But you see how this is an athletics problem, not a WOUB problem. WOUB could’ve told athletics to kick rocks when they asked for a copy of the presser, but they didn’t. WOUB shouldn’t have to edit videos for athletics, and since athletics doesn’t have any video people currently you get what you get. Just direct your criticism at the right place. Is it athletics fault that they haven’t filled video positions yet? Absolutely. Is it WOUB’s job to edit pressers for athletics? No.

I just want to let you guys (maybe not you specifically) know how incredibly difficult you made my job at times and when you complain as much as you do, how that weighs on our burn out. Some schools upload pressers, some don’t. It’s not required (even though it sort of is now since the MAC requires it), but what should be the easiest thing I had to do during a week became the biggest pain in my butt. I wanted to live stream these but since we didn’t have and couldn’t afford the equipment at the time to stream in stereo that got nixed. Then the emails flooded in that you couldn’t hear the question. I tried to just use the mic on the camera, but that wasn’t good enough. FB wasn’t that big of a deal, but for MBB I had to run around to collect equipment in the two minutes between the game ending and presser starting to get a stupid microphone that could be passed around. Then when I tried to upload just one big press conference with time stamps you could click in the video to go from coach to players, that wasn’t good enough and it had to be two separate videos (which when you’re trying to go home or work on videos at 11 PM after a game, that extra time adds up and heaven forbid we don’t put that thing out the second it happens). I’m honestly surprised angry emails didn’t come in about us not doing post game football press conferences and me having to try and find a way to swing that too. All of those changes weren’t changes I wanted to make. They all came after emails from probably one average Joe that has no idea of the internals of the department but we had to bend over backwards to please them.

It’s a good thing this message board seemingly only cares about the two sports I left a student to cover or you’d really be imploding right now. FH has 3 wins at home and no highlights or videos. Soccer has 4 wins at home with no highlights or videos. VB has one whole win this season at home and it might be their only one and no video or highlights. Nothing to commemorate Carlston’s first win back.

It may seem like at times no one responds to your complaints, but I can guarantee you that we were at least having conversations about them (and I personally was checking the boards hoping for a smidge of positive reception about a video I made, but it was seemingly never good enough.. Example, I didn’t use Russ for a video, I used a hip hop instrumental, the press conference wasn’t bright enough when I had the camera maxed out but you didn’t know that there’s only like 8 lights in the room we shoot those in.)

You wanna be a top FBS school? Maybe the members of the board here should pull together the funds for an endowment position to supplement the lack of income and resources we had and then you guys can call all the shots you want since you pay for it.

On the way out, I suggested obtaining 2 or 3 GAs that could help the one single video person. To date, it doesn’t seem like they’re going to do that and just go back to the one person for 16 sports model. Personally, if that’s the route they go, I hope the position is never filled and I can kick back and watch you complain about all the WOUB videos and how they’re not up to FBS standard when they have NOTHING to do with athletics.

*End rant*

Listen, I'm not harping on about some guy at WOUB or a video guy who feels (and likely is) overworked.

My point is that when I watch coach press conferences and other video content from other MAC schools, theirs is far superior these days. Last week's press conference - camera crooked, sound atrocious - was embarrassing.

Compare that with Akron's press conference videos. We look like a junior high school in comparison...and Akron is known throughout NE Ohio as "Hilltop High." Many of their academic programs and associated technology are horrible. Yet they put us to shame.

I certainly understand VideoGuy's irritation but do not appreciate the "Hey, that's not my responsibility" crap that too often comes from folks who work in higher education. Ohio is a brand. Our video product should burnish that brand.

But once again, it’s not our video product from an athletics perspective. That’s just WOUB giving us something to cover our butt. Akron has a full timer. Any full timer that has in person pressers should be able to competently do this. If you want a good example, CMU lost their full timer. Nothing on their YouTube. Toledo doesn’t post them. Ohio State doesn’t post them. Memphis is still doing Zooms.

WOUB is put in a really bad spot because there’s zero oversight of their sports department. It’s students teaching students. What their professors teach them in class I’ll never know, but I can tell you in a lot of my interactions with WOUB students when I’d show or tell them something it blew their mind because it never was taught to them. I’ve heard good things about one of the WOUB employees whose name is escaping me, but I can say with relative certainty almost none of the J-school cares or knows about sports. If they did, they’d see their student with a sideways camera and tell them how to fix it. They’d tell them how to shoot the games better. They don’t though. It’s on the students to figure out. Not to talk completely bad about my former employer, but everyone talks about how good the J-school is but I never saw it. The students I interacted with that will succeed are the ones that went out and grinded themselves, asked questions, sought help from professionals. Those that didn’t, won’t. I’ll say that in my time there (about 4 years) the number of people I know will fail (or extremely struggle) far outnumbered those I think will succeed.

