• Loading stock data...
Friday, July 18, 2025

TV Networks Are Programming College Football’s Future: What’s Next

  • The final Power 5 conference championship weekend begins today.
  • Media rights money is shifting college football unlike ever before.
Syndication: Austin American-Statesman
Exclusive

Bill Belichick UNC Series Heading to Hulu After ‘Hard Knocks’ Breakdown

The series lands at Hulu after a deal with HBO fell through.
Read Now
July 18, 2025 |

College football entered this conference championship weekend in rare circumstances: with major postseason implications at every Power 5 title game. 

Heading into the weekend, seven of the top eight teams in the College Football Playoff rankings were given the opportunity to make their case — and potentially seal their fate — with a win in their respective games.

But a year from now, with an influx of new money coming into the sport, things are bound to look drastically different.

Realignment is consolidating the top conferences to a Power 4 whose championship games will no doubt be impacted by the CFP’s expansion to 12 teams. Conferences are changing how they distribute money, creating a bigger divide between the haves and have-nots — and unsurprisingly, it’s all driven by increasingly lucrative media rights deals from college football’s biggest broadcasters.

Now, the question is: Will the upcoming changes put the sport in a better or worse position?

The Broadcast Shuffle

Saturday will mark the last SEC championship game broadcast on CBS Sports. Next year, Disney will start paying more than $700 million annually to be the SEC’s exclusive broadcast partner, with most of its top games headed to ABC.

But CBS will quickly be back in the spotlight, airing the 2024 Big Ten championship game as part of the conference’s new $7 billion set of deals. The conference title game will also rotate annually between Fox and NBC.

The Big 12 is sticking with its longtime partners in Fox and ESPN — with a new $2 billion-plus deal beginning in 2025 — but next fall the conference will expand its reach with four new teams. 

“You’re looking to appeal across the country,” Lee Berke, the president and CEO of consultancy LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media, told Front Office Sports. “These conferences increasingly are becoming national conferences.”

That sentiment applies to the ACC, which is adding California and Stanford at a discounted price. And it applies to the Big Ten, which brings on Oregon and Washington, each of which is set to receive somewhere north of $30 million annually from Fox Sports instead of the standard (much higher) Big Ten revenue distribution.

But college football’s makeover is certainly not limited to broadcast affiliations.

More ‘Juicy Matchups’

Next year’s conference championship weekend will be unlike any other before it, thanks to two big changes.

Each of the Power 4 conferences is eliminating its divisions structure, allowing for title game matchups like Michigan-Ohio State in the Big Ten, or Alabama-Auburn in the SEC. 

Earlier this fall, CBS Sports executive vice president of programming Dan Weinberg told FOS he was excited by that potential for “really sexy … and juicy matchups,” specifically in the Big Ten. But would those theoretical star-studded games actually provide the drama Weinberg is suggesting? 

The new 12-team CFP format may add a new — and complicating — plot twist: Teams could have already secured postseason berths by the time they play in conference championship games. That issue has caught the attention of some conference commissioners, like the ACC’s Jim Phillips and the Big Ten’s Tony Petitti, who admitted this week that title games will need to be reevaluated.

But if conference championship games in 2024 and beyond prove to be unattractive products, eliminating them won’t be that simple — they’re influential parts of most conference’s media rights deals.

A source familiar with college sports media rights deals told FOS that this is more of a long-term problem, noting that any theoretical change would most likely come under new contracts. The Big Ten and Big 12 deals run through 2030, while the SEC and ACC have contracts through ’34 and ’36, respectively.

Neal Pilson, who served as the president of CBS Sports in the 1980s and ’90s, believes the championship game issue is not a serious problem and that the industry will work it out, especially as more CFP broadcast inventory becomes available in 2026 and beyond. 

“From a television point of view, it really is a neutral equation, because if you don’t play [those championship games], we don’t pay you, but we’ll pay more for the playoffs,” Pilson, who now runs a communications firm and is a sports management lecturer at Columbia University, told FOS.

No matter what happens, broadcast partners appear to be the big winners.

Four Better Than Five?

The dissolution of the Pac-12, one of the oldest conferences, may be tough to swallow for some college sports fans — but not for media companies, particularly college football’s duopoly of ESPN and Fox.

