THE GAME IS EVERYWHERE: How Streaming Changed College Sports
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
On a Saturday night in Huntsville, Texas, a Sam Houston football game can be local and national at the same time.
The stadium sits far from the country’s largest television production centers.
The broadcasters, camera operators and production staff may have connections to Huntsville, Houston and the surrounding region.
Yet when the game begins, their work can be distributed through an ESPN platform to eligible subscribers far beyond Huntsville.
That combination was much harder to achieve not that long ago.
Before streaming became a major part of college sports, programs outside the largest conferences often depended on regional television, local radio and school-operated webcasts for much of their exposure.
National television opportunities existed, but television had an unavoidable limitation: There were only so many hours available.
ESPN+ helped change that.
When ESPN+ launched on April 12, 2018, ESPN executives specifically described one of its intended audiences as fans who had limited access to teams they cared about—including alumni whose schools might otherwise receive little television exposure.
The service launched with thousands of college events across numerous conferences.
Eight years later, that idea has reshaped a substantial part of college sports.
Television Had A Scarcity Problem
ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and other traditional networks have only 24 hours in a day.
College athletics does not.
Football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball, softball and other sports frequently overlap across hundreds of campuses.
Traditional television forces networks to choose which events receive a channel.
Streaming created another shelf.
Conference USA’s ESPN agreement makes more than 450 live sporting events available through ESPN+ and ESPN3, including substantial inventories beyond football and men’s basketball.
The West Coast Conference offers an even larger example.
Its agreement with ESPN places more than 900 conference events each year on ESPN+, covering basketball, soccer, volleyball, water polo, baseball and softball.
The model was apparent from ESPN+’s beginning.
The Ivy League agreement announced just before the platform launched called for more than 1,100 conference events annually, with the majority distributed through ESPN+.
None of this means a Tuesday-night volleyball match suddenly attracts the audience of a Saturday SEC football game.
Streaming did not erase college athletics’ hierarchy.
What it changed was availability.
A game does not necessarily need one of a small number of national television windows simply to reach viewers beyond its local market.
The school can remain where it is.
The game can remain where it is.
The distribution can travel.
Huntsville Shows How The Model Evolved
Sam Houston provides a useful case study because its digital-broadcast history predates ESPN+.
Bearkat Sports Network began streaming Sam Houston sporting events annually in 2008 under the guidance of Jason Barfield.
By 2016, he was helping transition Sam Houston’s operation toward live ESPN productions.
The university later built production facilities that include a television and podcast studio and a central control room connected to multiple athletic venues.
By 2024, Bearkat Sports Network said it was responsible for nearly 80 ESPN+ productions annually, along with more than 50 live audio productions, press conferences, podcasts and studio programming.
That is no longer simply a school putting a radio call or basic video stream online.
It is local production infrastructure feeding a nationally distributed sports platform.
Barfield’s career illustrates what that can mean for the worker.
Before joining Sam Houston, he served as sports editor of The Huntsville Item.
He has called Bearkat baseball and soccer, worked football and basketball radio and handled both play-by-play and analyst roles on ESPN productions.
He did not have to leave Huntsville for his work to travel beyond Huntsville.
That may be one of streaming’s least-discussed effects.
The Worker Did Not Always Have To Move Either
For generations, one familiar route through sports media was geographical.
Start in a smaller market.
Develop a résumé.
Move to a larger market.
Then move again.
Maybe, eventually, reach a national platform.
That ladder still exists.
But streaming has expanded another route: sports-media professionals can gain experience on nationally distributed platforms without necessarily having to leave the markets where they built their careers.
Consider Rosie Langello.
Langello joined WSFA in Montgomery in January 2022 and became the station’s first female sports director.
In 2026, she moved into a primary news-anchor role.
She has also worked Troy football sidelines on ESPN+.
When Sam Houston opened its 2026 season at Troy, the ESPN+ crew featured Will Kollmeyer on play-by-play, Ben Stanfield as analyst and Langello reporting from the sideline.
That is an important distinction.
She does not have to choose between a regional television career in Alabama and participating in ESPN-distributed college sports.
She can do both.
Experience Can Travel In The Other Direction, Too
Will Kollmeyer represents another pathway.
Long before the current streaming era, Kollmeyer had already spent 18 years as sports director at WTVA in Tupelo, Mississippi, more than three years as sports director at WCBI and a decade working in public relations, marketing, sports information and broadcasting at Itawamba Community College.
When the SEC Network launched in 2014, Ole Miss selected Kollmeyer as one of its local play-by-play voices for locally produced network broadcasts.
More than a decade later, he remains part of the ESPN college-sports ecosystem, including that 2026 Troy-Sam Houston ESPN+ assignment.
