On The Grey Ep. 3: Breaking the Drought

 

In this episode, Navarro and Andrew talk about issues in the NFL, NBA Finals, and their own predicaments on the grey.

Listen Here: Stream episode On The Grey Ep. 3: Breaking the Drought by 73 Drew podcast | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

National Broadcast Review: Is ESPN Doing Enough for College Lacrosse?

 Photo Credit: Michael Greenlar

ESPN is regarded as one of the prominent sports broadcast stations in the country, they host hundreds of collegiate and professional games and events on their broadcast which can mass into millions of viewers. They own the rights to broadcast and cover basically whatever they want, but are they doing it right?

Men’s lacrosse is one of the most popular collegiate spring sports today, and the nationally broadcasted events create hype for the season both before and after each game. 

The content provider (In this case ESPN) continually contributes on Instagram and Twitter predominantly. Instagram is where most of the content is seen, but more than that, the content is taken and redistributed through 3rd party accounts and lacrosse fans as a whole. There is a much greater amount of user interactivity on Instagram than twitter, where it consists mostly of highlights and significant moments from each game. This past week, every single game ended in an overtime upset, 

On Twitter, the NCAA Lacrosse account isn’t very active in anything besides weekly standings, or monumental records being broken. 

Prior to Duke Lacrosse’s Men’s team facing off with Virgina, Instagram had much more activity using the #GODUKELAX hashtag. The Duke Lacrosse account posted 2 times within 24 hours of their matchup with Virginia on Saturday, April 8th, and massed over 7,000 likes with only 12 comments in both posts. However, @Lacrossenetwork on Instagram reposted a highlight from the game itself, which accumulated over 15,000 likes and over 30 responses. Instagram is utilized to find a place for those regardless of age, demographic, or any other factors to have the ability to see their posts, it is easy to share and reach new audiences. Their involvement in Instagram as a whole can help those who may not know about the sport to slowly find their way into the culture of lacrosse. Unfortunately, Duke fell to Notre Dame in their last outing, and this results in a slower pace of Instagram and twitter activity rather than if they were to win. It is understandable that a team may want to take a step back for a little before they make a statement or any further activity.

The social media that is utilized the most is their Instagram account; it is easier for the audience to find highlights across the discover page than it would be for them to reach it on Instagram. If I saw men’s lacrosse from a business standpoint, I would be much more involved on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, while trying to create a welcoming environment for not just Duke Lacrosse fans, but lacrosse fans as a whole. Espn does cover this category of sport and it is televised on their stations, but they do not advertise the sport enough for it to have its own subcategory for college lacrosse. Most of the Content on ESPN’s pages are professional sports: right now, being the NBA and MLB.

Professional sports should definitely be a prominent part of the content that ESPN produces, but they as a company should invest more time or space into including this sport on more of their content.