Crowning a national champion in college football has long been a controversial process. In 1992, the Bowl Coalition and (later the Bowl Alliance) was the first attempt to solve this problem, by matching up the AP’s #1 and #2 teams, but the format fell apart as it did not include the Rose Bowl, and therefore the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences. The Bowl Championship Series later rectified this issue, but was also not without controversy for its computer-aided team selections.
In November 2012, a completely different era of television than today, ESPN announced it had secured exclusive television rights to a new, four-team college football postseason tournament, that would once and for all allow the nation’s best teams to settle the debate on the field and compete for a trophy. The six major bowls would rotate hosting semifinal games and a new, neutral-site championship game would be held in early January. But upon its debut in 2014, the selection process was immediately controversial once again as Ohio State’s Big Ten Championship win caused them to leap past TCU and Baylor into the four-team bracket, leaving the Big 12 out. The controversy simply shifted from the second team to the fourth team.
When the first playoff arrived, ESPN hit the jackpot. The first championship game in 2015 between Ohio State and Oregon drew a staggering 34.1 million viewers, a figure which remains the most-watched cable telecast in US history. The strong ratings outweighed the controversial selection process.
As the years went on, complaints over team selection continued to linger (UCF in 2017, Texas A&M in 2020, Notre Dame in 2021, and Florida State last year), even as the ratings never again hit the highs of the first year of the four-team bracket, owing in large part to cord-cutting trends and the cable-exclusive rights ESPN held. Committees and commissions were formed and meetings and seminars were hosted to determine a way to maximize the value of the postseason with a less controversial method of determining college football’s champion.
The result was a new, 12-team format with guaranteed spots for 5 of the 9 conference champions. And once again, the controversy shifted down to debate who the twelfth team should be. The model includes 4 first-round games at home stadiums, which means postseason games will be surrounded with the familiar environments that make the sport great, rather than the sterile corporate settings of the bowls at NFL stadiums.
The increased field meant increased postseason inventory for networks, and the CFP organizers expressed their desire to have the playoff split between multiple TV partners. But the NFL had just signed its new contracts, extracting a combined $10 billion annually from ESPN, Fox, NBC, CBS, and Amazon. Cash flow was tight, and the networks’ appetite for the expanded CFP was less than anticipated. An agreement was eventually reached with ESPN for the full CFP at a price of $1.3 billion annually, somewhat a bargain for the network. ESPN was paying $685 million annually for the four-team format (including the four bowls that were not hosting semifinals) beginning in 2014, and the price for the twelve-team format was less than double that amount.
But then a new twist came from the NFL just weeks later. The NFL had reportedly requested the CFP adjust its schedule for the first round, to place two games on Friday and two games on Saturday, instead of one Friday and three Saturday. The league traditionally takes advantage of every Saturday it can outside of those protected by the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, and did not wish to compete head-to-head with college football. But the CFP found the idea of games on a Friday afternoon undesirable, and declined to adjust its schedule. In response, the league doubled down. Fearing the optics of losing a ratings battle to the CFP, the league scheduled two marquee games not on NFL Network as in years past, but national broadcast television (NBC and Fox). Combined with the NFL’s decision to play on Christmas (a day traditionally marked by coverage of the NBA on ESPN), the league had significantly devalued two of ESPN’s flagship events.
Elsewhere, a different company was dealing with the loss of its own flagship sports property. In the wake of its expected loss of NBA rights, which it had held for more than 30 years and become core to the network’s identity, TNT went on a flurry of new rights deals — including coverage of the French Open, Big East basketball, and Mountain West football. Then came reports of a deal for ESPN to sublicense two first-round games annually to TNT, at a reported price of “hundreds of millions of dollars,” a move that surprised even ESPN. The network had no plans to exercise its sublicense rights, but given the “very attractive” price tag felt the deal was too good to pass up, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro told Sports Business Journal. Additionally, ESPN now had the opportunity to dump the games opposite the NFL off to TNT, avoiding that ratings battle.
Two college football playoff games cannot replace the value that dozens of regular-season and playoff NBA games brought to TNT, even when combined with tennis and college hoops. But the network was faced with an existential threat, and chose to secure rights to high-profile games that fans will miss if they can’t access.
The arrangement resulted in a new co-production effort, which is now fairly common for TNT. TNT and CBS’s partnership on coverage the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has been received positively for many years, and TNT will also partner with Amazon for its new NASCAR coverage next summer. In this new CFP arrangement, ESPN will provide game coverage for two first-round games, which will air across TNT Sports networks, while TNT will provide its own studio coverage surrounding its games. Beginning in 2026, TNT will also air two quarterfinal games in a similar arrangement, which (pending further changes to the playoff format) will be the traditional New Years Six bowls. ESPN will choose the two least-desirable games to give to TNT, meaning they will likely never part with the Rose Bowl.
It should be noted that TNT’s involvement came as a surprise, as the company had not carried college football since 2006. Most reports suggested Fox, which controls the majority of the rights to the Big Ten, would emerge as a potential partner with ESPN on the CFP. Instead, Fox is now a direct competitor: airing a pivotal Steelers-Ravens NFL game at the same time as Clemson-Texas.
Next year’s playoff will be mostly the same, but the 2026-27 tournament will see a few changes as part of the CFP’s new deal with ESPN. The national championship game will begin simulcasting on ABC, ending a 15-year run exclusively on ESPN cable networks. TNT will begin airing two quarterfinal bowl games in addition to its first-round games. TNT’s sublicense agreement ends after the 2028-29 playoffs, opening the door for a new partner or for ESPN to keep all the games for itself.
2026 also presents a calendar crunch not present in the first two years of the expanded playoff. The end of the CFB regular season coincides with the NFL’s Week 12 in 2026, as opposed to Week 13 this year, meaning the first available Monday night for the championship game is January 25, expanding the total length of the playoff from 32 to 39 days, before any further expansion of the field is introduced. For a sport that has had its national championship game outdrawn by a semifinal 3 of the last 4 years, moving the final even further into late January may be unwise.
This year at least, the NFL is projected to come out on top in the two windows it goes head-to-head with the College Football Playoff. Even in the postseason, SMU-Penn State on TNT is no match for the Kansas City Chiefs on NBC. But there are only so many attractive weekend television windows in December and January, and the two divisions of America’s favorite sport appear poised to battle over them for years to come.
