ESPN’s perceived -- and legitimate – biases and the best college football towns from which to host a broadcast were among the topics broached during a wide-ranging conversation with the net’s Chris Fowler at the ‘14 NeuLion Sports Media & Technology Conference today. Fowler made news recently by firing back at viewers who accused ESPN of having a bias toward the SEC. He expanded on his comments today, saying, “My comments were specifically about this huge misconception that ESPN benefits from pushing SEC teams into the playoff bracket.” Fowler said, “It bothers me when people question your integrity or people think that what they’re hearing on the stage is just strings pulled by the puppet master. That’s offensive to me. The other thing is that it’s ludicrous to think that the business of ESPN is improved by having three SEC West teams in a bracket or having teams clustered to one small geographic area in the bracket. That’s just illogical and it doesn’t make any sense. If you really thought about it for ten seconds it would be obvious that it’s not ideal. … Anybody, whether it’s us or Fox or anybody who has the rights to broadcast the games, wants geographic distribution.”
Other highlights from Fowler:
* On ESPN’s actual bias: “We’re extremely biased toward the best teams in the sport. We’re biased toward the top of the rankings, and we always have been for 25 years because those are the high-impact games. Now, do we do it too much? Maybe. That’s one of the things we talk about every week. I think we should be more inclusive of the teams on the edge of the radar screen. I don’t think we should have as much of a top 5, top 10 sensibility sometimes.”
* On his top three favorite places from which to broadcast “College GameDay”: “Fargo, North Dakota, has been pretty fun for us. We go and salute the FCS three-time defending champions and Fargo turned it into Mardi Gras. Who knew what Fargo was like? And it turns out it was like Bourbon Street on a Saturday morning. … Every time we go to Oregon, there’s a special energy there. The show starts in the dark. I always say you cannot see the fans but you can smell them, because there are lots of aromas in the air in Eugene. … Ole Miss was phenomenal. We had never been to that campus. We were there a few weeks ago when they beat Alabama and that was as advertised. It was beautiful. It was passionate. It was unique."
* On the broadcasting ramifications of the new college playoff: “Trying to make New Year’s Day special again with the semifinal doubleheader is a good idea. Next year it will be New Year’s Eve, which I think will be a more radical change of viewer’s habits because New Year’s Eve has not been a big football night. It’s been a big social night….As we sit here now, the postseason format has a lot higher fan approval rating than the BCS ever did.”
* On where Marshall will end up in the final standings if it goes undefeated: “Not good enough to get into the bracket. I just think a Conference USA team is just on the outside looking in. We’ve tried to give them some love (on “College GameDay”). It’s so hard to go undefeated regardless of your ranking. But the committee sort of has stated where they stand on it. I’m not sure what else Marshall can do. … There’s sort of a glass ceiling for Marshall.“
