DaytonDailyNews.com

Let's hope our new president can make good on his promise to throw his weight around about a college football playoff system and do away with this bogus Bowl Championship Series stuff.

Barack Obama, in an interview on "60 Minutes," said he'd try to do something. That might be a tougher assignment than getting General Motors out of hock.

Undercutting Obama was a new deal signed by ESPN, which will broadcast the BCS games from 2011-14. The cost to ESPN was a reported $125 million a year.

But guess who gets to really pay the fee? Once ESPN's contracts come up with all its cable and satellite carriers, the network likely will ask for higher fees — and it already gets the highest fees in the business. The cable and satellite companies will pass those higher fees on to us.

Pretty soon, we'll be saving for the education of our children, retirement and ESPN fees.

New free stations

To tide us over, how about something for "free?" On Wednesday, Time Warner launched nine new HD channels, including ESPNU HD (Ch. 769), on digital.

"The added capacity for HD channels and content didn't require significant upgrade expenditures or labor costs, and reflects the robust and flexible nature of our existing advanced fiber network," Time Warner General Manager Shannon Mullen said.

In other words, ESPNU didn't hold up the company for additional funds to air the network in HD.

One of the new HD stations is Palladia, by the way. It's a music station that's probably going to be a lot more popular than the NFL Network, which is asking for more money than Time Warner wants to pay. Palladia, I'm guessing, asked for much less.

By the way, if you want a listing of all your Time Warner channels, go to twdayton.com and hit the programming tab. New HD Channels are listed.

Knight duties expanded

Speaking of expansion, how about Bob Knight's new gig at ESPN, which has him not only commenting in the studio, but working certain nonconference games? One thing about Knight, he isn't going to say stuff just to get ratings. If he says it, he believes it.

If you haven't seen him in makeup yet, check out his commentary at 5 p.m. today on ESPN2 from the 2K Sports Classic.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157

or mkatz@DaytonDailyNews.com.