The B1G TV deal is a tale of two cities

[Schnauzer]

College football seems to be intent on packing more and more advertising into game broadcasts in some sort of evil experiment to see how much fans attending games can tolerate. They are even willing to reduce the amount of actual football played in exchange for more advertising time.

That has been discussed here and it sucks.

That being said, the TV deal that includes FOX, NBC, and CBS does provide a great weekly lineup of high exposure B1G games and it is really fun to watch. With the Gopher season being so front loaded with home games (I attend them all), yesterday was college football viewing perfection for me and I may have set some personal viewing records.

I love watching college football at the cabin. I watched B1G football and was actively flipping between easily accessible games from 11:00 AM until the end of the Gopher post game, well after midnight.

My intimate relationship with my couch/TV was only briefly broken a few times during the day to put a few storm windows on. It was glorious. I LOVE the way they have the kickoff times distributed throughout the day between network options.

It seems light years ahead of what any other conference is doing, even the SEC.

 

[Taji34]

I hate the increasing amount of commercials when I attend a game in person. I think the U does a good job filling those TV timeouts with things that contribute to a fun atmosphere, but I may be biased. At almost every away game I've been to, the the in-stadium atmosphere has been poorer than we have IMO.

I don't mind as much when watching on TV because I just tune out the commercials and use that time to grab a snack or use the bathroom or catch up on what reddit/gopher hole is saying.

I DO appreciate the variety of channels though, having different announcers keeps things a bit more refreshing IMO.

 

[fmlizard]

Well said. It's ads-a-palooza (wait until the Gophers have a corporate logo on their unis) but the distribution and availability are awesome. Unimaginable for an 80s-90s kid, and probably even more for those older than that.

I remember watching the Gophers beat Iowa on a 4" black and white antenna TV from Nebraska as an 80s kid. I had a $20 radio I won as a prize from the Care Bears movie as a 5 year old that got me through a couple seasons of the Wacker era. I was able to stream the Gophers from the Rose Bowl on my computer last night even without internet 3 days after a hurricane, tethering through my phone.

The Gophers now routinely play games on national network prime time TV, which is something that once happened every few seasons when they were on the altar for slaughter by Ohio State or Michigan.

Traditions have changed in the new Big Ten, but not all of that is bad.