In this whole video and staffing conversation it dawned on me to ask this question: I thought the point of being FBS for football was to have more resources for stuff like this?

Don't hate me for saying it, but it seems like that really should be part of the conversation when it comes to stuff like this.

Will the game day experience be improved?

Will Albin bring his return man to the sideline instead of risking the Homecoming muffed punt?

Will there be anything en chanting as part of the experience Saturday?

Besides the Alumni Band...probably not

Really? Dayton is flush with cash and has a non-scholarship football team and a basketball team that produces more money then we ever have. One of the benefits of not having FBS football.

The relationship was so beautiful when Evan was here. They’re the ones that actually made the content for teams not named football. Those students worked with Evan too, so he was able to work with them on a more personal level than I when I just passed them a tip in passing.

I made a big pitch to rebuild that relationship and go back to sharing their content, working with the students that had interest to get better(would’ve added some responsibility to me, but would’ve helped me not have to be everywhere), but the powers that be on our side decided that they didn’t want to do that so that time, effort, and meetings on my part was a waste of time. Would’ve helped get more people in too because the university doesn’t promote us as a place students can learn like they do for WOUB. Would’ve given us an in with high schoolers to be able to have help for a full four years.

I come across as a scorned lover haha, but it’s just kind of fun to me to see things play out exactly how I told them it would if changes weren’t made. It’s a mass exodus leaving the profession, and the changes that need to be made would stop that, but I think the powers that be just don’t want to be the bad person and explain to people why things aren’t a certain way anymore.

Losing an SID for a content position was just kind of a bonehead thing anyways. The person doesn’t create any of the content, they literally just hit post. SIDs did that before and there wasn’t a problem (other than a disagreement on what videos to make), but if we want to talk about FBS and staffing… Even at the FCS level there’s at least 3 full time SIDs. The fact that we now have one trying to manage everything is absurd.

Football Miami 2017 was my first day on the job and the Purdue Fort Wayne baseball series this past April was my last.

I said something in an earlier post about the famous line in athletics of "we've always done it this way," so I was moderately aware of the work Evan did from the time I stepped on campus (even though if it wasn't for the relationship they had with WOUB, if I was in his shoes I'd have never done a half hour show). He's still with the university... Sort of. I met up with him when I was making our content crossover from news to the more creative stuff. He works with WOUB (does the "Our Town" show for WOUB) and teaches a sports cinemaphotography class (they finally after all these years decided to lean into a guy that shot/shoots for the NFL). *Catch 22 of that sports cinemaphotography class is, I already had connections with the students that were talented, so it didn't really provide any sort of help that I needed... Most got their reps for his class doing Gridiron/Hardwood.*

I also saw A LOT of what he did when I was making our online archive system (all sports, and some footage goes back to the 1930s... BUT, since all the video people left, I don't think anyone can give access to anyone knew that comes in so that thing is about to be a lot of work down the drain haha).

There hasn't been a ton of turnover in the video department overall (it's only really existed since probably 2010 or 2011). Yeah, you loose your GAs and interns like clockwork, but I mean it went Evan, Tanner Smith, then Jason Chiappino at the tippy top (I think Ohio got super lucky here because every one of those guys graduated from here and probably took a home team discount) and then all I can think of full time wise under them was myself under Jason and then Derek Mishiro under Tanner (Derek I think may have done some post grad work here as he started as an intern and then was full time for a year), but we only had a staff of 2 people because they threw ESPN into the mix. When we had those old lower boards, myself and Jason made the stuff for it and a marketing intern ran it. It wasn't until we got the new board in the Convo they decided to hire a motion graphics person/board op (she was a recent Ohio grad/ran here, so I'm not sure if she just was getting her foot in the door for a first job and wanted to come back to the home team or what... Never thought to ask). Then you had Don Moore (professor from OU Southern) as the ESPN professor since it's inception until he retired this past year. Now that all of us are gone, they're having to build from complete scratch.

Kurt is definitely out for the season. Reading between the lines, it seems like Keye is too.

The only thing I'm basing my prediction on is we don't do well against CMU on homecoming.

Injury report: Richardson's status for Saturday uncertain

Jackie O's back in Peden this week!

Looks like sports coverage at the Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun took the same kind of hit from the pandemic that Arkley did at the Mess. Their only college football stories all week have been from the AP and their story on the CMU-MOFO game was written by an asst AD for communications at CMU. They used to have two or three insight stories about CMU athletics each week. Their sports editor covers local high school and Alma College sports.