Money drives the car in today’s college and professional athletics. Those who pay big money often get what they want.
That includes television contracts. Unfortunately, big money TV contracts have spilled over to the high school level.
For several years, football fans in Iowa could watch the semifinals and finals of the high school football playoffs on Iowa Public Television.
It worked. Fans who couldn’t travel all the way across the state for a 10 a.m. kickoff could still see the games.
That was no longer the case this season for many fans.
The Iowa High School Athletic Association sold the TV rights for the semifinal and championship games to the Iowa High School Sports Network, who then reached an agreement with Comcast Sportsnet Chicago.
Because, you know, everyone in Illinois was just dying to catch those Iowa high school football games.
The main issue with CSN Chicago is Mediacom does not carry that station. If you look at a map of Iowa showing cable companies in the state who carry the network, you’ll see most of the eastern half of the state was good, while most of the western half was not.
Makes sense. The closer you get to Chicago, the more important that station becomes.
But what about teams like Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley and Western Christian, two schools in the Northwest side of the state which reached state title games. Van Meter in Central Iowa also reached the semifinals.
Fans of those schools could not watch any games from the UNI-Dome unless they had satellite television.
The easy fix is to just dump cable and get DirectTV or Dish Network.
It sounds easy. I can certainly get either of those in my current tree-less home in Newton.
When I lived in Des Moines, we were all ready to make the switch to DirectTV but the representative told us he couldn’t set us up because we had too many trees.
So not everyone can get satellite TV. Everyone should get to watch these games.
We are starting to sacrifice tradition for a few bucks. Or in this case, several bucks.
On one of the local sports radio stations in Central Iowa, a representative from IPTV called and said their network did everything it could to keep the games.
They used the fact that everyone in the state could see those games as their biggest selling point.
Unfortunately, the same IPTV representative also said they couldn’t compete with the money CSN Chicago paid to get the games.
So the money wins out. Again. It’s just a shame that it’s beginning to happen at the prep level.
In college football news, the University of Baylor is in more trouble. A report came out this week that Baylor Associate Athletic Director Heath Nielsen was charged with misdemeanor assault.
According to the report, Nielsen allegedly grabbed a reporter by the throat after the reporter tried to take a picture with a Baylor football player.
The reporter got permission from the athlete. However, as a reporter myself, I wouldn’t ever ask a college or professional athlete for a photo if I was at the event as a member of the media. To me, that’s unprofessional.
At the same time, I was surprised to hear that a school official went that far to make sure the picture wasn’t taken.
Putting your hands around a guy’s neck for taking a selfie?
I thought I had seen it all. Then Baylor did something else.
Contact Troy Hyde at
thyde@newtondailynews.com.