ESPN+ peasants

Most of WBB, maybe a quarter of softball games, and over half of the baseball games are going to be on ESPN+. The wrestling thing today stinks, but I feel like coverage is expanding. I’ve been fairly satisfied with ESPN+. The production issues from time to time are annoying, but that’s an OSU issue…

From reading that tweet interaction with my old pal Lee it looks like Gavin doesn’t really give a crap and we need a better voice for these topics. The dude straight up offered to help him financially and he was just giving canned responses that looked like he was mocking him.

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It’s not just the wrestling issue. I believe the % of games in a sport offered was better a couple years ago. Now, they offer more sports but it seems like a smaller % of each one.

Also, they should make replays on any ESPN network available via ESPN+. I’d play $8 or $10/mo if I could watch any OSU game, live or replayed. Until then I’ll probably never pay for it again. I’d pay for Sling or another sports streaming service before I do ESPN+.

Gavin has irritated me for years regarding football. While he doesn’t get under my skin like gundy, he’s someone I’d prefer see replaced.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. I went through his other tweets and he seems to just generally stay on par with OSU sports talk.

ESPNU is on YouTubeTV…

It wasn’t yesterday for some reason. Maybe it’s not in Dallas?

Strange.

Mens tennis won’t be on espn+ today.

It’s was on my YouTube TV, so it wasn’t a Dallas area thing. That’s weird.

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Yeah, Gavin sucks.

So Gavin is pretty much just communications? I guess I’m curious on more context to why people don’t like him. Those tweets were off putting for sure.

YouTubeTv played the game, but at least down here it was listed as Ohio State vs Indiana, which I think was playing on espn at the same time.
I didn’t see our game on the schedule, so tried espn plus, but after google told me YouTubeTv did have espnu i found it.
Helps to have the app record all college games

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He is the communications director for athletics and also serves as the primary SID contact for football. I know lots of people who have worked for him and, uh, I don’t many think people like working for him. I don’t know that he is very progressive in the athletic comms field. A lot of other programs have more engaging comms departments, both internally and externally. OSU doesn’t have the resources a lot of programs do, but like today Gavin isn’t always proactive in searching for solutions.

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He treats his employees like sh*t and he’s just an a$$.

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They do have this. For me, this will make it worth the cost during baseball season.

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Not the stuff that plays on non-espn+ channels unless you have cable.

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I just want to know how we got in this situation and how it wasn’t planned for years ago. Lee offered money to help get wrestling on TV next year and Gavin didn’t really explain on Twitter. Got the response above to Seth’s email. Why not come out and say we’ll be glad to take it we actually need (insert amount) per year to do it?

It’s the staffing and equipment. I think it would take a camera-person per mat and then announcers from ESPN to do the broadcast. So I think it’s the agreement with ESPN and their staff vs. our needs.

I’ve noticed they aren’t carrying as many gymnastics meets this year on ESPN+ either. That’s because they are only using 2 announcers who do all the meets from home or a home studio (pretty sure Bart Connor is at the gym, not his house because he’s got some weird gymnastics statues and a conference-like table in the background.) Kathy Johnson Clark is at a house.

They used to use extra people like a former Bama gymnast, Lauren Beers, and some more recent Olympic gymnast announcers. They used to carry all the meets, then it went to Flo and now it’s back for SEC but sporadic. They used to do apparatus feeds too and that’s gone.

All that to say, it may not be within the OSU Athletic Department’s power to fix, unless we want to go the Texas route and make our own channel.

This goes to my earlier point that they spent so much money acquiring rights and then laid off tons of folks that now they’re holding us hostage in part because they won’t pay for all of the content. They instead sit on content so others can’t show it. This was mentioned on another thread, can’t remember who, but our agreements should have a clause that ESPN still gets first pick then allows another provider to pick up the content if ESPN doesn’t want to show it. The current deal is not great for fans.

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