This piece was adapted from Friday’s edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything you need to know about the sports media world.
Polarization. It’s a popular word among the political class. Most who have observed America’s greater societal shifts in the 21st century, regardless of right or left, can agree that, on average, Americans are further apart in terms of how they view their country and its values than at any point dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
And there’s perhaps no better manifestation of our country’s polarization than the institution of cable news. By and large, cable news viewers can be broken into two very distinctive camps. The pro-Trump contingency flocks to Fox News. The Resistance tunes into MSNBC. Both channels are similar in the sense that they offer a warm blanket to viewers seeking to reaffirm their worldview.
CNN and NewsNation, at least ostensibly, attempt to carve out a lane in the so-called “middle” with little success from a ratings perspective.
It’s fair to say, this dichotomy hasn’t exactly been helpful in enhancing productive discourse in the country. MSNBC and Fox News viewers live in two completely separate realities. They speak different languages. And to the truth-seeking “middle” of the country, insomuch as an engaged nonpartisan coalition of Americans actually exists, there’s really no option for cable news consumption outside of parsing through the biases of MSNBC and Fox, or worse, trying to adjudicate winners and losers throughout a “both-sides” newscast like that found on CNN.
And now, the cable news model is seeping into coverage of our beloved American pastime, college football.
Who could be surprised? The sport has essentially realigned itself into a two-party system, especially from a media standpoint. ESPN finds itself financially aligned with one half of the Power-2, the SEC. Fox, the other major power broker in college football, is financially aligned with the other half of the P-2, the Big Ten.
Both sides have embraced becoming evangelists for their associated conference. Over the offseason, Fox hired unabashed Michigan homer Dave Portnoy for the express purpose of blowing smoke up the Big Ten’s rear end. Last month, Puck’s John Ourand reported that “the need for a passionate conference booster” had been a topic of conversation among Big Ten and Fox executives, a role Portnoy fits to a tee. Over at ESPN, a similar dynamic pervades its coverage of the SEC with characters like Paul Finebaum serving as de facto spokesperson for the conference.
These biases have always existed depending on which networks are associated with which conferences from a media rights perspective, but there’s reason to believe the issue is getting worse. One look at Saturday’s opening weekend coverage will show why.
Over on Fox, Portnoy made his Big Noon Kickoff debut. And while he definitely leaned into his Michigan Wolverine fandom, making a WWE-style entrance in Columbus, Ohio while singing his school’s fight song, Portnoy quickly backtracked on his expected heel persona by picking Ohio State over Texas, and giving a rousing endorsement for Big Ten superiority over the SEC.
Dave Portnoy picks Ohio State to beat Texas.
“I’m so sick of hearing about the SEC. Last year in the bowls, the Big Ten was 5-1 against the SEC teams. Yet you still hear ‘SEC this, SEC that. It’s better down south.’ No. Midwestern football. We like a good punt in Iowa. We… pic.twitter.com/PR27JQ5iyz
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 30, 2025
“I’m so sick of hearing about the SEC. Last year in the bowls, the Big Ten was 5-1 against the SEC teams. Yet you still hear, ‘SEC this, SEC that. It’s better down south.’ No. Midwestern football. We like a good punt in Iowa. We respect three yards up the middle. The Big Ten is back in charge. Man football,” Portnoy told Big Noon host Rob Stone.
That’s not exactly the type of analysis you’d hear from a network aiming for a dispassionate assessment of the college football landscape. But that’s no longer what the networks are going for.
ESPN’s Finebaum had a similarly one-sided take yesterday on SEC Network, claiming Texas quarterback Arch Manning was “the best player we have seen from every aspect since Tim Tebow.”
“[Arch Manning] is the best player we have seen from every aspect since Tim Tebow.” – Paul Finebaum, this morning on ‘SEC Nation’. 🏈🎙️ #CFB pic.twitter.com/UrNuXdp2BG
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 30, 2025
That prognostication didn’t age well through four quarters against the Buckeyes on Saturday, and was certainly a limb to go out on given Manning’s limited college experience entering the season.
But in today’s media environment, sizzle sells. There’s every incentive for networks to manufacture hype around their associated conferences. From a business perspective, it makes sense, right? Fox is essentially a corporate parent of the Big Ten, a relationship unique in college sports. Fox is the majority owner of Big Ten Network. BTN, not the conference, controls the sale of media rights for the league. Media rights are by far the biggest revenue driver for the conference. Therefore, perhaps more than any other network-conference relationship, Fox has a vested interest in the success of the Big Ten.
Beginning last year, ESPN had similar incentives with the SEC. The network has, of course, always owned SEC Network. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s small potatoes compared to how the relationship expanded last season, when ESPN started exclusively airing the conference, often in triple-header style on ABC. That strategy resulted in ESPN/ABC wiping the floor with every other network in the ratings.
The SEC on ABC primetime window averaged 7.39 million viewers per telecast, a 106% increase from ABC’s primetime college football window the previous season. Its 3:30 p.m. ET window averaged 5.83 million viewers, a 57% increase from the prior year. Both windows beat out Fox’s Big Noon Saturday game, which had led the way in viewership for several years running before last year. There’s no doubt ESPN wants to continue this ratings dominance throughout the term of its current deal with the SEC, and what better way to do that than to get viewers to believe it’s the best conference in college football?
The crazy part? More than any other sport, the way media outlets cover college football has a tangible impact on what happens on the field. When the postseason is determined by a selection committee, as it is in college football, the media can actually influence which teams are considered contenders for a playoff spot. And like it or not, a conference’s perceived strength, be it measured by historic performance, non-conference results, or simply how TV networks talk about them, has real-world consequences for teams looking to secure a postseason bid.
More than ever, the success of these conferences determines the financial success of the networks they’re involved with. ESPN is paying the SEC over $700 million annually through 2034 for its full suite of game inventory. The Big Ten is earning over $1 billion per year from its partners at Fox, CBS, and NBC through 2030. These are not rounding errors. Convincing advertisers, distributors, and viewers that your college football games are the best college football games has tangible financial repercussions.
And so networks are incentivized to lean into favoritism, just like cable news, where the monetary incentives also point towards favoring one side or the other. Soon, Fox and ESPN could mirror Fox News and MSNBC, with one overtly the “Big Ten” network and the other the “SEC” network. Fans will start living in two different realities, one shaped by a network that shamelessly promotes the Big Ten, and the other shaped by a network shamelessly in the tank for the SEC.
College football already brings out more tribalism than any other sport in America, and playing into the Big Ten versus SEC divide will only embolden both sides. Fox and ESPN might earn incrementally more viewers, and incrementally more money. But the cost? Losing trust from fans. Accusations of bias reaching a fever pitch. The overall quality of college football coverage being diminished.
The shift towards the cable news model seems inevitable given how college football’s two primary broadcasters are so neatly aligned with the sport’s two primary conferences. Week 1 of this season was simply the start of the race towards the bottom.
