The Penn men’s lacrosse team is ready for its close-up.
Though the Quakers’ Saturday matchup against Harvard may seem like any other regular season game, there’s a twist this time: the game will be televised locally on The Comcast Network.
Penn’s most recent game against Brown last weekend was available for streaming on the Penn Sports Network through PennAthletics.com, but Saturday’s game will reach a wider audience.
The contest will be the second Penn lacrosse game to be aired on TCN. On April 2, the network aired the women’s lacrosse team’s 12-6 loss to then-No. 2 Maryland.
Men’s head coach Mike Murphy was approached by the athletic department earlier in the season about the possibility of gaining some local exposure for his program.
“I know our administration more or less set this up and asked us a couple dates that would be good dates and good games and good opponents for a TV game,” he said. “We gave them two or three options, [the Havard game] being one of them.”
In an e-mail, senior associate director of athletics Alanna Shanahan said this was her first time working with television programming in her five-year tenure with Penn Athletics.
“A couple of our games have been televised in the past, but it seems like in my career, we’ve only had at most three or four games televised,” senior attack Chris Harms said. “When you have a game televised, it always makes it seem like a bigger game.”
Although any added hype may be a result of a televised matchup, Shanahan claims that excitement may be all that is generated, as little revenue comes from Penn teams’ television appearances.
Still, with the lacrosse squad’s first Ivy win on the line — the team will enter Saturday’s game at the bottom of the Ancient Eight — the team refuses to allow the extra attention to distract from playing its game.
“Every game is important to us — the fact that it’s on TV doesn’t really make a difference to us,” Harms said.
What is at stake, however, is the impact the televised matchup may have on the program’s recruiting process.
Of Murphy’s 46-man roster, seven players are New Jersey natives, while two more hail from Pennsylvania. The coach believes TCN’s coverage of the Harvard matchup could be beneficial when it comes to recruiting locally.
“We were just talking to a recruit today who said instead of TV, he’s been following our games online, and now they actually get to watch them live,” Murphy said. “I think that’s a huge help — that’s probably the biggest benefit to this televised game, the fact that we’ll get exposed to a much greater number of prospects.”
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