Fox College Football

Coverage history

The Fox network acquired its first college football telecast in 1998, when it obtained the broadcast rights to the annual Cotton Bowl Classic held each January on (eventually, the day after) New Year's Day; the first game to be shown on the network as part of the deal was held on January 1, 1999. Fox renewed its contract to carry the game in 2010, in a four-year agreement that ran through the 2013 NCAA college football season. Fox lost the rights to the Cotton Bowl to ESPN for the 2015 edition, as the cable network holds the television contract to all six bowl games that encompass the College Football Playoff system under a twelve-year deal worth over $7.3 billion. The Cotton Bowl was the only game among the six that was not already broadcast by ESPN.

From the 2006 through the 2009 seasons, Fox held the broadcast rights to most of the games comprising the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) – including the Sugar Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl and the Orange Bowl, as well as the BCS Championship Game. Fox paid close to $20 million per game for the rights to televise the BCS games. The network's contract with the BCS excluded any event in the series that was held at the Rose Bowl stadium, such as the Rose Bowl Game and the 2010 BCS National Championship Game, as ABC already had a separate arrangement with the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association to serve as the broadcaster for the games.

ESPN, which is majority owned by ABC's corporate parent The Walt Disney Company and serves as the producer for all of ABC's sports coverage, would displace Fox outright as the broadcaster of the BCS beginning in the 2010-11 season. This left the Fox network with only the Cotton Bowl Classic as the sole college football game, to which it held the television rights until the 2013-14 season.

Beginning with the 2011 season, sister cable channel FX began airing a "game of the week" on Saturdays featuring matchups from three of the major collegiate football conferences: the Pac-12, the Big 12 and Conference USA. The Fox network also obtained the rights to air the Big Ten Conference's new championship game beginning that season and running through 2016, as part of Fox Sports' involvement with the Big Ten Network. Additionally, Fox broadcast the inaugural Pac-12 Football Championship Game – future editions of the game would alternate between ESPN and Fox.

Beginning with the 2012 season, Fox added regular season games on Saturdays to its lineup; it broadcast eight afternoon games and twelve nighttime games throughout the season, with the latter telecasts airing as part of a new strategy by the network to carry more sports programming on Saturday nights during prime time.

Fox Sports 1 replaced FX as the cable outlet for college football in 2013.

Fox's coverage of the 2015 season opened with a game on FS1 featuring the Michigan Wolverines at the Utah Utes. As the first game featuring new head coach Jim Harbaugh, the game was heavily promoted through an Opening Drive tour which featured a "HarBus"—decorated with a sweater and khakis in imitation of Harbaugh's on-field wardrobe, and accompanied by a group of "HarBros" dressed like Harbaugh. The tour concluded at Salt Lake City's Grand America Hotel for game day, although the bus itself was barred from entering the University of Utah's campus.

On July 12, 2016, the San Francisco 49ers announced that it had taken over the Foster Farms Bowl, and had reached a four-year deal to move the game to Fox and Fox Deportes beginning in 2016. It was also reported by Sports Business Journal that Fox was perusing a share of the Big Ten's primary football rights.

Fox Sports began carrying select college football games in virtual reality for the 2016 season. The games are distributed through a special smartphone app that requires a stereoscope (such as Google Cardboard or View-Master) and TV Everywhere authentication.

Graphics

College football game telecasts aired on Fox have always used variants of the graphics used for the NFL on Fox telecasts at that time (along with a red variant of its logo for BCS games, which were branded as BCS on Fox), while telecasts on Fox Sports Net had used the current graphics package used for the family of regional sports networks. Telecasts began to use the new standard Fox Sports graphics that were first introduced by NFL on Fox in 2010 (albeit with a scoreboard displaying the names of the teams playing in the game, instead of team logos) beginning with the broadcast of the 2011 Cotton Bowl Classic, with the Fox Sports Networks following suit for the 2011 regular season. Fox Sports' college football and NFL broadcasts would use a new logo bug with text abbreviations in 2012 and 2013.

In 2014, a new graphics package was introduced that utilizes abbreviations on both the NFL and college football broadcasts, however the bug seen during NFL broadcasts display the scores in a stacked fashion, while the version used for the college football telecasts shows the score to the right of each team's name.

Theme music

From 1999 to 2004, Fox's broadcasts of the Cotton Bowl used a marching band arrangement of the Scott Schreer-composed instrumental theme used for NFL on Fox broadcasts. Telecasts on Fox Sports Net used their own distinct theme music; however, the FSN theme was used for the Cotton Bowl telecasts on Fox from 2004 to 2006. From 2007 to 2010, FSN retained its own separate music package, while Fox's BCS and Cotton Bowl broadcasts used a new and distinct instrumental theme. During the 2010-11 season, when Fox reverted to showing only the Cotton Bowl, the Fox Sports Networks telecasts maintained their separate theme, while Fox used the NFL on Fox theme music for the bowl broadcast. In 2011, when Fox began airing regular season college football games, telecasts on Fox and FX used the NFL on Fox instrumental as part of a network-wide rebrand, while FSN continued using its classic theme. Starting in the 2012 season, college football telecasts aired on any Fox-owned networks other than the Fox Sports Networks slate of regional channels (Fox, FX, Fox Sports 1 or Fox Sports 2) have used a slightly updated version of the marching band variant of the NFL of Fox theme, which essentially utilizes the same arrangement. Meanwhile, telecasts on the Fox Sports Networks (which had its coverage reduced to a regional basis beginning with the 2013 season), continued to use their own classic theme through 2014 before being replaced by the NFL on Fox theme in 2015.

Seasonal

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of Fox College Football Night on Fox.