You would think with all of the exposure black college sports has found on the ESPN family of television networks, the sports media giant would be sprinting to put the niche market in a complete headlock with regular black college sports content on ESPN.com.
Alas, we’re mostly left with vague weekly updates on scores and players to watch. And that’s no disrespect to Donald Hunt, the Philadelphia Tribune columnist who files the weekly HBCU football report. But it is to say that it’s not enough. Not even close.
ESPN legitimately finds value in fans of the SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10. These conferences have their own bloggers, their own beat writers, and is many cases, headlines capturing the front page of ESPN.com. If they get lucky come March Madness or in the early stages of the football season, some mid-major programs occasionally get some love.
But you would be hard pressed to find regular content on black college programs in Division I or II. It’s almost as if black colleges don’t hire and fire coaches, players don’t get hurt or win awards, or don’t have critical match-ups with implications stretching beyond the borders of school bragging rights.
Unless it is black history month, of course. Then HBCUs can’t keep ESPN off their back porches.
ESPN was smart enough to monopolize television contracts with the four black college conferences for many key football and basketball games, but, as with most media outlets, ESPN likely surmises that black folks aren’t heavy on the web for sports content.
Sadly, there is some truth to that; because the content is not there to be found.
Given the company’s vast resources and penchant for picking up AP stories and local write-ups, ESPN.com could do a much better job of providing information beyond scores and black history lessons.
