Week 0 of the 2025 college football season is still more than a month away and the Philadelphia Eagles won’t host the Dallas Cowboys in the Week 1 Kickoff Game for another 52 days. Hell, NFL training camps haven’t even opened yet and we’re still in the midst of conference media days. But make no mistake about it, when it comes to talking football on ESPN airwaves, Monday might as well have marked Opening Day.
Despite this being a week on the sports media calendar most-often associated with making the most of unused vacation time and the ESPYS, it was impossible not to notice the star power present on Monday’s episode of Get Up. Most notably in the form of Peter Schrager and Dan Orlovsky, ESPN’s biggest signing and re-signing, respectively, of the NFL offseason.
All throughout the morning, Schrager and Orlovsky were joined by a variety of football-first guests, including NFL analyst Damien Woody, SEC reporter Jordan Rodgers and NFL insider Jeremy Fowler, who kicked off Monday’s episode by breaking down the top-10 list of quarterbacks that his annual survey of league personnel generated. The trend continued on the ensuing episode of First Take, which included more football-focused guest such as Kevin Clark and even more debates about quarterbacks like C.J. Stroud and Baker Mayfield.
.@danorlovsky7 can’t believe C.J. Stroud isn’t on the top NFL QB’s list 😯 pic.twitter.com/hf1riirJ4l
— First Take (@FirstTake) July 14, 2025
If there was even a single reference to the MLB Home Run Derby, we must have missed it — not that we would have expected one even though the event will air on ESPN’s own airwaves on Monday night. By this point, it’s long been established that football gets the first, second and third priority at the network, creating a “chicken or the egg?” scenario about the sport’s status as America’s pastime.
The start of SEC Media Days and ongoing rookie arrivals at training camp opened the door for ample football talk and ESPN took the ball burst through it like a television version of Saquon Barkley on Monday morning. In fact, it was almost jarring to see the transition from First Take to The Pat McAfee Show simulcast, which aired a baseball-focused episode live from Atlanta ahead of Monday night’s derby, featuring interviews with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and ESPN insider Jeff Passan.
While it would be natural to draw a connection to ESPN’s bitter breakup with MLB, the reality is that these type of programming decisions were already being made well before the network and league mutually opted out of their deal this past February. And they’re also what Manfred seemed to be referencing in a letter to the league’s owners ripping ESPN’s presentation of the sport after the network opted out first.
But if anybody thought that Manfred’s barbs or the recently renewed negotiations were going to change ESPN’s calculus, that clearly wasn’t the case. If anything, the network seemed to lean even harder into its football coverage on Monday morning than one might have otherwise expected it to on July 14, although a quick look back at ESPN’s social media feeds from a year ago indicates a similar strategy was deployed.
Whether it’s by design or the realities of the NFL’s calendar, the truth is that ESPN never truly stops talking football, especially on its morning programming. Still, the shift in Monday morning’s content was certainly noticeable, as football season — quarterback debates, SEC hyperbole and all — is unofficially here.