Media Championship Coverage Almost Non-Existent

[tomclen]

If you're a hard-core volleyball fan and you want to find news coverage of the volleball championship, you can do some digging and find it.

But if you're an average sports fan, the PSU/BYU championship match may as well not exist.

Click on the sports page of the Washington Post website and you'll find stories about Washington's NFL team, what's next for Jim Harbaugh, Maryland basketball, and a story about how a pair of old Michael Jordan sneakers that sold at auction for $33K might not be real. But you can't find a story about the Penn State championship.

Click on the sports page of the New York Times website and it's similar. NFL stuff, including a feature about a 107-year-old Buffalo Bills fan. Keep scrolling down past dozens of other stories and you'll finally get to a box called 'More Sports News' where you'll find 8 little headlines. And the 8th and last one is "Penn State Women Top BYU to Defend Volleyball Title."

Even Pennsylvania's own Pittsburgh Post-Gazette keeps it hidden. Go to the P-G website, click on sports and scroll down and down and down. After about 100 other stories, inexplicably you'll find a story about Penn State and Hancock and their drive for another title. It was story written before the finals! Then scroll down even further and you'll finally find a headline about the championship match.

San Francisco Chronicle sports page? Lots of stories about the 49ers. A story about Stanford Women's Basketball. Even a story about Stanford Volleyball losing to PSU in the tournament. But if there's a volleyball championship story there, I couldn't find it.

Even the Seattle Times - in a town that really has a strong volleyball interest, and hosted the finals last year - you click on the sports page and there's almost nothing. Scroll down to a 'more headlines' box and the 10th little headline is "Penn State wins its 6th NCAA Women's Volleyball Title in 8 Years."

And if you ain't cutting thru in Nebraska, you've got a problem. Try finding a championship story on the Lincoln Journal-Star sports page or the sports page of the Omaha World Herald.

The bad news is, in the internet age, newspaper editors really know what people read. They can analyze the clicks and fill their websites accordingly. They must know that volleyball has limited readership.

The good news is, the college volleyball marketing people have an enormous opportunity.

[badgerbreath]

It comes down to exposure. I think, of all women's sports, volleyball has the highest potential to attract more general interest. It's a fast paced game that is complex, but it's not that hard to understand the basics and most have played in it grammar and high school. So it does represent a real opportunity. In the male sports realm, it's a hard ask -- the competition is really rough.

Vball is great to watch live. Cannot think of a more fun sport in that respect. But it is not a TV friendly game right now, and many of the things that would make it so -- longer time between serves, more time outs, simpler ball handling rules, some regularity in time of matches -- most of us would not like. Soccer also is not TV friendly, but it has such a large fan base and such a tradition that globally is held quite dearly, that TV finds a way around it.

So the question is, will a TV outlet or exec realize the opportunity, and what compromises will vball have to make to get the exposure it needs.

[canda]

Local papers only cover their teams while they're active in the tournament. On the other hand, I doubt Washington, Stanford and Nebraska fans want to read too much about how well the teams are doing that beat them. From that standpoint, Women's Volleyball is still parochial.

[FreeBall]

Dec 21, 2014 10:40:31 GMT -5 tomclen said:

And if you ain't cutting thru in Nebraska, you've got a problem. Try finding a championship story on the Lincoln Journal-Star sports page or the sports page of the Omaha World Herald.

I subscribe to the LJS and today's print edition does have a story about last night's championship match. It's on page 8 of the sports section, with 13.5 column inches of text, plus a picture that measures 5" x 4.5" (caption included). Near as I can tell, this story was not posted on the LJS website.

[gogophers]

Dec 21, 2014 10:40:31 GMT -5 tomclen said:

The good news is, the college volleyball marketing people have an enormous opportunity.

Good luck with that. Football and basketball aside, what college sports get any mass media coverage to speak of? You could just as well argue that gymnastics draws well during the Olympics, so why doesn't the media help promote college gymnastics. Millions of people play golf. Where is the coverage of collegiate golf? Volleyball is a niche sport. So it is, so it shall remain.

[tomclen]

Part of the issue is the failure of sports editors to catch up with fan interest.

At many schools, women's volleyball is now regularly drawing women's basketball, but basketball still gets more coverage.

At the University of Washington, the men's basketball team is 8-0, their best start ever. Getting tons of TV coverage and newspaper stories. In addition to live TV coverage of baseketball games, there's live radio coverage of every game, pre-game and post-game radio shows and a weekly coaches show. But even with the big start, men's basketball has yet to draw a crowd as big as the Stanford at UW volleyball match.

Yet with all that fan interest in volleyball, the media coverage pales in comparison to coverage of basketball.

[bigfan]

L.A. Times gave it a small side bar paragraph. This great sport is soo undiscovered. The athletes are better than B ball, soccer and softball players.