The long holiday weekend gave me plenty of time to think about my first post today (Michigan Preview 2008 was the best thing I came up with). But I have to say, the real winner this weekend was the Big Ten Network. After all of my complaining about it, and even the calling out of the BTN schill who commented on our blog, I'm going to reverse my decision.
I have officially joined the club of flip-floppers.
I turned off College Gameday at 8:59 a.m. PT and switched to channel 223 on my DirecTV HD receiver, and after a moment of Deep Purple background music and the DirecTV logo, I was in the booth with Roger Twibell and Mike Tomczak in Columbus, ready to watch my Buckeyes take on the Penguins of Youngstown State.
The BTN delivered everything that it promised: every game was carried over, and in addition to checking in on the Michigan vs. ASU game, I was able to watch Northeastern @ Northwestern, and Florida International @ Penn State. Although I couldn't take my eyes off of the train wreck on Channel 220 (Michigan vs. ASU), I got a great first-time experience watching my Buckeyes on the BTN.
But now knowing that there might be a BTN person reading this blog, I do have a few observations:
- Green Announcers For those who might not know, Mike Tomczak (one of the announcers) was the Ohio State quarterback from 1982-1984 (and led the Buckeyes to 2 Big Ten championships). I'm assuming he'll do more OSU games, which is fine with me, but he is obviously a beginner in that profession. My experience was similar with all the games.
- Ridiculous Advertising One thing is for sure: the advertising on the BTN has not yet matched ESPN's level. I saw some of the cheapest, most ridiculous advertising on the BTN...but luckily they have carried on the Big Ten commercials. Those commercials that only Big Ten fans like or care about.
- Halftime Show? For halftime of the OSU game, they went back to the janky BTN studio for an update of other BTN games in progress. First of all, I can check the other games with a switch of the remote. But secondly (and most importantly), because it's only OSU fans watching the channel anyway, why not show the halftime show? I would have tuned in to watch this week's lucky sousaphone player dot the "i." Maybe they can show some halftime shows this year, then we'll really feel like we're in Columbus, without the couch burning.
All split feeds are offered to cable and satellite providers. DirecTV has already said that it will carry all of the split feeds on its overflow channels so if your carrier gets the BTN you should be able to choose the game you want to watch or channel surf among all of them, just like ESPN GamePlan except for much lower cost.