ESPN began airing taped college football games during the 1979 regular season, starting with a game between
Colorado and
Oregon. The network was limited to airing tape-delayed games because the
NCAA controlled television rights through exclusive contracts. However, because bowl games operate outside the control of the NCAA, ESPN was able to air the
1982 Independence Bowl between
Kansas State and
Wisconsin live (through a simulcast with the
Mizlou Television Network) – the first live football game televised on ESPN. After the 1984 Supreme Court decision in
NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma allowed individual schools to negotiate television rights, ESPN began broadcasting live regular-season games during the
1984 season, beginning with a game between
BYU and
Pittsburgh on September 1, 1984. The first live broadcast of a regular-season night game followed that night, between the
Florida Gators, who were ranked number 17, and the
Miami Hurricanes, who were ranked number 10. In 2007, the ESPN family of networks aired over 450 games. Also, they aired a weekly game on
ESPN Radio for the first time ever. ESPN started that season with 25 hours of college football programming. Also, ESPNU has rapidly increased the coverage of
spring intramural team scrimmages with entire programs dedicated to this phenomenon. In 2008, ESPN aired
College GameDay from
Florida Field prior to their spring scrimmage game. Starting with the 2007 season, ESPN began sublicensing games from
Fox Sports Net, with the Big 12 Conference (later extended until 2009) and with the
Pacific-10 Conference. However, the games cannot air during the "
reverse mirror" slot. During the 2008 season, ESPN aired over 400 games. Beginning in the 2010 season, ESPN acquired exclusive broadcast rights to the
Bowl Championship Series in a four-year contract, where all games in the BCS would be aired on ESPN. Also in 2010, the company launched
ESPN Goal Line, a gametime-only channel that switches between games to show the most interesting plays, similar to
NFL RedZone. In 2012, ESPN reached long-term, 12-year agreements to retain rights to the
Rose Bowl,
Orange Bowl, and
Sugar Bowl following the dissolution of the Bowl Championship Series. In November, ESPN reached a 12-year deal to broadcast the remainder of the new
College Football Playoff system, valued at around $470 million per-year, giving it continued rights to the
Peach Bowl and
Fiesta Bowl, as well as the
Cotton Bowl Classic and the
College Football Playoff National Championship. For the 2014–15 postseason, ESPN implemented a major overhaul of its on-air presentation and branding for college football with
flat design and a score box in the bottom-right of the screen, which soft launched during the
New Orleans Bowl, and formally debuted alongside new graphics and theme music during the inaugural College Football Playoff games. ESPN revamped its on-air presentation for college football again for the 2020 season, with a "test facility" theme, and a scoreboard along the bottom of the screen reminiscent of
Monday Night Football. In 2017, ESPN renewed its rights to the Big Ten, but lost its tier 1 rights to Big Ten football to
Fox Sports, meaning that it no longer has the first choices of games each week. In 2019, ESPN began a 12-year deal with the
American Athletic Conference, with at least 40 football games on ESPN linear networks and ABC per-season, and all other content on
ESPN+. ESPN+ also acquired the third-tier media rights to most Big 12 teams, besides the
Texas Longhorns (who had a partnership with ESPN and
Learfield on
Longhorn Network) and
Oklahoma Sooners (which had a partnership with
Fox Sports Oklahoma). ESPN+ eventually acquired the Sooners' rights in 2022, in an agreement that would last through its exit to the SEC in 2024. In December 2020, ESPN announced a 10-year, $3 billion contract to hold the top media rights for the SEC beginning in 2024, ending its long-standing agreement with CBS, and seeing its flagship package of games move to ABC. In August 2022, it was reported that ESPN had backed out of negotiations to renew its rights to Big Ten athletics after the 2022 season, ending a relationship dating back to 1982. In 2024, ESPN began to soft launch a revamp of its college football on-air presentation and branding, beginning with new graphics specific to SEC games on ABC, and a related design for College Football Playoff broadcasts—both of which switching to a centered scoreboard, and heavily incorporating
sidebars (known internally as "blitz towers", and also adopted by
Monday Night Football) for statistics graphics to take advantage of the
16:9 aspect ratio. A variant of this design was adopted full-time for all other
ESPN College Football games and studio shows beginning in the 2025 season, shifting from the more "cinematic" look of the previous package to one intended to "encapsulate the college football atmosphere". Additionally, while remaining on ABC, the graphics used for SEC games have since been extended for use on all ESPN platforms, including
SEC Network and its streaming component SEC Network+. ==Programs==