Jimmy Platt

Jimmy Platt

Director

Jimmy Platt is one of the sport’s industry’s most accomplished directors. He is the lead director for ESPN’s college football and he previously spent four seasons directing ESPN’s Monday Night Football games.  

Platt, who began as a freelancer in 2005 and has been a full-time ESPN employee since 2010, has worked a variety of other high-profile sports throughout his career, including NFL and college football, men’s and women’s college basketball, Major League Baseball and lacrosse.  

Platt was named the director of ABC’s Saturday Night Football primetime package in March 2023. In this role, Platt will direct the College Football Playoff National Championship and an annual CFP semifinal matchup. 

From 2019-22, Platt was the director for ESPN’s Monday Night Football. His work on sports television’s signature series included MNF’s milestone 50th season. Platt was also widely praised for how ESPN’s production team covered Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest during a game in 2022. 

Platt has directed football since he joined ESPN full-time in 2010. He started with SEC Primetime games on ESPNU before moving onto the ESPN2 primetime crew in 2011, doing mostly SEC matchups. Platt continued in that role through the 2014 season, culminating in the opportunity to direct the Peach Bowl, the first of the New Year’s Six bowls. From 2015-19, Platt directed college football games on ESPN and ABC, including five New Year’s Six bowls – the Peach Bowl (twice), Cotton Bowl (twice) and Sugar Bowl. 

In addition to college football, Platt has directed college basketball games for more than a decade – including the NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four (2018, 2019, and 2021-23). He also contributed to ESPN’s Major League Baseball coverage from 2013-2019, while directing four NCAA Lacrosse National Championships and four College Football Awards shows. 

Platt has been a director since 2008 when he was offered the opportunity to work high school football for ESPN. That same year, he transitioned to college basketball and lacrosse. He began working for ESPN in 2005 as a freelance technical director. 

Prior to ESPN, Platt was a freelance technical director from 1999-2010. He worked all the local Washington, D.C. and Baltimore games and did an NFL on Fox football package for four years. He also covered three Olympics for NBC (Athens, Tornio, and Beijing), earning a Sports Emmy Award in Technical Achievement for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 

After graduating from college, Platt began working in the Washington/Baltimore market for Home Team Sports (HTS) as a clock and score operator, then as a technical director. 

Platt’s first television experience was in college as an intern at WDVM, the local NBC station in Hagerstown, Md. After a month, he was hired on a part-time basis, and after just six months he was promoted to Morning Director of the 6 a.m. newscast. Soon thereafter, he was promoted again to Evening Supervisor where he directed the nightly news and hired and scheduled the production staff. 

A native of Inwood, West Virginia, Platt graduated from Shepard College in Shepherdstown, WVa. He majored in Communications with a minor in Coaching. 

Platt, lives just outside of Annapolis, Md., with his wife, Jenn, and their four children. 

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