College football is set to officially get underway with Week 1 action this week, and Florida Gator fans are going to need to locate ESPN+ and/or SEC+ to watch the game against LIU if they aren't going to The Swamp on Saturday.
This isn't new for games against FCS opponents to be on a separate streaming platform package, and the rest of the season is set to be on standard ESPN and/or ABC.
But for Big Ten and Big 12 fans who have the bulk of their games appear on Fox, FS1, and any of the other sub-networks that appear under that banner, they are about to go through a headache that Florida fans experienced two years ago.
YouTube TV and Fox can't get along
Almost out of nowhere, it was revealed to the public that all Fox networks could be dropped from YouTube TV on Wednesday, due to a carrier dispute.
Among the games that are slated to appear on Fox networks this week are Auburn vs. Baylor, Utah vs. UCLA, and the massive clash between Texas and Ohio State.
Fans looking for these games are either going to hold out hope that the two sides reach a deal, or they will have to find alternative ways to watch the games (whether that's finding an antenna or sailing the high seas online).
At least fans wanting to watch those games are getting some form of a warning so they can plan accordingly, which isn't what happened to Gator fans two years ago.
When Florida took on Utah back in 2023 to open its season on a Thursday night, ESPN was dropped from Spectrum that night with litteraly zero warning. Florida fans who had waited all offseason for the rematch of 2022's epic opener turned on ESPN only to be greeted with the same nonsense that YouTube TV and Fox find themselves in now.
This dispute, like all these disputes, is over money and who should pay whom.
And the problem is that while corperate CEOs who could probably fund NIL in college football by themselves squabble over this, it's the fans who are left to suffer.