That said, it's possible the guys making "The Cut" with BYU cameras on the sidelines are shooting in 4K or higher, which when downscaled and compressed carefully into 1080p will appear to have much more detail, whereas the ESPN broadcast is 720p or 1080p. Pass that through compression and it won't look quite as sharp.

But with any video online, that step of compression is really going to impact the quality. The Cut can afford to make it as crispy and high quality as possible. ESPN is serving that video to hundreds of thousands and data costs come into play, so they're not going to be as cavalier as BYU uploading to YouTube.

Edit: I see The Cut is even in 4K on YouTube and one of the ESPN videos I found on YouTube is 1080p, so yes, all things being equal The Cut is most likely to have more detail and clarity than whatever ESPN is putting up in 1080p.