ESPN’s college football spotlight keeps shining where its business is, and Texas Tech just got another reminder of that.
During Thursday night’s Syracuse-Pitt ACC game, ESPN ran a graphic listing the weekend’s biggest matchups. Six games made the list, and all but one were on ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC, the network’s parent company. The lone exception was Texas Tech’s Friday night home game against Houston, which will air on FOX.
The part that stood out wasn’t just that the Big 12 game was the odd one out. It was that ESPN also got the day wrong.
The graphic showed Texas Tech-Houston as a Saturday game, even though it is set for Friday night. The only game on the graphic marked correctly was one of ESPN’s own.
“One of the premier Big 12 games of the season, Houston at Texas Tech, is tomorrow night on FOX.
So here’s a graphic that just aired on ESPN showing the game on Saturday, while conveniently showing tomorrow’s ESPN game correctly.
Great work guys. pic.twitter.com/R0U0n9XE3E
- Tyler Dreiling (@TylerDreiling) September 18, 2026”
The mistake landed as more than a simple graphics slip because it fit a broader pattern. ESPN is the main engine behind college football coverage, and the source of the complaint here is that the network keeps treating Texas Tech and the Big 12 like an afterthought while leaning hard into the SEC, ACC and Big Ten.
That matters because college football is still a sport built on perception. Polls and playoff decisions shape the pecking order, and the argument here is that ESPN helps set that tone week after week. With ESPN and ABC carrying seven of the 11 College Football Playoff games, the network has a direct stake in how teams and conferences are viewed.
The concern is that constant promotion of SEC, Big Ten and ACC programs helps those teams look bigger to the public, and that public opinion can bleed into the conversations that determine who gets rewarded. Even when ESPN spends time breaking down mid-tier teams from those leagues, the exposure itself can tilt the field.
That’s part of why the Big 12 continues to be painted as the conference fighting for scraps. It is also why the league remains the only one of the four major conferences yet to earn two bids to a 12-team playoff field.
The source material points to the 2024 playoff as another example. Clemson and SMU got in from the ACC, even though the ACC was described as no better than the Big 12. BYU, which beat SMU in Dallas that season, was left out despite finishing the regular season 10-2.
The larger complaint is simple: if ESPN had no built-in bias, it would not push the leagues it is tied to while leaving the Big 12 to fend for itself. But the network is driven by profit, and that means the Big 12 will keep trying to climb an uphill road for respect.
For Texas Tech and the rest of the conference, the only real answer is to keep winning and hope the sport’s perception shifts anyway. Until then, the Big 12 is stuck battling a media giant that keeps making it clear where its attention goes.
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