ESPN Layoffs Mean Big Changes for College Football Coverage

In a move to save money, struggling sports media giant ESPN laid off more than 100 on-air personalities today. It’s a bad day for college football fans, and here is why.

As more and more people cut the cord to cable, huge cable-based companies like ESPN are feeling the burn, and are forced to make huge organizational changes.

It didn’t matter if they’d been there three years or thirty years. If the powers at ESPN felt deciding against renewing a contract would be best for business, those people were listed as expendable to the Disney-owned sports giant. On Wednesday, ESPN’s president, John Skipper stated:

"“Today, we are again focused on a strategic vision that will propel our vast array of networks and services forward … Dynamic change demands an increased focus on versatility and value, and as a result, we have been engaged in the challenging process of determining the talent — anchors, analysts, reporters, writers, and those who handle play-by-play — necessary to meet those demands.”"

Look, ESPN isn’t perfect, but let’s face it–they are the premier sports network.  They show the most games in the greatest variety of sports. They are still the most powerful entity in the industry, despite the fact that they have lost over 10 million subscribers in the past few years, according to the New York Times.

The network has been forced to spend more money on its digital outlets; this means that they have fired a great number of people that were solely network personalities. The bloated contracts the network paid for certain sports are now coming back to haunt them as people move away from traditional cable television services.

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The layoffs also are the harbinger of an era of shoddy sports coverage. In the digital age, the trend is to get the news out first, often without checking on sources. This results in reporters–and I use this term loosely–scrambling to get their stories posted on Twitter just so that they can be first off the mark.

Often, these stories end up being false, or at the very least, packed with misinformation. Say what you will about ESPN, the network honored journalistic integrity by ensuring that their stories were fact-checked thoroughly.  In this era of fake news, so many reporters care more about being first than about being correct, consequences be damned.

Some of the more famous on-air personalities were let go, including NFL commentator Ed Werder, Big 10 Experts Austin Ward and Jesse Temple, SEC Recruiting Analyst Derek Tyson, ESPNU reporter Brendan Fitzgerald, college football analyst Danny Kanell, and college football reporter Brett McMurphy. All-sports hottie Kaylee Hartung was let go a few months before. Below are a few of the social media impressions from the now-unemployed folks.

How will this affect college football (and college sports in general)? Besides the sad fact that a reported 100-plus people are out of a steady income, this also means that more changes are in the works. As ESPN continues to hemorrhage money, the sports leagues, in turn, lose money. This means that revenue for teams and athletes will go down, too. This will affect the fans in so many ways.

First, people in small to mid-sized media markets may not get coverage at all. If ESPN chooses to go completely digital with the less popular networks, fans in, say, southern Alabama without reliable high-speed internet may not get the games they want to watch. Let’s face it–Google fiber probably hasn’t made it to Dothan, AL yet.

This also means that coverage of less-popular teams will most likely get ousted to show games from teams that bring in revenue.  To put it another way, Alabama fans will have a better shot at seeing their games broadcast than Georgia Tech fans will. Frankly, that’s a shame.

Those also-ran games usually have the most drama.  It’s no fun watching Alabama beat up on their opponents week after week because most teams can’t compete with the Tide. The Yellow Jackets, on the other hand, bring surprise upsets to their competitors. Just ask the Florida State Seminoles.

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It seems that the network is shifting its focus toward digital media, which is a smart move from a financial standpoint. From the standpoint of a football fan, I say it’s  the sad end of an era. If you’re like me, you grew up watching ESPN. There will never be another network like it. so let’s hope that the network can recover. If not, it is the sports fans that will suffer.