Category: Music

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Bowl season is finally upon us. The 2025 NCAA football regular season has come to an end and the first round of college football playoff games are here. As we enter into week 17, there are plenty of hard-hitting matchups to tune into this week, including Oklahoma vs. Alabama, Texas A&M vs. Miami, Ole Miss vs. Tulane and Oregon vs. James Madison.

With most playoff football games broadcasting on ESPN and ABC, watching college sports may be easier than ever. With so many options for streaming NCAA football games online, here’s our guide to catch your favorite team’s games without cable (and for free) in 2025-26.

Keep scrolling to also see the full schedule and times for 2025-26 NCAA football playoff season as well.

What TV Networks Feature College Football?

NCAA college football games broadcast across multiple networks, such as ABC, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS, CBS Sports Network, The CW, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, Fox, Fox Sports, NBC, SEC Network and truTV.

Where to Watch NCAA Football for Free

For cord-cutters, there are a few ways to watch NCAA Football, if you don’t have cable, especially if you want to watch for free. DirecTV has a five-day free trial, while other streaming services, such as Fubo, also offer free trials, so you can watch your favorite teams play for free.

Keep reading for more details on how to watch NCAA Football with DirecTV, Fubo and others.

A subscription to DirecTV — which comes with ABC, ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS, CBS Sports Network, The CW, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, Fox, Fox Sports, NBC, SEC Network and truTV — gets you access to live TV, local and cable channels, starting at $49.99 for the first month $89.99 per month afterwards. The service even offers a five-day free trial to watch for free, if you sign up now.

You can watch local networks such as PBS, while you can also watch many cable networks, including Lifetime, FX, AMC, A&E, Bravo, BET, MTV, Paramount Network, Cartoon Network, VH1, Fuse, CNN, Food Network, CNBC and many others.

To watch NCAA Football, Fubo starts at $54.99 for the first month of service $84.99 per month afterwards with nearly 235 channels — including local and cable — that are streamable on smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and on web browsers. And with a seven-day free trial, you can watch for free, if you act fast and sign up now.

The service even gets you live access to local broadcast networks including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, while it also has dozens of cable networks, such as ACC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS Sports Network, The CW, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, Fox Sports, SEC Network and truTV and much more.

ESPN Unlimited is the official streaming platform for ESPN, and a subscription includes instant access to games and more exclusive content for $29.99 per month. You can save almost 17% off by purchasing an annual subscription for $299.99 per year. There is no free ESPN Unlimited trial, but it does include exclusive on-demand videos and access to content from what was formerly known as ESPN Insider.

With prices starting at just $4.99 for a day pass, Sling TV includes ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN 3 (for ABC simucast) with it Sling Orange and Sling Orange + Blue packages — which features dozens of channels that can be streamed on up to three devices at the same time. Sling Orange + Blue features FS1 and the NFL Network too.

For the most content options, Hulu + Live TV gives you access to the entire Hulu library in addition to more than 95 live TV channels — including ESPN and ABC for just $82.99 per month.

And, unlike the rest of the options, you can also expand your content library by bundling Hulu + Live TV with Disney+ and ESPN Unlimited. You’ll not only have all of the Hulu library to watch, but also exclusive and original programming available exclusively on ESPN Unlimited.

List of Every 2025-26 College Football Bowl Game

Check out the full schedule, TV channels, matchup information and more below (all times ET).

Tuesday, Dec. 16

Salute to Veterans Bowl

Wednesday, Dec. 17

Cure Bowl

68 Ventures Bowl

Thursday, Dec. 18

Xbox Bowl

Friday, Dec. 19

Myrtle Beach Bowl

Gasparilla Bowl

College Football Playoff First Round Game

Saturday, Dec. 20

College Football Playoff First Round Game

College Football Playoff First Round Game

College Football Playoff First Round Game

Monday, Dec. 22

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Tuesday, Dec. 23

Boca Raton Bowl

New Orleans Bowl

Frisco Bowl

Wednesday, Dec. 24

Hawai’i Bowl

Friday, Dec. 26

GameAbove Sports Bowl

Rate Bowl

First Responder Bowl

Saturday, Dec. 27

Military Bowl

Pinstripe Bowl

Fenway Bowl

Pop-Tarts Bowl

Arizona Bowl

New Mexico Bowl

Gator Bowl

Texas Bowl

Monday, Dec. 29

Birmingham Bowl

Tuesday, Dec. 30

Independence Bowl

Music City Bowl

Alamo Bowl

Wednesday, Dec. 31

ReliaQuest Bowl

Sun Bowl

Citrus Bowl

Las Vegas Bowl

College Football Playoff Quarterfinal

Thursday, Jan. 1

College Football Playoff Quarterfinal

College Football Playoff Quarterfinal

College Football Playoff Quarterfinal

Friday, Jan. 2

Armed Forces Bowl

Liberty Bowl

Duke’s Mayo Bowl

Holiday Bowl

Thursday, Jan. 8

College Football Playoff Semifinal

Friday, Jan. 9

College Football Playoff Semifinal

Monday, Jan. 19

College Football Playoff National Championship Game

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

It can be hard to shop for the holidays, with all the different personalities you’re shopping for and the countless deals seemingly available online. So this year, let ShopBillboard do the hard work for you and suggest some fool-proof gifts that are sure to surprise and delight any recipient on your list.

