A&T Home TV Games: A Plus or Minus?

[aggieblackie]

No brainer. The tv exposure for our football program is a bonus. The attendance at the Hampton game was great although it thinned out after the half time show.

[DECKS]

The refs will need to do better as that game lasted entirely to long. It was 1:20 when I got back home.

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[DOOMS]

Not all tv exposure is good. Last week was good... if you tuned in until the fourth quarter.

The refs were horrific. I'm sure that caused a great number of people to turn away. A co-worker asked me who won and he was shocked at the final score. He couldn't stomach it after the first 20 minutes or so.

Between poor execution and much worse officiating, I'm not sure if that was our best work. And by our, I mean the conference as well as the teams.

[aggieblackie]

Dooms, I agree that the refs were horrible and the game was extremely too long. I think our sub par execution in the first half was due to our irregular scheduling and lay off. Our team executed better in the second half.

Saying all of this, the tv exposure is still a plus for A&T and the conference.

[DOOMS]

Talk to a few non-affiliated folks who caught part of the game before you make that assessment. I did.

Thing is, on the inside it appears that the tv exposure is a plus because we're just happy to be on t.v. From the outside, watching two poorly executing teams in a poorly officiated game... not a good look.

We don't need exposure to the folks on the inside. The hbcu fans are already there. If we're trying to get exposure we need it to folks who otherwise wouldn't check out an hbcu game. We need to give it to kids who may end up considering attending Ayantee. We need to give these folks something worth tuning into. We failed that part last week until the fourth quarter. By then it was FAR too late.

We get another shot this week. We can't control the refs but hopefully the conference makes damn sure their best crew is on this game. The part we can control is our execution. We need to come out crisp and stay that way all game. If we do well enough and the conference has any officials that are competent on the game, we'll get more eyes watching us on our third Thursday game. If not then we'll lose more viewers.

[aggieblackie]

Dooms, you make good points. I believe our team will execute better this Thursday because they are back on scheduled even though we are playing on a Thursday.

The MEAC should make sure they assign the best refs to our tv games. (might be hard to do)

Exposure good, bad or ugly is better than no exposure. Especially if we win.

[Aggie Monster]

I'm always talking to non-affiliated people about A&T football. I dont allow them to dominate the conversations with their NC State, UNC talk. But anyways.... these people do and have checked out A&T when they play on ESPNU, but only because of the hype of Tarik Cohen. Unless he is skatting all over the field they are not interested. But it proves Dooms point. You have to put on a good show if its going to matter to the non-affiliated people. Think about how many terrible FBS games you watch just because they are on TV? Probably zero.

With that being said, it is a good recruiting tool to play on TV for 3 straight weeks and be available on ESPN3 2 weeks prior to that run. I'm sure we are taking advantage of it.

[popdad]

I like having the opportunity to talk up a TV game to my neighbors, but since many of them are Duke, UNC, Tennessee, Wake Forest, I warn them that many of the FCS divisions games are not the same quality of FBS games, but I try to sell them on the greatness of Cohen or the number of local players on the team. I think it may have been too much to ask expecting them to hang on to the end of this one, with the mess displayed especially the refs.