I think most people will be happy with the way this bidding war turned out: Fox Sports declined to match an offer from ESPN to televise Bowl Championship Series college football games from 2011 to 2014, the network announced Monday.Fox still has the rights for the next three years.
The Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar bowls will now reside on ESPN; the move also triggers a clause in the Rose Bowl's contract with the Disney/ABC/ESPN hydra that allows said hydra to move the Granddaddy to ESPN.
Upside: no more tortured Barry Alvarez and the BCS games move to a network that actually cares about college football year round. It was odd to turn on a BCS game only to get some weird smattering of announcers you've never seen before and endless cutaways to the band by a director obviously used to NFL games. Dude, check out those people with the funny hats. And they've got instruments! WE MUST EXPLORE THIS FASCINATING ODDITY.
And so forth and so on.
Downside: if you don't have cable you're out of luck. (But how can a serious sports fan exist without cable these days?) And if you're a playoff advocate this is another four years of the BCS mess.
(HT: Awful Announcing.)
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
It blew my mind that Fox could do such a poor job covering the BCS games. With their Fox Sports affiliates covering Pac 10 and Big 12 games throughout the year and Fox crews working for the BTN, they really should have had no problem putting together a competent product. I'm no fan of ESPN, but at least they know how to broadcast a football game.
Am I missing something here? We're happy that ESPN is enabling the BCS to stay alive? Why are people happy with this? It's time to put major league pressure on ESPN to change it to a playoff. Or are there still people in favor of the BCS?
Are they actually going to be on ESPN, or on ABC? All of ABC's games are broadcast under the "ESPN on ABC" agreement. Not that it makes much of a difference today, and it will probably make even less of a difference in 3 years.
I don't have cable, and I don't want cable (because it's a lot of money for a lot of stuff I don't want to watch and a few things I do want to watch), and it irritates me when major sporting events move to cable. Major events like top-tier bowl games should be on free tv.