ESPN, FOX prepare for 'Prime Time' duel of morning shows in Boulder

Two superpowers are angling for college football supremacy – and we’re not talking about coaches, teams or conferences.

ESPN vs. FOX.

Both network behemoths are gravitating to the unlikely site of the sport’s most compelling storyline: Boulder, Colorado. FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff and ESPN’s College GameDay will have boots on the ground for the next chapter of Deion Sanders’ improbable inaugural season with the 18th-ranked Buffaloes, who host Colorado State at 10 p.m. ET on Saturday on ESPN.

Did anyone predict a year ago that both networks would haul their pregame shows to the Rocky Mountains for CU-CSU in Week 3 this season? You would have been rightly laughed off your block.

Now? It’s a no-brainer.

Coach Prime’s Colorado squad is ratings gold. And both networks are going all in looking to capitalize.

“The biggest story in college sports is Prime Time,” Paul Finebaum said on The Tony Kornheiser Show. “I’ve covered college football for more than 40 years. I have never seen one individual completely take all the oxygen out of the sport.”

Steve Spurrier actually called in, unprompted, to Finebaum’s show last week just to talk about Sanders and Colorado because he had never seen anything like it. We’ve seen irrepressible talents and stars – Reggie Bush, Johnny Manziel, Tim Tebow among them – but fans know this is something different.

And it’s can’t-miss TV.

One week after attracting 7.26 million viewers for its season-opening victory at TCU, Colorado saw 8.73 million tune in for its home-opening win over rival Nebraska. It was the best Pac-12 regular season game ever on FOX; the 10th-most watched regular season college football game ever on the network; and FOX Sports’ second-most streamed college football game in history. 

The 8.73 number fell just short of the high water mark for the week – 8.76 million who watched Texas’ victory at Alabama on ESPN (the game was blacked out on Charter cable systems). 

‘It’s fun to be that competition lurking out there’

Michael Mulvihill, FOX Corp’s president of insight and analytics, tweeted that when FOX asked Colorado to take the unconventional step of kicking off at 10 a.m. local time Saturday against Nebraska, “the answer was an immediate, unhesitating yes.” And it paid off for the network and the program, whose brand has been dormant since Sanders himself was high-stepping his way into end zones.

As Finebaum noted, Saturday’s morning show competition featured an interesting juxtaposition. ESPN tapped 80-year-old Joe Namath, the former Alabama quarterback, as GameDay’s guest picker, while FOX had on set the charismatic 56-year-old Sanders whose brash demeanor resonates with today’s youth just as it did three decades ago.

College GameDay, in its 37th season, is still that sweater you throw on for familiar comfort. But Big Noon Kickoff is formidable competition.

In the final hour of programming last year, according to the Associated Press and Neilsen, GameDay averaged 2.69 million viewers to Big Noon Kickoff’s 1.58 million. But FOX has seen gains of 30% since 2019.

Among the big changes for GameDay this year: analyst David Pollack, reporter Gene Wojciechowski and senior VP of production Lee Fitting were let go – all veterans. Longtime mainstay Chris Fallica joined FOX as a gambling analyst. FOX also added Mark Ingram II to its show. 

Rob Stone, Big Noon Kickoff’s host who also worked at ESPN before joining FOX in 2011, told the AP: “I admire everything that they have done and the people in front and behind the camera that have created that institution. But boy, it is fun to be that competition lurking out there and continually eating away at their crowd and pulling more and more people into what we like to do.”

ESPN, Fox Sports are hooked on Coach Prime

Now the morning show duel will be contested head-on in Boulder – against the backdrop of mountains and Prime Time.

It’s the third straight week FOX will be on site for a Colorado game, the first time the kickoff show will be present at a game it is not broadcasting, and the first time it visits the same location in back-to-back weeks. ESPN’s morning show visits Colorado for the first time since 1996.

It reflects the allure surrounding the captivating Sanders, who instantly rebuilt a team coming off a one-win season with a deep, deep dive into the transfer portal. 

All he’s done is win his first two games – over national runner-up TCU and Nebraska – showcase two early-season potential Heisman Trophy candidates and make his athletic department money hand-over first. 

Remember, when CU Athletic Director Rick George gave Sanders a five-year, $29.5 million contract, George conceded: “We don’t have the money yet. But I know we’ll have it, so I’m not worried about that piece.”

That piece is paying dividends. Donors contributed a record $28 million to CU’s Buff Club. Plus, CU sold out season tickets for the first time in 27 years and the school made $430,000 in ticket sales just last week. In just the first 24 hours after the season-opening TCU victory – a game watched by 7.26 million – school officials saw 6.3 million impressions on Twitter and 22 million on Instagram.

And just wait a few weeks. 

All eyes will be on Eugene, Oregon, when Colorado visits Oregon on Sept. 23 (ABC). And if you thought the nearly $500 “get-in” price was high for CU-Nebraska, dig even deeper in your pocket for the Sept. 30 showdown with USC at Folsom Field. 

Both will be must-see affairs. If CU’s success continues, FOX and ESPN staff may as well secure six-month apartment leases in Boulder. They’ll be frequent visitors.

“College football is run by two television networks,” Finebaum said. Both are hooked on the Sanders storyline – and for good reason. 

When George hired Sanders, CU became an instant fascination. Two games into this adventure, the Buffaloes are the greatest show in the sport.

Other TV ratings nuggets

• The Texas-Alabama game was the most-watched regular season game on ESPN since 2015. The game peaked at 10.7 million viewers between 10:15 and 10:30 p.m. ET, just in time for the fourth quarter.
  
• An encouraging sign for ESPN: The Pat McAfee alternative cast produced strong numbers. With 799,000 viewers, it was the most-watched McAfee cast yet. The Alabama-Texas game was also the top college football alternative cast since the 2018 national championship.
  
• Miami‘s victory over Texas A&M, an outcome that further exacerbated the angst in College Station, was Week 2’s third-highest viewing audience with 4.02 million on ABC.
  
• NBC garnered only 665,000 viewers for its primetime Charlotte–Maryland game, which Sports Media Watch characterized as one of the smallest primetime sports viewing audiences ever on the network.
  
• The paltry NBC number barely surpassed the 617,000 The CW saw for its college football debut with Cincinnati–Pittsburgh.
  
• On Saturday – a huge day for college football and the U.S. Open – the ESPN app set a new all-time, single-day record with 13.7 million unique users in the U.S.
  
• As part of their early Big Ten slate of televised games, NBC will stream the Washington–Michigan State game exclusively on Peacock. It will be the first game involving a Pac-12 school to be exclusively on Peacock.