I-80 Road Trip

[valpo84]

Here's Cleveland Plain Dealer's story on CSU's start in conference play.

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/college/index.ssf/2014/01/akron_cleveland_state_kent_sta_1.html

[LaPorteAveApostle]

maybe you meant this one?
http://www.cleveland.com/pluto/index.ssf/2014/01/post_78.html

[valpo84]

No, both help catch every one up. Terry is writing his once a year "I have nothing better to write about this weekend as the Browns coaching search holds Cleveland fans hostage for Day 20 (yesterday) takes a day off for the NFC/AFC tilts". Elton Alexander is the CB beat writer for CPD, but isn't very deep. We are bereft of decent college hoops coverage in NEO, especially when they feel we care about OSU.

[StlVUFan]

No, both help catch every one up. Terry is writing his once a year "I have nothing better to write about this weekend as the Browns coaching search holds Cleveland fans hostage for Day 20 (yesterday) takes a day off for the NFC/AFC tilts". Elton Alexander is the CB beat writer for CPD, but isn't very deep. We are bereft of decent college hoops coverage in NEO, especially when they feel we care about OSU.

Believe it or not, UIC coverage in Chicago is even worse.  Loyola gets a lot of ink these days, but *only* because of the 50th anniversary stuff which practically writes itself.

Somebody tweeted a link to a Sun-Times article today that talked about the yearning for compelling College Basketball in Chicago someday, exploring current options.  Chicago State got a mention.  UIC did not.

I tried clicking on the link and got a 502 error, so I don't know anything first-hand, but I'm not surprised in the least.  When UIC plays, you get a 4-line paragraph from Fred Mitchell.  After the game, you get a Sports Xchange AP-like bland accounting of what happened.  And this is the Chicago damn Tribune I'm talking about.

To be fair, I dropped the Sun-Times from my visit list a long time ago, so they may have gotten better.

[wh]

As has been mentioned before, Chicago is strictly a professional sports town.  The sports talking heads and sports reporters have a very narrow sphere of interest and expertise - 365 days a year of Bears, Cubs, Sox, Hawks and Bulls - period.  They probably know less about college sports than many people on this board. There is ZERO interest in mid major basketball anywhere in the city and there never will be. 

[VULB#62]

Philadelphia, God bless the bas$%^&s, have (IMO) the greatest college basketball environment in the country.  People there really follow the Philly 5.  Even snooty, pro-centered NYC does a better job than Chicago. For major cities, Detroit is among the bottom of the group.

[Dave_2010]

Believe it or not, UIC coverage in Chicago is even worse.

But doesn't UIC at least get a decent amount of their games on ESPN 1000? Ever since the major shakeup in Cleveland radio in 2006 (sale of the only sports station at the time, and long-time Viking radio affiliate) CSU has been relegated to playing its games on a 5,000-watt Christian talk station that I literally have trouble picking up at my house less than 10 miles from its transmission tower (a network that also serves as the Cleveland affiliate for the Akron Zips as well).

Even though Ohio State is the undisputed king of the state (and Cleveland), you would think that with 2 Cleveland-based sports talk stations there would be enough air time for CSU. However, the Vikings are consistently passed over for Keith Dambrot's "sexier" Akron program (and to a lesser extent Kent State) on the Cleveland air waves. This is in spite of the fact that Akron has its own sports station that's local programming is all Zips all the time. These patterns of covering Akron over CSU continue to TV and print outlets as well.

This must be highly frustrating for the Cleveland State marketing & sports information department, especially considering that the Vikings are the only Ohio school north of Columbus to win an NCAA tournament game since Kent's Elite 8 run in 2002 (I think). The lack of media attention (among other things) absolutely kill the Vikings at the turnstiles, which is a shame because they do an outstanding job of putting on a game in a nice (albeit nearing facelift time) facility. Additionally, play by play man Al Pawlowski is one of the best in the league not named Todd Ickow.

[wh]

The upcoming Ohio trip should go a long way in determining how successful this season will be:

- Win both to go to 5-2.  A confident team comes home with an opportunity to beat GB and close out the first half 6-2 and a game out of 1st.

- Split to go to 4-3, followed by the GB game.  Prospects of a finish somewhere in the middle of the pack seems likely.

- Lose both to go 3-4. A follow-up loss to GB could lead to a bottom third finish and a quick exit from the conf. tourney.     

[StlVUFan]

Believe it or not, UIC coverage in Chicago is even worse.

