We are into the dog days of summer, sports-viewing-wise. We got the World Cup going on, and that's great, and we have baseball. Those are surely the most-watched sports in the U.S. right at the moment.
And then you have the sports that are played every day or week over the summer, and if you're interested in those things, you already know about them: golf, tennis, MMA, boxing.
But what if you want to watch something else still? Or, what if you, like me, have a little sports hipster-contrarian in you and want to watch more niche sports, lesser events of the mainstream sports?
I got you covered. All times Eastern.
BIG3 Basketball: 2 PM Saturday, CBS
You remember BIG3 basketball, right? Co-founded by Ice Cube? First one to 50 wins? It continues to tick along. Dwight Howard, Lance Stephenson, Jeremy Pargo ,and Glen Rice, Jr. are some of the names you may recognize.
Indoor Football League: 3 PM and 7 PM, Yahoo! Sports Network
If you're jonesing for football and are (incorrectly) not into the CFL (who I don't include here only because I write about the CFL fairly frequently anyway), you have the Indoor Football League, which is pretty much the dominant indoor league right now.
Not familiar with Yahoo! Sports Network? It's a FAST Channel. FAST stands for "Free Ad-Supported Television." Some examples of where you can find FAST channels are Pluto TV, Roku Channels, and eight zillion others. Yahoo! Sports Network is on a lot of them. Fishers Freight at Green Bay Blizzard is at 3, San Antonio Gunslingers at Las Vegas Knight Hawks at 7.
Canadian Soccer
Unlike the MLS and the NWSL, the Canadian leagues did not take a break for the World Cup, so on the women's side you have the Halifax Tide taking on the Calgary Wild Saturday at 5 on ESPN+, and on the men's docket on Sunday we see Calvary FC (Calgary) taking on Supra Du Quebec on Fox Sports at 5 PM. The women's match gets bonus points for going head-to-head with a World Cup match.
The X Games
Is it just me, or were the X Games a bigger deal in the '90s and aughts? Well, they're in Sacramento this year, and ABC (Saturday at 2 PM) and ESPN (Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 7 PM) are all over it.
U20 Rugby World Cup
Is the U.S. gaining any ground on the rest of the world in Rugby Union? Find out on CBS Sports Network on Saturday. You'll have to get up really early (3 AM) to watch the Americans take on Argentina, but that's only the first of a quadruple-header which culminates with a match starting at 10:30 PM (Uruguay at South Africa).
Big League Wiffle Ball, 3:30 PM Sunday ESPN+
This might be my favorite listing, because while ESPNNews has "ESPN8: The Ocho" weird and niche events (beloved by me and written about in this space several times before) all weekend, they are carving this out as something separate, like they are really getting behind wiffle ball.
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