July 2, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -
By Gary Brown, The NCAA News
Division II's strategic-positioning platform relies on a purposeful blend of local and national initiatives to achieve success. Among the former are the division's emphasis on campus/community engagement and a concentration on positive, fan- and family-friendly environments at all Division II athletics contests.
While those efforts have galvanized Division II locally, the division also has sought to spread its identity to a national stage through increased television exposure in regular-season and championships competition. As Division II enters the final year of a three-year television agreement with CBS College Sports Network (formerly CSTV), a membership advisory panel is talking about how to build upon what has been among the division's most successful ventures since it embarked on its strategic-positioning campaign.
The arrangement that by this coming April will have provided national, live broadcasts of 13 regular-season football games and 21 regular-season basketball contests - plus dozens of additional games via broadband (included WWU women's game vs. Western Oregon and men's game vs. Central Washington on Feb. 23) - has been a benefit for a division seeking exposure not only for its high-quality athletics but also for its new strategic-positioning platform.
Given that success, a Division II media advisory group will convene July 10 to begin determining what's next. Division II Vice President Mike Racy said the advisory group, composed of Division II presidents, athletics directors and conference commissioners, will consider whether the Division II Presidents Council should extend the television agreement, either with CBS College Sports (which has expressed an interest) or with another media entity.
"Three years ago when the Presidents Council was introduced to the concept of developing a national media presence for the division, members agreed that this was a good use of Division II resources," Racy said. "The advisory group will now be asked whether Division II should make a similar resource investment moving forward."
The third year of the agreement already is taking shape. Division II recently announced a six-game football game-of-the-week package (up from three the first year and four the second) that begins August 23, and a nine-game basketball package for 2008-09 is close to being finalized. Remarkably - and strategically - the 34 total football and basketball games in the three years of the television agreement will have been hosted by 34 different institutions.
"Not only is that a representative selection of games, it's also been a collegial sense of sharing the experience," said Pfeiffer University President Charles Ambrose, who chaired the Division II Presidents Council when the contract began. "That's a great example of Division II institutions realizing how the collective gains of the strategic-positioning platform are more important than the individual gains of being on national television."
Telling the Division II story was why the Presidents Council committed to the agreement in the first place. The division has been able to do that primarily because the television agreement with CBS was a partnership - the NCAA picked up production costs while CBS built the network infrastructure for delivering games to a national TV and broadband audience. With the NCAA controlling production, broadcasts were populated with Division II features and PSAs, halftime interviews with key Division II leaders and game announcers that understand the Division II brand.
"Together, that helps the membership and the public better understand the Division II strategic-positioning platform - what the `I Chose Division II' theme stands for," Racy said. "They see what the hexagon means, and that Division II student-athletes have higher grad rates than their student peers. And they understand what Division II's connection is to community-service activities like Make-A-Wish, and what the division's commitment is to community engagement."
The television exposure also provides a membership benefit that wasn't there before. Racy said many of the schools in the past that migrated from Division II to Division I did so in part because they sought national television exposure. Now, after the third year of this current agreement, 68 Division II institutions will have had a regular-season national TV game. Some institutions that moved out of Division II have yet to realize such a regular-season or championship opportunity.
The Presidents Council also wanted to tell the Division II story to more than just a Division II audience. The television platform reaches prospective student-athletes and their parents, as well as corporate entities that will see the benefits of being associated with Division II.
"When we first started talking about Division II identity," Ambrose said, "some of the measures of institutional or divisional worth were in terms of television exposure - not just whether there was any, but the quality of that exposure. So CSTV/CBS came at a time that was much more than just complementary to a new identity for Division II. The other tremendous asset to the partnership has been that the platform gave an ideal means to amplify Division II attributes and characteristics."
There also have been some unexpected benefits, Racy said, in that communities are rallying around the broadcasts, both from a production standpoint and a publicity perspective. "It's another way for institutions to engage their communities under the bright light of national television," Racy said.
In addition, because the NCAA is producing the games with a partner like CBS, the broadcasts are syndicated through regional sports networks and made available via broadband, thus expanding the audience beyond the 20-plus million home reach of the CBS College Sports Network.
Still another benefit of the first two years of the agreement is that it has encouraged institutions to upgrade technology to accommodate the broadband component. The agreement in fact included dozens of games being offered via broadband, in addition to those on live television, which meant that institutions without the technological capacity to take advantage of the broadband had an incentive to add it.
So many institutions upgraded their technology that as a result, the third year of the TV agreement will not include the broadband component - simply because conferences and institutions have added that element on their own.
"You could say in fact that one of the benefits of the partnership is that it encouraged institutions and conferences to upgrade the technology necessary to accommodate the TV and broadband exposure," Racy said. "Many of the institutions that first year chose to make the investment, and as the number of schools to follow suit increased, more conferences were able to adapt that technology to their own purposes. That means conferences and institutions don't need to rely as much on the division for that technology - they can do it themselves."
Not only can they offer their games to their constituents, but they also can tell their campus stories, Racy said. In that respect, Division II's national television campaign has provided a grass-roots benefit.
The savings from reducing reliance on broadband will be pumped into the television component. That means sports accustomed to championship-finals-only coverage could see additional coverage deeper into the bracket (for example, semifinal or quarterfinal TV broadcasts), and sports that aren't traditionally televised will begin to be. That occurred at the Division II National Championships Festival in Houston when golf and tennis highlights were available online and the softball semifinal game was televised.
So far, the Division II Presidents Council has been able to fund the television agreement through year-end fund balances, but even if future arrangements required an allocation of new dollars, Racy said the presidents would be willing to consider it.
Ambrose said Division II should keep telling its story.
"We should keep these broadcast opportunities as a high priority for the division because it has brought us a lot further along. If we can capture the same momentum in the coming years as we have in these three, think how far we'll be down the line," he said.
