The largest sports entertainment company in the United States has arrived in Muncie for the Ball State University, Navy football game.
Two semi's pulled in Wednesday afternoon outside Scheumann Stadium carrying all the equipment ESPN will need to broadcast Friday night's game. It will mark the first time a Ball State home game will be broadcast on ESPN's flagship channel. It's the only game on the schedule for Friday, meaning the whole nation will be able to see Ball State and its stadium.
"It's great exposure for our university, it's good exposure for our football program, and I think it's a complement to coach [Brady] Hoke and his staff," Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Tom Collins said.
The Mid-American Conference and ESPN have a contract that gives ESPN broadcasting rights to MAC games. Collins said ESPN first looked over the conference games before a higher up at ESPN contacted him in the early part of 2008 about potentially moving the Navy game to a Friday.
"I asked how many other games would be on and they said 'no you'd be the only game, and it will be on ESPN,'" he said. "I mean that's huge for us."
Joe Hernandez, Associate Athletics Director at Ball State, said ESPN has requested approximately 80 credentials, a large increase from last year when ESPN2 came to broadcast Ball State's 41-20 victory against the University of Toledo.
"Last year with ESPN2 they brought a number of people with them, but they also used a lot of our people," Hernandez said. "This is a little different. [ESPN] basically has a crew that travels with them everywhere they go."
The attendance for the ESPN2 game last season was 10,162, a number that could be doubled Friday. When Ball State played Indiana University in 2006, a record 23,813 fans piled into Scheumann Stadium.
The Ball State athletics department is hoping the attendance for this week's game will approach that number, and it will do all it can to get the figure as high as possible. In addition to having the usual promotions around campus raising awareness for the game, there will be T-shirts handed out at the game by the Student Government Association for students to wear.
"Hopefully we will have a full house with standing room only and create that home field advantage," Collins said.
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