From gifts for music fans to tech-savvy gadgets and celebrity favorites, these gift ideas are at once unique and unexpected. Take it from someone who reuses these gifting items every year — whether you’re shopping for family, friends or for a holiday get together, you can’t go wrong with wrapping one of these presents to put under the tree.

Check out out guide to easy, foolproof Christmas gifts below.

Ray J is doubling down on his assertion that Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner have engaged in racketeering, saying in a new court filing that their family business empire is “a criminal enterprise akin to the mob.”

The Friday (Dec. 12) filing is the latest salvo in a salacious legal battle that began with Kardashian and Jenner suing Ray J for defamation after they say he falsely talked about them being investigated for racketeering on both a TMZ broadcast and Twitch livestream. The R&B singer countersued, accusing Kardashian of intentionally leaking their infamous sex tape back in 2007.

Ray J (William Ray Norwood Jr.) is now asking a Los Angeles judge to throw out the defamation allegations under California’s anti-SLAPP law, which bars meritless litigation that tramples on free speech. The singer says the claims will fail because, at the time he went on TMZ and Twitch, he genuinely believed Kardashian and Jenner had violated the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

“To me, Kim and Kris have repeatedly engaged in a criminal enterprise and racketeering activity, violating RICO over and over again. I have no doubt about that,” writes Ray J in his Friday declaration. “Every time someone does something the Kardashians don’t like, they use their money and power to silence them. The Kardashian enterprise has made billions of dollars off their racketeering activities.”

Ray J’s filing then makes a very 2025 assertion: that his beliefs about the Kardashian family’s supposed racketeering activity were confirmed by ChatGPT. He says that when prompted with his claims against the family — including that they lied about the 2007 sex tape and extorted him into signing a fraudulent settlement agreement — the AI chatbot responded that he had a “strong” case for RICO.

This unusual argument is a creative one for clearing the “actual malice” threshold of libel law, in which a plaintiff must show that their defamer lied on purpose. AI chatbots like ChatGPT have often been criticized for being overly sycophantic, meaning they tend to echo back what you tell them. This can have the effect of entrenching false beliefs, which could theoretically make someone like Ray J believe they were telling the truth, even if a statement was actually specious.

Ray J’s Friday court filing also argues that regardless of whether he really believed what he said on TMZ and Twitch, the defamation claims should be thrown out because the broadcasts were not intended to be “taken seriously or at face value.”

“Norwood is also widely known as a successful ‘troll’ — a person who engages in provocation, insults people and talks a lot of ‘smack’ online,” writes his attorney, Howard King, in the anti-SLAPP motion. “‘Trolling’ is not slander; rather, it is a skill that streamers (like Norwood) wield to generate public discourse and create chaos which, in turn, increases viewership, online following, popularity and influence.”

Reps for Kardashian and Jenner did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday (Dec. 15). Their lawyer, Alex Spiro, has previously written in court filings that Ray J’s RICO claims are “blatantly false” and aimed merely at “reviving his own fading notoriety.”

Dionne Warwick is facing a lawsuit claiming the legendary singer has turned her back on a rights management company that negotiated her deal for the famed sample of her song “Walk on By” in Doja Cat‘s chart-topping hit “Paint the Town Red.”

In a case filed Monday (Dec. 15), a company called Artists Rights Enforcement Corp. says it’s repped Warwick for years “at great effort and expense” on tricky issues, ranging from the recent Doja sample to a 2002 lawsuit against Atlantic Records. But the company says she’s now trying to back out.

“After decades of service, Ms. Warwick is now trying to evade paying Artists Rights hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars,” the company’s lawyers write. “In so doing, she has violated her contracts with Artists Rights.”

Artists Rights says it provided its services to Warwick for years “at no cost to her,” assuming all the risk and upfront costs. In return, it says she agreed in 2002 to pay the company a 50 percent cut of any money recovered through the enforcement efforts — and to do so “in perpetuity.”

Such arrangements are not unheard of in the music industry, which confronts many artists, even legendary stars, with a thicket of complicated rights deals with a slew of different companies. They mirror contingency deals employed by some law firms, which represent plaintiffs for free with the hope of a big payoff in court.

Warwick’s arrangement worked well for both sides for years, according to Artists Rights, resulting in more than $2.5 million in revenue and a “sixtyfold” increase in royalty distributions from her record companies, according to the lawsuit. But in recent years, Warwick has “increasingly expressed her desire to stop paying Artists Rights,” the company says; in September, her lawyers allegedly reached out to “terminate” the agreement entirely.

“Artists Rights has performed all of its obligations under the contracts,” the company’s lawyers write. “Ms. Warwick has wrongfully and unreasonably repudiated the contracts.”

Among its work for Warwick, Artists Rights says it handled a 2002 lawsuit against Atlantic and others over the royalties to her chart-topping 1974 hit “Then Came You.” When the case finally settled in 2004, and Warwick was “finally was able to receive some of the royalties that she justly deserved,” the settlement deal signed by the star allegedly required that royalties be routed through Artists Rights.

The company says it later handled issues with SoundExchange, as well as a complicated matter involving Sony Music paying her royalties to the state of California to satisfy unpaid taxes, among other disputes. Then in 2023, Artists Rights says it handled the clearance of a sample of Warwick’s “Walk On By” in Doja’s “Paint,” which spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 and 37 overall weeks on the chart: “Ms. Warwick profited enormously from Artists Rights’ work,” the lawsuit reads.

A rep for Warwick did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday. Doja Cat, Atlantic Records and others mentioned in the lawsuit were not named as defendants nor accused of any wrongdoing.