COLUMN: Information superhighway robbery

From Eric Moskowitz's, "An Obstructed View," Fall '99 From 19-5 Stanford to 18-5 Samford, 147 college basketball programs make live radio broadcasts of their games available free of charge over the Internet via broadcast.com. The list includes 22 of the top 25 schools in the most recent AP poll and two members of the Ancient Eight -- Cornell and Princeton. Penn fans, however, must pay $8.95 per game or $59 for a season pass to listen to Quakers games on the Internet at College Sports Network (http://www.collegesportsnet.com). CSN is the brainchild of Penn club volleyball coach Marc Davis. Davis created the service to provide friends and family of Penn club volleyball an opportunity to listen to Quakers matches from their home computers. Over time, CSN expanded to cover a host of other Penn teams, including men's basketball. "[Broadcast.com] basically provides a one-dimensional service," Davis said. "There's maybe 100,000 -- maybe 40,000 -- teams out there that play sports, and broadcast.com is probably interested in 200 of those teams. But we're interested in all 40,000." In its quest to broadcast everyone, CSN expanded to cover Penn women's volleyball for $95 per season, as well as Fairfield lacrosse and Princeton soccer in 1997. The service will also carry Penn lacrosse for the first time this spring. In addition, CSN picked up WXPN broadcasts of Quakers football ($89 per season for non-alumni, $39 for students and alumni) in the fall. CSN also provides chat rooms and message boards allowing Penn sports fans to interact. But Davis feels one of the best features of CSN is what it gives back to the team -- part of the profits. "For women's volleyball we gave them a check for like $600 last year," Davis said. "For club volleyball, if we made $500, that was like 25 percent of our budget added." But in the million-dollar world of college basketball, $500 barely registers. According to Davis, CSN currently boasts 25 subscribers to its Quakers basketball service. Meanwhile, "tons of people were listening" to the Tigers' comeback against Penn on broadcast.com, according to Jerry Price, manager of sports media relations at Princeton. Surely such service for fans must come with a hefty price tag. "I guess Princeton decided to spend a bunch of money on equipment [for broadcast.com] and took money away from the other parts of their athletic budget," Davis said of his competitor's costs. But Price says otherwise, claiming that Princeton pays nothing to put its games on broadcast.com. At Cornell, Sports Communications Director Dave Wohlhueter seconded Price's claim. "Cornell actually didn't have to put up any money at all," Wohlhueter said. "I've heard people tell me they're being charged like $100 a game by broadcast.com, but they haven't approached me at all about it." Wohlhueter did mention that Cornell needed new servers and software to feed the games to broadcast.com, but that the hockey boosters -- broadcast.com does Cornell football, hockey and men's basketball -- bought one server and radio station WVBV, which announces the basketball games, bought the other. Price, however, was skeptical. "I don't know what computers or servers they're talking about. We didn't need anything like that -- it just runs through a phone line. It doesn't cost us anything," Price said. "There is no software." When asked about the fee, Price speculated that perhaps the Tigers' fee had been waived, claiming "we're America's team." Davis' service offers some great features to parents or alumni who want to follow the volleyball team. Volleyball teams are not typically broadcast on TV or radio to begin with, so CSN fills a void for those fans. "We wanted to do something for more than just the big teams," Davis said. "It doesn't seem right to me just from a fairness standpoint that a school will go and just have broadcast.com do their big football and basketball games, but not have anything else." Fairness standpoint? How about those basketball fans forced to chalk up $59 to follow the Quakers run for the title while Big Red diehards get to listen for free to a team that has won just one Ivy League crown ever. But CSN does offer tapes via mail order of already broadcast games, at just $19 ($14 for subscribers) plus $3.50 shipping. "We have these games archived. If people want to listen to the Temple game, they can listen to it anytime for the rest of their life," Davis said. "That's probably something [broadcast.com] doesn't do for Princeton -- they just have the game on it and it's live and that's that." Actually, Penn's November 23 upset of then-No. 6 Temple is available on broadcast.com, as all of the Owls games are archived. The same is true for Princeton. Any fan sadistic enough to want to relive last Tuesday's 50-49 loss to the Tigers can do so free of charge at broadcast.com without paying $19 bucks and without watching the mail for tapes. Penn basketball fans don't want chat rooms. They don't want cassette tapes. And they certainly don't want to pay $59. They want what fans at schools from Alcorn State to Arizona already have -- an opportunity to listen to free live broadcasts on the Internet. It's time Penn finally put its games up on broadcast.com.