His career shows that streaming does not merely create opportunities for newcomers.
It can also give experienced regional broadcasters another outlet for decades of accumulated knowledge.
A Student Can Now Enter The Same System
Then there is Gavan Baxley.
Baxley grew up attending Troy football games and later studied broadcast journalism at the university.
In October 2025, while still a senior, he went from watching Troy football from the stands to reporting from the sideline on ESPN+.
He graduated in spring 2026 with a degree in broadcast journalism and remained at Troy as an athletics broadcasting graduate assistant.
By September, Troy was identifying him in that role while he produced football previews and other athletics content.
That may be one of the clearest examples of how dramatically the entry point has changed.
A student in Troy, Alabama, can learn how to prepare for a live college broadcast, work with a production crew and gain experience on an ESPN platform before beginning the traditional sequence of professional-market moves.
Streaming did not eliminate the apprenticeship.
It brought the apprenticeship closer to the national distribution system.
Regional Television And ESPN Can Overlap
Randy McIlvoy adds another wrinkle.
McIlvoy is sports director at Houston’s KPRC 2 and continues to perform college play-by-play work for Rice, Houston and Sam Houston through university broadcast platforms.
His career also includes regional television work predating the modern streaming era.
On Sept. 19, 2026, McIlvoy called Sam Houston’s home football game against Nicholls on ESPN+ with John Harris and sideline reporter Kendra Sheehan.
At the same time, Jason Barfield and Brian Adams handled the Bearkat Sports Network radio broadcast, which was also available locally on KSHU 90.5 FM.
One game.
Multiple crews.
Local radio.
A university network.
A Houston television sports director.
National streaming.
That is the modern college-sports media ecosystem in miniature.
It also shows why this story is bigger than simply saying workers in small towns no longer need to leave.
Streaming has blurred the boundaries among local, regional and national work.
Video Courtesy of ESPN College Football YouTube Channel
Richmond Offers Another Version
Eastern Kentucky shows the same transformation from a different angle.
Wes Chandler spent 14 years working within the EKU Sports Network before being promoted in August 2026 to lead play-by-play responsibilities for football and men’s basketball.
Maggie Davis followed another path.
Davis is an anchor, reporter and producer for BBN Tonight at Lexington’s LEX 18.
She joined the EKU Sports Network in 2025-26 and has worked play-by-play, color analysis and sideline assignments across multiple sports.
In September 2026, Davis joined Chandler and Terry Johnson on the ESPN+ broadcast of Eastern Kentucky’s football game against Dayton.
Again, she did not have to abandon regional television to participate in nationally distributed college sports.
The jobs can overlap.
That is becoming the point.
The Old Ladder Is Becoming A Network
Taken together, these careers do not follow one pattern.
Barfield built his career within a university and local media ecosystem.
Langello combines regional television with ESPN+ sideline work.
Kollmeyer brought decades of local and regional broadcasting experience into ESPN-distributed college broadcasts.
Baxley gained ESPN+ experience before graduating and moved into a university broadcasting role.
Davis works in Lexington television while contributing to Eastern Kentucky broadcasts.
McIlvoy remains the sports director of a major-market television station while continuing college play-by-play work.
That diversity may be more important than any single résumé.
The modern sports-media career increasingly looks less like one ladder and more like a network of overlapping roles—broadcasting, local television, university media, digital production, freelance work, podcasts, social media and national streaming.
One person may participate in several of them.
ESPN+ Is Now Part Of An Even Larger Streaming System
The distribution infrastructure has continued to evolve.
ESPN’s current Unlimited offering provides access to its full suite of networks and services, and ESPN says the platform contains more than 47,000 live events annually.
Meanwhile, the ESPN+ library is now included in the ESPN Select offering.
ESPN content has also been integrated into Disney+.
Disney says subscribers with ESPN Select, ESPN Unlimited or qualifying bundles can access ESPN programming within Disney+. ESPN Select includes the ESPN+ library, while subscribers without an ESPN subscription receive only a curated sampling of ESPN content.
Individual events can also be affected by rights and blackout restrictions.
That distinction matters when discussing scale.
In Disney’s last detailed subscriber disclosure, the company reported 131.6 million Disney+ subscribers worldwide as of Sept. 27, 2025.
That does not mean 131.6 million people can watch a particular Sam Houston, Troy or Eastern Kentucky event.
The number describes the scale of the broader Disney+ ecosystem—not the addressable audience for an individual ESPN+ game.
But the evolution still matters.
A college sporting event produced in Huntsville, Troy or Richmond can now exist within a streaming environment connected to one of the world’s largest entertainment companies.
