The St. Louis Post-Dispatch story addresses how ESPN has allowed people all over the country to watch games from different parts of the country on pretty much a nightly basis. And this has led to the simultaneous explosion in popularity of college basketball and ESPN, culminating (at least to this point) in the launch of yet another ESPN network, ESPNU, which debuts tonight.

so now if one wants to follow the national college hoops scene on a nightly basis, one must tune into espn. of course, there is a problem for us Pac-10 folks: none of our conference games are on espn. this means nobody in other parts of the country sees our games, but a bigger problem is that it means a lack of attention and respect from espn's analysts. there is no incentive for espn to promote the Pac-10 because they don't benefit from increased viewership of our games.

this is why i hope Howland realizes how important it is to have big non-conference games on our schedule. we need to have these games because our lack of presence on ESPN denies us the national exposure that other conferences get just by playing their regular conference schedule. When Howland was at Pitt, he would have a national audience on a weeknight if they were playing say, UCONN. So there's no need for him to travel cross-country for a big non-conference matchup late in the season. But at UCLA, he doesn't have this luxury. He needs to put his team on display against tough non-conference opponents to hopefully earn the respect of analysts, recruits, and fans. This actually is one thing UCLA did right under Steve Lavin, as we always had plenty of widely televised, marquee matchups while he was coach.

by the way, if you're wondering why we have no conference games on espn, my understanding (which is based on information from several years ago), is that espn would want our games to be on after the 11pm ET sportscenter, which means they would start at 9pm on the west coast. obviously, the pac-10 wants no part of starting games this late.

i know that from a basketball perspective, what actually matters most how good we play as a team, and not how we are perceived. but with recruiting being as big a deal as it is, it helps to do as much as we reasonably can to keep bilas and company from ignoring and/or insulting our program and our conference. the firekarldorrell blog also addresses this in its call for increased media communications from the athletic department.