College Football

ESPN’s College Football Playoff coverage makes for a miserable, negative experience

College campuses hosted FBS playoff games for the first time this weekend. But instead of celebrating the first-of-its-kind matchups and incredible scenes, ESPN spent the entire weekend bashing schools, criticizing fans, and generally making it a miserable experience.

It started Friday night when Cinderella Story Indiana played Notre Dame in the first playoff game in South Bend. Indiana coach Curt Cignetti failed to back up his pre-game trash talk and the Hoosiers lost to the Fighting Irish 27-17. The ten-point margin was flattering to Indiana, but by the end of the telecast, you would think you were watching a replay of Georgia beating TCU 65-7 in the national championship game a couple of years ago.

Never one to hide his opinion, ESPN play-by-play person Sean McDonough got the anti-party started late in the fourth quarter. With the game well out of reach, instead of focusing on the amazing job Cignetti did in taking a team ranked 17th in the Big Ten preseason poll to the playoff, McDonough instead questioned Indiana’s worthiness of making it in the first place.

If that wasn’t enough, McDonough then decided to throw the entire Big Ten as a conference under the bus in bemoaning the stranglehold that the Power 2 have over college football.

Imagine you’re an Indiana fan watching that game. What would your response be to having the best season in school history wadded up and thrown in a trashcan like that? It probably wouldn’t make you feel great. But it was just the beginning of ESPN spending the entire weekend being the wicked stepmother trying to keep Cinderella locked up in the attic.

The next morning on College GameDay, Kirk Herbstreit piled on and went even further. He said that Indiana was outclassed, shouldn’t have been on the field, and that it was a mistake that the committee gave them a playoff berth instead of “other teams.”

But at least it wasn’t a knock on Indiana, according to him…

Who those “other teams” should have been Herbstreit did not say. Is it Alabama that who went 9-3 including a loss at Vanderbilt and could only muster 3 points against a 6-6 Oklahoma team? Is it three-loss Ole Miss that gave Kentucky its only Power Four win at home? Or maybe it’s three-loss South Carolina, who probably ended up with the best resume but lost to both Alabama and Ole Miss. Maybe it was two-loss Miami, as he hinted later in the program.

When Pat McAfee is emerging as the voice of reason asking to let all the games play out before issuing hot takes, you know things are getting weird.

It went from bad to worse when another at-large team, SMU, got soundly beaten by Penn State in Happy Valley. The Mustangs threw a pair of first-half pick-sixes in a game that was never really in doubt as the Nittany Lions rolled to a 38-10 victory.

Again, some of the network’s personalities (specifically those on the SEC Network side) were quick to tear into SMU’s playoff presence as a joke.

But were there any celebrations over the fact that SMU’s first season in the ACC resulted in their first playoff berth? The job done by Rhett Lashlee? Was there any credit given to Penn State and James Franklin for clutching up in a playoff game when his big-game resume is such a target? How about the white-out crowd at Penn State being one of the toughest environments in the sport?

Nope, just more gatekeeping from the likes of Paul Finebaum and Lane Kiffin from their couches at home.

At least the pearl-clutching was calmed down during Texas’ 38-24 win over Clemson since the Tigers won an automatic bid by winning the ACC. Besides, Clemson has been one of the most successful teams of the 2000s, so their spot in the in-crowd is safe. They already “belonged.”

But if the narratives were moving a certain pro-SEC, pro-brand name direction heading into the Tennessee-Ohio State game on Saturday night, they got blown up in a major way. At least they should have. But that wouldn’t have helped ESPN’s effort to crush the underdog and continue to treat the College Football Playoff as their own exclusive country club.

Ohio State dominated Tennessee from start to finish in a 42-17 trouncing, the most impressive performance of the first round. But again, instead of celebration, the game was used as a prop for Kirk Herbstreit to continue his totally bizarre feud with Buckeyes fans and share his frustrations about the state of college football fandom with everyone.

By saying 20% of one of the largest fanbases in sports were “lunatics” the message was clear. If you’re not on board with how Herbstreit or ESPN wants you to see it, you don’t belong.

But here’s what’s really curious. At no point during the blowout did Herbstreit give Tennessee the same energy that he gave to Indiana earlier in the day. There was no mention of Tennessee, an at-large selection by the way, being “outclassed” or perhaps ceding their spot to other teams who would have made for a better game. There was no discussion of whether Tennessee was a paper tiger or the truth that Indiana was more competitive in Columbus than the Volunteers were.

Instead, after the Tennessee game on SportsCenter with Linda Cohn, Herbstreit doubled down again with even more gatekeeping when asked for his one takeaway from the first-round games.

Herbstreit called out “fringe fans” once more for daring to value wins over who looks better getting off the bus, (someone please call Herm Edwards), and asked the committee not to listen to social media when making their selections next year, as if Warde Manuel and company are following the tweets of every Barstool campus affiliate to see who makes the best case for their school.

But at least he didn’t hit fans over the head with the tiresome “fat guys in their underwear living in their mother’s basements” gag. Nick Saban beat Herbstreit to that on Friday’s episode of College GameDay.

Once more, there was no mention of Tennessee because they are one of the haves. They have national championships, the SEC, and the preferred status at ESPN that comes along with it. They fit Herbstreit and ESPN’s definition of someone who belongs. It’s great to hold people in the sport accountable and not blindly be a cheerleader for everyone and everything, but why do it so selectively where only those outside the power players receive that treatment? And why put your own fans and viewers in the crosshairs?

And in case you were wondering, in the 24 hours after the Tennessee game, there were no tweets from Paul Finebaum bashing the CFP committee for giving the Volunteers the 8 seed and producing another “blockbuster.” Scott Van Pelt was the only ESPN person willing to go there.

What message does all of this send?

Well, if you watched ESPN all weekend long, you would think that the 12-team playoff was an abomination and an embarrassment for college football. You would think its fans are on the level of English soccer hooligans of the 1980s. And you would think there is no point playing any of these games and that we should just give things to teams that have great brand names who we “think” are “best.” You would believe college football is in a total crisis because it turns out it’s really hard to win a playoff game on campus.

(To be fair, maybe college football is in a crisis, but it’s certainly not because of all that.)

This was the defining theme from ESPN from the College Football Playoff weekend – the outsiders that lost are frauds and fans that care a little bit too much are sickos. And not in the fun Sickos Committee kind of way, either.

None of this is helpful or healthy. No other sport treats its fans or teams with such open disdain except for college football, specifically if this is how ESPN operates. It’s a direction of tribalism, of haves and have-nots, and where anyone who is not part of a 10-year, $3 billion deal is not a big enough box office attraction to be part of the show.

Maybe someone should tell ESPN that college football has never been more popular and that there are great stories and terrific positives to consider and promote?

Hopefully, after this weekend, ESPN will take a long look inwardly and ask themselves if this is really where they want to take College Football Playoff coverage, and the sport as a whole. Because there must be a better way than the constant drumbeat of negativity they peddled this past weekend.

Do you know why America loves March Madness so much? It’s because we don’t spend hours trying to re-litigate who got in and who didn’t once the tournament begins. We celebrate Cinderella instead of trying to tar and feather her. And we have fun. We celebrate the beauty of it all and why we love sports in the first place.

Maybe ESPN’s College Football Playoff coverage should take the hint and do likewise.

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