Brad Schwartz couldn\u2019t hide his excitement.<\/p>\n
Yes, the president of The CW was rooting for USF to upset Florida last week in Gainesville. No, he doesn\u2019t have any obvious ties to the school.<\/p>\n
The impetus for that interest? That\u2019d be because The CW is broadcasting this week\u2019s matchup between No. 5 Miami and No. 18 USF, the first contest in the network\u2019s brief sports history that will feature a pair of ranked teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was massive rooting,\u201d Schwartz quipped. \u201cI\u2019m not exaggerating, we talked about this as soon as they beat Boise [State in Week 1]. We were like, \u2018Can you imagine if they beat Florida?\u2019 We knew we had this game.\u201d <\/p>\n
There are big games this week, sure. ESPN\u2019s \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d is headed to Tennessee-Georgia. Texas A&M travels to Notre Dame for a contest on NBC\/Peacock.<\/p>\n
But on Saturday, arguably the biggest game of the week — USF at Miami — will run on The CW, a network perhaps better associated with sitcoms and reruns than the gridiron. <\/p>\n
How that happened is a longer story.<\/p>\n
The CW landing a high-profile matchup this week is the culmination of recent efforts by the network to further integrate into the sports world. Nexstar acquired The CW in 2022, and the network has since built sports offerings that include the ACC<\/a> and Pac-12<\/a> on the college side, along with properties such as NASCAR\u2019s Xfinity Series<\/a> and \u201cWWE NXT<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The ACC deal is of particular note this weekend. The four-year agreement that runs through next year was negotiated as part of a deal with Raycom, which sublicenses ACC events from ESPN. That results in what will be 13 ACC football games on The CW\u2019s airwaves this fall.<\/p>\n \u201cI always like to say, \u2018Broadcast television still has the widest reach of any platform in the United States,\u2019\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a spin. It\u2019s not an exaggeration. We have bigger reach than any cable channel. Broadcast still is the biggest reach. <\/p>\n \u201cThe product that actually takes the best advantage of that reach and the product that can bring the most amount of simultaneous viewers together at the same time is sports. Sports and broadcast are really made for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n That this week\u2019s USF-Miami game comes when it does marks a significant and convenient moment in the early history of The CW\u2019s college sports efforts. <\/p>\n Baylor\u2019s double-overtime win over SMU on the network peaked at 2.05 million viewers and averaged just over a million total, making it The CW\u2019s most-watched college football game in almost two years. The CW\u2019s Pac-12 broadcasts of Fresno State-Oregon State (4pm ET) and San Diego State-Washington State (10:15pm ET) each recorded north of 500,000 viewers. <\/p>\n USF-Miami should push, if not pass the Baylor-SMU game in viewership thanks to a 4:30pm ET kickoff, while The CW is rolling out the stops for the unique stage it\u2019s being afforded.<\/p>\n The CW\u2019s A-team of Thom Brennaman, Will Blackmon and Wes Bryant will be on the call. The game is also being promoted across all of Nexstar\u2019s stations this week. The company, too, is putting extra cash behind paid marketing efforts this week, while \u201cmaybe 90% of our promo inventory this week\u201d is going toward the game, Schwartz added.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re only two years into this,\u201d he said. \u201cI hate to use the old cliche, but we\u2019re just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Schwartz couldn\u2019t hide his excitement. Yes, the president of The CW was rooting for USF to upset…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[27228,64,63,594,596,85],"class_list":["post-131564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-acc","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}