At Louisville, Athletic Boom Is Rooted in ESPN Partnership

[ReadCT]

"At Louisville, Athletic Boom Is Rooted in ESPN Partnership" is Part 2 in a New York Times series of articles describing ESPN's ever increasing influence & power in the world of college football.

A couple quotes from the article:

Louisville’s ascent is a case study of how an institution of higher learning can become all but inextricably conjoined with ESPN, an institution of higher profits.

It illustrates not only ESPN’s power to make kings among athletic programs, but how profoundly its presence can affect an entire university and its institutional priorities.

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.

“We became America’s team at midweek,” Mr. Jurich [Louisville’s longtime athletic director] said.

In 1999, Stefan LeFors, a high school quarterback in Louisiana, saw the Cardinals play a wild overtime game against Army on ESPN and decided to send a tape of himself to the Louisville coaches.

“That was my only reason Louisville was on my list,” said Mr. LeFors, who ended up as the starting quarterback...

Part 1 was discussed in this VN thread.

 

[McCat]

Whoring themselves out on Tuesday and Thursday nights worked. Jurich is pretty smart as a marketer.

 

[ReadCT]

Whoring themselves out on Tuesday and Thursday nights worked. Jurich is pretty smart as a marketer.

Totally agree.

ESPN did the exact same thing for Boise St. a decad agoe, similarly turning them into a national power if they were willing to play Tue. & Thu. nights against whomever ESPN wanted.

 

[Lawrence Wright]

"Louisville's athletic boom started when they crushed the Gators in the Sugar Bowl...LOL...Gators lost!"

- VFL25

 

[tim]

Spurrier has done the exact same thing at SC.

 

[KappinSpaulding]

Louisville has alot of money and some mega boosters.

 

[CountVolcula]

Louisville has alot of money and some mega boosters.

Papa Johns is one