ESPN spent Tuesday night turning the first CFP rankings of 2026 into a television event. There was a studio show, a countdown, and plenty of discussion about which teams were in a position to reach the 12-team field.
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Kirk Ferentz, meanwhile, was not particularly interested in watching. The Iowa head coach had noticed how ESPN covered the sports it owned, and how much less attention it appeared to give those it did not.
“ESPN’s loving it, and I’m sure next time I look at my iPad I’m sure, I’ll be reading all about it,” Kirk Ferentz said about the latest CFP rankings on November 3. “I did notice, like, they seem to promote the sports that they carry. Isn’t that correct?”
It was delivered with a smile, but the message was clear. Ferentz was questioning whether a network with a major stake in college football can give an impartial platform to a selection process that has such a big impact on the sport.
The exchange began with a straightforward question in the presser. Would Ferentz be watching the first CFP rankings reveal that night?
“Geez, I can’t wait! Yeah, that’s tonight?” he replied sarcastically. He quickly made clear that he had no intention of treating the show as a priority.
Asked whether the rankings might at least give Iowa an idea of where it stood, Ferentz said the program had always wanted to reach the playoff. But he was not going to let a television reveal distract his team from the next game.
“All I’ve learned in coaching is good things come with winning,” he said. “So that’s really what we need to worry about.”
Iowa is 6-2 heading into its November 7 trip to Northwestern. The Hawkeyes have beaten Michigan 20-19 in Ann Arbor, lost 31-14 to Ohio State and suffered a narrow 13-10 defeat at Minnesota. They responded by shutting out Wisconsin 30-0 on October 31.
That is a respectable résumé, even if it does not put Iowa among the leading national contenders. Ferentz was not interested in spending the week studying what the committee might think of it. His reasoning was familiar, and he seemed to target ESPN.
“If you’re looking down the road, it’s a good time to really go out there and perform badly,” Ferentz said. “I think a lot of teams suffer from that weekly, actually. Not to make fun of it. But, yeah, it’s great for TV, right?”
Ferentz shifted from the rankings to ESPN’s coverage of baseball. The 2026 World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays was broadcast on FOX, with the Brewers winning the series in five games.
“You couldn’t find anything on the baseball World Series until the last game on [ESPN],” Ferentz said. “I’m living in the same world? Right? I’m like, are they still playing in the World Series or what?”
There is some context worth adding. FOX had the US television rights to the World Series, but ESPN did not ignore the championship entirely.
It provided coverage through SportsCenter, ESPN.com, Baseball Tonight, and ESPN Radio, which carried the games nationally. ESPN2 also scheduled selected pregame and postgame editions of Baseball Tonight.
Ferentz’s complaint was about the prominence of that coverage rather than its complete absence. He was watching from the perspective of someone who felt the event did not receive the attention it should have.
“I’m Pro FOX, right? We’re FOX Conference and several others,” Kirk Ferentz remarked.
The Big Ten has not had a regular-season football media rights deal with ESPN since its current arrangement began. The conference’s principal broadcast partners are Fox, CBS, and NBC, with Fox serving as its leading partner.
The SEC, by contrast, has a major rights agreement with ESPN. That difference gave Ferentz an easy punchline. Iowa plays in a conference whose games are regularly carried by Fox, and the CFP rankings show is an ESPN production.
“We’re not ESPN, so we probably won’t make the rankings,” Ferentz joked. “Haven’t gone that far, but anyway. Yeah, I’m not too worried about it.”
When the rankings came out that night, Iowa was sitting at No. 19. It had a place in the top 25, but the playoff picture was still some distance away. That has given fresh support to Ferentz’s criticism of ESPN among fans, many of whom are now backing the coach.
“ESPN ruins everything they touch,” wrote a user on X. Another user remarked that Kirk Ferentz was saying the “quiet” part out “loud.”
The remaining schedule offers Ferentz little room for a slip. Iowa faces Northwestern, Purdue, Illinois, and Nebraska. The Hawkeyes need to keep winning and hope the teams ahead of them give the committee reasons to reconsider their positions.
“He’s not wrong. ESPN actually has a say in the rankings,” wrote a user on X. He pointed to ESPN’s control of the “bowl games” as the committee allows the broadcaster to “have input” as to where teams are ranked to get the “best bowl games” and ratings.
An Iowa fan, though, urged to ignore that noise and wrote: “F-em, we always do better as underrated underdogs.” Another user simply called ESPN “biased” and said anyone “with a brain” could see it.
Despite everything, though, Ferentz had a simple conclusion about how his team can beat the ESPN odds he seems to have taken into account. Just keep winning.
“Winning is not political,” Kirk Ferentz said. “If you win enough, they can’t deny you. If you lose, you’re gone.”
In all, Ferentz can joke about Fox and ESPN, and he can question how a network promotes its own sporting properties. But he knows a No. 19 ranking will not change because of a television dispute.