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How much play do you give college hoops?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Football_Bat, Mar 11, 2013.

  1. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    For Division I college towns, obviously the answer is "a lot," at least with the hometown team.

    But what about national or regional ball? Depending on what else is going on, we try to break out a Big 12 game on the front and run a regional roundup inside (either men or women, thanks to Baylor). And I run national scores in agate whenever I work desk.

    I ask because national interest in college basketball seems to have been on the wane for the last 15 years, but it seems we're trying to hold the line. I have to admit I've been more interested in college ball this year than probably at any time since I started working in media.
     
  2. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    We run standings every day for the three conferences represented by our state teams, plus a list of state scores (we have six D-I teams and a half-dozen D-II, D-III and NAIA schools in the state).
    As for roundups, it's based on space. Slower days we run them, busier days we don't. We might include some of the SEC West programs in our briefs, but we're not going out of our way to include the Georgia-Vanderbilt gamer.
    That's for men.
    For women we run a roundup of the SEC and one or two other D-I state schools and that's about it.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Side note: We've had some pretty good rows about this contention on Sports & News. For the record, I totally agree with you. It has been declining. Precipitiously.

    Things that hold America's attention:
    * Everything about the NFL
    * College football regular season
    * College basketball tournament
    * Baseball regular season
    * Golf majors
    * NBA conference finals and finals

    Things that don't
    * Baseball postseason
    * College football bowls
    * College basketball regular season
    * The NHL
    * NBA regular season up through and including second round of the playoffs
    * Golf non-major tournaments
     
  4. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Most papers give college hoops really good coverage from January until the end of the tournament...

    The exceptions are the programs that have a fan base that demands blanket coverage from Midnight Madness through the NCAAs. There might be 20 programs that get that kind of treatment from a large paper... I get that there are a lot of college town papers that do that, but in most larger markets, college hoops is relatively under tha radar until college football season ends or when conference play begins...

    Obviously, we're not talking about the Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas/Missouri, North Carolina markets.

    It was even like that before places started cutting back on travel. It's very, very expensive to travel to every college basketball road game... I did it for several years and I was frequently stunned when I'd be sent across the country to cover a non-conference game that started at a time when we'd be lucky to get a score and a running story into the next day's paper. This was a little more than a decade ago when it wasn't commonplace to have an updated gamer on the website.
     
  5. Creig Ewing

    Creig Ewing Member

    In Louisville, college basketball stories consistently get the most web hits each day.

    I will be surprised if we have a story on our Sports front tomorrow that doesn't involve college basketball -- with a men's Big East preview, Indiana follow, Western Kentucky playing for a trip to the NCAAs in the Sun Belt final and the Louisville women playing in the Big East semifinals.

    We also usually have the highest TV ratings of any market for the NCAA tournament.
     
  6. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    If it were up to me personallty, I wouldn't run it at all. It's been at least five years since I've watched any sort of basketball game from start to finish. Just not my cup of tea. Rather watch hockey or golf.

    But I've always tried to take into consideration interests other than my own (hell, I'll even run NASCAR), so I'd try to run a men's AP Top 25 roundup, statewide colleges and conference roundup from whatever conference (Big 12, Pac-12, MWC, Big Sky) was regional. I'd run the national score list in agate, with the logic if you can't give people anything else, at least give them the scores. Run standings 2-3 times a week on local/regional conferences.

    I rarely run game stories on the section front, unless it's a local/regional team or deep in the NCAA Tournament. Rather run features or enterprise stuff. I just don't think people read game stories as much as they used to because everything's on TV.

    We cut out the women's Top 25 a few years back for space reasons, but would still run a score list everyday. And we'd run the really big games (Stanford vs. UConn, when the 89-game win streak was snapped) and an occasional feature and NCAA Tournament roundup.

    Granted, most of the places where I have worked are not basketball hotbeds. I really would not enjoy working somewhere where that is the dominant interest.
     
  7. What's wrong with basketball? Not enough scrappy players?
     
  8. printit

    printit Member

    This is spot on.
     
  9. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Everybody has their personal likes and dislikes. Some people don't like hockey. Others don't like football, car racing, baseball, golf, whatever. I have always tried not to let my personal biases color what I did or did not include in the section I was producing.

    I'm just saying that I would not be a real happy camper if I were living in a college basketball hotbed like, say, Kentucky, Indiana or North Carolina. Just not my personal interest.
     
  10. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Freudian slip.
     
  11. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Some of Mark's best friends are college basketball players.
     
  12. Mark2010

    Mark2010 Active Member

    Were.... past tense. They're all retired now.
     
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