For all the talk about meaningful wins and the relative strengths of their schedules, SMU has prevailed over Alabama in the bid for what amounted to the only up-for-grabs berth in the first 12-team College Football Playoff. The selection committee’s decision to promote the 11-2 Mustangs over the 9-3 Crimson Tide not only eliminates the nation’s top-spending football program from contention, but also sets up some crucial scheduling considerations for ESPN.
Ironically enough, in passing over Alabama the committee inadvertently undermined the spending power of one of college football’s most storied programs. According to the university’s financial records for the 2022-23 academic year, Alabama spent $83.3 million on football that same season, or some $7.7 million more than also-ran Florida State. (Last season, ‘Bama’s bigger budget won out, as the committee chose the one-loss SEC champs over the undefeated Seminoles. Controversy is as much a part of the fabric of the run to the title as are deep-pocketed boosters.)
Among the big spenders that will be fighting it out for a shot at the title next month are Big Ten mainstay Ohio State ($72.4 million), SEC champs Georgia ($69.1 million) and the ACC’s Clemson ($66.8 million). The 10-2 Buckeyes look to bounce back from a humiliating loss in the ‘Shoe against the hated Michigan Wolverines, while the 11-2 Bulldogs earned a bye Saturday with a 22-19 win over 11-2 SEC newbies Texas, who’ll host Clemson in the first round. As can be seen by way of a few clicks through Sportico’s College Sports Finances Database, the Longhorns’ football budget in 2022-23 was a tidy $61 million.
While the budgets for the two private schools that advanced to the CFP aren’t included in the Sportico database, the rise of NIL has more or less allowed wealthy alumni to unload Brink’s trucks onto the front lawns of their schools’ provosts. SMU has been the beneficiary of a gusher of oil money that’s been rerouted by billionaire Bill Armstrong (’82), whose name is now stamped all over the Mustangs’ practice facility. While Armstrong hasn’t disclosed the extent of his donations to the football program, he’s been fairly vocal about his willingness to help steer SMU back to the glory days of the Pony Express.
“I bet a lot of these schools look at SMU and go, ‘Oh, sh*t, here come all the billionaires,’” Armstrong told ESPN in September. “We’ve been the whipping boy for so long. We’re not going to blow it. There’s a lot of pent-up fun to be had.”
Speaking of ESPN, the network moved quickly to decide which of the four first round games it would offload to sublicensee TNT. The Warner Bros. Discovery network will screen a doubleheader on Sat., Dec. 21, kicking off the day with SMU-Penn State game at noon ET before moving on to Clemson-Texas at 4 p.m. That leaves ESPN with the Fighting Irish (Notre Dame hosts Indiana at 8 p.m. Friday) and Tennessee-Ohio State in Saturday prime. That SEC-Big Ten battle will be simulcast on ABC.
As part of a deal announced in the spring, Disney elected to farm out two of its opening-round CFP games to the WBD outlet, a move which ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro later acknowledged was prompted by a “very attractive” financial offer from David Zaslav’s team. While the licensing fee has been kept under wraps, Pitaro’s crew is said to have valued each of the four early game at around $25 million a pop.
Rita Ferro, Disney’s president of global advertising, confirmed that ESPN would retain all of the ad revenue generated during the two games to be carried by TNT. A similar arrangement will play out in 2025.
After 30 minutes of throat clearing and table setting, ESPN began unveiling the committee’s picks Sunday at 12:30 p.m. ET. The cable network reserved the disclosure of the No. 10 seed for last, as ‘Bama-or-SMU marked the expanded bracket’s only toss-up. (In a post to his X account that went live just before the selection show telecast went live, Action Network reporter—and former ESPNer—Brett McMurphy revealed that the Mustangs had gotten the nod over the Crimson Tide.)
All told, the field of 12 features four Big Ten teams, three SEC schools, a pair of ACC reps and one each from the Big 12 and Mountain West Conference. Notre Dame is the outlier as the lone independent school in the mix. The TV turnout should work in the advertisers’ favor, as the all-SEC matchups accounted for 11 of the season’s 20 most-watched college football games, while interconference matchups bumped the frequency up to 15. Each of those 15 games aired on ABC, which was the runaway winner of this season’s Nielsen race.
Four standalone Big Ten games and a pair of interconference telecasts accounted for the rest of the season’s biggest draws to date.
