ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows for Championship Week

ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows for Championship Week Expanded technical builds, camera plans power top-flight productions for SEC, ACC, Big 12, and American title games By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Friday, December 5, 2025 - 3:00 pm

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For ESPN, the month of December is a marathon of high-stakes football compressed into a sprint.

This weekend, seven conference championships will flood four networks - including marquee SEC, ACC, Big 12, and American matchups on ABC - and lead directly into the rapid holiday cadence of bowl season. It's, undoubtedly, the network's most operationally complex stretch of the year.

ESPN has loaded up on production resources for marquee college football conference championship games this weekend, including at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta for the SEC Championship. (Photo: Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)

December is really the apex of our college football calendar, says Catherine Chalfant, Manager, Remote Operations for ESPN. It's incredibly demanding from a production and operations perspective but it's also where we hit our stride. Our crews are prepared for the volume, the pace, and the high stakes. This is the moment our teams are ready for: delivering the biggest shows on the biggest stages, night after night.

A Unified Yet Flexible Production Model ESPN's approach to Championship Week blends full onsite productions, REMI operations based out of Bristol and the Wide World of Sports, and support from packagers who help the network scale its bandwidth.

We have a mixture of full production, REMI's out of Bristol and WWOS, and packagers, says Jim Birch, ESPN's Senior Manager, Remote Operations. It allows us to scale appropriately depending on the venue and the event. The model allows ESPN to adapt to the varying technical realities of each site while keeping the overall production philosophy consistent.

The SEC and ACC Championships, however, operate at a different tier. These are ESPN's marquee titles of the weekend, and the network expands its regular-season workflows to match the stakes.

The SEC Championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta receives one of ESPN's most ambitious builds of the year. A Sony 5500V camera paired with Fujinon's UA125x long-lens system sits on a stacker cart to capture dramatic field-level isolation shots. A Sony 4800 handheld outfitted with the Duvo 24-300 lens is positioned inside the stadium's roof to deliver elevated, cinematic overhead views.

PylonCams will be deployed at all major conference championship games this weekend. (Photo: Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)

The broadcast incorporates additional SSMO cameras, goal-post robotics, pylon angles, and deeper camera and communications integration with accompanying studio shows such as College GameDay and alternate broadcasts like Field Pass.

From top to bottom, it's a larger crew, expanded equipment, and more integration with our studio partners, says Birch. We take our routine production footprint and amplify it.

The ACC Championship in Charlotte mirrors that elevated approach. ESPN deploys six SSMO cameras, expands its field-level coverage, increases replay capacity, and integrates two RefCams worn by officials that are provided by JockeyCam/POVORA.

The RefCam we've used a few times during the regular season, Birch says. It gives fans a truly immersive look at what's happening on the field.

The ACC broadcast also incorporates AR SkyCam graphics and receives remote-based graphics support through Viz Libero (based in Bristol). The SEC Championship gets its Libero support from site.

The ACC Network studio show ACC Huddle is fully integrated into the production, and its alternate broadcast, Field Pass, connects directly to the game broadcast.

Technology, Storytelling, and Viewer Experience For ESPN's crews, the emphasis throughout the month is on enhancing both clarity and emotion. Isolation shots, overhead perspectives, replay variety, referee-mounted cameras, and increased audio capture all contribute to ESPN's evolving visual language.

These tools reflect ESPN's continued push for cinematic visuals and more intimate storytelling, Birch says. We want fans to feel the speed, physicality, and emotion in new ways.

Chalfant adds that the technology ultimately serves a broader creative purpose. In her words, December is a time of celebration, and these games should feel as such.

We hope fans come away with a deeper sense of connection to the teams, personalities, and stakes, she says. Enhanced coverage helps viewers feel closer to the field and the passion that defines college football.

To meet that scale of Championship Week and bowl season requires an extensive network of vendor partners who support ESPN across hundreds of college football broadcasts each year. Companies such as True Grip and Chapman, who support camera-cart solutions; SkyCam, which provides aerial coverage; JayBird Jibs, which outfits the SDF Ronin systems; Fully Armed Productions, which supplies jib carts; BSI and Bexel, who provide pylon camera technology; Fletcher, responsible for robotics; and CP Communications and BSI, who support RF systems.

Coordination at Scale: Keeping Everything on Track Executing this stretch successfully requires months of planning, refined workflows, and an operations team capable of managing extreme complexity.

We're fortunate to have an Operations team with years of experience working on college football, says Chalfant.

That operations group includes Operations Supervisor Eric Kimmel; Senior Operations Producer Bob Simon; Specialists Terry Cook and Mitch Workman; and Coordinators Charlie Skoog, Tatianna Montalvo, Aaron Thompson, and Renee Greenwood.

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