“The reality is they both benefit from the consolidation of the conferences,” Berke said. The incoming schools from the Mountain and Pacific time zones simply provide more “content to be exploited.”

The anonymous source who spoke to FOS took that a step further, saying: “I’m not sure it’s hurt anybody that the Pac-12 disappeared.”

Plenty of obstacles lie ahead over the next 12 months. But when the 2024 conference championship weekend arrives, college football fans will get their first major glimpse into how realignment, network shuffling, and the expanded CFP will impact the future of the sport.

For now, there’s one final ride to enjoy college football as we know it.

Linkedin
Whatsapp
Copy Link
Link Copied
Link Copied

What to Read

WNBA Stars Say Zero Progress Made at CBA Meeting

The WNBA and its union had their first in-person meeting Thursday.
exclusive

Bill Belichick UNC Series Heading to Hulu After ‘Hard Knocks’ Breakdown

The series lands at Hulu after a deal with HBO fell through.
Lloyd Howell

Scandal-Ridden NFLPA Chief Lloyd Howell Quits

The union executive director stepped down late Thursday night.

Featured Today

Jul 21, 2024; Ayrshire, SCT; Xander Schauffele celebrates with Claret Jug after winning the Open Championship golf tournament at Royal Troon.

The Boozy History and Traditions of The Open’s Claret Jug

The Open awards the world’s most famous wine decanter.
2025 PDC World Darts Championship Final - Luke Littler vs Michael Van Gerwen
July 16, 2025

A Teen Darts Prodigy Is Becoming Bigger Than the Game Itself

Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler is cashing in on his devastatingly accurate shot.
May 31, 2025; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Sydney McLaughin-Levrone (USA) reacts before the women's 100m hurdles during the Grand Slam Track Philadelphia at Franklin Field
exclusive
July 13, 2025

Track’s New Money Is Running Into Old Problems

The sport’s big-money era has hit some speed bumps in 2025.
Bobbleheads are seen at Vintage Indy Sports, Tuesday, April 29, 2025 in Speedway. The local sports memorabilia store opened recently.
July 12, 2025

Baseball’s Bobbleheads Are the Center of the Collectibles Universe

Baseball’s most important keepsake drives long lines—and big business.
(NCL_OSU_11_SUGAR_LAURON 04JAN11) Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Terrelle Pryor (2) slips around the Arkansas Razorbacks defense during first half of the Sugar Bowl at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, January 4, 2011.

Terrelle Pryor’s Case for NIL Backpay Dismissed in Court

Pryor played seven years in the NFL after leaving OSU amid a scandal.
Sep 28, 2024; Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA; GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump waves flanked by former Georgia Bulldogs player Herschel Walker, recording art Kid Rock, professional golfer John Daily, Alabama senators Tommy Tuberville (R) and Katie Britt (R) during the second half of the game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Georgia Bulldogs at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
July 16, 2025

President Trump Is Actively Working on an NIL-Related Executive Order

It’s unclear what the executive order would include.
Mar 21, 2025; Seattle, WA, USA; Memphis Tigers head coach Penny Hardaway walks off the court after losing to Colorado State Rams at Climate Pledge Arena.
July 17, 2025

Memphis Basketball and Softball Placed on NCAA Probation

Memphis has had multiple NCAA issues since hiring Penny Hardaway.
Sponsored

Game On: Portfolio Players Stories, Brought to You by E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley

Dealmaker Jeffrey Kaplan maps the evolution of sports as an asset class
July 16, 2025

Alabama’s New Era Contends With NIL—and Nick Saban Rumors

Kalen DeBoer is entering his second season as head coach.
Texas Head Coach Steve Sarkisian waits to lead his team out of the tunnel ahead of the Longhorns' game against the Baylor Bears, Saturday, Sept. 23 at McLane Stadium in Waco.
July 15, 2025

Is a Texas Takeover About to Hit the SEC, On and Off..

The Longhorns are favored to win the SEC in their second year in the conference.
Georgia takes the field for the first half of the SEC championship game against Texas in Atlanta, on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024.
July 15, 2025

SEC Lands Starring Role in Netflix College Football Docuseries

Netflix brings its sports storytelling to the heart of SEC football.