College football has always featured a lot of lobbying, especially around who gets selected for the season-ending championship field, whether that involves two, four, or 12 teams. And that’s sometimes seen coaches and athletic directors comment on a network’s coverage, especially ESPN’s. But the most poignant example of that in some time came on ESPN’s College Football Playoff Selection Show Sunday, from SMU Mustangs’ head coach Rhett Lashlee.
Following their 34-31 loss against Clemson (on a career-long 56-yard walk-off field goal from a true freshman kicker) in the ACC championship Saturday night, the Mustangs (11-2 overall, 8-0 in regular season conference play) were on pins and needles to see if they’d make the CFP or be left out in favor of the Alabama Crimson Tide (9-3, 5-3 in conference play). And there were notable arguments both ways, with the ESPN booth that called that title game and also Clemson coach Dabo Swinney stumping for SMU, but the AP Top 25 voters choosing Alabama.
In the end, the committee did pick the Mustangs over the Tide. That was reported by Brett McMurphy of The Action Network at 11:59 a.m. ET, and it was finally officially revealed on ESPN’s selection show 35 minutes later (and 34 minutes into that four-hour show). Almost an hour after that (at 1:21 p.m. ET), ESPN brought Lashlee onto their show, and host Rece Davis asked him about his nerves while he was waiting to find out the decision.
Lashlee responded by discussing ESPN’s producers “creating a lot of drama” with the announcement delay. And he followed that up by shouting out McMurphy (who worked for ESPN from 2012-2017) for his report:
“Your production team sure did a really good job of creating a lot of drama there. …I think shortly before it was announced, I saw a tweet from Brett McMurphy, and the Vegas odds started shifting.” SMU HC Rhett Lashlee had quite the lines on ESPN’s CFP reveal show. pic.twitter.com/I17Z1ieBUO
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 8, 2024
“Your production team sure did a really good job of creating a lot of drama there. We were on pins and needles watching it. I think shortly before it was announced, I saw a tweet from Brett McMurphy, and the Vegas odds started shifting. That probably took my heart rate from about 200 down to about 160. But until we saw it up there, you’re just hanging on the edge.”
Lashlee absolutely answered Davis’ question about his nerves and anxiety, and he did so in amazing fashion. The “Your production team sure did a really good job of creating a lot of drama there” line would have been a great promo on its own. But he topped it with the mention of finding out from McMurphy.
(An underrated aside here: Lashlee mentions that the Vegas odds “started shifting” after McMurphy’s tweet. It’s unclear how long those odds remained up, but if Lashlee’s timeframe is accurate, that’s amazing. That means that people could still bet on who was in this playoff following a definitive report from a prominent national reporter because it happened to come before the “official” TV reveal. That carries a lot of potential issues. And that’s one more angle to add to the lists of media/betting challenges.)
Like many, Lashlee got the news closer to when a decision was made rather than when ESPN decided to reveal it in their drama-emphasizing special. And he got it from someone who used to work for the network. And he then pointed that out on their own airwaves. (And in doing so, he did a better job of crediting McMurphy than ESPN often has.)
[Sports Illustrated; image from Awful Announcing on X]
