The United Football League wraps up its second season in its current form Saturday night with its championship game. That’s sparked some discussions around what this version of spring football has brought. And one particular figure associated with it, ESPN/ABC field analyst Tom Luginbill, would love to see one of its innovations in particular brought over to college football.
This UFL championship game, between the Michigan Panthers and DC Defenders, will air on ABC beginning at 8 p.m. ET. It will also be available on ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes, with ESPN+ including an option for an AudioCast alternate viewing experience in addition to the main broadcast. And it comes after some other UFL coverage on ESPN, including a surprise MVP announcement on SportsCenter Friday:
Congratulations to 2025 #UFL MVP award winner, Bryce Perkins 🎉
Friday on @SportsCenter, @TheUFL co-owner Dany Garcia surprised the @USFLPanthers’ QB with the award pic.twitter.com/PZnDatHPcI
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) June 13, 2025
The main broadcast for Saturday’s championship game will feature the top ABC/ESPN UFL team of Joe Tessitore and Jordan Rodgers in the booth. It will also have Luginbill and Sam Acho again reprising their roles as field analysts. Those field analysts spoke to Awful Announcing last week ahead of the UFL’s conference championship games, emphasizing the tremendous access they’re able to provide viewers with in this role.
There, Luginbill added that the UFL-granted access goes beyond what field analysts can do from the sidelines, with perhaps the most powerful access of all being the way the league lets viewers at home see officiating reviews. And he thinks that should be applied elsewhere, including on the college football broadcasts he’s spent more than a decade working on.
“If there’s one area of this league that absolutely needs to bleed into college football, it’s the transparency of officiating reviews,” Luginbill said. “There is absolutely no reason or excuse, in my opinion, that that should not be a part of college football broadcasts.”
Luginbill said key benefits of that transparency include discussions of just what the review conversations are, what the time is being spent on, and how the ultimate call isn’t necessarily as obvious as it might seem. And he feels showing that process more might benefit college football fans the way it has UFL fans.
“What’s the complaint in college football about officiating? It’s ‘Why is this taking seven minutes? And why is this taking so long? And what is it? What are they discussing? It’s clear as day.’ Well, the reality is it’s rarely clear. Today, most of the fans probably don’t know the mechanics and the details of how the call is being determined.”
For Luginbill, this kind of access is important not just to educate fans, but also to get officials on record (something rarely seen at many levels) with their rationale for their decisions. And he thinks both those elements would improve fan perceptions of officials.
“When you allow that to be public, you create a greater appreciation on behalf of the fan for the officials. Because officials take a lot of heat, right? And if you look at any sport, what is the one group that never has to stand at the podium? It’s the officials. Well, they don’t need to in this league because you just heard them in great detail.”
Luginbill said in the UFL in particular, these reviews have often gone very rapidly.
“The thing that’s amazing about it is how quickly it happens. I mean, they are on it in the blink of an eye.”
And he believes showing off the process here would lead to much less post-game controversy than what we’ve often seen, including after several ACC games last year.
“I don’t want to pick on anybody here, but the conference that could have utilized this more than anybody else in college football last year was the ACC. The ACC had some moments that were head-scratching: even to this day, people are trying to figure out how the Miami-Cal game was not targeting. People are still trying to figure out the end of the Virginia Tech-Miami game.
“But what if you had this mechanism in college football? You wouldn’t have anywhere near the pushback, you wouldn’t have anywhere near the people screaming to the rooftops. So I think that’s an area of this league that can adapt and can morph into other levels.
The UFL’s current video review approach grew out of one of its predecessor leagues, the 2020-launched version of the XFL. (That version of the XFL merged with the USFL in the fall of 2023, launching the combined UFL ahead of the 2024 season.) The XFL replay approach won praise in both its COVID-shortened 2020 season and in its 2023 comeback. And Luginbill said while officials in that league were worried about the idea when it was proposed in December 2019 league meetings, but quickly came to see the benefits of this transparency once play began.
“I distinctly remember the officials being very, very concerned about being put up to the scrutiny. But they had it all wrong. What they didn’t realize is revealing this stuff by revealing these calls and how you come to the end result, it actually helped them. It made them look good. It made them look professional. You got more detail as to why the call was happening.”
Luginbill said that educational element is a key part of why showing these reviews to fans matters.
“I think that’s the biggest thing: [fans] don’t understand why a call is made, like ‘How could you make that call?’ Well, if you listen to the mechanics, you’d have a much better understanding. And maybe you would react more favorably or differently towards an official than maybe you normally do now. And I think [the officials] came to find that out: ‘Wait a minute, this is a real positive thing for us.’”
Indeed, Luginbill thinks the extra transparency of showing fans these reviews could benefit sports and officials well beyond the gridiron.
“I’m not just talking about football, I’m talking about all sports. Because I think it’s healthy. I think it creates a genuine appreciation, which is good for everybody involved.”
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