That is a radically different distribution environment from the one smaller college programs inhabited two decades ago.
Local Media Did Not Disappear
There is an easy mistake to make when telling this story.
National streaming did not eliminate local sports media.
If anything, the new environment makes the distinction between game distribution and community coverage clearer.
A national platform can carry the competition.
A local radio station can deliver a hometown call.
A university media operation can produce interviews, podcasts and highlights.
Local newspapers and independent digital publications can cover the coaches, athletes, facilities, attendance, recruiting and institutional decisions surrounding the program.
Social media can redistribute all of it again.
Sam Houston’s Nicholls broadcast illustrated several of those layers operating simultaneously: ESPN+ carried the game, Bearkat Sports Network produced its separate radio call, and KSHU provided an over-the-air local outlet.
Those platforms do not necessarily replace one another.
They perform different jobs.
ESPN can distribute the competition.
Local media can explain why the competition matters.
Small Market No Longer Has To Mean Small Reach
Streaming has not made Conference USA equal to the SEC.
It has not erased the financial differences between conferences.
It has not guaranteed large audiences for every game.
And it has not eliminated the advantages of working in Houston, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles or another major media center.
But those are not the only ways to measure what changed.
ESPN+ helped weaken one of the basic limitations facing college sports outside the biggest conferences: Television could not carry everything.
Once that limitation weakened, another boundary weakened with it.
A broadcaster could build ESPN production experience in Huntsville.
A Montgomery television journalist could work the sideline in Troy.
A Lexington broadcaster could add Eastern Kentucky games to her portfolio.
A veteran Houston sports director could call a Sam Houston game on ESPN+ while another crew delivered the hometown radio broadcast.
And a college student could stand on an ESPN+ sideline before his professional career had even fully begun.
The games never stopped being local.
The communities never stopped mattering.
But the ceiling on how far the games—and the work behind them—could travel became much higher.
The game did not have to move.
The worker did not necessarily have to move.
The distribution did.
And that may be one of the most consequential changes ESPN+ brought to college sports beyond the power conferences.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Why This Case Matters: Journalism, AI and the Work Behind the Story
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
Artificial intelligence can make journalism faster.
That is precisely why journalists need to be careful with it.
AI can help organize research, compare documents, identify questions, summarize complicated material and assist with drafting.
Tasks that once consumed hours can sometimes be completed much more efficiently.
But speed is not the same thing as accuracy.
An AI system can produce an answer that sounds authoritative while overlooking context, confusing chronology, relying on weak sources or presenting an interpretation as fact.
The technology can assist with journalism, but it cannot assume responsibility for what a journalist ultimately publishes.
That distinction became increasingly clear to Vallano Media while researching its two-part series examining the FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal and its aftermath.
What began as a sports story also became a real-world test of how artificial intelligence could fit inside an existing journalistic process without replacing the principles that made that process reliable.
The central question was simple:
What does responsible AI-assisted journalism look like when the journalist remains responsible for the work?
The Story Came First
The project did not begin as an experiment with artificial intelligence.
It began with a story.
The FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal raised questions that could not be answered simply by reading one article or accepting one organization’s explanation.
The reporting required multiple sources, comparisons between claims and documents, attention to chronology and a clear distinction between what could be verified and what remained uncertain.
AI became useful because it could assist with parts of that process.
It could help organize information.
It could surface potential inconsistencies for further investigation.
It could compare material from different sources.
It could generate additional questions.
And it could help structure complicated research before that research became an article.
But throughout the project there was one important boundary:
AI could help investigate the story.
It could not decide what was true.
That still required verification.
Using AI Is Not the Same as Depending on AI
There is an important difference between using artificial intelligence in journalism and handing journalism over to artificial intelligence.
A simplified AI-first approach might look like this:
Choose a topic → ask AI to research it → ask AI to write the article → publish.
That process may be fast.
It is also risky.
A more responsible workflow looks very different:
Question → research → source evaluation → verification → AI-assisted analysis → additional research → drafting → fact-checking → editorial judgment → publication.
Video Courtesy of NBA YouTube Channel
In that model, AI operates inside the journalistic process rather than replacing it.
The purpose of this project is not to argue that journalists should avoid artificial intelligence.
Nor is it to suggest that AI can independently perform journalism simply because it can produce convincing prose.
The more useful question is how journalists can use the technology while preserving the sourcing, verification, skepticism and accountability that journalism already requires.
That is what the FIFA reporting project allowed Vallano Media to examine in practice.
Journalism Already Had a Workflow
Artificial intelligence did not invent the journalistic process.
Long before generative AI became widely available, reporters already had a basic system for determining whether something was ready to publish.
A reporter receives information.
