As more technology enters sports broadcasts, networks will try to find any way they can to bring the viewer closer to the game. That holds true for ESPN and their college football coverage each week.
This week, Amanda Gifford, the Vice President of Production and the leader of college football/XFL productions for ESPN, was a guest on the Sports Media With Richard Deitsch Podcast. Deitsch asked Gifford where she sees the future of college football broadcasts going and the big thing she was talking about going into the year was access.
“One thing that we went into this season talking about is access and that’s something that we are really pushing with our crews this year. How are we taking our viewers behind the curtain of what happens during a typical college football game? We’ve had some success with the pregame speech from Dan Lanning at Oregon….That was a great example of access. But, what’s the next step of that?”
“It would be great to have even more access in four years. Can we hear the conversation between the coordinators and head coaches? Can we hear the conversations between the head coaches and players? Can we put a camera on the quarterback in some way? How we push for access I think will be interesting and see how that evolves over the next couple of years.”
Gifford brought up the point that technology is a big innovator for college football and one of the things she is hoping for is that the camera angles continue to evolve for the viewer.
“I think technology is always going to be a big part of our college football broadcasts. How are we innovating the main things like the pylon cam, the 1st and 10 line? How are we getting past the chains and human part of it? Camera angles, I really hope we can continue to push different camera angles. We’ve done things like the pylon cam, (and) the ref hat cam. I feel like the view of the game hopefully will continue to get even more intricate as we evolve over the next few years.”
As the network gets set for the first set of College Football Playoff Rankings to be revealed on Tuesday, the viewership of college football has been up for ESPN this year and Giffords did say that Deion Sanders has played a small part in that now that he is coaching Colorado.
“I think the first thing is probably some of the big brands of college football are doing really well. A lot of the traditional powers are having really good years. Deion Sanders can not be denied as a storyline and why there has been such an upswing of viewership especially in the PAC-12. Every game we have done of his has performed really well from a ratings perspective and he has brought a new element to college football that expands beyond the traditional college football fan.”
