Two major roadblocks could derail college football 'RedZone' channel

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro confirmed to Front Office Sports recently that ESPN is exploring the potential for a college football 'RedZone' style of channel.

The wildly popular NFL version draws millions of eyeballs every Sunday afternoon during the early and late-afternoon slates by cramming all of the league's best action into one yet still require RedZone compliance across the board because they own and negotiate the full rights deals for every team collectively.

At the college level, conferences strike deals on their own. SEC football was auctioned off for X, the Big Ten for Y, the Big 12 for Z, and so on. Instead of one central entity striking deals like the NFL, college football has four power conferences, a handful of smaller conferences, and independents like Notre Dame all negotiating their own television deals. ESPN owns the lion's share of them, but not all.

On a college football Saturday, fans can fill their YouTube TV quad-boxes up with several different ESPN channels, but also... FOX, CBS, The CW, NBC or others that all carry college football coverage.

That's not a problem for the NFL since the NFL centrally controls and distributes rights to every single minute of its games. They can sell to as many networks as they want and have no issue creating RedZone because different deals with different channels are all still negotiated by one entity: the NFL. Meanwhile, a comprehensive college football RedZone channel would require ESPN to strike deals with all of the other channels that have individual deals with teams and conferences.

You'd be asking that NBC allow snippets of Notre Dame games to be played on an ESPN highlight channel, basically. That's a big ask and likely carries a hefty price with how many viewers that could cost NBC since casual fans wouldn't have to flip over to the actual NBC station to see Notre Dame's biggest moments.

The same goes for FOX, who is second behind ESPN among networks broadcasting college football games. They'll just hand over their premier highlights to an ESPN clip reel? Front Office Sports already reported that FOX would need a large hand in the cookie jar to make a joint RedZone channel even conceivable.

"Fox would require significant ownership in the venture to have any willingness to participate, a source said," FOS wrote about the RedZone possibility back in August.

These rights deals between conferences and networks are immense, long and complicated. The idea of converging all of them in one place to create a true, totally comprehensive college football RedZone channel feels a little utopian in 2025. But we'll keep dreaming.

What seems very possible is a college football RedZone channel emerges years down the line, perhaps if college football can finally build some real infrastructure and start operating under one roof instead of the dozen they are now.