Visions of college football danced in the heads of Tennessee Volunteers and Florida Gators fans as they plunked themselves down into the comfy confines of their easy chairs Saturday afternoon.

They were ready for some football, but what they got instead was sitcom reruns and Windsor Pilates exercise infomercials.

The game was the early portion of CBS’ Southeastern Conference TV football doubleheader last Saturday. Bangor CBS affiliate WABI (Channel 5) normally carries all CBS early afternoon Saturday telecasts, but does not air the late ones (3:30 p.m. starts) due to the likelihood the broadcasts will run into and over the station’s 6 p.m. newscast.

Usually, WABI allows Bangor station WBGR (Ch. 33) to air the late games WABI can’t carry.

There was no danger of the Tennessee-Florida game running late with a noon start time, but it still was not carried locally in the Bangor area despite no WABI conflicts.

“The gist of it is I didn’t know that wasn’t going to be on WBGR and it wasn’t Tennessee-Florida when we first rejected that game,” said WABI program director Steve Hiltz. “It was Georgia-LSU on the original schedule and Tennessee was at 3:30 p.m.”

The Georgia-LSU game was carried at 3:30 p.m. by WBGR, but the Tennessee-Florida game got lost in the shuffle.

“I was as surprised as anybody could be that it wasn’t on WBGR. When I got home Sunday, I was rather surprised to find out and I had a few messages at the office as well when I got in Monday morning,” Hiltz said. “It certainly wasn’t our intent to do that.”

Hiltz said Saturday’s noon game was the only one his station could clear, but he didn’t think it made sense to carry just the one game and opted to make it available to WBGR. The problem is WBGR is in the fourth year of carrying Big East Conference football each Saturday at noon and had no room for the SEC game.

“It came down to a series of miscommunications,” said Hiltz. “If I had been aware WBGR hadn’t been able to take that game, I probably would have gone back to our powers that be and suggested we do it. We would have had to move some things around to make it happen, but I think we could have done it.”

WABI will carry some games not normally carried later in the season, regardless of their start times, including a 2:30 p.m. Friday (after Thanksgiving) game, the Nov. 29 Florida-Florida State (3:30 p.m.), plus Army-Navy and the SEC title game on Dec. 6. Another potential scheduling snafu looms on Oct. 4, when the Florida-Mississippi game at 12:30 p.m. will not be carried by WABI.

The Awards Zone

Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) came away with two firsts and two seconds while sister station WDME (103.1 FM) in Dover-Foxcroft took a third at last weekend’s Maine Association of Broadcasters awards banquet.

The Sports Zone was first in the play-by-play category for coverage of University of Maine hockey with play-by-play man Dan Hannigan and analyst Larry Mahoney. Second went to WZON’s high school basketball tournament coverage team of Dale Duff and Jim Churchill for the Class A state title game between Bangor and Cheverus of Portland. Toby Nelson (play-by-play), Andy Conway (color) and Steve Cannon (support) earned the third for broadcasting the Foxcroft Academy-Boothbay Class C state football game.

WZON was first for sports features for a piece Duff did on UMaine hockey coach Tim Whitehead and second for a feature on UMaine quarterback Jake Eaton by Clem LaBree.

“I think it shows again that we have good team depth. If you look at all the names on the plaques, there are a lot of people represented by these awards,” said Dale Duff, program/sports director at WZON. “It’s a group effort and that’s shown especially on the play-by-play side.”

Brave new Internet

Saturday’s 1:30 p.m. football game between Husson College and Bluffton College in Ohio will be broadcast live by the Bluffton radio station and “streamed” live on the Internet at www.wdoh.com.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600, or aneff@bangordailynews.net