School Daze: ESPNU's Magnus Discusses Campus Connection Program

By Paul Sanford , Television Editor As part of ESPNU’s Campus Connection program, the network aired the UNC Asheville-UNC men’s basketball game last Wednesday night in which 16 students from the UNC School of Journalism & Mass Communication participated in the production of the game. ESPNU VP & GM Burke Magnus, who attended the game in Chapel Hill, said the production “went off as [well] as I could have possibly hoped. Of course, we were dealing with college students, so there were issues of nervousness and inexperience that we had to deal with on-site. But all in all it actually went beyond my expectations in terms of how prepared the kids were and how professional they were.” A full network crew was on-site, so Magnus said it was "much more sort of a side-by-side tutorial.” "It was the first time that we did it, so we weren’t certain what to expect on our end, but we certainly wanted to have the game covered properly,” he said. OTHER SCHOOLS INVOLVED : There are ten other schools participating in the Campus Connection program that Magnus noted the net "had good pre-existing relationship with that we knew would ‘get it’ and would understand what we were after and look at this as an opportunity.” All the schools contacted were receptive to the program, but he said the net "started small ... and we’re going to grow it from there.” “We had such a good experience at (UNC) that I have no doubt that we’re going to continue to target high-profile event programming to do this kind of thing with," Magnus said. "But right now our focus is primarily ... beefing up our roster of schools that we have relationships with. After we announced the program publicly, we have been swamped with schools who want to be a part of it.” PAY TO PLAY? Neither UNC Asheville nor UNC were compensated in any way for their involvement, as Magnus noted this was "part of a structured classroom project" for the students. However, that may not always be the situation. “In another circumstance, if it’s not a game production we’re dealing with, if it’s something where a singular kid is like a campus correspondent for us that we call on for studio shows or a kid is writing a monthly column for ESPN.com, then there may be some financial consideration," he said. "But we’re going to tackle that as we go forward.” GOING FORWARD : The net plans on continuing the program, and Magnus said the on-air angle during the broadcasts "won’t always be in the form that it was (Wednesday night). ... Every experience with every different school is going to be slightly different. There’s no template for this." Magnus said he hopes the program will help "differentiate ESPNU from a content perspective from our other networks.” He said, "We are going to be about two things long-term. One is games ... (and then) how do we fill in around those games with interesting and unique content that reflects, not only college sports, but the college experience.”