College football is a sport made for — and by — upsets, especially late in the season.
Last year, Auburn upset Alabama, preventing what felt like an inevitable clash between the Crimson Tide and Florida State for the last BCS championship.
Two years ago, Oregon lost to Stanford late in the season, enabling Alabama to face Notre Dame for the BCS title.
Also two years ago, another game helped push Bama into the BCS National Championship Game: Kansas State at Baylor. The Bears ambushed Collin Klein and the Wildcats. That result, coupled with Stanford’s dumping of the Ducks, gave Nick Saban a chance to win a third national title in Tuscaloosa and his fourth overall.
It is therefore a delicious irony that in 2014, “Kansas State at Baylor” has once again provided an upset for college football fans and television viewers… or at least, something which seems like an upset.
Here’s the news, via ESPN:
Waco: you're up next. @CollegeGameDay will see you this weekend. Can't wait! @BaylorAthletics
— Lee Fitting (@leefitting) November 30, 2014
At first glance, this appears to be a highly improbable occurrence, an “upset” in a broadcasting sense.
You mean to tell me that ESPN has spurned both the mighty SEC and defending national champion Florida State on Championship Weekend?
You mean to say that Chris Fowler — who said that “one of the best things for ESPN would be if the Big Ten were a dominant conference” — will not go to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship Game between Ohio State and Wisconsin?
Why?
It’s quite smart for ESPN to do this. It’s also logistically convenient.
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First of all, let’s deal with the logistics of the move. There are only a handful of particularly big games on the final college football Saturday of every season. With Fowler being a game broadcaster in addition to GameDay’s host, it quickly becomes apparent why ESPN did what it ultimately chose to do.
With CBS getting the SEC Championship Game broadcast, that was unavailable for Fowler to call. FOX has the Big Ten Championship Game, so that was also unavailable for Fowler as a broadcast assignment. Would ESPN have wanted to fly Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit from one game location to another when it could have just set up shop at one location for both GameDay and game night?
There was only one realistic option for ESPN involving a plane flight for Fowler and Herbie from the GameDay site to the location for their game broadcast: Putting GameDay in Atlanta for the SEC title game and then shuttling Chris and Kirk to nearby Charlotte for the ACC Championship Game between Florida State and Georgia Tech. Anything else would have represented a more daunting logistical undertaking.
If ESPN didn’t feel an Atlanta-to-Charlotte schedule for Fowler and Herbstreit was the best plan, the WorldWide Leader had two choices: Charlotte (ACC) or Waco (Kansas State-Baylor) for both GameDay and the night’s game broadcast.
Why does it make complete sense for ESPN to choose Waco over Charlotte and feature the Big 12? One needs to look beyond Saturday.
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Here’s the biggest reason why it makes sense for ESPN to put GameDay in Waco for Kansas State-Baylor: ESPN wants to build the brand of the College Football Playoff.
Makes sense, right?
Here’s the explanation, just to nail down the point:
At 12:45 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, the first College Football Playoff field will be announced on ESPN. This is the first college football version of the NCAA basketball tournament’s “Selection Sunday.” This is a momentous event for the sport of college football, and it’s a very important event for ESPN, as the sport’s lead broadcaster. You have seen that the Tuesday rankings announcements for the playoff have done very well for ESPN. Making the first football version of “Selection Sunday” a magnet event is a priority for ESPN. This goes without saying.
The real point to be made here, then, is that going to a Big 12 game should drive more viewers to the selection show on Sunday.
Think about it: Alabama is likely to beat Missouri, so there’s not a maximum of drama attached to the SEC Championship Game. (Had Georgia played the Crimson Tide, ESPN might have made a different call, so that has to be taken into consideration.)
Florida State is in a “win and in” situation in the ACC Championship Game. There’s drama involved in FSU’s situation, but not complexity… at least not if they win.
Ohio State is a team whose situation is highly complex. The Buckeyes would have made a great Saturday morning talking point for GameDay. Therefore, going to the Big Ten Championship Game would have promoted Sunday’s selection show. However, as said above, the logistics of putting GameDay in Indianapolis worked against ESPN, if it privately might have wanted to feature Ohio State-Wisconsin.
This left Kansas State-Baylor as the option which satisfied more of ESPN’s interests than any other. For one thing, the Big 12-Ohio State debate could become the central tension point of Selection Sunday. If Ohio State loses to Wisconsin, the TCU-Baylor debate could easily become the biggest source of drama in the first College Football Playoff announcement. One way or another, the Big 12 stands at the center of Selection Sunday, and this will be even more the case if Oregon, Alabama, and Florida State take care of business this weekend.
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Go through all the considerations ESPN had to sort through to make this GameDay decision. A few factors here and there might have pointed to Florida State and the ACC or to Alabama and the SEC, but Kansas State-Baylor in Big 12 country offered the most pluses and the fewest headaches for ESPN.
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