Behind The Scenes

Front & Center: VP of Programming and Acquisitions Ilan Ben-Hanan on college football coverage

Notre Dame-USC on ABC was one of the highlights of the regular season for college football. (Allen Kee/ESPN Images)

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ESPN’s Ilan Ben-Hanan.
(Joe Faraoni/ESPN)

For millions of fans, college football is not an August-to-January sport.

It’s a year-round adventure of games, recruiting, spring football and reliving the memories of past action. For ESPN’s programming group in charge of scheduling their favorite sport, it is all that and more. There is no offseason: The four-person team hits the phones and calendar books to start making matches between top teams and putting together a schedule of more than 400 games for upcoming seasons.

Front Row spoke with Ilan Ben-Hanan, vice president of programming and acquisitions, ESPN’s day-to-day point person on college football for all major areas and businesses within the company. Ben-Hanan talks about the ability to schedule games six or 12 days before the kickoff throughout the season, the successful year of action for ESPN, the upcoming Discover BCS National Championship and more.

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