base and second or third base is that a runner on first can usually only score if the batter ...

(baseball/softball). Goal Line aired during the regular season on Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. ET to approximately 11:30 p.m. It also ran throughout the

playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eit ...

as an alternate feed for Megacast coverage, usually as a "datacast" feed of extended data. The network was occasionally simulcast on

ESPNews ESPNews (pronounced "ESPN News", stylized ESPNEWS) is an American multinational digital cable and satellite television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company (which owns ...

in the late afternoon or early evening when that channel was not carrying its own games. Bases Loaded operated during the early rounds of the NCAA Softball & Baseball Championship. At its launch, the channel was made available to customers of

Time Warner Cable Time Warner Cable, Inc. (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was acquired by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, opera ...

and

Bright House Networks Bright House Networks, LLC also simply known as Bright House, was an American telecom company. Prior to its purchase by Charter Communications, it was the tenth-largest multichannel video service provider and the 6th largest cable internet prov ...

systems, and became available soon after to customers of Verizon FiOS TV. In addition, the channel is also carried on

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

Cox Communications Cox Communications, Inc. (also known as Cox Cable and formerly Cox Broadcasting Corporation, Dimension Cable Services and Times-Mirror Cable) is an American digital cable television provider, telecommunications and home automation services. It i ...

Charter Communications Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribe ...

Sling TV Sling TV is an American streaming television service operated by Sling TV LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dish Network. Unveiled on January 5, 2015, at the Consumer Electronics Show, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor a ...

Cablevision Cablevision Systems Corporation was an American cable television company with systems serving areas surrounding New York City. It was the fifth-largest cable provider and ninth-largest television provider in the United States. Throughout its e ...

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television series ...

and

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...

. During the network's downtime, it would promote the next week or event that would air with a still card and a loop of ESPN's college football theme of the time as background audio; cable providers were disallowed from using the channel space for other purposes. The channel formerly operated a third iteration of the service in the same channel space during the

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

season known as ESPN Buzzer Beater, which broadcast on Wednesday nights and Saturdays from December to early March. In July 2017, ESPN announced that it had discontinued Buzzer Beater, in order to "shift resources to better position ourselves for the long-term". The Goal Line and Bases Loaded services were not affected by this change. Officially, the network's last program was the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship on January 13, 2020, when it again carried the DataCast channel for ESPN's Megacast coverage.

Network closing

The 2020 version of Bases Loaded would never occur, due to the coronavirus pandemic causing the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA baseball and softball seasons, including their associated

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

and softball tourneys; the cancellation was announced on March 12, 2020. One day after on March 13, Disney Media Distribution sent notice to providers that the network would be discontinued on June 30, 2020, with notice of it relayed to customers between late May and mid June. The discontinuation was thought of as a foregone conclusion, as ESPN pushes viewers to its streaming service,

ESPN+ ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The c ...

, which allows the customer the choice of following any ESPN/ABC-aired game at their own pace, along with overall network cutbacks of extraneous wireline networks and connected on-air staff. With no other programming to promote, the channel space merely carried a looping video of the ESPN logo and audio of the network's default NCAA championship theme in the background after March 13, until the network feed was quietly dropped at 11:59 p.m. ET on June 30, 2020.

Network closing

References

See also