No Way To Work Around ESPN's College Football Conflict of Interest.

The Poynter Institute addresses the Longhorn Network, realignment and the issues presented by ESPN’s involvement with and active manipulation of college football. Kelly McBride asserts that “As long as ESPN maintains its journalistic standards and increases reporting resources devoted to college sports…the network should assuage most of its understandably skeptical critics.” That’s quite a substantial “as long as.”

ESPN primarily is a television network. Business-wise, there’s no moral ambiguity. College football is a compelling product. ESPN’s mission is to televise said product and extract as much profit as it can within the bounds of human decency. Activities such as holding bowl games, arranging high-profile non-conference games that otherwise wouldn’t happen and possibly nudging conferences toward consolidating into fewer, more competitive, television friendly entities support that mission.

If there is a moral question about meddling in college athletics, debating it is moot. Even if an idyllic past existed, there’s no dialing back to it. Amateurism exists only in rhetoric to avoid taxes and player payment. Corruption has passed the point of shame. As in every other facet of university life, the money is king. Administrators are slaves to the source. That source is ESPN.

As the money increases, so does the power and influence of ESPN’s programming limb. The question is whether a reputable, functional journalistic enterprise can coexist independently of the organ that funds it.

ESPN argues that it can. The example, cited by McBride as well, is that the Longhorn Network did not prevent ESPN running Mark Fainaru-Wada’s report that Texas spent $400,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit involving former assistant Cleve Bryant. This example does not dispel the conflict of interest.