The BYU Cougars absolutely smoked the Colorado Buffaloes in the Alamo Bowl on Saturday night in San Antonio, but despite one of the best performances of the bowl season, it still seemed like the Cougars, in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, “Don’t get no respect.”
Understandably, the Buffaloes got a ton of hype going into the game with the biggest coaching star in college football in Deion Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter leading the way, plus likely Top 5 NFL Draft pick in Shedeur Sanders.
Related: Three Biggest Takeaways From BYU’s 36-14 Win Over Colorado in the Alamo Bowl
But it became very obvious once the game started that this was going to be BYU’s night. However, that didn’t seem to matter much to the so-called “World Wide Leader in Sports”, a.k.a. ESPN.
Here are a few of the most egregious examples of how ESPN treated the Cougars during and after their dominant performance on Saturday night.
First off, the only ESPN homepage mention of this game on Saturday night was from a Colorado angle.
Late in the game the SportsCenter X account make sure to share, IN ALL CAPS, a highlight of Shedeur Sanders to Travis Hunter in a game that Colorado trailed 27-0. And there were multiple opportunities to share BYU highlights prior to this play. For the record, the SportsCenter account didn’t share a single BYU highlight all evening.
Heck, you even had the ESPN announcers getting in on the conversation, with a little sarcasm to go along with it, as Dave Pasch noted when BYU was up big, “We’re talking about BYU now. I’m sure the fans in Provo would love us to talk about BYU the whole night.”
While we have no problem understanding the eye balls and clicks that can come from the star power at Colorado, and love what Coach Prime has done to bring more attention to the Big 12, BYU should have received much more respect going into this game, and certainly during and after this game, than the network who owns a bulk of the Big 12’s rights elected to give them.
They were a 10-2 team who should have been in the at-large conversation for a College Football Playoff berth, and that conversation rarely, if ever, transpired. This despite their head-to-head win over SMU, who received an at-large berth.
In general, this has been an ongoing problem for the Big 12 with ESPN, and it’s something Brett Yormark has already addressed with ESPN leadership.
Related: Brett Yormark Called ESPN to Improve Big 12 Coverage
Unfortunately, he may need to make another call in the not too distant future.
