North Carolina State University Athletics
VA Decides it's Better to be Heard than Seen
11/20/2000 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
By Tony Haynes
While most of the country continues to be inundated with news on the unprecedented presidential election of 2000, another unprecedented event has taken place in our own backyard.
When was the last time a major university turned down an opportunity to have one of its football games televised? To my knowledge, never. Hey, as a radio guy, I'm certainly not going to complain. But the University of Virginia's choice to decline a chance to have its game against NC State televised is incredibly peculiar given the amount of exposure the school will be turning down.
Apparently, the time has come for the Governor of Virginia to order mandatory narcolepsy vaccinations in Charlottesville so that the students at Mr. Jefferson's University can get out of bed.
UVA athletics director Terry Holland, whom I consider to be one of the most honorable men in collegiate athletics, flatly turned down the ACC Network's request to televise the game because Virginia students were having trouble getting their engines running in time for 12 noon kickoffs.
Those Friday night punch parties over at the old Rotunda must be getting out of hand.
What if Thomas Jefferson would have said he was too sleepy to write the Declaration of Independence? Then again, maybe the founding fathers weren't as brilliant as we make them out to be anyway. They obviously missed the boat when failing to include any information about swinging chads, hanging chads and pregnant chads in the constitution.
Of course, the Virginia athletic department could be making a critical error when it assumes the students will revive themselves in time for a 2:30 start time. That's 2:30 p.m. Had they decided to kick things off at 2:30 a.m., the student section at Scott Stadium would have been packed with a hardy group of punctual scholars.
On one hand, Virginia's choice to turn down television coverage is somewhat refreshing. The TV people funnel big bucks into the conference coffers and as a result, they take full advantage of their opportunity to control everything from start times to the length of time outs to the amount of programs that can be sold in the stands. It's rare for an athletic department to look television in the eye and say "no."
On the other hand, a football telecast is the ultimate recruiting tool. Virginia is giving up a three and a half hour window of opportunity to market its program and university to high school prospects who would have been watching all along the mid-Atlantic coast. The loss of exposure affects NC State in the same way. Instead of watching the Wolfpack and Cavaliers, viewers in North Carolina will get the game between UNC and Duke.
"I like to be on TV because if you're doing bad people can turn you off," joked Wolfpack coach Chuck Amato. On a more serious note, Amato added, "being on television gives us exposure and we can tell young men that we're recruiting that we were on television seven times last year. But that's out of my hands. We'll just go and play at 2:30."
And they won't even need a wake up call.