The reporter asks where it came from.
A source is identified.
Additional sources are consulted.
Claims are compared with documents, statistics, direct statements or other evidence.
Contradictions are investigated.
Context is added.
The reporter determines what can be stated as fact, what needs attribution and what cannot yet be supported.
Then the story is edited and reviewed before publication.
The tools have changed repeatedly over journalism’s history.
Reporters moved from notebooks and typewriters to computers, databases, search engines, digital archives, social media and now artificial intelligence.
But the fundamental responsibility did not change with each technological shift.
The journalist still had to determine whether the information was reliable enough to publish.
AI should be treated the same way.
It is another tool inside the workflow.
It can make portions of that workflow dramatically faster, but it does not eliminate the workflow itself.
In fact, because an AI system can generate polished explanations so quickly, the temptation to skip traditional verification may become greater.
A confident answer can look like a researched answer.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
The Professional Has to Know the Field
This leads to another important lesson from the FIFA project.
AI becomes more useful when the person using it already understands the fundamentals of the work.
A journalist familiar with sourcing can recognize when an answer depends too heavily on secondary reporting.
A journalist who understands attribution can identify when an AI response has turned somebody’s claim into an apparent fact.
A journalist familiar with chronology can notice when separate events have been incorrectly combined.
And a journalist who understands the subject can recognize when an explanation simply does not make sense.
This is why AI literacy alone is not enough.
Someone can become highly skilled at prompting an AI system and still produce unreliable journalism if they do not understand reporting.
The technology does not remove the need for professional knowledge.
It increases the value of that knowledge because the professional must evaluate what the technology produces.
In that sense, one of the most important AI skills may not be knowing what to ask.
It may be knowing when the answer is wrong.
AI Can Play More Than One Role
Another lesson from the reporting process was that AI did not perform one fixed job.
Its role changed depending on what the story required.
At one stage, it could function like a research assistant, helping organize information that had already been gathered.
At another, it could act like a brainstorming partner by suggesting questions that had not yet been considered.
Later, it could help compare claims from different sources.
And during review, AI could be deliberately prompted to challenge the assumptions behind the reporting.
That shift is important.
AI does not always have to help a journalist strengthen an argument.
Sometimes one of its most useful roles is helping expose weaknesses in that argument.
Rather than treating the first AI response as an answer, the response can become the beginning of another round of questioning.
What evidence supports this?
What is missing?
What assumptions are being made?
What would contradict this conclusion?
Is this statement supported by a primary source?
Those questions deliberately slow down a technology whose greatest appeal is speed.
The objective is not to use AI as quickly as possible.
The objective is to use it without allowing speed to outrun verification.
Accountability Never Moved
There was one responsibility that could not be delegated anywhere in the process.
Publication.
AI could recommend wording.
It could summarize research.
It could challenge assumptions.
It could help identify information that deserved further examination.
But when Vallano Media published the FIFA articles, responsibility for those articles belonged to Vallano Media.
If a claim had been wrong, saying that an AI system generated it would not have been an adequate explanation.
That may be the simplest principle in this entire project:
AI can participate in the process.
Accountability stays with the publisher.
Why This Matters Beyond One FIFA Story
The FIFA case is useful because it turns an abstract debate about artificial intelligence into something practical.
Much of the conversation around AI and journalism tends to swing between two extremes.
One side treats AI primarily as a threat to journalism.
The other presents it as a replacement for large parts of the reporting and writing process.
The experience of using AI inside an actual reporting project was more complicated than either position suggests.
AI was useful.
It made research easier to organize.
It helped surface questions.
It helped test assumptions.
It reduced the time required for some tasks.
But none of those benefits removed the need for reporting judgment.
The technology worked best when combined with an existing professional process.
That lesson extends beyond journalism.
Public relations professionals still have to understand audiences, messaging and reputation.
Researchers still have to understand methodology.
Business owners still have to understand their markets.
Analysts still have to understand the information they are interpreting.
AI can increase a professional’s capacity, but it does not automatically create expertise.
Someone who understands the work is in a much better position to use AI effectively because that person knows what should happen before, during and after AI becomes involved.
The Goal Is Not Automation for Its Own Sake
It is tempting to measure AI adoption by how much work can be automated.
That may be the wrong measurement for journalism.
A better question is whether AI improves the quality, speed or depth of the reporting without weakening verification.
If the technology helps organize dozens of sources more efficiently, that can be useful.
If it surfaces a contradiction that deserves further investigation, that can be useful.
If it helps produce a clearer outline, that can be useful.
But if it encourages a reporter to stop checking sources because an answer sounds convincing, the technology has made the workflow worse rather than better.
