When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz walked onto the “College GameDay” set on the University of Texas campus ahead of the Longhorns’ showdown with Ohio State, he was greeted by a raucous Austin crowd that drowned out host Rece Davis. “Ted, you suck! Ted, you suck!” several hundred students chanted for nearly 10 minutes on Saturday morning, standing behind the Republican and booing as Davis attempted to conduct a one-on-one interview. Cruz was on the most-watched college football program in the nation to make the case that Congress should “bring order to chaos” in college sports. But by the time it was over, clips of “Ted, you suck” drowned out everything the senator actually said about the Protect College Sports Act.
The segment was funny, not to mention deservedly embarrassing. But as a casual observer of college football, ESPN’s offer to Cruz initially struck me as a baffling spectacle. Why would a corporate giant like Disney — ESPN’s parent company — long perceived as culturally progressive and frequently at odds with conservative politicians, hand 10 minutes of prime, uninterrupted broadcast time on its flagship sports show to a controversial Republican senator? Why subject its premiere college football brand to an awkward political lecture that its core audience clearly did not want? And, as several people questioned on social media, why hand Cruz an unvetted platform on ESPN during the same week that ABC, another Disney-owned company, pulled Texas’s Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico from the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” broadcast schedule over regulatory fears?
