TV Networks Have Killed College Football

College football has a ton of issues; however, some have plagued the sport long before the new playoffs or NIL. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the media is overhyping the SEC. Yes, the conference is having a much better season than in years prior, but I still believe they get benefits no other conference, especially the Big Ten, receives.

One of the biggest issues for the Big Ten is that they struggle to build the togetherness the SEC thrives on. While I’ve always found it weird that fans of certain SEC schools seem to cheer on their rivals for the conference's benefit, I think the issue runs much deeper than that.

ESPN’s partnership with the SEC is the sport's most successful pairing. When you flip on ABC at noon, you can watch elite SEC games from the start of the day until college football ends. You never need to flip channels to find the best game in the conference; it’s almost always on ABC.

Now let’s take a look at the Big Ten. Big Noon Kickoff almost always forces you to watch whatever opponent Ohio State is playing, whether it’s a fun game against Indiana or a joke of a matchup against Kent State. Then you flip over to CBS for the 3:30 slate, and that game has been incredibly hit-or-miss for the conference; by the time the 8:00 slate rolls around, you’ll be lucky to find a decent Big Ten game, and it’s probably outside a basic cable package on FS1.

The SEC makes it as simple as possible to watch its marquee games, while the Big Ten makes it easy to watch only Ohio State, and the TV ratings show that. While the Buckeyes are their breadwinner, that isn’t how you build overall conference depth, which is why you see so many SEC teams ranked.

AP voters are not smart. They aren’t watching every team in college football; I’d venture most voters couldn’t even tell you who the starting quarterback is on a 5-0 Nebraska team because they aren’t ranked. The AP poll is an incredibly reactionary poll, and the voters can only seem to remember what happened on a given Saturday.

Let’s look at some current rankings that make zero sense in the SEC. Florida got crushed this week, so they fell 8 spots to 16th, behind the Missouri team that just beat them. But now, despite having the same number of losses as Ole Miss, Florida is NINE spots behind them in the rankings, even though they beat them by 24 just one week ago. Missouri got a big jump with their win and are now three spots above Mississippi State, a team they lost to at home the week before!

The SEC is a never-ending self-fulfilling cycle. One team gets overrated and loses a big game, but doesn’t fall out of the rankings. That team beats another overrated SEC school, then hops them in the rankings, and everybody keeps themselves firmly in the top 25.

Now let’s compare that to the Big Ten. Iowa lost 31-14 to a great Ohio State team. They dropped six spots in the poll. Mississippi State lost at home to a great Alabama team and fell one spot. You get punished for losing in the Big Ten, but not in the SEC. Heck, USC won a tough game against a Washington team that will probably win 8 games, and they still fell in the polls!

Lastly, imagine a 5-0 SEC not being ranked in the top 25. While I don’t think Nebraska is all that impressive, they’re undefeated. They’re currently ranked 31st in the AP Poll, and you’d never see that in the SEC.

When you win in the South, you’re a national title contender; when those same teams lose, it just means they lost to another contender. When Big Ten teams lose, it basically kills their season, and something about that needs to change, and I feel that’s where the TV Networks come back into play.

These networks aren’t there to push college football; they’re in place to push a conference. ESPN is there for the SEC, while FOX is there for the Big Ten. When you tune in to Big Noon Kickoff or College Gameday, they’ve become terrible propaganda machines for networks pushing the conference they’re affiliated with, and that’s ignoring the terrible personalities they’re using to talk about the sport.

At some point, college football needs to break away from its one-network-per-conference agreements, and I think it would go miles toward saving the sport. Like our current political climate, college football is all about “what’s best for your team” instead of what’s best for the sport at large.