Efficiency only matters if the finished work remains trustworthy.
That principle became one of the most important lessons of the FIFA project.
The objective was not to remove the journalist from the process.
It was to determine where AI could make the journalist more effective.
A Working System, Not a Perfect One
The workflow examined in this series should not be treated as a universal formula.
Different journalists, publications and subject areas will require different safeguards.
Breaking news will operate differently from long-form analysis.
Investigative reporting will require different levels of documentation from a game recap.
A local newsroom may use AI differently from an independent digital publication.
And the technology itself will continue to change.
What matters is the underlying principle.
AI should be incorporated into a system where its output can be questioned, checked and rejected.
The journalist needs the ability to say:
That answer is useful.
That answer needs verification.
That answer is incomplete.
Or simply:
That answer is wrong.
The process documented here developed through actual reporting rather than theory.
It evolved as problems appeared.
Weak answers led to stronger verification steps.
Overconfident conclusions led to more adversarial questioning.
Gaps in research led to additional sourcing.
In other words, the workflow improved because the technology was not assumed to be reliable by default.
It had to earn its place in the process.
What Comes Next
The next stage is where the discussion becomes more practical.
Before AI could help interpret the FIFA story, the reporting needed a research foundation strong enough to support that analysis.
That meant identifying credible sources, separating primary evidence from secondary reporting, establishing chronology and recognizing where the evidence remained incomplete.
Only then could AI become useful without becoming the source itself.
Chapter 2 will examine how that research foundation was built — and why source quality had to come before AI analysis next Tuesday.
North Dakota State Didn’t Move Up to Start Over
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
For more than a decade, North Dakota State stood between some of the best programs in the Football Championship Subdivision and a national championship.
Sam Houston knew that better than most.
Twice, following the 2011 and 2012 seasons, the Bearkats reached the FCS national championship game.
Twice, North Dakota State was waiting for them.
The Bison won both.
Those championships became part of one of the most dominant stretches in modern college football.
North Dakota State won 10 FCS national championships between the 2011 and 2024 seasons: five straight from 2011 through 2015, three straight from 2017 through 2019, and additional championships in 2021 and 2024.
Now the Bison are testing whether that success can travel with them.
North Dakota State accepted an invitation to join the Mountain West as a football affiliate and began competing at the FBS level this fall.
Four games into its first FBS season, North Dakota State is 4-0.
The Bison defeated Jacksonville State 33-7, shut out Fordham 38-0, won their first Mountain West game at Air Force 38-32 and defeated Sacramento State 31-10 on the road.
They entered their open week having outscored opponents 140-49, with two wins at home and two away from Fargo.
Four games cannot tell us whether North Dakota State will reproduce its FCS dominance at the FBS level.
But four games are enough to begin asking a different question.
What if the most important part of an FCS-to-FBS transition happens before the transition ever begins?
Moving Up Does Not Mean Starting Over
College football routinely describes the transition from the FCS to the FBS as “moving up.”
Administratively, that description makes sense.
The FBS brings different scholarship demands, conference schedules, financial expectations, media exposure and roster challenges.
North Dakota State’s first FBS schedule includes eight Mountain West games, three additional FBS opponents and one FCS opponent.
But “moving up” can also create the impression that every transitioning program begins at roughly the same point.
Recent history suggests otherwise.
James Madison entered the FBS in 2022 and finished 8-3 overall and 6-2 in the Sun Belt, tying for first in the conference’s East Division during its first season.
Jacksonville State moved to the FBS in 2023 and finished 9-4.
The Gamecocks defeated Louisiana 34-31 in overtime in the New Orleans Bowl, becoming the first program to win a bowl game during its inaugural FBS season.
Sam Houston’s transition followed a dramatically different path.
The Bearkats went 5-4 during their 2022 transition season before beginning their first full FBS schedule with eight consecutive losses in 2023.
They finished that season 3-9.
One year later, Sam Houston went 10-3 and defeated Georgia Southern 31-26 in the New Orleans Bowl.
These are similar classification changes.
They are not identical circumstances.
The programs entered the FBS with different rosters, resources, conferences, institutional situations and competitive timelines.
Even the NCAA rules have changed.
James Madison, Jacksonville State and Sam Houston dealt with postseason restrictions connected to the reclassification process.
Jacksonville State reached a bowl in 2023 only through an exception created by an insufficient number of normally bowl-eligible teams.
James Madison finished atop the Sun Belt East in 2022 but could not represent the division in the conference championship because of transition rules.
Beginning with the 2026 season, the NCAA changed that policy.
Reclassifying programs that satisfy the applicable FBS and reclassification requirements can participate in postseason bowls and the College Football Playoff.
