Raycom Sports has entered into an agreement with another company to enhance its internet offerings during game telecasts starting during football season. (Link to article)
CHARLOTTE – Raycom Sports is hoping to capitalize on sports fans’ growing multitasking.The syndicator has announced a partnership with Jacked SportsTop that will begin during telecasts of Atlantic Coast Conference and Southeastern Conference football games this fall and continue during basketball season.
The Jacked SportsTop is an Internet application that allows fans to download a device on their computers that provides statistics, videos, photos, news and other interactive features, including live chats with other fans. The application will be synchronized with the game telecast and be surrounded by online ads.
The agreement hopes to capitalize on the growing number of fans who are online at the same time they’re watching sporting events.
In Raleigh, NC State officials had no idea how to handle the news. Now foolish NC State fans will have yet another internet based environment to interact with others and potentially ruin our program (if it is possible to ‘ruin’ what is generally considered to be the worst athletics program in the ACC and one of the worst BCS programs in the country).
Bobby Purcell, who used to the Wolfpack Club’s summer caravan tour to promote the idea that everything on the internet is negative and that NC State fans should not use the medium, is surely dumbfounded by this new move from the ACC’s primaria media partner.
Lee Fowler is surely wondering why Raycom would so freely embrace an approach that only enhances the platform of “fan message boards on the internet” that he feels is “the biggest challenge to NC State Athletics” (Link) for the sake of “50 fans on the internet” (a quote from Fowler in response to some fans frustration with his decision to retain Herb Sendek in 2001).
Seriously, how will the out-dated dinasours at NC State react to this move? With the tacit support of NC State’s ever silent Chancellor, Jim statusquOblinger…Fowler, Purcell, Annabelle Vaughn Myers and other NC State leaders have waged a public war against fans’ freedom of speech on the internet for years. Now the ACC’s primary media partner has chosen to expand the voice of the fan on the internet?!? Oh the insanity!!!
I wonder how every other school in the conference is going to find a way to deal with this ‘problem’? Hopefully someone in Raleigh can benchmark the strategies of other schools since somehow the issues of the internet only impacts the programs at NC State (because our fans have unique DNA that makes them built differently than everyone else in the conference and country).
In related Raycom news – Clay Travis of CBS Sports took some fun and well-deserved swipes at Raycom’s announcement that some of their would finally be broadcast in High Definition in this article from last week.
Nevertheless I’d be lying if some part of me didn’t think Raycom believes HD means physically at the Home Depot. I’m halfway expecting to turn on Hawaii at Florida and see Dave Rowe wearing an orange apron sitting underneath a covered swing-set saying, “Boy, have we got a great game to start off the 2008 season for you. Live at HD.” Guffaws and chortles will ensue before we cut back to the broadcast to see sideline reporter Dave Baker sticking his head inside Albert the Alligator’s mouth to better report on how hot it is for the mascot on an August game day on the surface of Hell.
My public feud with JP/LF/Raycom began in the halcyon days of yesteryear — way back in August of 2006 when I wrote a eulogy for Jefferson Pilot after Lincoln Financial purchased the network. The fine folks at JP/LF were nice enough to complain to my bosses at CBS about my ridicule of their broadcasts, and so I wasn’t allowed to write about them for several months lest their feelings be hurt. I was told that I “really hurt their feelings.”
So I wrote about their response to my column in my book. JP/LF cemented their status as the self-esteem-challenged sorority girl who runs through the fraternity house only to be cast aside time after time when the network changed hands again last year — Raycom purchased LF Sports, which resulted in my quiz to see if you were qualified to be a Raycom broadcaster, and now, unbelievably, in the most remarkable of all the changes, the games themselves are going to be in HD — beginning with the opener, Hawaii at Florida.
