Fox Sports CEO outlines plan to turn college football into the NFL lite

In 2006, the Big Ten and the Fox Corporation started their partnership to create the Big Ten Network. The aim was to broaden the convention’s attraction by airing video games that in any other case would not have been on TV, and generate income alongside the method. The plan has since modified.

Twenty years later, Fox and the Big Ten have fully remade the map of college athletics, and now the aim is to basically alter college football as we knew it for greater than 150 years.

Before we get to the place we’re going, let’s first keep in mind the place we have been: Realignment crash course.

At the time of BTN’s launch, the Big Ten was considered one of six roughly-equal energy leagues. I say roughly equal as a result of the Big East, which launched football in 1991, endlessly misplaced its shot at equal footing when Penn State turned the Big Ten’s eleventh member in 1991. With that transfer, the Big Ten achieved two issues: 1) it weakened a possible rival, and a couple of) it broke away from the thought {that a} convention’s title was certain by widespread sense. However, BTN’s success starting in 2007 pushed the convention to improve its earnings by way of enlargement. Since then, the Big Ten has taken from each single considered one of its friends besides the SEC.

The convention opened the floodgates by swiping Nebraska from the Big 12 in 2010, then defended all sense searching for {dollars} and cents by buying Maryland from the ACC and Rutgers from the American (previously Big East) in 2012. Over time the logic for realignment modified, and in 2024 the Big Ten despatched a demise blow to its former accomplice convention out west by buying UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington.

Of course, the Big Ten wasn’t the solely convention to take a predatory stance towards a peer, however they’ve typically been the first, the most aggressive, and the most brazen.

The Big Ten and Fox’s evolving relationship.

At launch, the Big Ten owned 51 p.c of BTN, and Fox 49 p.c. Over time, the ratio has flipped, and Fox now owns 61 p.c to the Big Ten’s 39.

But cable TV is now much less vital in the present day than it was in the 2000s, and so the greatest metric to perceive the community and the convention’s relationship is thru its most up-to-date spherical of media rights negotiations. In signing an NFL-like take care of Fox, CBS and NBC, the latter two networks negotiated their respective contracts with Fox sitting on the Big Ten’s aspect of the desk.

Does this sound like a partnership to you, or an proprietor/property relationship?

Now contemplate that, for higher or worse, Fox has constructed its college football technique round proudly owning the Saturday midday window and, more and more, enjoying video games on Friday nights. This means Ohio State and Michigan followers have to plan round each huge and even medium sport kicking at midday, whereas Rutgers may have to kick off at 11 pm on a Friday.

Where we’re going subsequent. Fox constructed its sports activities technique and, certainly, its entire TV empire off of proudly owning as a lot of the Cowboys, Packers and 49ers as potential, and its college football technique is constructed round replicating that success, with zero regard to the way it impacts college football, and college athletics, as an entire.

Fox desires to nationalize college football as a result of it believes there’s more cash in catering to casuals than serving diehards. It desires to commerce USC-Oregon State for USC-Ohio State, and would not care if it requires delivery UCLA softball to Ann Arbor or fully crushes Oregon State in the course of.

Now, let’s apply that to the CFP. Here’s what Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks stated Thursday, by way of Sports Business Journal:

Before we go additional, I need to state that Shanks will not be precisely incorrect in connecting any of those dots, neither is he alone in coming to these conclusions. Plenty of directors, coaches and followers have stated the similar on their very own. In Shanks’s thoughts, he is merely working to give the folks what they need and make some cash alongside the method. I’m simply attempting to lay out the penalties of the adjustments he is pushing to institute.

No one’s going to turn down extra significant video games in September, however take into accout the steadiness of the see-saw. If each sport is “meaningful,” ultimately none of them are. Texas-Ohio State was a frenzy merely due to the stakes concerned. In the olden days, the loser would’ve had to stroll a tightrope uphill all season lengthy to stay in the hunt for the nationwide title. The stakes aren’t fairly as excessive as they had been in the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, however Texas nonetheless missed the CFP at 9-3 partly due to that loss. If there isn’t any penalty for shedding in non-conference, there isn’t any that means in these video games, both.

The that means Shanks is attempting to add to November are the seventh, eighth, and ninth place B1G and SEC groups enjoying for the twenty second and twenty third seeds in a 24-team event. It’s this, however with the 5-4 Wisconsin and Minnesota IN THE HUNT.

Reducing the stakes for non-conference video games and reducing the bar for CFP participation would hold extra folks invested in college football for longer, I’ve little doubt about that. It would additionally turn college football into a wholly totally different sport than what it used to be, and I’ve severe doubts Fox or the Big Ten care.