BleedGopher
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per NY Times:
Over the past dozen years, to feed its unending appetite for live football, ESPN has made Louisville Cardinals midweek games a mainstay in prime time. In turn, Louisville has made exposure on ESPN the centerpiece of a campaign to rise above its commuter-school roots and become a powerhouse in college sports.
“If it wasn’t for ESPN, we would be a fraction of what we are today,” Tom Jurich, Louisville’s longtime athletic director, said in an interview in his office on April 1 as the university savored its latest basketball success: the men’s and women’s teams were each on the way to the Final Four. The men went on to win the N.C.A.A. title.
“We owe them so, so much,” Mr. Jurich said of ESPN. “They were willing to take a chance on us.”
What ESPN offered Louisville, beyond millions of dollars in fees for television rights, was prime-time exposure on the leading sports network, putting Cardinals football in front of national audiences of fans, donors, recruits and prospective students.
The cost to Louisville? It had to be ready to play whenever ESPN could fit the Cardinals into its schedule.
“Louisville came to us and said, ‘We’ll play anyone, anywhere, anytime,’ ” said Mark Shapiro, a former head of programming and production at ESPN. Indeed, “anytime, anywhere” became Mr. Jurich’s motto in his early years as athletic director.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/sports/at-louisville-an-athletic-boom-made-for-and-by-tv.html?_r=0
Go Gophers!!
Over the past dozen years, to feed its unending appetite for live football, ESPN has made Louisville Cardinals midweek games a mainstay in prime time. In turn, Louisville has made exposure on ESPN the centerpiece of a campaign to rise above its commuter-school roots and become a powerhouse in college sports.
“If it wasn’t for ESPN, we would be a fraction of what we are today,” Tom Jurich, Louisville’s longtime athletic director, said in an interview in his office on April 1 as the university savored its latest basketball success: the men’s and women’s teams were each on the way to the Final Four. The men went on to win the N.C.A.A. title.
“We owe them so, so much,” Mr. Jurich said of ESPN. “They were willing to take a chance on us.”
What ESPN offered Louisville, beyond millions of dollars in fees for television rights, was prime-time exposure on the leading sports network, putting Cardinals football in front of national audiences of fans, donors, recruits and prospective students.
The cost to Louisville? It had to be ready to play whenever ESPN could fit the Cardinals into its schedule.
“Louisville came to us and said, ‘We’ll play anyone, anywhere, anytime,’ ” said Mark Shapiro, a former head of programming and production at ESPN. Indeed, “anytime, anywhere” became Mr. Jurich’s motto in his early years as athletic director.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/sports/at-louisville-an-athletic-boom-made-for-and-by-tv.html?_r=0
Go Gophers!!