When ESPN sets its sights on a new sports venture, it surrounds it, gets inside it and eventually owns it. Such is the case with high school sports.
Over the past two years, the sports cable giant has made a major move into prep coverage, buying competitors and rapidly building a dominant brand in all things scholastic.
The list of competitors swallowed by ESPN is impressive, including HoopGurlz.com, StudentSports.com, RiseMag.com, DyeStat.com (a boys and girls cross-country and track Web site) and the entity now known as ESPN Scouts Inc.
In August, ESPN launched its own high school sports portal, ESPNRise.com, a one-stop prep sports Web site that provides Joe Fan with news, features and an exclusive “Fab 50” ranking of the nation’s top teams.
Looking backIt’s getting easier to find a prep game on an ESPN television network, too. ESPN telecast its first prep game 20 years ago — between football rivals Easton (Pa.) and Phillipsburg (N.J.) — and over the years, it has been on the sidelines or courtside for other memorable games.
In 2002, the network carried possibly the most-watched high school game of all time: the national TV debut of LeBron James while he was still a high school junior in Akron, Ohio.
In 2007, ESPN2 and ESPNU aired
19 high school football games
from 15 states.
That game (with Dick Vitale and Bill Walton at the microphones) drew an audience of more than 1.5 million and reportedly was the second-highest-rated program ever aired to that point on ESPN2. (The highest-rated program on ESPN2 at the time was “RPM 2Night” on the day Dale Earnhardt died.)
As the array of ESPN networks has grown over the last decade, prep-game coverage has grown along with it. In 2007, ESPN2 and ESPNU aired 19 high school football games from 15 different states, ending with an Arizona prep game Nov. 7.
A story in the Dec. 22-28 issue of SportsBusiness Journal reported that ESPN is launching a postseason boys and girls basketball tournament slated for April 3-5. ESPN Rise will manage the tournament, which will be televised on ESPN2 and ESPNU. The championship game will be on ESPN on April 5.
The story also said the tournament had commitments from four teams.
High interest For ESPN, such ventures are simply good business. Interest in high school sports, particularly in elite players headed for big-time college sports programs, is growing fast, fueled by fans monitoring the college recruiting wars.
“We’re serving our [viewers’] needs to understand these young players and their talent,” said James Brown, senior vice president of ESPN Rise.
Though ratings for such games aren’t overwhelming (on average, about 0.5, according to ESPN), it is startling to consider that hundreds of thousands of people are tuning in to high school football to watch players they’ve never heard of, including some in faraway states.
For the high schools involved, the games present opportunities and, say school officials and sports activists, risks. Many, including administrators and former pro athletes, regret the creeping commercialization that a national telecast of a high school sports game represents.
Others see the national exposure, and the competition to earn it, leading to abuses such as the wooing of top players from one school to another.
“It becomes a game of, ‘How am I going to attract the best players to my school to allow me to have a better team and therefore get my school on national TV?’” said Bob Bigelow, a former NBA player and noted youth sports advocate and author.
Shaping perceptions Inside some schools, there also are concerns about how a football game beamed all over the country can shape perceptions.
“We want to make it clear, our kids are here to get an education, not play football,” said John Graham, principal of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Olney, Md. “We don’t want football to be more important than it really is. Yet any time you’re showcasing high school athletes on TV, there’s a danger of that.”
On Oct. 2, ESPN telecast a football battle between Good Counsel and its perennial nemesis, DeMatha Catholic High School of nearby Hyattsville, Md. It was Good Counsel’s first appearance under the bright lights of national television, and Graham said he was pleased with the results (including the final score, a 42-21 victory for Good Counsel).
“The telecast showed the school in a very favorable light,” Graham said.
Specifically, he noted the good sportsmanship displayed by Good Counsel students and a plug for the school’s strong academics by ESPN’s Kevin Blackistone, a Good Counsel alumnus.
Any notion that the game would be a moneymaker for Good Counsel was short-lived, however. The “rights fee” to each of the competing schools was $1,000, less than the extra security and other costs to host the game, to say nothing of the many hours of planning by the school’s staff.
“It’s certainly not something I would want to do every week, I’ll tell you that,” Graham said. n
Mark Hyman’s book on the impact of adults on youth sports, “Until It Hurts,” will be published by Beacon Press in April. He blogs at www.youthsportsparents.blogspot.com and can be reached at mhymanweb@markhyman.com.
