Is college football on Sling TV?

Sling TV app icon on Apple TV. — Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

As spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall, you might find yourself trying to figure out whether college football is on Sling TV. Fair question.

The answer is yes, college football is on Sling TV. How much college football is on Sling TV, though? That depends on a few things, and it’s going to require further explanation. Because Sling TV is not the most simple of streaming services.

First, we have to talk about how Sling TV works. It’s based on two main tracks of channels—Sling Orange and Sling Blue. You can subscribe to one or the other, but Sling has priced them so that there’s a very good chance you’ll just go ahead and get both. It’s also structured the two tracks so that each has channels you’ll want — including when it comes to watching college football on Sling TV.

If you were only to pick one of the two tracks for college football on Sling TV, however, you’d want it to be Sling Orange because it’s the one that has ESPN, ESPN 2, and ESPN 3.

But the Sling Orange and Sling Blue tracks only have so many channels, and those channels are fewer than what you’ll get on other services that cost more upfront. You’ll want to turn to the Sling TV Sports Extras to augment those.

This part’s important: There are different extras depending on whether you’ve opted for Sling Orange, or Sling Blue. So depending on which channels are important to you, you might want one or the other. Or both.

Here’s what we mean as of early 2024:

The Sling Orange Sports Extra (which costs $11 a month) includes SEC Network, ACC Network, Longhorn Network, ESPNU, SEC Network+, ACC Network X, ESPNews, MLB Network, NBA TV, beIN Sports, Tennis Channel, NHL Network, and MLB Strike Zone.

The Sling Blue Sports Extra (which also costs $11 a month) includes NFL RedZone, Big 10 Network, FS2, Golf Channel, NHL Network, NBA TV, beIN Sports, MLB Network, Tennis Channel, and MLB Strike Zone.

Now, chances are that much of the college football you’d want to watch will be covered by Sling Orange and the Sling Orange Sports Extra. But there may be something on FS2 and that’d require another subscription.

Or — and this is another big one — the college football you want to watch may be on one of your local broadcast networks, and that’s a totally separate conversation. Sling TV does have local channels, but there are some major caveats. The short version is that it very much depends on where you live. And even then, it might not have all your local channels. That’s because ABC, NBC, and Fox aren’t covered by Sling TV across the board — and CBS isn’t available at all.

To make up for that, Sling TV has something it calls AirTV, which really is just a Sling-branded over-the-air tuner that ties into your Sling app to put your local channels alongside everything else you’re getting on Sling TV. It’s clunky, but it works. But it may also send you looking for an easier option for college football that includes everything in one place.

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