North Dakota State therefore enters its transition with postseason opportunities that earlier programs did not have under the same circumstances.
That difference reinforces the larger point.
There is no single FCS-to-FBS transition model.
North Dakota State Had Already Built the Program
North Dakota State did not spend the past decade trying to become an elite FCS program.
For much of that period, it helped define what one looked like.
The Bison’s 10 national championships came under multiple head coaches and across generations of players.
Craig Bohl coached the first three.
Chris Klieman won four.
Matt Entz won two.
Tim Polasek led North Dakota State to the 2024 championship.
Coaches left.
Players graduated.
Transfer rules and roster movement changed across college football.
North Dakota State continued returning to championship contention.
That does not prove one simple explanation for the program’s success.
It does demonstrate unusual continuity.
North Dakota State entered the FBS with something many transitioning programs would like to possess before playing their first game: a football operation accustomed to sustained expectations, coaching turnover and postseason pressure.
The Bison did not have to create that identity in 2026.
The question was whether it could translate.
Sam Houston Shows Why Translation Is Not Automatic
Sam Houston provides a useful counterweight to any temptation to treat North Dakota State’s early success as inevitable.
The Bearkats were hardly an unsuccessful FCS program when their transition began.
Sam Houston won the 2020 FCS national championship with a 10-0 record and followed that championship season by going 11-1 in 2021.
Then came the transition.
Sam Houston went 5-4 in 2022 and was ineligible for the FCS postseason.
In 2023, its first full FBS season as a Conference USA member, the Bearkats started 0-8 before winning three of their final four games.
Then they won 10 games the following season.
That progression matters.
An accomplished FCS history does not guarantee immediate FBS success.
At the same time, a difficult first FBS season does not necessarily mean the transition has failed.
Roster timing matters.
Recruiting matters.
Depth matters.
Finances matter.
Conference competition matters.
So does the condition of the program at the moment the transition begins.
That is what makes North Dakota State’s first month worth examining.
Not because 4-0 proves the Bison have already mastered FBS football.
It does not.
It matters because North Dakota State has so far shown that significant pieces of what made the program successful in the FCS have survived the change in classification.
The Infrastructure Had to Move Too
The transition cannot be measured only on Saturdays.
North Dakota State also had to prepare financially and institutionally for a different operating environment.
The university launched a $50 million “Climb the Mountain” campaign built around four areas: scholarships, football operations, NIL opportunities and facilities.
During a July fundraising initiative, NDSU reported receiving $280,918 in cash gifts and $10.1 million in matching gift pledges.
At that point, the campaign had raised more than $28 million toward its goal.
North Dakota State has also said additional fundraising is intended to support 22 additional football scholarships.
Then there is exposure.
Ten of North Dakota State’s 12 games were scheduled for national television in its first FBS season: five on The CW, three on CBS Sports Network, one on FS1 and its game at Sacramento State on ESPN.
The other two were scheduled for the Mountain West’s streaming platform.
That represents another part of the transition that does not appear in a win-loss record.
Moving to the FBS means more than playing different opponents.
It means operating in a different financial, recruiting and media environment.
North Dakota State spent years proving it could win championships.
Now it has to demonstrate that the entire operation can scale.
Video Courtesy of NDSU Athletics YouTube Channel
Four Games Are Evidence, Not a Verdict
This is where perspective matters.
North Dakota State is 4-0.
That is significant.
It is not definitive.
Fordham remains an FCS program.
Sacramento State is navigating its own move into the FBS.
Jacksonville State has established itself at the FBS level, but one result against the Gamecocks cannot tell us how North Dakota State will perform over an entire season.
And although the victory at Air Force gave the Bison their first Mountain West win, it remains only one conference game.
North Dakota State has not yet experienced the cumulative effect of an eight-game FBS conference schedule.
That changes after the open week.
Wyoming comes to Fargo on Oct. 3. North Dakota State then travels to UNLV, hosts Nevada and visits New Mexico during three consecutive weekends.
That stretch should provide considerably more evidence.
Injuries accumulate.
Opponents gain film.
Depth becomes more important.
Adjustments require adjustments of their own.
A strong September can disappear quickly in college football.
So 4-0 should not become shorthand for “North Dakota State has conquered the FBS.”
What it gives us is an early indication that the Bison can compete there.
Whether they can sustain it remains an open question.
The Labels Can Hide More Than They Explain
North Dakota State’s start also says something about the way college football talks about subdivisions.
FBS and FCS are real classifications with meaningful structural differences.
They are not interchangeable.
But the labels can become shortcuts for evaluating the quality of individual programs.
An FBS label does not automatically guarantee organizational stability, strong player development, effective coaching or sustained winning.
