How Two Circles helped set the tone for an Emmy-nominated CFP broadcast

Two Circles had been covering college football with a cinematic approach that stood apart from traditional broadcast production, and the work caught the attention of Kirk Herbstreit and his team. The conversation that followed led to a formal partnership with ESPN’s broadcast for the 2024-25 college football season, with Two Circles tasked with producing teases for primetime Saturday Night Football on ABC and, eventually, the entire College Football Playoff run.

Ten teases in total. The last of them opened the CFP National Championship, a broadcast that has since received an Emmy nomination with Two Circles named alongside ESPN in recognition of the role the tease played in setting the narrative and tone for the entire evening.

Refined across a season

Across the season, Two Circles developed and sharpened a working method built around one principle: that great storytelling requires the right emotional foundation. Music, visuals and narrative had to work together rather than alongside each other. By the time the Championship arrived, every element of that approach had been tested and dialled in.

The music chosen for the final tease had been identified months earlier and held in reserve for exactly the right moment. When the matchup was confirmed, it clicked. The story the game was telling and the emotional tone of the piece aligned perfectly, and the team had the preparation and instinct to recognise it.

The stories that wrote themselves

Indiana arrived at the national championship as a team nobody had seen coming. Miami had fought their way into the CFP in the final selection spot before reaching the championship game in their own stadium. Both teams carried narratives that went far deeper than the scoreboard.

Indiana were the “unknowns, now undeniable.” Miami were the “outsiders who fought to belong.”

Those lines landed because they were written by people who genuinely understood what those fanbases needed to hear. Joe Abdellah, who led the project day-to-day, had attended Indiana. His brother Ross, a videographer in Two Circles’ Kansas City office, had too. Doug Rowan, based in the New York office, was a diehard Miami fan and alumni. The Championship tease was a collaboration between an Indiana fan and a Miami fan, each bringing an insider’s feel for their team’s history and emotional stakes.

That connection ran through every creative decision. The details that made each fanbase feel genuinely seen were there because the people making the piece already knew what those details were.

Sitting in the middle

What made the final product possible was trust, and trust takes time. Two Circles’ relationship with the CFP spans more than five years. The partnership with ESPN had been carefully built across the season. Without both, the piece could not have been what it was.

The tease was the first thing viewers saw when the Championship broadcast went live. It set the mood, the theme and the emotional register for everything that followed. Throughout the evening the production team kept returning to Baba O’Riley between segments, a sign of how completely the tease had embedded itself into the fabric of the broadcast. That a two-minute piece could shape the tone of an entire broadcast is precisely why ESPN and Two Circles stand together on the nomination.

That is what helping our client know fans best looks like in practice. Not just understanding the sport, but understanding the people who love it, what stories they need told, what details will make them feel seen, and what it takes to deliver all of that at the highest level of production. Two Circles has built that capability across years of work in college football, and the Championship tease was its clearest expression yet.

The project was spearheaded by Joe Abdellah and brought to life by more than two dozen Two Circlers across North America and London, including Luke Johnson, Eric Siders, Adam Shultz and the wider videography team.

To find out more, get in touch with us at hello@twocircles.com.