Saturday, January 13, 2018

Game Time: When college football really was event TV

Today, watching college football on several different channels can leave one viewer dizzy and on the verge of falling asleep too soon. That's the end result of the expansion of cable, to the point where there are links between broadcast & cable networks via corporate ownership (i.e. ESPN/ABC as a unit of Disney), flooding the airwaves and fans' senses almost to the point of desensitization.

It wasn't always thus. In the pre-cable era, and even in cable's infancy, ABC, in particular, subscribed to the concept of having a Game of the Week, kind of like Major League Baseball. That's what made watching college football so special back in the day. After the unification of ESPN & ABC under the Disney umbrella some 20-odd years ago, the idea has been to heavily push the top 25 ranked teams, and over-promote each year's Heisman candidates from the start of the season.

Take a trip back in time with me to 1968 and a classic rivalry between SEC rivals Alabana & Tennessee.



Posted in memory of play-by-play announcer Keith Jackson, who passed away today at 89.

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