Many of us, the fans, may just be able to help the Mountain West schools, literally. It's a longshot, but here is my logic: Right now, almost nobody watches The Mtn. except for football and basketball games. If we start watching the shows, then the network can report more viewers which helps with advertising and also helps with showing Comcast why the reach of The Mtn. needs to be bigger.
The advertising will in turn make the network quality better and give even more reason for Comcast to make The Mtn. a channel available nationally on their cable service. That creates a huge jump in subscribers to The Mtn. (TowerPower pointed this out to me in another thread. People don't have to subscribe specifically to The Mtn, all they have to do is subscribe to the package Comcast offers it with. i.e. With the new reach in Atlanta, The Mtn. is in the same package as NFL Redzone. Without knowing it, tons of people will subscribe to The Mtn. as well as NFL Redzone and the MWC makes money off of it. Put that on a national scale with the largest cable provider in the nation and the amount of money made off of subscribers jumps through the roof) that in turn actually helps provide money to the schools we consider ourselves fans of.
If there is an issue with that logic, please point that out in the comments for me as I am not even sure that us watching more of The Mtn. will actually follow this train of thought.
With that, here is today's review of this week's installment of the bowl previews - Las Vegas Bowl Preview
Alright, since this is a grade system, that means I have to have a series of things to grade on. Here is my grading rubric:
| Graphics | How well the graphics look. i.e. how good are the video clips, do they have good statistics, do the graphics stand out? |
| Analysis | How much does the analysis make sense? Does it seem like the analysts are saying something you and I have already come up with or is it something that's new? |
| Quality of Interview Questions | Are they questions that everyone is wondering or are they meaningless? |
| Smoothness of Show | How smooth is the transition between camera angles, in and out of commercials and graphics? |
Graphics:
The graphics were fine. Nothing that really stood out, just the average clips. Although one thing that really made the graphics seem cheap was that The Mtn. could only seem to find clips from the Boise State vs. Wyoming game when giving analysis on BSU while Utah had a variety of games to choose from. All they had to do was get the recording of the game from ESPN3.com and ask ESPN to let them use highlights of BSU's game.
Graphics Grade:
B-
Analysis:
The analysis was good for the most part, but one thing sticks out in my mind when it comes to the analysis: Andy Wide. At the beginning of the show, one of the analysts was listing offensive weapons for Utah and apparently Andy Wide takes a significant amount of reps for Utah. How do you work for The Mtn. and think that Utah's Eddie Wide is Andy Wide? Other than that, the analysis was fantastic.
Analysis Grade:
B+
Quality of Interview Questions:
The interview questions were very good, but some of them didn't pertain to previewing the bowl game. i.e. "Does any motivation come from the fact that Utah is essentially leaving you guys behind for the Pac-12?" Chris Petersen's answer was a simple "We worry about winning our games this year, not who we won't be playing next year." That kind of stuff just doesn't help in a bowl preview. It was interesting to see what Kyle Whittingham's response as to if Terrence Cain gives the Utes an advantage they otherwise wouldn't have had.
Quality of Interview Questions Grade:
B+
Smoothness of Show:
Today's show seemed to have a lot of akward moments where analysts seem to be just looking at eachother, trying to figure out what to say. That was annoying to say the least, not to mention that all the videos seemed to not flow well in-between the analysts discussion.
Smoothness of Show Grade:
C
Let's take another look at that rubric, this time with the grades:
| Graphics | How well the graphics look. i.e. how good are the video clips, do they have good statistics, do the graphics stand out? | B- |
| Analysis | How much does the analysis make sense? Does it seem like the analysts are saying something you and I have already come up with or is it something that's new? | B+ |
| Quality of Interview Questions | Are they questions that everyone is wondering or are they meaningless? | B+ |
| Smoothness of Show | How smooth is the transition between camera angles, in and out of commercials and graphics? | C |
Final Grade:
B
This show didn't really seem to impress me as a breakdown of each team's strengths and weaknesses more than it was interviewing the coaches and finding out their opinions. I would reccomend this show if you are really apt to find out what Coach Peterson or Coach Whittingham had to say about several questions.
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