Pac-10 in The Dark: How Greed And Notre Dame Bias Could Doom Oregon, Stanford

I’m fairly certain I’m speaking for college football fans across America when I say that the time has come for an overhaul of television broadcast strategy. The system of regional coverage, live web streaming, and scheduling is incoherent, irritating, and costly—like Les Miles’ clock management. And too often the end result is missing (at least) a game you’ve been looking forward to watching for days or even weeks. 

The most recent example of botched decision-making came on Saturday when the Stanford-Oregon game, the site of ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast, was blacked out in New York City (!), the nation’s largest media market. The game featured two top 10 teams with at least two Heisman trophy candidates (Andrew Luck and LaMichael James), a national championship contender (Oregon) and the probable Pac-10 champ (both). Instead, New York got USC-Washington, which turned out to be a great game but only because it was a poorly-executed race to the bottom, Allen Bradford excepted.  

The hot shot television executives likely would point out that the game was available on espn3.com. But as Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend. If you have Time-Warner cable, like millions of New Yorkers, you would’ve been out of luck. Time Warner has no arrangement with ESPN. All we could do was send an angry e-mail. And text our friends to see if anyone figured out how to work around this minor technical glitch (no one did). 

No doubt these same executives would then try to $ell us on GamePlan. Sure, it’s an option but at $24 a week or $135 for the season it’s not a cheap one. And it comes on top of an already exorbitant cable or satellite bill and the sports package you pay extra to get. It may not seem like a lot of money to a fat-cat CEO but for some of us common folk that’s a lot of beer and peanuts. 

Besides, by the time we figured out we didn’t get the Stanford-Oregon game, it was well underway. We were exasperated and frustrated. Like we missed the cool party before prom. You know what I’m talking about.

First you scroll through all of the channels because surely the game you’ve planned your entire day around is on one of them. Hopefully you’re not a Dish Network customer trying to watch a game on Fox Sports Network because you don’t get that anymore. 

The television program guide is no help, especially if you’re dealing with an ABC/ESPN game. You might get this game or that game or this other game. So you scroll and scroll and scroll before calling and texting friends and family to confirm the executives at (fill in the blank network, but most probably ABC/ESPN) have about as much judgment as the guy who left Reggie Bush on the sidelines on fourth and two. 

Even if you get espn3.com more than likely your computer is in a room with an uncomfortable chair far away from your television. Which means you and your beer have to run from room to room when it all should be a comfortable click away on your couch. 

You debate shelling out the dough for GamePlan but then realize you have no idea where the phone number is for the cable people and no stomach to navigate the automated voice answering system. Because of the course the menu options will have changed. 

With all of today’s whizz-bang technology is this really the best system they can come up with?

Though the brass at the Pac-10 were probably thrilled they got a date to the dance with GameDay, the reality is the nation’s largest media market was at another party. Oregon and Stanford are the best the league has now and if Oregon gets bumped in favor of Ohio State in the national championship game because of the real and ever-present East Coast media bias, then the league loses precious revenue and cache.Not to mention it would be unfair, though not for the first time.

Remember when Cal got bumped from the Rose Bowl in favor of Texas? And not to take anything away from Mark Ingram, but if Toby Gerhardt played for Ohio State, Notre Dame or Florida then I’m not sure he wouldn’t have won the Heisman last year. The Pac-10 needs to fix this. Fast. 

Speaking of a (bad) date, how about the giant green leprechaun that’s been stalking us? Notre Dame in prime time? That is so 1987. Kirk Herbstreit said on GameDay that watching their defense was like watching a high school game. A top 10 matchup got bumped for that junk? 

The Notre Dame-Boston College game should’ve been scheduled for 1 p.m. And USC-Washington for 4pm, freeing up prime time viewing space for the games that everyone wanted to watch: Florida-Alabama and Stanford-Oregon.

Ultimately, the solution is the ability to select the game you want to watch. If ABC/ESPN is covering this game and that game and this other game why can’t you watch all of them? You click Select from your program guide and then use the arrows on the remote to navigate to the game you want to watch and click Select. Presto!

I’m not a tech wizard but if my cell phone can get live traffic reports for New York from a satellite in outer space in seconds then I’m betting it can be done with the money we’re already paying. But don’t ask Les Miles for help. I’d recommend calling Google.