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Fox to innovate BCS coverage
By
TONY BARNHART
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/26/06
Phoenix — No, Fox Sports executives said Tuesday, Homer Simpson will not be brought in to officiate games when the network kicks off its college football bowl coverage this season.
Nor will Simon Cowell be called upon to humiliate Texas' defense from a telecast booth.
<!--endtext--><!--endclickprintinclude--><!--startclickprintinclude--><!--begintext--> Just as Fox overcame gloomy forecasts that critics predicted for the flamboyant network when it signed on to broadcast NFL games and NASCAR races, officials are confident it will be a hit in the bowl business it spent millions of dollars to get into.
"We heard a lot about how we were going to ruin [NASCAR]," Ed Goren, Fox Sports' president and executive producer, said Tuesday. "All we were able to do is help build it into the second-most popular regular-season sport in the country. And the last time I checked, they were still doing left-hand turns, no right-hand turns."
Fox executives are at the Bowl Championship Series meetings in Phoenix this week to discuss coverage plans — and quell fears — about how it will cover four of the five BCS games it signed on to telecast in a four-year, $320 million deal.
The network has the rights to every BCS bowl but the Rose — it stays on ABC — including the Jan. 8 national title game.
"When we took over the NFL, our motto was, 'Same game, new attitude.' We think that applies here," Goren said. "But whatever impression folks may have of Fox, over the past 12 years we've always shown a great deal of respect for the game. How we cover what surrounds the game may be a bit different because we want to capture the complete excitement of what a college game is all about."
To that end, viewers will notice a few changes in the way Fox covers the BCS vs. the way ABC has done it since 1998. Among them:
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Talent. Goodbye, Keith Jackson, the play-by-play man on January's Texas-Southern Cal Rose Bowl classic. Hello, Thom Brennaman, son of Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman and the new lead announcer for the title game.
The younger Brennaman earned his broadcasting spurs in baseball but has worked the Cotton Bowl since Fox acquired the game from CBS. Fox will announce Brennaman's broadcast partner in the coming weeks.
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More people stories. And not just players. Goren remembers watching members of Ohio State's band stretch before they went on the field for the first time at the Fiesta Bowl.
"These folks were ready to go out and compete against the band from Notre Dame. I just thought that was great," he said. "And I never saw that on television. We want find stories about the bands, the cheerleaders and the fans in the stands. You're going to see more flavor."
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Pregame shows for each contest. Rather than anchor coverage for the entire BCS at the site of the national championship game, Fox will do separate pregame shows and fly the talent to each site. "Each game has its own identity," Goren said. "Even if you're not in the championship game, for the fans that is their Super Bowl."
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The BCS selection show. ABC put the show on Sunday night, when other networks were airing NFL games — and the poor ratings reflected it. Fox will put the selection show on Sunday night at the end of an NFL doubleheader.
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Greater access. Fox will try to push for more access to locker rooms before and after the games. It will also ask to put microphones on coaches during the games — an idea Larry Jones, Fox Sports' chief operating officer, knows will be met with resistance.
"We had the same thing in baseball when we wanted to 'mike' the managers," Jones said. "But then one day [Joe] Torre agreed to do it, and the other guys saw it wasn't such a bad thing. It's a process."
Added Goren: "You have a chance to capture some real human moments and to bring the audience closer to the game."
But no matter how many innovations Fox tries, Goren knows they'll mean nothing if the games themselves aren't hits. Last season's BCS bowls, led by the Rose, were so compelling that ratings were up 30 percent from the year before.
"If we had had all those games last year, even if we had shown them in black and white, it wouldn't have mattered," Goren said. "You just can't manufacture that. The game will always be the thing."
