The ESPN-NFL Media deal is a transformational one for the sports media industry. And one of the key pillars is the RedZone Channel.

The NFL’s RedZone has been one of the most influential and popular concepts in all of sports broadcasting. The DirecTV version launched with Andrew Siciliano in 2005, the NFL version with Scott Hanson arrived in 2009. And they have forever changed sports on television.

Simply put, the RedZone experience is as close to sports broadcasting heaven as you can achieve on planet earth. It’s non-stop action, it’s commercial free (for the most part), it’s all the big scores and highlights, and it’s all presented to the fan at home seamlessly without having to press a single button. The NFL is now more popular than ever. And while it’s impossible to quanitfy the impact of RedZone on that growth in fandom, it has certainly played its part.

But now with the ESPN-NFL Media deal, RedZone will become part of the Disney portfolio, although both sides will continue to share interest in it. As part of the equity deal, ESPN has gained the distribution rights to RedZone Channel and now can sell it and NFL Network alongside ESPN and other Disney channels to providers. The NFL will still operate the channel and hold on to its digital rights. That means you won’t see NFL RedZone alongside NFL Network in the new ESPN DTC platform.

But there’s another important element to the deal that can have a huge impact on sports fans for years to come. ESPN has also acquired the RedZone branding. As Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed to the Wall Street Journal, this branding opens the door for ESPN to launch new RedZone channels in the future for other sports.

As soon as you read those words, there should only be one thought that enters your head – a College Football RedZone Channel.

The ink is barely dry on the ESPN-NFL agreement and it still has to meet regulatory approval, so any concrete plans for RedZone expansion could be months or years away. But for football fans, it’s impossible to ignore the tremendous opportunities that await with college football live look-in programming thanks to ESPN owning the RedZone brand.

Believe it or not, something similar actually did exist once upon a time in the 2010s as ESPN Goal Line, but the channel shut down in 2020. So the blueprint is already there. It would just be a matter of figuring out what could fall within a potential ESPN College Football RedZone package.

The easiest and most efficient model would be an SEC RedZone channel that could show highlights and live look-ins from each game throughout the day. It wouldn’t be complicated as ESPN is the sole rights partner for the SEC and already has all of their rights in house. A further expansion of the concept to other leagues that ESPN is in relationship with could bring on board the ACC, Big 12, and other Group of Five conferences. If the network was able to include conferences it has relationships with through ESPN+, the look-in and highlight potential could be endless.

Of course, the elephant in the room would be the involvement of the Big Ten, which has contracts with NBC, CBS, and Fox… not ESPN. However, maybe we can hold out hope for one day in the not far too distant future when peace can exist in our land and all of major college football can exist under one neat and tidy RedZone umbrella.

Other sports and leagues have tried their hand at the RedZone concept. The NBA does it with NBA GameTime. ESPN and the NHL have done it with their Frozen Frenzy. But no sport fits the motif as perfectly as football does. A college football redzone channel would be one of the biggest gamechangers for sports fans in modern times. And now it’s a dream that may one day actually turn into a reality.