Off to Big D

Sorry about the relative lack of postings here this week ... it has been a very busy time. In addition to everything else, my son and I are headed to Dallas for the Texas-OU football game and the Texas State Fair. (The picture should at least suggest which side we're rooting for). In an attempt to connect at least some of this to sports media--

Have you noticed that despite two OU losses, ESPN has plugged the game almost as much as last year when the two teams were unbeaten? The game is on ABC Saturday, and both ABC and ESPN are owned by Disney. By comparison, ESPN has said almost nothing about a very intriguing matchup between Notre Dame and USC, a game that will be televised on the Notre Dame Broadcasting Company (NBC). Last week, ESPN's tone on the Florida-LSU matchup was relatively tame because the game was on CBS. (Although, credit to ESPN for having its College Gameday program from Baton Rouge). By contrast, the ABC primetime game was Iowa-Michigan; an interesting matchup, but not a marquee TV attraction.

It's a difficult balancing act for ESPN, CBS, ABC and the major carriers of college football. You want to hype the games on your related networks, but at the same time you shouldn't ignore important games going on somewhere else. If nothing else, don't bury your head in the sand and pretend that the other games aren't even going on. If you tuned in to ESPN this week you would think the biggest game was South Florida-Cincinnati (a Thursday night ESPN game) instead of Notre Dame-USC.