NFL Playoffs Continue; ESPN Punches Up ‘UFC 297’: What’s on This Weekend in TV Sports (Jan. 20-21)

Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs on December 10, 2023
The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs meet in an AFC divisional playoff rematch of their Dec. 10 regular season game. (Image credit: Ryan Kang/Getty Images)

This weekend’s schedule of live TV sports events begins on the gridiron with the NFL divisional playoff round.

Saturday’s NFL playoffs lineup features Houston Texans-Baltimore Ravens at 4:30 p.m. on ABC and ESPN and Green Bay Packers-San Francisco 49ers contest at 8:15 p.m. on Fox. On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Detroit Lions at 3 p.m. on NBC, while the Kansas City Chiefs travel to Buffalo to face the Bills at 6:30 p.m. on CBS. 

In the octagon, ESPN will distribute the UFC 297 pay-per-view event featuring a main event bout between middleweight champion Sean Strickland and Dricus Du Plessis. The co-main event features a women’s bantamweight fight between Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva. 

In men’s college basketball, top-ranked UConn faces Big East rival Villanova on FS1, second-ranked Purdue faces Iowa on FS1, third-ranked Kansas plays West Virginia on ESPN Plus, fourth-ranked North Carolina travels to Boston College on The CW and fifth-ranked Houston battles UCF on ESPN Plus

Sunday’s women’s college basketball lineup includes top-ranked South Carolina battling Texas A&M on SEC Network, second-ranked Iowa meeting Big Ten rival Ohio State on NBC, third-ranked Colorado facing No. 6 USC on Pac-12 Network, and fourth-ranked North Carolina State hosting Duke on ACC Network.

ESPN2 will offer weekend third and fourth-round action from tennis’s Australian Open, while NBC and Golf Channel will offer weekend late-round coverage of the LPGA Tournament of Champions.

R. Thomas Umstead

R. Thomas Umstead serves as senior content producer, programming for Multichannel News, Broadcasting + Cable and Next TV. During his more than 30-year career as a print and online journalist, Umstead has written articles on a variety of subjects ranging from TV technology, marketing and sports production to content distribution and development. He has provided expert commentary on television issues and trends for such TV, print, radio and streaming outlets as Fox News, CNBC, the Today show, USA Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio. Umstead has also filmed, produced and edited more than 100 original video interviews, profiles and news reports featuring key cable television executives as well as entertainers and celebrity personalities.