ESPN would face several obstacles if the network attempted to launch a college football version of RedZone, and it sounds like at least one of them cannot be overcome.
One of the biggest issues with a potential college football RedZone is that ESPN does not have the media rights to every college conference. ESPN has the rights to the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and American Conference, but not the Big Ten or Big 12. It would be difficult to imagine a whip-around program that covers all of the best college football moments without including at least every Power Four conference.
FOX, CBS and NBC collectively hold the rights to the Big Ten. According to a Thursday report from Amanda Christovich and Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports, FOX is not interested in licensing any of its Big Ten or Big 12 games to ESPN.
The only way FOX would be willing to work out an arrangement with ESPN is if FOX were to receive “significant ownership” in a college football RedZone endeavor, a source told FOS.
The SEC and Big Ten are the two best conferences in college football. ESPN and FOX have been competing for years for college football viewers, and ESPN now holds the exclusive rights to the SEC. It makes sense that FOX is unwilling to allow ESPN to have a piece of the Big Ten pie as well.
ESPN reached an agreement last week to acquire NFL Network, and RedZone is part of the deal. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed that the deal, if and when it is finalized, will allow ESPN to apply the RedZone format to other sports should the network want to do that.
As current NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson laid out, there would be several challenges standing in the way of ESPN launching a successful RedZone program for college football.