An FCS label does not automatically mean those things are absent.
James Madison arrived from the FCS and immediately won eight games.
Jacksonville State won nine.
Sam Houston struggled through its first full FBS season and then won 10 games the following year.
North Dakota State has started 4-0.
These examples do not prove a universal formula, nor do they eliminate the structural differences between the subdivisions.
They illustrate something narrower.
The distance between a highly developed FCS operation and portions of the FBS landscape can be smaller than the classification labels alone suggest.
That may be especially true when a program has already spent years developing coaching systems, recruiting pipelines, donor support, fan expectations and organizational continuity.
North Dakota State did not become a serious football program when it joined the Mountain West.
It joined the Mountain West after already building one.
Now Comes the Harder Part
The open week provides a natural dividing line.
North Dakota State’s first month as an FBS program is complete.
The Bison are unbeaten.
Their first FBS victory is behind them.
Their first Mountain West victory is behind them.
Their first FBS road tests are behind them.
Most of the season is not.
That is why the story should not end with a declaration about what North Dakota State has become.
We already knew what North Dakota State had built.
Sam Houston knew.
James Madison knew.
South Dakota State knew.
Anyone who spent the past decade trying to get through the FCS playoffs knew.
The more interesting question is whether what North Dakota State built there can withstand an entire FBS season.
Four games have provided the first evidence.
The Bison changed subdivisions.
They did not leave their program behind.
Now we find out how far it travels.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
The Rise of Cheddar TV: Building Business News for the Streaming Generation
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
When ESPN launched in 1979, the idea of dedicating an entire television network to sports was still a gamble.
The network ultimately demonstrated something important about specialized media: a passionate audience could support a destination built around its interests.
Nearly four decades later, entrepreneur Jon Steinberg made a different kind of media bet.
In 2016, Steinberg launched Cheddar, a digital-first business news network designed around the viewing habits of younger audiences.
Rather than trying to beat established financial networks such as CNBC and Bloomberg at the traditional cable television game, Cheddar built its strategy around an emerging reality: people were increasingly consuming video through streaming platforms, smartphones, computers, and social media.
Cheddar did not invent streaming, of course.
But it recognized early that changing distribution could create an opening in an established media industry.
That makes its rise more than a story about financial journalism.
It is a business case study about finding an underserved audience, building around changing consumer behavior, and understanding that distribution can sometimes be as important as the content itself.
It also has an interesting parallel in sports media.
Finding an Opportunity in an Established Market
Before founding Cheddar, Steinberg had already accumulated significant experience in digital media, including serving as president and chief operating officer of BuzzFeed and later leading Daily Mail North America.
That experience gave him a front-row view of changing audience habits.
With Cheddar, he bet that younger viewers could be reached with business news designed around digital distribution rather than the traditional cable model.
The network still covered financial markets, but its editorial universe stretched beyond stock prices and quarterly earnings.
Technology, startups, venture capital, entrepreneurship, media, consumer products, and innovation became important parts of the programming.
That distinction mattered.
Someone didn’t necessarily need to be an active stock trader to care about the next technology company, an emerging consumer brand, or an entrepreneur building a startup.
Cheddar was essentially broadening the definition of who might be interested in business television.
Built for Streaming From the Beginning
One of Cheddar’s most important advantages was that digital distribution wasn’t something added years after the network launched.
It was fundamental to the original concept.
Cheddar distributed programming through streaming services, connected television platforms, social media, and other digital outlets.
By the time Altice USA announced its acquisition of Cheddar in 2019, the company’s reach had become substantial.
Altice said Cheddar was available in approximately 40 million pay-TV homes, distributed through virtual television services including YouTube TV and Sling TV, and available through free streaming platforms including Pluto TV and the Roku Channel.
Altice also reported that Cheddar’s content generated more than 400 million monthly video views across social platforms at the time.
Those figures came from the acquiring company rather than an independent audience audit, but they illustrate how aggressively Cheddar had expanded beyond a conventional television channel.
The strategy was simple: don’t make the audience come looking for you.
Go where the audience already is.
Credibility in a New Format
Being digital-first did not mean abandoning the symbols associated with traditional financial journalism.
Cheddar established a major broadcasting presence on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
It also expanded its New York production footprint to locations including Nasdaq MarketSite and the Flatiron Building.
That was smart branding.
The NYSE gave a young streaming network an immediate visual connection to Wall Street, while Cheddar’s presentation, graphics, subject matter, and distribution strategy signaled that it wasn’t trying to recreate traditional financial television.
It wanted credibility without looking old.
That balance helped establish a recognizable identity in an industry already occupied by much larger competitors.
