• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 28, 2006

For the first time, Fox Sports plans to sell downloads of College Bowl football games in their entirety, the network said Wednesday. In addition, on Jan. 1, Fox will offer a live stream of the Cotton Bowl game for free.

The paid downloads will be available at a variety of sites, including Fox Sports on MSN, Fox Interactive Media's Direct2Drive, Apple's iTunes, Amazon's Unbox, AOL Video, CinemaNow and Instant Media. Games including the Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and BCS National Championship, will be available in their entirety for $2.99 each; in addition, Fox will sell preview shows and highlights programs for $1.99.

"Sports fans are consuming content on new and different platforms every day, and our goal is to expand the reach of Fox Sports and the BCS to as many of those media platforms as possible," Ed Goren, president of Fox Sports, said in a statement.

Most full-length games will be available for download within 24 hours of the game's end. In addition, some of the sites selling the downloads will allow people to pre-order games, starting today.

Other networks are also experimenting with paid sports downloads. This spring, CBS Sports and Apple sold full-length versions of the NCAA Basketball tournament semifinals and championship game on iTunes.