Joel Klatt isn\u2019t blaming ESPN for what\u2019s happened to college football. He\u2019s just explaining why ESPN is the reason it happened.<\/p>\n
The Fox Sports analyst made the case on his eponymous podcast that the College Football Playoff has swallowed the sport\u2019s entire narrative whole and that ESPN, which is paying over a billion dollars annually for the rights, is doing exactly what any rational business would do.<\/p>\n
Klatt\u2019s network and the Worldwide Leader are currently locked in an extended proxy war over the future of the playoff format, with Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks endorsing a 24-team bracket<\/a>, specifically because anything beyond 14 teams would trigger open-market bidding and break\u00a0ESPN\u2019s monopoly on the postseason. And yet here is Fox\u2019s lead college football voice essentially telling you that if the roles were reversed, his network would do the exact same thing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to sit here and bash on ESPN,\u201d Klatt said. \u201cBecause if Fox had the 12-team playoff and we were the sole partner, guess what? We would focus all of our energy into maximizing the importance of that playoff. That\u2019s all ESPN has done. That\u2019s their job. They made a giant investment into the College Football Playoff \u2014 over a billion dollars annually \u2014 in order to televise the College Football Playoff. So, what should they do? Make it the most important thing possible; derive all meaning into that area of the season. So, they\u2019re doing exactly what they should do. This is not their fault. In a lot of cases, they built college football into what it is now. And now all they\u2019re doing is they\u2019re protecting their billion-dollar investment \u2014 as they should.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n ESPN pays $1.3 billion annually for CFP rights<\/a> through 2031, re-upping in February 2024 after a bidding process in which Fox reportedly made a significant bid<\/a> that ultimately didn\u2019t materialize. The network also owns SEC rights through 2034 and runs the SEC Network. ESPN does sublicense some games \u2014 TNT gets two first-round games and, starting in 2026, two quarterfinals and one semifinal annually through 2028 \u2014 but that\u2019s still fundamentally ESPN\u2019s deal to carve up. TNT is renting rights from Disney, not competing for them, which doesn\u2019t solve what Klatt is actually getting at.<\/p>\n And therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what has happened now is the weekly rankings, all the talk, and all the narrative. All it suggests is that if you\u2019re not within that \u2018Who\u2019s in?\u2019 model, then who cares?\u201d Klatt continued. \u201cAnd, yet, all of those programs are still expected to have this major investment from outside boosters in order to try to build a roster to get to that point, and it\u2019s really hard to get to that point.\u201d<\/p>\n The sport has reorganized its entire identity around a playoff that excludes most of it. Every Tuesday from October through conference championship weekend, the conversation narrows to whoever is in the bracket picture. The weekly ESPN rankings, which have drawn calls for abolishment from voices across the sport<\/a>, have effectively turned the sport\u2019s discourse into a 14-week \u201cwho\u2019s in, who\u2019s out\u201d exercise.\u00a0The 100-something programs that have no realistic path to the field exist primarily as r\u00e9sum\u00e9-building fodder for the teams that do. And yet the financial demands haven\u2019t gone anywhere for those programs. Schools are spending at historic levels to chase a postseason that the current structure makes extraordinarily difficult to reach, while the weekly television narrative tells their fans that if you\u2019re not in the picture, you don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n None of that, according to Klatt, is ESPN\u2019s fault, though. Even if he believes the network \u201cchose the wrong path when it comes to the presentation of this playoff,\u201d and that no postseason should belong exclusively to one television partner.<\/p>\n