How ESPN turned Clemson’s entrance into a 9-minute epic movie

ESPN’s “A-Team” is its Saturday night ABC crew, with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call and director Derek Mobley in the production truck. The network has been refining its ability to capture “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” for years now — here’s a look at 2013’s entrance vs. Georgia — and added even more cameras for this productions team’s fifth attempt.

Normally ESPN uses around 15 cameras to shoot a football game. For Louisville-Clemson, ESPN used 24 cameras (not including pylon cameras in the end zones) for the game and to create the opening shot.

That includes a technocrane camera, normally used for crowd scenes in movies, for sweeping shots of the east side of Death Valley.

“Except a film can take a moment in time and stretch it. Five seconds can become 30 seconds on film. We’re trying to capture it as it happens, to edit the film live, to speak,” Mobley said.

Because of the complexity of the entrance — the players exit their locker room on the west side of the stadium, board buses, travel to the east side, touch Howard’s Rock, and run down the hill and onto the field — Clemson and ESPN had to coordinate with local police and fire departments. Not only would multiple cameras track the players (including cameras on Clemson’s buses that were developed for NASCAR in-race footage), but they’d navigate thousands of fans in tight passages.

Mobley estimated ESPN’s total crew to have been around 200. Normally, TV production trucks start set-ups on Fridays, but the complexity and variety of shots required an extra day of prep, and the Tigers’ meetings with ESPN started as early as the day of their game at Georgia Tech the week prior.

“If you’re approached by this crew, find a way to make it happen. That’s our mentality here,” Clemson director of athletic video services Rick Bagby said. “We’re going to find a way to make it happen. The end result is spectacular. The national exposure we get off that? No one can pay for that.”

For the rest of us, it’s just really damn cool to watch. ESPN functions at its best when it elevates college football’s hokum tics to prestige theatre.

There are two undefeated non-power conference teams. Let’s go with creative monikers “Team A” and “Team B.”

Team A is 4-0, with two Power 5 wins, one against a likely bowl team. If they go undefeated, they’ll do so against an eight-game conference schedule with an average ranking of 91st in the current S&P+ overall rankings. Their likely conference title opponent is currently 59th in S&P+.

Team B is 5-0, with a marquee Power 5 win, but also an FCS win. If they go undefeated, they’ll do so against an eight-game conference schedule of opponents averaging 82nd in the current S&P+, only nine spots better than Team A’s opponent strength. Their likely conference title opponent is currently 33rd in S&P+, roughly twice as good as Team A’s.

Team A, Boise State, and Team B, Houston, aren’t that far apart among the have-nots. The AAC is a step better than the MWC in résumé, and that’s about it.

Houston is winning huge non-conference games. After beating Florida State in the Peach Bowl, the Cougars hit the non-conference lottery in 2016, beating Oklahoma (12th in S&P+), with a November home game vs. Lamar Jackson’s Louisville (fifth) still to come.

Houston is winning by big margins (33 points a game on average) and often in prime time weeknight showcases (UH has aired twice already on ESPN’s Thursday night slot, with two more to come).

When you want fun weeknight football free of circumstance relative to your own allegiances, you’re watching Houston, with that one coach everyone wants to hire, who’s calling all those cool offensive plays. If someone asks for your Playoff four and you’re feeling spicy, you throw in Houston.

And it’s all so Boise. But that’s fine with third-year Broncos head coach Bryan Harsin, because Boise’s identity has swung dramatically in his tenure, despite a pristine, 25-6 record at his alma mater.

“You know, people have asked me ‘What do you think about Houston or these other teams?’ I think they’re doing a great job, but I have nothing to do with that,” Harsin told SB Nation on Tuesday. “I can’t control that.”

“I really don’t go look at their schedule or figure out if they’re going to lose a game here or there. If I was doing that, we wouldn’t be taking care of our business. I know it’s good media, but that’s really all it can be. We’ve been there before, meaning Boise State has, our teams in the past have, and we, this team, can get there if we concentrate.”

1. The Broncos schedule a massive opener and they win, like vs. Oregon (2009) or Georgia (2011). The hype machine on Boise as a national title contender starts Day 1, and every week the Broncos are on the national radar. They end up in a major bowl, like the Fiesta.

2. BSU schedules a massive opener and loses, like vs. Michigan State (2012) or like Ole Miss (2014), in Harsin’s first season as head coach. Boise lives under that radar until December and pounces, sometimes sneaking into a major bowl game, like the Fiesta.

“We had that first season, and we didn’t have any expectations,” Harsin said. “We were just trying to play and get better and establish the program and figure out who we were, and we won the Fiesta Bowl. And then that next year, you have those expectations, and you know, I think it’s human nature to forget about the process.

3. Last year’s Boise. The Broncos beat former coach Chris Petersen and Washington to open another hype year, but the forgotten process of 2015 produced a pedestrian 9-4 record. There were understandable losses at BYU and Utah State, but then back-to-back defeats at home against New Mexico (101st in the 2015 S&P+) and Air Force.

This was after losing three home games in 14 seasons. So, yeah, Boise could make another patented Boise run in the coming weeks, but Harsin’s not losing sleep over Houston at the moment. The Broncos are undefeated, but also in new territory, including a revenge game against New Mexico Friday night.

Quarterback Ryan Finley went down early, and now-entrenched starter Brett Rypien had to learn on the job. The Broncos turned the ball over a lot in losses and gave up big plays on defense.

After offseason meetings, Harsin felt there was Boise problem in Boise. Years of overachieving had turned expectation into assumption. The institutional memory of a program that went from nothing to almost everything is one thing; the perception of 18-year-olds is another.

“The message has been clear for every new player that steps on the campus: You’re a part of the tradition of Boise State, but you did not create that tradition,” Harsin said. “Those other teams did. The standard every single week is that literally you will go back to the bottom and build your way back up. I knew that from being here as an assistant coach because we’d been in that situation before.”

So far, behind Rypien and a defense on par with 2014, BSU has beaten Washington State and Oregon State. With just BYU and conference play left, that’s a mediocre potential résumé for Playoff consideration, when stacked against what Houston can offer.

“At the end of the year, we all know that if we do what we do, I don’t know exactly what that means for us but it’s meant pretty good things in the past,” Harsin said.

Entertaining that hypothetical is no longer acceptable. Harsin talks about studying the consistency of Alabama. The idea of stumping for postseason consideration any earlier than the very end of the regular season is now Old Boise. That’s the effect of just one four-loss season — those are the stakes for the modern game’s original outsider.

“If we get too far ahead of ourselves and we’re already ready to play in a BCS game before the fifth game of the season, we’re not a good enough team to go do that,” he said. “We won’t make it.”

Among the flat-out awesome elements of Louisville-Clemson was the traditional bus entrance by the Tigers, captured again by ESPN in a cinematic format as a single, spectacular segment on live television.

If you’re a regular listener to Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody, you’ll notice a departure from our format for an extra episode this week. We welcome SB Nation’s Richard Johnson and Tyler Tynes, two writers who have covered the matter of race and football in the past week.

The purpose for this conversation doesn’t need explanation. However, the sensitivity of the matter should be recognized. I know it’s not comfortable.

But as someone years and years deep into the function of this sport: race doesn’t just feature in the subtext of college football, it is so often the entire lens through which to perceive its failures and successes.

Race is soaked into the fabric of this game like you wouldn’t believe. I say that because I continue to find it appearing in ways I can’t believe.

Accordingly, I can only ask that you consider that, and I welcome your response.