http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/050324espn.html ESPN Unveils College Baseball Schedule By Will Kimmey March 24, 2005 ESPN, SEC DON'T AGREE The National Hockey League's loss is college baseball's gain, as ESPN will televise regular-season games for the first time since 1990 in part as replacement programming. ESPN unveiled a 2005 college baseball schedule that includes 29 games beginning April 8, with 16 games on ESPN or ESPN2 and 13 on its newest channel, ESPNU. At least two more games were planned but had not been confirmed. ESPNU also will show games from two NCAA regional sites, and will televise super-regional games that are not seen on ESPN or ESPN2. College Sports Television planned to show 16 games plus one NCAA regional after finding success in showing the Stanford regional in 2004. ESPN put together an impressive schedule, with highlights including 2004 College World Series champion and current No. 1 team Cal State Fullerton against Tony Gwynn's San Diego State club, '04 CWS finalist Texas against Alex Gordon and Nebraska, and Louisiana State against preseason No. 1 Tulane. The advent of ESPNU and the exposure it provides college baseball should feed the sport's growth. It gets an initial boost from the ESPN and ESPN2 games as the network seeks replacement programming for time slots vacated when the NHL canceled its season. "It comes at a time of need for us right out of the blocks," said Burke Magnus, ESPNU's vice president and general manager. Magnus ranks baseball just behind football and basketball on the ESPNU priority list, terming it an "emerging sport" that he thinks can follow a similar path to that of women's basketball. ESPN began showing the women's Final Four in 1996 and subsequently added regular-season and postseason games as time has passed. The 2004 final between Connecticut and Tennessee set a record as ESPN's most-watched basketball game ever--men's or women's, college or professional. It averaged about 3.8 million households and held the record for nearly a month before a Pacers-Pistons NBA playoff game. "Five or six years ago, women's basketball was not a TV property at all," Magnus said. "Now, by the time of the tournament, it's a big deal. The philosophy we took in women's basketball was to put the championship game on the biggest possible stage, and it all flows back from that." ESPN acquired the rights to televise the CWS in its entirety beginning in 2003, the same year it also showed super-regionals for the first time. ESPN's coverage of the CWS championship series drew an average of 1.3 million households in 2004, a 7.4-percent increase from 2003. The in-season coverage should help those numbers increase, and that coverage will expand in 2006, when ESPN plans to begin showing college baseball in mid-March (and possibly earlier). It should have a more diverse selection of games as well, after this year's schedule wasn't settled until after the NHL's cancellation. Many leagues had previous agreements with local or regional cable networks before ESPN entered the marketplace. ESPNU is available on DirecTV and Adelphia cable, and Magnus said he expects deals with more cable companies to happen in the spring. -- If you're not have fun in baseball, you miss the point of everything. --

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