Want a REAL college football RedZone channel? Root for the act of Congress that might actually pass

The mammoth ESPN-NFL deal dipped into the world of college football Wednesday. During an appearance on SportsCenter, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell connected some dots college football fans have wanted to see connected for a while.

“ESPN purchased the RedZone name, and they will be able to utilize that for other sports, college football and other things, and I think that could be an exciting thing for our fans also to see a RedZone, maybe in college football or other sports,” Goodell said. “That’s something that they now own and have the ability to do that. But as far as RedZone, NFL RedZone, there won’t be any changes for our plans.”

College football RedZone sounds amazing — if it includes all of college football. Unfortunately, that’s not possible right now. If ESPN wants to create a RedZone-like product for college football, it couldn’t include any Big Ten games. Those are broadcast by Fox, NBC and CBS. It couldn’t include Notre Dame home games. Those are broadcast by NBC. It wouldn’t include some Big 12 games, because Fox owns those.

It could someday, though. And the actions that would give us a true college football RedZone — which would have to include an act of Congress — also could help solve some of the issues the sport faces at the moment.

If the NFL’s RedZone, which would shift from the league’s control to ESPN’s as part of a deal in which Disney gives the league a 10% equity stake in the network, omitted all games coming from AFC East and NFC West home stadiums, it wouldn’t be nearly as popular.

That doesn’t happen, though. Instead, after the deal gets regulatory approval sometime in the next year, ESPN’s version of NFL RedZone will cut in live to games broadcast on CBS and Fox, which will continue to pay billions to the NFL and probably won’t utter a peep of complaint. 

That could never happen in today’s college football. The best we could hope for now is a product similar to Goal Line, the extra package the network offered from 2010-19 that aped RedZone’s concept for games to which ESPN owned rights. 

The warring tribal chieftains and TV networks that rule college football today wouldn’t dare work together. Heck, they still can’t agree on a College Football Playoff format, predictably because the league (the Big Ten) that doesn’t partner with the network (ESPN) that broadcasts the CFP wants something completely different than the other nine FBS leagues. (All of which have deals with ESPN.) 

The NFL dictates terms to ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS (and Amazon and Google) because it can. It’s the only seller of premium pro football — the most popular sport in the country. Those networks must bow to the shield because the shield guarantees ratings. If the shield tells CBS and Fox that games they’re producing will air on an ESPN product, then that’s what will happen. And the networks will keep paying more because the NFL is the most reliable way to draw an audience in this era of television.

College football is the second-most popular sport in the country in terms of per-game TV audience, yet the NFL’s media rights revenue dwarfs it in total and per viewer. Why? Because networks must pay what the NFL asks. 

In its last media rights deal, the Big Ten and its partner Fox — a part-owner of the Big Ten Network and the entity that truly controls the rights to Big Ten games — pit CBS against NBC against ESPN against various streaming services and cobbled together the most lucrative package it could. 

But ESPN didn’t engage in the bidding war. It decided its whole ownership of the ACC and SEC’s rights — and a piece of the Big 12 — would be enough. That kept the price for Big Ten rights lower than it could have been, just as the Big Ten’s upcoming deal suppressed the SEC’s asking price when it made its current deal with ESPN.

Even though the NFL and college football are two versions of the same business, college football can’t dictate terms to the networks. The networks dictate the terms. 

So why can NFL teams pool their rights to sell and college football leagues can’t?

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. 

The law gives teams in professional sports leagues an antitrust exemption that allows them to sell their media rights as one without fear of being taken to court for colluding against competing teams or leagues. It includes language that protects college football’s broadcast windows from NFL encroachment, but it doesn’t grant college football teams or leagues the same exemption.

There are smart people working now on convincing college sports leaders that their best hope of accomplishing anything in Washington isn’t a broad antitrust exemption and a law that essentially allows schools to go back to price-fixing the labor market for players. Such a law won’t likely pass.

But what could pass? A new version of the Sports Broadcasting Act, which would only be fair considering revenue sports in college are essentially operating identical businesses to the pro leagues now that the players are getting paid.

Why would that benefit schools? Because everyone could charge more money. Instead of the SEC selling to ESPN and the Big Ten selling to Fox, NBC and CBS, all those networks would have to come crawling to the Big Ten and SEC (and ACC and Big 12 and American and all the others) to throw dollars for a piece of the action. All the leagues would make more money. The Big Ten and SEC would still make a lot more than the others. But everyone would make more because everyone could charge more.

And instead of leagues getting puppeted by networks, the leagues would run the show. The schools, of course, will have to choose how they do this. They can try to build consensus now and work together for the benefit of everyone, or they can break apart and the members of some select super league will get the law changed and use it to keep all the broadcast money.

If they would like to keep the sport vibrant and diverse while getting everyone more money to pay players and keep supporting the sports that don’t make money, they should start moving immediately toward this model.

Ten FBS leagues, selling their rights as one, bending the networks over a barrel instead of the other way around. They’d have a sustainable financial model and a centralized governance that might actually be able to agree on something every once in a while.

And we’d get a real college football RedZone channel.

Everyone wins.