ESPN is once again rolling out their Megacast coverage for the College Football Playoff semifinals, which this year includes the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl on Saturday, December 29th.
The Coaches Film Room is often one of the more interesting ways to watch the game, especially if you’re a neutral fan who enjoys the ins and outs of football strategy. Just tuning in for a quarter or so can be an enjoyable viewing experience, as the coaches involved tend to get very into the action. For the semifinals, ESPN is deploying two groups of four coaches, as per their release:
This year’s Coaches Film Room will be available on ESPNEWS and the ESPN App from ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn., featuring a live feed as top head coaches watch the game and offer a strategic breakdown of the action in real time. Mack Brown (North Carolina), Dave Clawson (Wake Forest), Paul Johnson (Georgia Tech) and Mike Norvell (Memphis) will breakdown the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at 4p.m. ET featuring No. 2 Clemson and No. 3 Notre Dame while Steve Addazio (Boston College), Herm Edwards (Arizona State), Bryan Harsin (Boise State) and Gary Patterson (TCU) will cover the Capital One Orange Bowl at 8 p.m. between No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Oklahoma.
The Cotton Bowl group features Dave Clawson, who faced both Notre Dame and Clemson this season at Wake Forest, and retiring Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, who also has years of experience battling Clemson. The Orange Bowl crew features TCU’s Gary Patterson, who obviously has plenty of experience facing Oklahoma.
It also features the ESPN return of Herm Edwards, who was hired at Arizona State after serving as a longtime ESPN NFL analyst, and whose debut season in Tempe went better than anyone really expected. They went 7-5 and lost in the Las Vegas Bowl, but still! Herm is back!
The Coaches Film Room and all the other attendant Megacast coverage (including RefCam, if that interests you) kicks off this Saturday at 4 PM Eastern.

About Jay Rigdon
Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.
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