Maryland

[Schadenfreude]

So I just got around to watching the press conference videos this morning. Did one of the media members really ask Jinks about Durkin coming back to his alma mater on Saturday?

Yeah, I'll bet that reporter would like to have that one back.

[Falconfreak90]

Cannot wait to get back home to the Doyt Saturday. MD will be a challenge, no question.

[jpfalcon09]

Hopefully the weather cooperates. The remnants of TS Gordon will be bringing showers into the area on Saturday afternoon and evening, some of those might be heavy. At least it won't be sunny and hot.

[slashba33]

Hopefully it will hold off until after sometime after kickoff to maximize the amount of people to at least come to the game...the athletic dept. is banking on a big crowd for this game.

[chandler101]

Looks like your boy DJ is going to get cleared but will settle and move on from Maryland.

[Flipper]

Court was his boy...hard to see how DJ stays in there after his incompetence killed a kid

[chandler101]

Court was his boy...hard to see how DJ stays in there after his incompetence killed a kid

Yeah, it's been tough but in all fairness, there are two issues at hand and unfortunately the lawyer got with the writer and helped create the narrative. Jordan died running sprints at the very first practice of the off season. Sadly, the medical staff did not diagnose the issue and treat. That seems to have been confirmed. The second story is Court and the way he handled the off season work outs. There are also reports from others that suggest the narrative painted was not nearly as bad as suggested. Either way, Jordan is with us and my guess the players have a special mission this year.

[moneymaker02]

Will I be able to watch this game at a bar that has directv? All i see listed right now is for it to play on ESPN+.

[Schadenfreude]

I don't know if bars will have access to ESPN+ games or how that's going to work. I believe a subscription to ESPN+ is about $5 per month.

[jpfalcon09]

Directv doesn't broadcast any ESPN+ games. If you want to watch it on your TV you can use Apple TV or Chromecast, other than that you're limited to your computer.

[hammb]

This is the next step in rendering MAC football even more irrelevant and unpopular than it's ever been before. Tied to an awful ESPN contract for all of eternity and now ESPN makes all the MAC games part of their additional subscription service. I wouldn't pay another nickel to ESPN given how much we already pay for all of their other services.

If the MAC had a set, they should have sued ESPN. Of course, given how shitty that ESPN contract has been since day 1, I'm sure ESPN was smart enough to put a provision in there that they could move these games to any future paid service when they felt like it. ESPN3 was bad enough, but at least those fees were rolled into existing contracts so the consumers didn't have to pay extra.

[jpfalcon09]

This is the next step in rendering MAC football even more irrelevant and unpopular than it's ever been before. Tied to an awful ESPN contract for all of eternity and now ESPN makes all the MAC games part of their additional subscription service. I wouldn't pay another nickel to ESPN given how much we already pay for all of their other services.

If the MAC had a set, they should have sued ESPN. Of course, given how shitty that ESPN contract has been since day 1, I'm sure ESPN was smart enough to put a provision in there that they could move these games to any future paid service when they felt like it. ESPN3 was bad enough, but at least those fees were rolled into existing contracts so the consumers didn't have to pay extra.

ESPN3 fees were still passed onto the consumer. ESPN bundled the cost of ESPN3 into current agreements with ISPs and cable/satellite providers, even if a person didn't care to watch their content. The result was ISPs passing the buck onto the consumer to recoup that money, so in a way ESPN+ is forcing people to double dip.

In the end, it's all about the bottom line and ESPN has suffered greatly from the cord cutting phenomena. Their only way to try and increase that lost revenue was to force people to sign up for ESPN+ and charge them to access content and what I basically term as "premium events", and to layoff hundreds of employees.

If you'll notice this year, MAC vs. FCS games are available on ESPN3 and any other OOC or conference games will require that beloved subscription. They're betting that you'll pay the extra $5 to watch the content you want because there's nowhere else to access it besides actually going to the game.

[kdog27]

I think we can hold them a little more and score a few more than last week. I say Maryland 48-34.

[mbenecke]

I think we can hold them a little more and score a few more than last week. I say Maryland 48-34.

I feel similarly on this. I think our offense will work a little better with another week of chemistry building, and our defense under Coach Pelini will be a little better. I would predict 45-31.

[Schadenfreude]

Tied to an awful ESPN contract for all of eternity

Come on. This is a great contract. It's by far the best TV contract in the history of the MAC, measured either in dollars or in visibility for our football games.

I'm old enough to remember the early 1990s, when the only game the entire conference could get on TV at all was the California Bowl, and that only on regional cable channels like Detroit's old PASS network. The only other media the conference seemed to have going on at all was an effort to get a few fifth-rate radio stations in Michigan and Ohio to air one MAC football game of the week. (That didn't last long.)

Back then if you lived outside of Northwest Ohio and you wanted to check in on the Falcons? The only option was to call a phone number to listen to the radio feed using a landline (It cost like $1 a minute, too.)

Now all our games are available on television. Some are in the national spotlight starting in November and through the end of bowl season. As for the others, at most, we might have to watch $5 per month to watch every single play. If you don't want to pay? Listen on the radio anywhere in the world for free.

To gripe about all this? Reminds me of the old LouisCK bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TviGil-U2HE" target="_blank