For two decades now, we’ve gotten used to seeing the biggest SEC games broadcast on CBS.
You know what time it is when you hear that familiar college football jingle coming on your television. It always just felt like you were about to watch a good one, no matter who the teams playing were.
Chances are you probably were about to watch a good one since the SEC has been the most dominant conference in college football through the years, some of those games were the season’s most important games.
Now, you’ll have to watch those games somewhere else. The SEC’s games are no longer being broadcast on CBS’s network.
This fall, the SEC’s home will exclusively be on ESPN. The CBS deal expired at the end of the 2023 season and was never renewed.
However, the decision for both parties to move on isn’t a new one. According to Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger, the relationship had been deteriorating for years shortly after the conference added Texas A&M and Missouri to its coffers.
ESPN agreed to pay both schools the same as the previous 12 schools. CBS didn’t.
“While CBS owned rights to the No. 1 football game each week — as well as two doubleheaders a year — ESPN owned all other SEC games. When the league expanded, ESPN paid what is described as “pro-rata,” increasing distribution from 12 units to 14 to account for the two new schools.
CBS declined to do the same.”
So, when it was time to re-up the deal between the conference and the network, the two sides couldn’t reach a compromise.
Now, we’ll only watch SEC games on ESPN for the foreseeable future.