ESPN College Football

The American, ACC, Big 12, Conference USA, MAC, SEC and Sun Belt are all covered by ESPN.

Through its online arm ESPN3 and the ESPN+ streaming service, ESPN carries a wide variety of other athletic conferences and games at lower divisions, spanning the full breadth of college football.

The network was limited to airing tape-delayed games because the NCAA controlled television rights through exclusive contracts.

However, because bowl games operate outside the control of the NCAA, ESPN was able to air the 1982 Independence Bowl between Kansas State and Wisconsin live (through a simulcast with the Mizlou Television Network) – the first live football game televised on ESPN.

After the 1984 Supreme Court decision in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma allowed individual schools to negotiate television rights, ESPN began broadcasting live regular-season games during the 1984 season, beginning with a game between BYU and Pittsburgh on September 1, 1984.

[5] Also, ESPNU has rapidly increased the coverage of spring intramural team scrimmages with entire programs dedicated to this phenomenon.

[6] In 2008, ESPN aired College GameDay from Florida Field prior to their spring scrimmage game.

[12] Also in 2010, the company launched ESPN Goal Line, a gametime-only channel that switches between games to show the most interesting plays, similar to NFL RedZone.

[14] For the 2014-15 postseason, ESPN implemented a major overhaul of its on-air presentation with flat design and a score box in the bottom-right of the screen, which soft launched during the New Orleans Bowl, and formally debuted alongside new graphics and theme music during the inaugural College Football Playoff games.

[25][26] In December 2020, ESPN announced a 10-year, $3 billion contract to hold the top media rights for the SEC beginning in 2024, ending its long-standing agreement with CBS, and seeing its flagship package of games move to ABC.

In late October and November, games almost exclusively from the Mid-American Conference air on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, usually on ESPN2.

ABC gets the first pick of games for all the major conferences, with the exception of the SEC, in which case CBS get their first selection.

[32] ESPN's Saturdays during the regular season begin at 9:00 AM ET with College GameDay, a three-hour live show that previews the day's games.

It is typically an hour-long program featuring interviews with past winners and nominees (with their families or coaches).