But doesn't UIC at least get a decent amount of their games on ESPN 1000? Ever since the major shakeup in Cleveland radio in 2006 (sale of the only sports station at the time, and long-time Viking radio affiliate) CSU has been relegated to playing its games on a 5,000-watt Christian talk station that I literally have trouble picking up at my house less than 10 miles from its transmission tower (a network that also serves as the Cleveland affiliate for the Akron Zips as well).

That's a separate issue.  I'm talking about coverage, not broadcasting.  Loyola games are regularly on Lake Shore Public TV as well, if I'm not mistaken, and indeed UIC games are often on ESPN 1000.  But the Chicago Tribune doesn't give them the time of day.

I will acknowledge that I'm not in touch with the current state of the newspaper industry vis-a-vis the Internet, but the Chicago Tribune has always been a huge newspaper, and it's been like this for years.  I find it difficult to believe they don't have enough room for the kind of reporting that the NWI Times gives to Valpo basketball.  And I'm not even talking about women's basketball which is literally invisible to them.  The NWI Times is not exactly a tiny paper and the High School is still pretty big in Valpo if I'm not mistaken, plus they run stories about Purdue, Notre Dame, and all the Chicago pro sports teams, in addition to Porter County high school sports.  Yet their coverage of Valpo Men's basketball is extensive by comparison to the coverage UIC gets.

I agree the Cleveland Plain Dealer is not much better if at all.  As Valpo84 illustrated, most of the time the articles about CSU are also about KSU and Akron.  They lump all 3 together into the same article.  And if I'm not mistaken, the regular beat writer hardly ever actually goes to the home games (I'm sure he never goes to away games).  I've heard similar complaints about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in its coverage of the Panthers, but this year at least, they seem to be doing a decent job.  Interestingly enough, the past week all I've seen in the Detroit Free Press about the Titans is AP stories.  Usually, they do better.

[Dave_2010]

That's a separate issue.  I'm talking about coverage, not broadcasting.  Loyola games are regularly on Lake Shore Public TV as well, if I'm not mistaken, and indeed UIC games are often on ESPN 1000.  But the Chicago Tribune doesn't give them the time of day.

The lack of coverage (be it airtime for basketball games or print previews/recaps) the league gets from local media (as a whole) stems largely from its makeup. Generally speaking, public commuter schools playing at the mid-major level have a hard time getting traction with the media, especially in markets dominated by major league and/or BCS-level collegiate programs. Fact of the matter is that in an era where print media is rapidly dying, the Trib, J-S, and PD (among others) are not about to invest significant resources into college programs that do not have extensive fan bases.

This whole issue of market size vs market attention is one of the reasons many of us felt that Valpo/MVC was a much more attractive pairing than Loyola/MVC. Mid-majors in large markets are very much the tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear.

Getting back to the HL's exposure issues, I don't really know what the solution is, but I'm confident relying on newspapers for additional coverage isn't it. One of the few "old media" outlets that is currently seeing growth is sports talk radio. With 2+ stations in nearly every major media outlet, you would think that these stations would want more original programming (in this case mainly games & a call-in show produced by the school) to add to their off hours (post-7pm) lineup. I have no idea what kind of media contracts school like UIC, CSU, & UWM have but maybe its time to sacrifice some money in the name of increased exposure.

By the end, you're stuck with a chicken or the egg argument...does increasing the fan base lead to better media exposure or does improved media exposure lead to an increase in fan interest? Regardless of the answer, I feel the responsibilities lie with our peer institutions to fight harder to improve both areas.

[LaPorteAveApostle]

This whole issue of market size vs market attention is one of the reasons many of us felt that Valpo/MVC was a much more attractive pairing than Loyola/MVC. Mid-majors in large markets are very much the tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear.

noddingsadly.gif

[a3uge]

This whole issue of market size vs market attention is one of the reasons many of us felt that Valpo/MVC was a much more attractive pairing than Loyola/MVC. Mid-majors in large markets are very much the tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear.

noddingsadly.gif

I think the most inane part about it was that Loyola/UIC had a history of failure, and there was this strange belief that the market would suddenly care about a Missouri Valley Team with no success. Ask a random caller to 670 THE SCORE to name a Missouri Valley team and they'll have no idea what that means... and that the Bears/Bulls/Cubs/Sox need to fire their coaches and GM, and owner, etc. The idea that Loyola will develop attention in Chicago because they're now in the MVC is laughable. They're going to play HARDER competition so they're even less likely to be successful, so gaining any attention is seemingly more impossible for them.

