In front of a room of 100 people in Huntsman Hall yesterday stood a real-life emperor.
To sports fans, that is.
George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN and ABC Sports, came to address interested students on everything from the financial losses associated with ABC's coverage of Monday Night Football to the making of the "This is SportsCenter" series of commercials.
Bodenheimer reigns over an empire that contains a magazine, a Web site and eight ESPN Zone sports bars, not to mention quite a large family of television networks.
And college sports fans should be excited about a new birth in the family of networks. On March 4, the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" launched ESPNU, a channel devoted solely to college athletics. While growth is slow -- ESPNU can be seen in four million homes, mainly via DirecTV -- Bodenheimer is convinced that his new product will be a winner.
"ESPNU is off to a great start, and no doubt it's going to be a great success," Bodenheimer said after his presentation.
"I can just tell by the nature of the product that it's going to be a hit on college campuses."
At least one student in the audience was in full agreement.
Wharton sophomore and Hamilton College House resident Dan Amer does not get ESPNU in his building, but said that he would be an avid viewer of the fledgling network.
"I'm a college sports fanatic," Amer said, adding that he has "a huge passion for college sports especially because I see the athletes on campus."
And while the athletes walking around Penn's campus do not usually make it onto ESPN, Bodenheimer believes that ESPNU may provide just that opportunity.
"All sports, all colleges have fans, and that's certainly true in the Ivy League, so I certainly see that."
As yesterday's presentation was put on by the Wharton Sports Business Initiative and an Entertainment and Sports Marketing class, a good portion of the talk focused on how ESPN went from Chris Berman making up nicknames on a program with no viewers to the monster that it is today.
But the answer may come as a surprise.
"There wasn't anybody with an MBA," Bodenheimer said. "A couple of guys, I'd be surprised if any of them had a high school equivalency diploma."
And 25 years later, the man who was named the most influential person in sports media by the Sports Business Journal is still all about fun and games.
