Tuned Out

The Ivy League Football Media Day has become more and more meaningless and uninteresting for a league that really needs to increase interest and encourage those who already are interested to stick around or boost their engagement. 

I don't if it's the individual coaches, athletic departments, or the league offices who are responsible for coming up with a product every year that barely qualifies as anything at all. 

Yes, it's to be expected that we're going to hear platitudes from the coaches. Yes, it's good to at least see and hear some of the players speaking clearly and respectfully. No, we don't expect to hear anyone give too much away about their game plans and all the starting lineups. 

But if you're a football fan, you really don't get anything out of these events. They never were an information extravaganza, but there used to be more actual content. I remember during my years broadcasting Columbia games and going to the media days and there would be discussions about the actual players competing for starting spots. There was talk about specific team strengths and weaknesses, etc. Now it just seems like the point of media day is to give everyone a chance to make a slightly low key pep talk. 

After a COVID-canceled 2020 season, I think we all need more than the usual update on who's who for each Ivy team. This was not the year to go back to what has been the media day's uninteresting business as usual over the last 6-7 years. 

But when I was a TV producer for 26 years, I had a rule that no one in our team meetings could just trash an idea or a segment that didn't work. They were required to come up with another idea.

So here's how I would have used Ivy Media Day to excite the fans, maybe create new ones, and reward everyone for waiting the 665 days it will be between games

1) A pre-produced video with music detailing the history of Ivy League Football. Get Erik Greenberg Anjou to make a 5-10 minute short version of his 2007 film.  

2) Have all-time great players from each of the eight schools introduce themselves, give a quick summary of their playing day accolades, and then have them virtually introduce their school's current head coach but first introduce a..,

3) ...  2-3 minute video highlight of each school's previous season to run before

4) Okay, we get that the coaches aren't going to reveal their starting lineups or list strengths and weaknesses. But each coach should tell us what was the best and worst about LAST season (I mean 2019) and generally what they're looking at now in those areas coming into this season. (Last season, we were terrible in the red zone. This year, we're making it a priority and we've got some new players and plays to make it happen). 

5) The players each school trots out should give us more biographical information. The media needs to humanize these kids, and the robotic, "everyone is excited and close on this team" comments make them look like robots and not people. They should tell the story of their paths to their school, what they're studying, what's surprised them about college life, etc. 

There are high school and summer camp A/V clubs that could do a good job producing the rundown I just listed above, And remember that the whole thing could be separated into eight parts and promoted by each school's own athletic department websites. 

PREDICTION TIME COMING

 I guess I have less than two weeks before I'll come out with my 2021 Ivy League Football predictions. A quick look at my 2019 predictions gives me some needed confidence. I correctly predicted Dartmouth would win the championship, only missed a little by not picking Yale to tie them (I picked them 3rd), and really only messed up by picking Columbia 2nd.

Not too bad.