Astronaut Barry Wilmore made one request to NASA before he’s rocketed into orbit next month with two Russian cosmonauts: The SEC Network.

Thanks to a special arrangement, Wilmore, a former football player at Tennessee Tech and avid college football fan, is taking his Saturday passion with him on his third trip to space on Sept. 25.

“I don’t watch a lot of sports — my wife might not agree with that — but I do like to watch football, the SEC Game of the Week, and I try to catch Tech every chance I get,” Wilmore recently told The Tennessean.

Five weeks after Wilmore’s crew reaches the International Space Station, he’ll assume command of the expedition before taking space walks in January and February to adjust the station’s docking apparatus.

Wilmore, a Navy captain who has logged 259 hours in space, will return to Earth just in time for spring practice in March 2015. In the meantime, it doesn’t appear he’ll miss a minute of SEC action this fall.