College football fans woke up Saturday morning to a nightmare scenario. YouTube TV subscribers found themselves locked out of ESPN, ABC, and all Disney-owned channels after the two companies couldn’t hammer out a new carriage deal before the October 30 deadline hit at midnight. About 10 million YouTube TV subscribers suddenly lost access to the content they’d been paying for. For now, the week 10 matchup of College Gameday will be uninterrupted thanks to the new update. 

ESPN made College GameDay completely free for everyone this week. One can catch the entire show without any subscription or login through the ESPN App. Plus, it will also be streamed live on X via The Pat McAfee Show’s handle (@PatMcAfeeShow). This came at the right time, as one of the biggest college football weekends had the College GameDay heading to Salt Lake City for the Cincinnati-Utah showdown.

ESPN announced this workaround directly in response to the YouTube TV blackout, making sure fans wouldn’t miss the crew’s trip to Salt Lake City for the Big 12 clash between No. 17 Cincinnati and No. 24 Utah.​ The whole dispute boils down to money and power, plain and simple.

Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, along with ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, have blamed Google for trying to use its market dominance. They argue that Google wants to get deals that would undercut Disney’s own streaming services like Hulu + Live TV. The stakes are huge here. YouTube TV is now the biggest U.S. media distributor by audience engagement, grabbing over 13.4% of TV watch-time. Some analysts even predicted it’ll become the biggest media company by revenue in 2025, surpassing even Disney.​

​​The reality is this marks the fifth distribution dispute YouTube TV has had with a major distributor in 2025. Moreover, it’s their fourth dispute in just the last three months. YouTube has been flexing its massive reach to push for what they call “ingestion” rights. They want to pull content directly onto their platform rather than sending users to separate apps. That strategy might work great for YouTube’s engagement numbers. But this is a direct threat to media companies.

Disney and others are trying to build their own direct-to-consumer relationships. Nobody knows how long this streaming war will go on. But at the very least, College Gameday fans have a way to enjoy their favorite show without being churned among media giants.

What’s actually at stake in Salt Lake City

Once you figure out how to actually watch the show, you’ll see GameDay breaking down one of the most consequential Big 12 matchups of the season. No. 17 Cincinnati rolls into Rice-Eccles Stadium sitting pretty at 7-1 overall and a perfect 5-0 in Big 12 play. They are tied with undefeated BYU at the top of the conference standings. Meanwhile, No. 24 Utah stands at 6-2 and 3-2 in league play, coming off an absolute beat-down of Colorado last week, where they won 53-7. 

The Bearcats control their own destiny. Win out against Utah, Arizona, BYU, and TCU, and they’re playing for a conference championship. For Kyle Whittingham’s Utes, who were picked to win the Big 12 in the preseason before injuries derailed their 2024 season and led to a disappointing 5-7 record, this is about proving they belong in the College Football Playoff conversation. The lines have been all over the place. Utah opened as a 10.5-point favorite despite 84% of the bets coming in on Cincinnati, which tells you everything about how tricky this game is to handicap.​​

The quarterback matchup is where this game gets really interesting. Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby has been nothing short of spectacular. The redshirt junior hasn’t thrown an interception in 63 days, dating back to that Week 1 loss to Nebraska on August 30. This season, Sorsby has completed 65.2% of his passes for 1,843 yards and 20 touchdowns while adding 425 rushing yards. 

Utah’s Devon Dampier, who missed the Colorado game with a lower leg injury that’s bothered him all season, is expected to start after not appearing on Wednesday’s availability report. The dual-threat junior has thrown for 1,375 yards and 13 touchdowns while rushing for 442 yards and five more scores. But he got banged up pretty good in that brutal 24-21 loss to BYU. If Dampier can’t go or re-aggravates anything, true freshman Byrd Ficklin would get the nod.​