GG’s Eli Judge helps the College Football Playoff committee navigate the basics of sports communications.
It’s the most magical time of year: the beginning of the college football season. Though players have changed teams and teams have changed conferences, one constant remains: fans are bound to get upset about rankings.
Every week when new rankings come out, the committee that selects the teams faces backlash from reporters and fans alike who don’t understand why each team was chosen. When explanations are offered, they are inconsistent at best.
The rankings will never be without controversy: people will always be upset when their teams don’t make the cut. But each week’s media blowup shows that the committee has some work to do in the PR department. Here we’ll provide sports communications tips that could help the College Football Playoff committee, as well as other sports communicators, avoid fan backlash and keep up the conversation on what’s important: sports.
When making a major announcement, it is critical for sports communications teams to be clear and transparent about how and why they made their decision. Sometimes a conference championship is used to determine the better team, sometimes it’s strength of schedule, and sometimes it’s not entirely clear at all. For fans, this can feel like the committee is just going off “vibes.”
For sports communicators, this opaqueness is bound to bring backlash. To avoid a social media flare-up each time new rankings are released, they should communicate – and stick to – a clear set of criteria for selecting the teams.
By communicating these key details proactively, the CFP committee could preempt the notion that its decisions are needlessly subjective. The public may still be unhappy (college football fans are rarely happy), but fans won’t be able to question how the committee decided on the final four teams. This is a communications lesson for sports PR teams: audiences respond best when they clearly understand why decisions are made, even if they don’t like the outcome.
Social media has changed the way sports fans interact with the game – many of the “hot takes” that have come to define sports journalism originate there. Because social media is such a driver for fan discourse around sports, it is critical for sports communicators like the College Football Playoff committee to strategically use those channels to meet fans where they are.
Using live communications options like Instagram Live or X Spaces would allow sports organizers to talk with a national audience and answer questions directly from fans who want to know more about why certain choices were made. “Ask Me Anything” threads on Reddit, which are already being leveraged by pro leagues to get players in front of fans, could be used by CFP officials to answer questions about rankings. Communicating directly with fans on the platforms they use will increase trust in decision-makers and make it easier to clear up misconceptions before they become viral moments.
Sports teams are a huge source of community for fans, but it often appears to those fans that institutional entities like the College Football Playoff committee are just suits making business decisions, not real enthusiasts of the game. By leaning into the community aspect of college football, sports communicators can show that their organizations care about the sports that fans love so dearly and help diffuse tensions between viewers and administrators.
For example, when the CFP Committee in 2021 (rightly) picked Cincinnati for the playoff, fans and journalists alike were excited. The plucky underdog, a perennial favorite for football fans, was selected over Goliaths like Notre Dame and Ohio State. But the Committee missed an opportunity to lean into this and build trust with its audiences. It could have hosted tailgate events with teams big and small, promoted fun and exciting players, or participated in bizarre executions of popular breakfast pastries. Fans love these kinds of things, and these moments of levity could help mitigate blowback for inevitably unpopular decisions down the line.
As the college football season continues, it’s guaranteed that many people will become upset and voice those frustrations on traditional and social media throughout the season. But if the sports communications team for the College Football Playoff committee commits to transparency and consistency in its communications about the season, uses social media to meet fans where they are, and embraces the community that makes sports special, it can set in motion a long-term effort to build trust between fans and organizers.
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