LSU-Alabama won’t feature in CBS primetime this season

For their second straight trip to Tuscaloosa, the LSU Tigers will not be featured on the annual SEC on CBS prime time football broadcast.

For the SEC Football fans out there: pic.twitter.com/0n3N1EccsA

— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) May 26, 2021

The network has set aside Saturday, October 9 as the date for their mid-afternoon/prime time doubleheader this upcoming season. The SEC schedule that day includes defending national champion Alabama at Texas A&M, the likely target for nighttime selection by CBS. Meanwhile, LSU visits Kentucky that same day.

The SEC West battle between LSU and Alabama is set for November 6 at Bryant-Denny Stadium. On that day, CBS has a scheduled a Army-Air Force in the morning before the tradition weekly 2:30 p.m. SEC featured game kickoff.

While the Tigers and Crimson Tide were featured in the SEC on CBS night game last season (Alabama won 55-17) with LSU coming off of a national championship, this year it appears the network favors committing to featuring the rising program at A&M on their homefield versus the Tide rather than an LSU squad trying to bounce back from a disappointing 5-5 campaign in 2020.

In 2019, the network also passed on LSU at Alabama for their night game before season, instead choosing a non-conference matchup between Notre Dame at Georgia. The Tigers and Tide were ranked in the top three in the country (LSU won 46-41), and CBS did not try to deal with fellow SEC broadcast partner ESPN to engineer a trade to move the hotly-anticipated game to primetime like they did when LSU and Alabama were ranked numbers one and two in 2011.