Fans coming to Franklin Field this season should be impressed by the improvements in the turf and the scoreboard, but there will be plenty of opportunities to keep up with Penn football for those who prefer to stay in the comfort of their own homes.
This is because Penn has announced its 2004 football television schedule. Six of 10 games will be televised on three networks: CN8, College Sports Television and Yankees Sports and Television Network.
A big part of recruiting for any school is its ability to gain exposure for its programs through television, merchandising and other forms of media.
This fact is not lost on Penn coach Al Bagnoli. But Bagnoli was quick to point out the disadvantages of TV coverage from a coaching standpoint.
"TV games make the games go forever," Bagnoli said. "You gotta find things to talk about, because as a coach you're trying to say things in 10 words or less and all of a sudden you have a two-minute timeout. Two minutes seems like two hours on the sidelines."
Bagnoli then went on to say that an extensive TV schedule is beneficial both to the athletes and to the Ivy League itself.
The Ancient Eight has its own six-game TV contract with YES, which will cover the Oct. 2 Penn matchup with Dartmouth as well as the Quakers' season finale at Cornell Nov. 20. The YES network reaches viewers in New York, Connecticut and many parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The Penn-Princeton game Nov. 6 will be featured as CSTV's college football game of the week. The game will be one of the few occasions when Penn football will be accessible to a national audience, as CSTV is broadcast to more than 20 million homes nationally on cable and satellite.
While the Ivy League itself is responsible for setting the TV schedule for league games, the Penn Athletic Department handles the TV coverage for the rest of the season.
"We try and work with the likely media outlets to let them know about our schedule and gauge their level of interest," said Andy Bilello, Penn's associate director of Athletics for External Affairs. "Most of the time it's year to year. We make sure that we have our schedule in front of people so that they can determine how it fits into their programming."
CN8 will carry the Quakers' showdown with crosstown rival Villanova on Sep. 25, as well as league games Oct. 23 at Yale and Nov. 13 against Harvard.
Perhaps the only drawback of the TV schedule is that both the Homecoming game against Columbia Oct. 16 and Family Weekend game Oct. 30 against Brown will not be televised.
