ESPN College Football Saturday Primetime ESPN College Football Primetime is a live game presentation of Division 1 - A college football on ESPN . In the past , the presenting sponsors have been Polaroid and AT & T . The current presenting sponsor is Hampton Hotels . The game telecast airs every Saturday night at 7 : 45pm ET during the college football regular season . The game is preceded by a 45 minute long " College Football Scoreboard " with Rece Davis , Lou Holtz and Mark May , all of whom also appear on the halftime report . This game telecast is also presented in high - definition on ESPN HD . History . Since debuting in 1984 , it has broadcast games from numerous conferences including the SEC , ACC , Big Ten and the Big East . In recent years , it has primarily featured the SEC as the second - choice game to CBS ' national coverage earlier in the day . Games from the other conferences typically could air either on ESPN / ESPN2 or ABC , but the SEC does not offer such flexibility . This game is often seen as the ESPN " Game of the Week " along with the Thursday night telecast . Some notable voices of " ESPN College Football Primetime " over the years have been Ron Franklin , Mike Gottfried and Adrian Karsten , but all have gone on to different assignments , except for Karsten , who died in 2005 . Currently , the primary commentators for the ESPN version are Brad Nessler on play - by - play , Todd Blackledge as analyst and Holly Rowe as field reporter . The secondary commentators are Chris Fowler on play - by - play , Kirk Herbstreit as analyst and Heather Cox as field reporter , all of whom also serve as the primary commentating team for ABC ' s " Saturday Night Football " . On October 14 , 2006 , " ESPN College Football Primetime " aired on five different networks as part of " ESPN Full Circle " . The networks included ESPN , ESPN2 , ESPNU , ESPN360 and Mobile ESPN . On August 30 , 2008 , the ESPN2 team of Mark Jones and Bob Davie commentated the Illinois - Missouri game . A week later ( September 6 , 2008 ) , the ABC team of Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit commentated the Miami – Florida game . Ron Franklin worked the November 22 , 2008 game with Ed Cunningham as they commentated the Florida State – Maryland game . This marked the first time since 2005 that Franklin called an " ESPN College Football Saturday Primetime " game . Franklin - Rowe Incident . On October 1 , 2005 , in a game that Ron Franklin was calling along with Bob Davie , sideline reporter Holly Rowe lauded Purdue defensive coordinator Brock Spack for using all three timeouts on defense despite trailing by four touchdowns late in the game . " If the coaches are giving up , " Rowe added , " what does that say to the players ? " Franklin responded : " Holly , it ' s not giving up . It ' s 49 - 21 , sweetheart . " In response to that , Mo Davenport , senior coordinating producer for college football said , " It was an inappropriate comment , and we ' ve communicated that to Ron . There ' s never a reason to say something so mean - spirited . Ron apologized . We dealt with it internally . " Many believe this was the cause for Franklin ' s demotion from the ESPN primetime game to the ESPN2 primetime game .