[wh]

A group of university presidents from ordinary Midwest towns went to the big city and got star struck.

[StlVUFan]

One of the few "old media" outlets that is currently seeing growth is sports talk radio. With 2+ stations in nearly every major media outlet, you would think that these stations would want more original programming (in this case mainly games & a call-in show produced by the school) to add to their off hours (post-7pm) lineup. I have no idea what kind of media contracts school like UIC, CSU, & UWM have but maybe its time to sacrifice some money in the name of increased exposure.

I don't know about anywhere else, but in Chicago, at least with WSCR, the morning show and maybe the mid-day show will once or twice a year have Porter Moser or Howard Moore on for an interview, that is when they aren't talking to the DePaul or Northwestern coach.  One of the morning guys is a Loyola alum so he'll mention it once in a blue-moon.  Laurence Holmes sometimes has interviews during is evening show as well.

I dare you to try to get any attention from the afternoon guys who only care about college basketball as a feeder system for the NBA, and they'd laugh at the idea that you're going to find gold at UIC.  If the power 5 formed their own division or association and hijacked the NCAA tournament, they'd be in heaven.

WSCR is my only sports talk radio experience on any kind of long-term basis, and when it comes to college basketball, I look for zero from them.  In fact, whenever they do talk about it, I go find some music to listen to.  And I'm really not interested in exploring other stations, because I'm not a talk-radio fan, period.  I cherry-pick the podcasts from WSCR that have subject matter I'm interested in, which isn't much.

The best coverage comes from blogs, and Jimmy Lemke's Horizone website is an attempt to start something along those lines.  John Templon's Big Apple Buckets occasionally mentions horizon league teams (he used to do a horizon league related blog).  Chris Burrows used to do a Horizon League blog.  There's at least one HL fan, maybe a couple, who are regular posters at Mid-Major Madness (one of them is a Valpo fan who posts here).  Jimmy's site started out with regular reporters from 6 of the 9 HL cities, but right now the only guy I see is Danny Zielenski who covers the Panthers.  There's a young kid who's had some interviews of HL players (his name escapes me at the moment, but he sure is driven on twitter).  CollegeBasketballTalk and Rush The Court will sometimes throw us a bone.  It would be interesting if they started having microsites for mid-major conferences instead of just the power conferences, but I'm just assuming they would entertain the idea if someone was interested.

In short, you're probably right, looking to newspapers for great coverage is probably a losing proposition.  At least we're heading in that direction.  At the same time, all of these papers have converted to on-line and many of them have gone pay.  I have been more than willing to subscribe and currently do to a couple.  Of course the Dayton Daily News and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are somehow unable to successfully complete my subscription attempts (one of them swears at me that the address I entered is invalid without telling me why).  Furthermore, Chicago Tribune is one of those sites that has gone the pay route.  I fail to see how they can't somehow develop that into a model that can make room for at least a modicum of UIC coverage.  Lord, no one expects them to splash the Flames all over their site for crying out loud.  A measly beat writer is too much to ask?  Does anyone visit Howard Moore's post-game press conference from the Trib?  I often wonder.

[StlVUFan]

Additionally, play by play man Al Pawlowski is one of the best in the league not named Todd Ickow.

Chris Collins of WSU is pretty good himself (when he's not paired with Bob Grote, that is).

[chef]

Al and Chris are very good. Not sure about the other guy.

[StlVUFan]

Al and Chris are very good. Not sure about the other guy.

I've seen him in the past when a WSU home game is on their CW TV channel, paired with some other pbp guy.  The other night he was with Collins on the radio.

Great trouble forming sentences (not because he doesn't know how, but because he's so impatient to get his point out, whatever it is), very loud raspy voice that grates on my nerves, at least.  Not sure what else to say about Grote.  All I know is I hear him doing a few minutes of color analysis and I have a strong urge to go drag my fingernails across chalkboards for an hour.

[chef]

I know who Bob Grote is. I meant the other aforementioned play-by-play guy. Chris uses a lot of color guys. I believe they all work for free. So, you get what you pay for.

[StlVUFan]

I know who Bob Grote is. I meant the other aforementioned play-by-play guy. Chris uses a lot of color guys. I believe they all work for free. So, you get what you pay for.

I did not know they worked for free over there.  I certainly listen for free, so there is that.