When Steve Pohl joined the Oregon athletics department as its video coordinator in 1996, his main responsibilities were to shoot scouting film and produce highlight films for each team. Since then the job of video specialist on many campuses has undergone a fairly radical transformation, driven in part by fans’ insatiable interest in quality video content. Marketing companies sell millions of dollars of ads around it, recruits eat it up, and some athletics programs have built up small armies to support the obsession.
Mr. Pohl and I went to high school together (I played shortstop and he played second base for our JV baseball team), and I had lost touch with him until I saw last week that he and his Oregon video crew won “Sports Video of the Year” at the College Sports Media Awards for their short film about the 2009 Ducks’ football season. The videos being produced now in athletics departments will blow you away. In fact, Oregon’s winning entry beat out CBS and ESPN, and the university’s sports video department has won national awards multiple times in recent years.
But some people see a downside to the explosion of interest in new media. Yesterday, as the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics released a set of wide-ranging recommendations to rein in spending in college sports, it called on athletics programs to limit the number of noncoaching staff members who don’t directly deal with the academic or health concerns of athletes. Among others, it singled out “video personnel” in that category.
In a 2009 Knight Commission survey, a majority of campus leaders supported creating policies to limit the growth in staffing in college sports. But cutting back video departments would be tough–especially when the fans that drive the revenue and the recruits that make or break the program want more YouTube, not less.
For his part, my old double-play partner, who some Oregon athletes refer to as “Spielberg,” will keep making the films that feed interest in the program. “I know kids are out there looking,” he says, “and it’s getting Oregon football and other sports noticed.”
2 Responses to The Spielberg of College Sports
11272784 - June 18, 2010 at 3:57 pm
This is calling on the tide to stop rising and falling. These discussions need to be internal to the campus, and the Knight Commission should butt out. If the campus admin have agreed that it’s worth doing and can pay for it, that should be the end of the discussion. One school’s wretched excess is another’s minimal investment…and that’s going to be how it is.
eboknows - June 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I’m curious how much this “Sports Video of the Year” highlighted Jeremiah Masoli, the starting quarterback and player most responsible for their “success” last season. That would be the same Jeremiah Masoli who was recently kicked off the team for possession of marijuana and driving with a suspended lisence after previously pleading guilty to breaking and entering. Maybe Mr. Pohl can update his video with this information. Probably not.