Live From CFP Championship: For ESPN’s Ed Placey, the Megacast is a ‘Producer’s Dream’

Command Center, Coaches Film Room are among 14 viewing options of the Alabama-Clemson rematch

In its fourth year, ESPN’s MegaCast has never shied away from rolling the dice and offering new and innovative ways of presenting one of sport’s biggest events. For this year’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game in Tampa, FL, there are as many as 14 ways across ESPN’s various linear and digital channels to consume Monday’s rematch between Alabama and Clemson.

The Command Center is one of 14 ways that viewers can watch Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

For ESPN Senior Coordinating Producer Ed Placey, there’s no more exciting event for a producer to be a part of, because the MegaCast offers a nearly risk-free opportunity to try out some things one would normally never try without the safety net for the main broadcast and robust infrastructure already onsite for this game.

“It’s a producer’s dream to conceptualize new ways of potentially covering things, and you can afford to not be absolutely right,” says Placey, who has run ESPN remote operations for  college-football since 2002. “You can try things that might fail and learn from those. We have done that for many years here.”

The MegaCast is a unique event on the sports-production calendar. Sure, CBS and Turner provide incredible depth to the NCAA Tournament, but that’s designed largely for scale, with many games over multiple weeks. Even the Super Bowl, the only other annual American sports event of the CFP title game’s magnitude, isn’t covered in any way like the way ESPN covers this game.

Ed Placey, ESPN’s senior coordinating producer for college football isn’t afraid to try new things in the network’s MegaCast presentation of the CFP Championship Game.

This year’s edition will feature the return of some MegaCast staples: the Command Center, Coaches Film Room, the Finebaum Film Room, and Sounds of the Game. Some pregame elements will be added this year. In the past, ESPN simulcast its pregame coverage across all its linear channels. This year, selected networks will get their own programming, including an uninterrupted look at on-the-field pregame ceremonies from the stadium airing on ESPNU.

“We’re more comfortable extending our reach, and people are more used to watching multiple screens of information coming at them at the same time,” says Placey. “It freaks people out initially, until they sit with it for a few minutes and understand that we’re not asking you to view all of these options at the same time. You can go around and pick what you want to watch and let your eyes pick what you want to watch.”

The most refined and revolutionary of the many viewing options may be the Command Center (which can be seen both on cable on the ESPN Goal Line channel and streamed on WatchESPN) and the Coaches Film Room (on ESPNNews and WatchESPN).

The Command Center offers a multiscreen view on a single image, offering an array of visuals — including isolated angles at the coaches, SkyCam, and extended replays of key moments — while also supplementing with tiles dedicated to real-time stats and data.

The Command Center has been presented in various forms dating back to the first MegaCast at the BCS National Championship Game in 2014 but has been a brainchild of Placey and other members of the ESPN production staff since the early 2000s.

“People’s initial reaction when we first did it was that it was sensory overload,” says Placey. “We’ve been presenting it in many different forms for 10 years now and slowly tinkering away at it. We feel like we’ve got it in a place now where, if viewers sit with it for five or 10 minutes, they discover they want to watch more games this way.”

The Command Center has been a part of the MegaCast from its inception in 2014 but has been a a concept in development at ESPN for more than a decade. (courtesy ESPN)

ESPN is dedicating some camera resources to shoot with a focus on programming for the Command Center. Those angles are, naturally, available for main-game director Derek Mobley to use in the game cut.

For the Coaches Film Room, ESPN analyst Brian Griese will watch the game with five current/former college head coaches and break down the game in real time. From a studio offsite, the production will feature limited commercial interruptions and will showcase multiple camera angles and allow the coaches to use telestration and other tools on replays to offer their perspectives on the game.

It’s an offering that Placey is particularly proud of, because his team took a risk in producing a show in a format that did not feature a host or desk to anchor the conversation.

“[Coaches Film Room is one] I have a lot of sentimentality for because many said that we would need a host,” he explains. “I want this to be the ultimate non-TV show. We have been in coach’s film rooms before games, and we know what that experience is like. That’s interesting to us even if we don’t know everything they are saying. To live in their world in an authentic way is unique.”

Placey was the first to admit that he could have been wrong about that but he really wanted to try it. If people really hated it, he points out, they could always go back to the main game telecast. He feels, though, that it has come together exactly as he would have hoped.

“We were validated for sticking to our guns,” he says. “We could afford to be miserably mistaken, but we’ll never know how people will react to it if we don’t let them see it.”

Here’s a complete listing of the MegaCast options available to viewers for Monday’s game:

Main Game Telecast: (ESPN)

“Homers” Telecast (ESPN2)
Broadcast will feature a nearly identical cut of the game but will feature Joe Tessitore on the play-by-play call with team-centric analysts Tajh Boyd (former Clemson quarterback) and Barrett Jones (a former Alabama defensive lineman) providing commentary and encouraged to actively root for and provide team-centric analysis.

Coaches Film Room (ESPNNews)

ESPN Voices (ESPNU)

Finebaum Film Room (SEC Network)
The outspoken SEC Network and radio personality Paul Finebaum returns to host a format that’s a bit of a hybrid of the Coaches Film Room and ESPN Voices, bringing former players (Greg McElroy, Booger McFarland) and a coach (Florida head coach Jim McElwain) together to watch the game and provide instant analysis. The show is being produced here in Tampa near the stadium and will also take live calls from viewers.

Sounds of the Game (ESPN Classic)
Want to watch the game with no announcers at all and just take in the natural sound from the stadium? This is your destination.

Command Center (ESPN Goal Line)

Hometown Radio (ESPN3)
Another hardcore fan’s dream. Want to watch the game with your team’s radio announcer on the call? ESPN has partnered with IMG College and Learfield Sports to provide two viewing options for streaming that syncs each radio broadcast with the live television presentation.

Data Center (ESPN3)
A stat junkie’s ultimate second-screen companion. This streaming option offers loads of stats, including deeper on-screen graphics, real-time drive charts, updated win probability, and constantly curated social-media commentary.

SkyCam (ESPN3)
No director making camera switches. Watch the entire game from the aerial camera for a unique view of the game.