ESPN's embarrassing negative tone around College Football Playoff misses what's great about the sport

ESPN is the official broadcast partner of the College Football Playoff. They have been one of its primary cheerleaders for the entirety of its existence, and their influence helped grow the conversation from the two-team BCS Championship to the four-team playoff, to the 12 teams we saw this year.

But if you watched any of the coverage of the first round of this year's playoff, the first time this many teams have been in the field, you probably noticed something else: ESPN spent the vast majority of the latter half of these games dunking on the losing teams.

RELATED: Notre Dame's dominant win over Indiana says more about the Irish than it does the Hoosiers

It started with Indiana, the most stunning story in all of college sports (and all of football) this season; broadcaster Sean McDonough laid into the Hoosiers, questioning whether Curt Cignetti's team was "worthy" of inclusion into the field:

From their, ESPN's resident crotchety old man and person most likely to bemoan the loss of the good ole days, Kirk Herbstreit took up the baton, saying Indiana didn't deserve to be in the playoff when you considered other teams who could've made the field, despite going 11-1 and finishing third in the Big Ten on the year:

But remember, him saying the Hoosiers weren't good enough isn't a knock on Indiana! It's not their fault they're the doormats who didn't get the memo to get out of the way of the blue bloods!

That would've been egregious enough, but the gatekeeping continued on Saturday, when SMU puked all over their shoes on the road against Penn State. The sour grapes coming from the likes of Paul Finebaum were always expected, but Jordan Rodgers (who is best known for being Vanderbilt's quarterback the last time they were any good, and also being Aaron Rodgers' brother) piled on as well, bemoaning both the Hoosiers and Mustangs' presence in the playoff.

Yes, the first-round games were largely uninspiring, and yes, the home team won all of them convincingly (although Clemson rallied nicely in the second half against Texas). But anyone who actually watches college football knows that the vast majority of games, even games between Power Four teams, tend to be blowouts. What did you think was going to happen?

And did you really think that Ole Miss, who did their own fair share of shoe puking this season against Kentucky, Florida, and LSU (who each had at least 5 losses of their own this season) would have fared better against Penn State's incredible defense? Do we think Alabama, who lost to a 6-6 Vanderbilt team and got straight-up decimated by the worst Oklahoma team in 50 years, would have been anything but a grease spot on Notre Dame's shoe?

What are we doing here? Why is ESPN being so negative? From a logical perspective, it makes absolutely no sense. The Playoff is one of the network's tentpole events, a massive revenue driver debuting a new format that had the potential for some incredible storylines. Indiana was the single best story of the season; a perennial doormat who finally found a coach who can win, who rebuilt the team overnight from one picked to finish 17th in the Big Ten into one that was good enough to make the College Football Playoff.

SMU are in their first season of power conference football since the Southwest Conference disbanded, and have their first truly nationally relevant team since they were given the death penalty by the NCAA in 1989.

Strangely, the only team not to catch any ire from the network was Tennessee, the SEC team who got their brakes beaten off by Ohio State. Sure, the Vols looked far more outclassed than either the Mustangs or Hoosiers did, losing 42-17, but if you believe ESPN, that's not because Tennessee doesn't belong.

The cynical answer to why ESPN dumped all over the two non-SEC teams is simple: money. The worldwide leader owns broadcast rights to SEC football from this year through 2033-34. By pushing the idea that the SEC is superior to all of these leagues, that even though Alabama got pasted by Oklahoma, and Ole Miss lost to a Kentucky team that didn't have another Power Four win this season and was incapable of moving the ball against most anyone, they deserved playoff berths simply by being SEC teams. By being inherently better than everyone regardless of what on-field results might say.

It misses what's great about college sports. College football is great because you have the chance for David to beat Goliath. Unlike in college basketball, where it happens when a player or two get hot to power someone past a superior team, the gap between the haves and have nots in college football is almost insurmountable most of the time.

It's about pulling for the underdog, about celebrating the things that make teams and fan bases unique and fun. It's about reveling in the chaos of a sport that could see a team like Indiana or Arizona State literally go from worst to first, about marveling about the job SMU has done to rebuild their program from the literal dead.

But it's also about celebrating dominance. By spending the back half of these two games disparaging both the Hoosiers and Mustangs, you're undercutting the performances put on by Notre Dame and Penn State, two teams who certainly looked the part of title contenders in their dominance.

Of course, expecting ESPN to understand that might be too much to ask at this point. The Worldwide Leader's college football coverage has been shifting more and more towards gatekeeping those who are unworthy for whatever reason away from those they've decided are worth celebrating. Just look at how they treated Washington State last season, who were left for dead after the network helped expedite the demise of the Pac-12.

The sharp edges and uniqueness that come from college football are problems to be removed, sanded away, until we get a homogenized television product that maximizes value for shareholders and nothing more.

They care about the sport and its actors only in so far as they bring in money, and as far as they're concerned, SMU and Indiana are interlopers who fail to add sufficient value to their bottom line.

And maybe, just maybe, if ESPN started treating the sport as something to be celebrated, top to bottom, and not just a commodity to be maximized, we could see the kind of coverage that this great sport deserves.

But if recent history is any indication, I wouldn't hold your breath.

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