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Q&A: How ESPN's Week 1 college football TV lineup came together

Daniel Uthman
USA TODAY Sports

The first full weekend of college football, a five-day stretch from Thursday through Monday, is considered to have one of the best lineups of games a kickoff weekend has had.

ESPN's College GameDay is a major attraction, but it can't match the intrigue of this weekend's opening lineup on ESPN.

One of the reasons is the menu of five neutral-site matchups being played between Saturday afternoon and Monday night — No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 13 Houston, No. 6 LSU vs. Wisconsin, No. 16 Georgia vs. No. 20 North Carolina, No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 17 USC and No. 4 Florida State vs. No. 12 Mississippi.

The origins of an opening weekend lineup go back as many as four years, but this year also included the addition of Notre Dame at Texas, which represents college football's first foray into ABC Sunday night primetime. That game only came onto ESPN's plate in April, and it gave the network one extra premier matchup than it had room for in its Saturday timeslots.

2016 college football TV schedule

We talked to two ESPN programming executives focused on college football — Nick Dawson, vice president of programming and acquisitions, and Kurt Dargis, director of programming and acquisitions — on how it came together, what pushed it from a strong lineup to an historically strong lineup, and what the future holds.

Some questions and answers have been edited for length.

USA TODAY Sports: Was there a wrinkle that let Notre Dame-Texas move to that Sunday night window?

Dawson: I really have to give some credit here to the schools, Texas expressed some early interest to us and being willing to play that game on an alternate day other than Saturday. Once we sort of identified that we had this sort of unique opportunity on Sunday night, we took it to them. They were interested from the start. Notre Dame expressed interest as well, and we really worked with the two schools so that it could happen.

Everything I've heard from the schools, they're thrilled by the opportunity to kind of be the only game in town on Sunday night on a big stage.

USA TODAY Sports: Do you remember a point that you thought, okay we have a good lineup, but now we're getting to the point where this is a historically great lineup?

Dargis: I think where it became a really wow moment for us is we also have the Oklahoma-Houston game from the Texans Stadium down there in Houston and at the time that was done two or three years ago, nobody expected Houston to becoming off the season they just had, a New Year's Six bowl victory over Florida State in the Peach Bowl. Everybody expects them to be at the top of the Group of Five this year, and if somehow they beat Oklahoma, then they really become a huge story.

USA TODAY Sports: What has made these neutral-site games so attractive to schools?

Dawson: I think the chance for these schools that have Playoff aspirations to be able to play a high-quality game at a neutral site similar to an environment that they're going to get when they get to the Playoff is attractive to be able to do it in a one-game situation as opposed to having to commit to a two-game series. The Labor Day weekend location for fans, makes these work as far as fan's ability to travel on a holiday weekend and attend.

I also think while a lot of the games this particular year were probably set before the CFP came to be, I think the committees' emphasis on strength to schedule and selections has kind of backed up the reasons to do these games for a lot of guys that it's important to play a big-time game outside your conference schedule and you're not necessarily going to get overly penalized if you play a quality game and happen to lose one along the way.

Dargis: I think just to add to the last point you made there about the emphasis the CFP's putting on the strength of schedule, we'll see that hopefully grow over the next few years as we try to set up more of these neutral site games into the late teens and twenties. I think the more years pass, it has shown that strength of schedule is vitally important when we set up the inventory of these neutral site games as we go forward.

USA TODAY Sports: The Pac-12 is very much pro-strength of schedule, that's a big priority for them. It also has become sort of a priority to play fewer late-night games. When you have a conference that is sort of looking for fewer late-night match-ups, what kind of a challenge is that for you as programmers?

Dawson: It's something we obviously have a lot of conversation with the conference about. The creation of that late-night Saturday window was important to us when we did the deal with the Pac-12. They're well aware of that and obviously acknowledge that. We're sensitive to the concerns that they hear from their fans and various stakeholders as well, so we work with them where we can, but under the parameter of knowing that late-night window on Saturday night is important.

The one thing that for us that sometimes gets out there for us that I think we probably disagree with is that it hurts them in terms of exposure nationally because from our standpoint, that window on Saturday night, it has really no competition. They're almost the only game in town on most Saturday nights, it's a big stage for them to perform, and our data has proved that over the last few years, so we think it's a great platform. We understand that they have some challenges and we try to work with them when we can within reason but there's no intention on our part to change the way we schedule those games.

USA TODAY Sports: This weekend obviously is a really big weekend. September 17th will also be a very big weekend of matchups, but looking forward is there a way in your mind to make the kickoff of the season even bigger?

Dawson: From my perspective I think you can always find ways to enhance it, and that doesn't always have to revolve around games. We continue to look for ways back into the month of August to really get the sport get talked about, get traction going, once fall camps open up, et cetera to build momentum into opening weekend. For us it can't be just, Hey, we arrive at Labor Day weekend and we launch. We have to do things from June, July, August, et cetera to make sure that fans are excited for Week 1 whenever it arrives.

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