By Brent Maycock
The Capital-Journal (Topeka)
Published Friday, June 13, 2008

Championship games televised would be football, basketball
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It's not the all-encompassing plan that many — including Kansas State High School Activities Association executive director Gary Musselman — would love to see.

But it's potentially a start.

Beginning with the 2008-09 sports season, state championships in football and basketball just might reach a broader audience. At Thursday's Executive Board meeting, the KSHSAA reached a three-year partnership agreement with a contingency of television stations, including Topeka's KTKA-49, to provide live coverage of state championship games as well as create a campaign that highlights the educational benefits of programs offered in Kansas schools.

Musselman said the goal was to televise two state championship football games and one boys and one girls basketball championship game this season, though no determination of which site or classification has been made. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen, but that is the goal.

"I sit here right now and worry about, 'Can we do this?'" Musselman said. "I know if it's up to me we can't, but that's why we've got a good partner and we'll work hard to do what we can do and they'll do what they can do, and that's something that we hope to bring to fruition."

Televised state events are nothing new in Kansas. For a number of years, Smoky Hill Television in western Kansas has produced telecasts of the Eight-Man football championships and the Class 3-2-1A state wrestling championships. For the most part, however, those have been tape-delayed broadcasts shown on public TV stations across the state.

But Thursday's agreement could bring live telecasts through the partnership of KTKA, KWCH/KSCW in Wichita, KCTV/KSMO in Kansas City and KOAM/KFJK in Pittsburg. In addition to televising state events, the stations also would broadcast 30-minute specials highlighting non-athletic activities and their participants — aspects of the KSHSAA that often get overlooked because of the attention sports grabs.

The potential for pay-per-view broadcasts of the events also could be an option.

"Over the years, I've felt like 'Boy, we'd love to get some of our games on TV,'" Musselman said. "But there have been stumbling blocks, some of them ours and some from the TV world's."

Some of the main obstacles have been:

• Attendance. Musselman said 80 percent of the KSHSAA's funding comes from revenue generated through ticket sales to the state's different sporting events with state football and basketball being two of the largest revenue producers. There was concern that televising events would cut into game attendance figures and the resulting revenue.

"I Picked the brains of colleagues where they do and they assured me that people that are going to come to the games are going to come," Musselman said. "There are also people who maybe wanted to see their nephew play but went to see their son play, now they could get a second chance if that game were made available later or on a pay-per-view basis."

• Programming. Most nationally affiliated networks have strict programming rules for local stations, making finding time spots to air championship games difficult. But as the digital television age approaches, many stations are adding channels through which they wouldn't have to concern themselves with pre-empting other broadcasts.

"It seems the planets are starting to line up with the digital revolution," Musselman said. "With that channel, they have more control over what they run, when they run it and how much they run. They're looking for programs. This feels like it's supposed to be a match and both parties bring something to the other that together would provide an opportunity to do things that we couldn't do on our own."

• Production costs. For a station to send a crew to cover a state event, the costs can range anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 or more. For a prep event with limited advertising potential, it would seem to be a cost prohibitive decision.

But the new agreement would involve high school students being heavily involved in the production of the games. After what Musselman witnessed at the Class 2-1A state championship football game last fall, he's more than confident that students are capable of getting the job done.

"I got invited by the Smith Center AD, who said "I'd love to show you what our kids are doing in the press box,'" he said. "They had four kids with cameras and one student sitting behind a PC control panel and box about the size of a shoebox that pretty much replaces a production truck. It was like watching Roone Arledge. He was putting together a four-camera broadcast of a game. They're fading in, fading out, they're zooming in and out, slo-moing this, replaying that. And he's putting it all together."

It's that aspect that has Musselman as excited as any other.

"There are already kids out there doing it," he said. "One of the huge pieces in this whole thing about why you put an agreement like this together is the educational component, absolutely. It's a chance not just for the kids to go play in front of the camera, but also for the kid behind the camera and production box to do their thing. That's real-world education and getting them on track to go to work.

"There just seems to be an awful lot of potential positives that can come out of this. With a little bit of patience and a lot of hard work, we'll see if it can't be great for the kids who play in those competitions and those kids who are behind the camera and take pride in that fact. That's true to the mission of what schools are there for."

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