By Rock Westfall
This week’s Blitz analyzes Nick Saban‘s joining ESPN and UCLA’s lack of football commitment.
Can Saban Add Steak to ESPN’s Cotton Candy?
I’ll be as delicate as possible. ESPN College GameDay is not meant for hardcore football fans. The last time I intently watched the program was in 2007, when the set was at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City for the epic showdown between #2 Kansas and #4 Missouri.
To paraphrase the former Dos Equis Beer Guy, I don’t often watch pregame shows, but when I do, I watch Big Noon Kickoff on FOX, but only as background as I wrap up work and prepare for 12 glorious hours of football watching.
My sisters, on the other hand, are GameDay fans. And it makes total sense. GameDay has a lot of non-football-related content on its weekly program. There is plenty of fluff, emotional human-interest stories, and celebrity guests. The same demographics who watch the NFL for cut-in shots of Taylor Swift would no doubt prefer GameDay to Big Noon Kickoff.
Still, ESPN College GameDay is a college football institution and a ratings bonanza. It is a wildly successful franchise that dwarfs its competition for audience. Yet Nick Saban can enhance it with substantive football conversation if allowed.
Schools dream of hosting GameDay, drawing massive morning crowds when they do. I have personally been on site as an observer when Gameday was at Columbia, Missouri, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin. I’ll concede it’s quite the spectacle and a good time. I don’t regret the hassles that came with attending and would do it again.
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But when at home watching, I want serious football news and views. Nick Saban has the potential to deliver. But is ESPN willing to diversify? Can it serve both steak and sweet chocolates?
#TBT Oct 23, 2010 ESPN College Gameday with @ErinAndrews and @MizGoldenGirls! #11 Missouri beats top ranked Oklahoma! pic.twitter.com/R9kCmcQ43l
— Mizzou Golden Girls (@MizGoldenGirls) November 15, 2013
Should (and Can) a Successful Institution Really Change?
The success of Gameday leads to Nick Saban and the improbability of the show being able to dramatically change from what it is.
The Alabama and college football coaching GOAT is joining GameDay for the 2024 season. This addition leads to the question of whether we will get a kinder, gentler Grandpa Nick or the iron-fisted Nicktator who dominated the sport for almost two decades. While serious football fans prefer the latter, the GameDay audience will likely prefer to coo about a softer, safer Saban turning “human” in retirement.
I can’t recall reading about anything profound ever being said on GameDay. The only memorable content I recall was in 2020 when Kirk Herbstreit wept over the state of the country and its race relations. America was coming off its most tempestuous and tumultuous summer since 1968. But it was a classic example of how GameDay is not focused on football, which drives viewers looking for it to FOX.
For millions, college football is a temporary escape and refuge from the insanity of life and hideous, corrupt, deceitful American politics. ESPN perpetually forgets that. And in Herbstreit’s moment, it was exemplified.
These days, GameDay is a traveling circus. For TV executives wanting ratings and advertising dollars, it works. But how does such a program incorporate substantive football content from the game’s most legendary coach amidst the clown caravan?
The challenge for GameDay is to try and drain Saban’s brain on football-related topics while keeping the casuals entertained. If Saban can serve as the steak to complement the GameDay standard dessert menu, the experiment could work. But the merger, if attempted, won’t be easy. ESPN faces a daunting challenge in trying to thread such a needle.
You don’t bring in Nick Saban to don a football mascot’s headgear. Or do you?
If UCLA Fell in the Forest, Would Anyone Notice?
On Tuesday, UCLA announced that it hired DeShaun Foster as its new head coach, replacing Chip Kelly, who walked out the door for a self-demotion to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Kelly left millions of dollars on the table, which spared the deeply in debt UCLA athletic department from having to fire him and pay an $8.5 million buyout.
For Kelly, being head coach of UCLA was such a miserable experience that it was no longer worth the money. UCLA’s lack of commitment to football and an NIL program that offers nothing was too much to overcome, especially for a coach who had all such advantages and more when he made his fame at Oregon. As Kelly said, walking out the door, “NIL defeats weather.”
In my last conversation with Chip Kelly, he said something I'm thinking about now.
Said Kelly: "NIL defeats weather."
My column on Kelly's decision to leave UCLA for Ohio State: https://t.co/fkifO0lcYU pic.twitter.com/hbV5tqOpkm
— John Canzano (@johncanzanobft) February 9, 2024
A Favorite Son is Called Home by Mama Bear
Foster returns home ten days after taking the running backs coach job for the Las Vegas Raiders. Before taking the Vegas gig, Foster served in that same capacity with UCLA from 2017 through last season.
Foster was hired for his strong UCLA ties, which include his status as an alum and former player. Foster has NFL bona fides as a former player from 2002-2008. At age 44, UCLA believes he brings much-needed vitality, youth, and local connections. Foster will hit the ground running and wowed UCLA players at the first team meeting. While that is great, he faces plenty of institutional gravity.
Jim Mora Jr produced UCLA’s last Top 10 season in 2014, and Kelly led UCLA to its last Top 25 season (21st) in 2022. Since 1989, UCLA finished in the national Top 10 only three times.
Success won’t be easy or immediate.
UCLA uniform game has always been top notch. But the football severely lacks. https://t.co/QpOIZ8GM7Q
— Jay Ran Here 🏃🏼 (@JayRanHere) January 1, 2022
UCLA is moving to the Big Ten Conference for the 2024 season. If UCLA were a pro franchise, it would file for bankruptcy. The red ink is deep, and the fan support is not. Los Angeles is a tough ticket for anything and does not have time for mediocre offerings. Yet that is all that UCLA has produced.
UCLA will get more money in the Big Ten but will have to share as much as $10 million of it with the University of California as part of its Pac-12 divorce settlement with the state university system. Foster will be paid about half of what Kelly was making, which no doubt was part of UCLA’s math equation for the hire.
To his credit, Foster knows what he is getting into and will have an all-in commitment to his school. Foster will blitz the SoCal area for recruiting, donations, and NIL support. Under Kelly, recruiting and transfer portal production dropped precipitously at the end.
Foster may be a fully capable HC. But he now bears the burden of an athletic department that is broke and a program that lacks what prospective recruits demand.
Until UCLA commits to championship football the way that its crosstown rival USC does, the coach remains irrelevant—the failures of any UCLA football coach rest with its haughty, out-of-touch-with-reality administration.
If Foster can pull off sustained success, he’ll be celebrated as a Miracle Man. We wish him well.
