An FCS Football night?

[woffordgrad94]

Someone on the Wofford board made a suggestion that instead of showing crummy FBS games, Thursday nights could be used as an FCS night by some of the sports networks. There would be great games from all over the country, and with some research by the announcers, some great stories to tell.

While this sounds great in theory, I personally think such an experiment would likely fail. As much as the people on this board love FCS football, the general public at large just isn't interested, and there is really nothing anyone can do to force FCS down their throats and make them interested. People would simply watch reality TV programs in lieu of FCS football on Thursdays...most people only care about the bigtime FBS (or BCS) programs, and this is likely not going to change. What do you guys think?

[BisonFan02]

Interesting thought. I would like to see FCS football and other mid major athletics getting some sort of "ESPNU 2" type of treatment (probably a pipe dream, but I can hope anyway). Today, I think if the coverage and quality of ESPN3 would improve (dramatically), FCS could pioneer streaming media. Longer term, I think that will be the future anyway.

[alvinkayak6]

woffordgrad,

E$PN has a vested interest in the success of the BCS narrative, due to their $500 million contract with the 5 BCS games over 4 years. E$PN also has the media rights to about 31 of the 34 bowl games.

E$PN has a 300 million $ contract with Texas over 20 years. E$PN has a contract with the Pac-12 worth over 20 million $ per year. ESPN has a partial contract with the SEC in the billions of dollars.

The tenor of your question seems to imply E$PN is motivated by the well-being of the public, or basically anything other than its advertising contracts.

You are asking all the wrong questions. May I suggest reading Noam Chomsky's work on the media? I believe he or more less got it right...that as media became corporatized, its motivation to sensationalize, monopolize, drive conflict, and propagandize would trump its motivation to provide content focused on the interest of the public.

E$PN is a business. Don't get it twisted.