College Football’s New Playoff System Exclusively on ESPN Through 2026

SPORTS CABLE NETWORK LOCKS IN COLLEGE POSTSEASON FOR TWELVE MORE YEARS

By Douglas Pucci
Follow @SonOfTheBronx

The system that will have the Final Four teams of college football vying for the annual national title won’t commence until the 2014 regular season, but ESPN — the only network telecasting Bowl Championship Series’ (BCS) premier games including the National Championship, as of January 2011 — reached a 12-year deal with the BCS to be the exclusive broadcaster to televise its upcoming playoffs.

ESPN will be able to telecast these playoff games worldwide on its various media platforms, such as TV, radio, online, mobile devices, tablets as well as on any technology that will develop in the near future.

According to the network, the playoff broadcasts will occur, as follows:

• Championship Games: Coverage of each year’s championship game pitting the semifinal winners against each other on the Monday at least seven days after the semifinals at sites to be determined by the commissioners
• Semifinals: Coverage of two semifinals each year matching four seeded teams identified by a selection committee to be named by the commissioners. The semifinals will be rotated among six bowl games consisting of three “contract bowls” and three “host bowls” to be determined by the commissioners.
• Additional bowls in the playoff format: Coverage of all remaining games from the sites of the three “host bowls” during the years those bowls are not semifinal sites. Note: ESPN had previously secured the rights to the Rose, Sugar and Orange Bowl games for the same 12-year period (through January 2026).
• Related programming: Exclusive rights to branded content throughout each season, including the official team-selection announcement.

To-date, according to Nielsen, the January BCS National Championship games of 2011 (27.32 million total viewers) and 2012 (24.21 million total viewers) rank as the No. 1 and 2 most-watched events in cable television history, respectively.