The Mountain West Conference Still Has a Lot to Learn

Media days wrapped up for the Mountain West which by all accounts was a success, however something was missing.  With media days around the country going on the past week there are some things that the MWC could do better in their coverage.

While The Big 10 Network brought out the fireworks with live coverage on their network as well as high quality streaming and other interaction on their website, as did the SEC with their online coverage; The Mountain West had zero live coverage and eventually posted videos on the league's site.

One would think that with their three television partners—Versus, CBS College, and The Mtn.—that there would be live coverage somewhere. The past two years the league has had live coverage of medias on either CBS College or The Mtn.  

Then the quality of video and audio currently on the leagues site is similar to someone who takes a low quality video camera to record something on their television and then post it to Youtube.

Just a joke, well sort of.

Now to defend the league, they first they are one of two leagues to have their own network—The Mountain West Sports Network—and the league is planning on prepackaged interviews from media days to run Monday at 8 and 9pm MST.

Why not do both? It would make sense to have a high quality stream and a live show during media day and then get other interviews to have another show.

This is not the only complaint about the television deal, besides not being on Dish Network the league unlike the Big 10 does not stream games for free on-line for The Mtn.  

The games on CBS College are streamed but they are at a few to access their very extensive online sports vault. If The Mtn. had at least that it would be an improvement, because if you do not have access to DirecTv or you are in an area that the cable company does not have The Mtn you are screwed.

Also, a good idea for more fresh content would be to broadcast the nine teams spring game. What a novel idea, know I know broadcasting a spring game like a regular season game can be expensive, however it can be done with out a sideline reporter because those are not needed plus all of the camera angles are not necessary.  

So, if you have the traditional view with a few others and the on-air talent would be enough, plus that will fill out 18 hours of live content—something the league desperately needs in the summer—which can be rerun all summer up until the regular season. That would bring viewers to a college channel that has very little of new content.

The league still has much to learn.