Where Sports Media Enters the Story
This is where Cheddar becomes especially interesting from a sports media perspective.
Cheddar did not create the streaming transformation in sports, nor did sports organizations simply copy its strategy.
The connection is more useful than that: both illustrate how media businesses responded to audiences gaining more control over where, when, and how they consumed content.
Sports organizations have faced many of the same questions.
What happens when fans no longer depend on one television package?
What happens when highlights are consumed on phones?
What happens when fans want interviews, documentaries, analysis, behind-the-scenes material, and live events across multiple platforms?
The answer increasingly has been for leagues, conferences, teams, and broadcasters to think beyond the traditional television channel.
Cheddar was confronting essentially the same distribution problem in business journalism.
It recognized that producing the content was only part of the job.
Making that content accessible was another part entirely.
Video Courtesy of Chat Sports YouTube Channel
Distribution as a Business Strategy
That distinction is easy to overlook.
A company can produce excellent journalism, a university can produce an excellent sporting event, and an independent creator can produce an excellent video.
None of that guarantees an audience will find it.
Distribution determines how easily that product travels.
Cheddar treated distribution as part of the product itself.
That approach helped the network appear in numerous places rather than depending on viewers developing one particular viewing habit.
For sports organizations, the comparison is particularly relevant because media distribution has become inseparable from the sports business.
Streaming services, conference networks, direct-to-consumer products, social media clips, team-produced documentaries, and athlete-created content all compete for a fan’s limited attention.
The platforms may be different, but the underlying business question remains remarkably similar:
Where is the audience, and how do we make it easier for them to reach us?
The $200 Million Milestone
Cheddar’s growth eventually attracted a much larger media company.
In June 2019, Altice USA completed its acquisition of Cheddar for $200 million, subject to customary closing adjustments.
For a company founded only three years earlier, the transaction represented a remarkable milestone.
It also provided evidence that digital-first distribution and a differentiated audience could create substantial business value even in a market dominated by established television networks.
But the acquisition was not the end of Cheddar’s story.
In April 2021, around the network’s fifth anniversary, the brand became Cheddar News.
By then, its coverage extended across business, technology, media, culture, politics, and other areas.
The evolution showed that Cheddar itself was continuing to change.
And that leads to perhaps the most important lesson in the entire story.
Being Early Doesn’t Mean You Can Stop Adapting
The media environment Cheddar entered in 2016 became dramatically more competitive.
Streaming services multiplied.
Podcasts became major sources of business information.
YouTube creators built their own media brands.
Newsletters gave individual writers direct access to audiences.
Social platforms turned entrepreneurs, executives, athletes, and analysts into publishers themselves.
Traditional media companies also became much more aggressive about streaming and digital distribution.
In other words, some of the characteristics that made Cheddar unusual in 2016 became increasingly normal.
That’s one of the paradoxes of innovation.
A company can correctly identify the future and still have to compete once everyone else arrives there.
Cheddar’s ownership changed again in December 2023 when Altice USA sold Cheddar News to Archetype.
Financial terms of that transaction were not disclosed.
The sale shouldn’t erase what Cheddar accomplished, nor should its earlier $200 million acquisition be treated as proof that the original model was permanently solved.
Together, those events tell a more useful business story.
Innovation creates an advantage.
It does not guarantee that the advantage lasts forever.
What Content Creators Can Learn From Cheddar
There are several lessons here for independent publishers, entrepreneurs, and digital creators.
The first is to look for audiences established competitors may be underserving.
Cheddar did not need every CNBC or Bloomberg viewer to switch networks.
It needed to establish a meaningful audience of its own.
Second, distribution deserves nearly as much thought as production.
Publishing an article isn’t a distribution strategy.
Neither is uploading a video and hoping people discover it.
Search, social media, newsletters, streaming platforms, partnerships, and direct audience relationships can all extend the life of the original content.
Third, differentiation matters.
Cheddar didn’t establish itself by simply becoming a smaller CNBC.
Its younger presentation, technology coverage, startup focus, and streaming-first distribution gave viewers a reason to understand the brand differently.
Finally, adaptation never ends.
The strategy that differentiates a company today may become standard industry practice tomorrow.
The Sports Business Lesson
That last lesson may be especially important in sports.
A league might sign an innovative streaming agreement.
A conference might build a successful digital network.
A university might develop an impressive in-house production operation.
But technology continues moving.
Audience habits continue changing.
The next distribution model eventually arrives.
That means the goal cannot simply be to “go digital” or “start streaming.”
Those are tools, not permanent strategies.
The deeper objective is understanding how the audience behaves and being willing to change as those behaviors change.
That was the opportunity Cheddar recognized in 2016.
Cheddar’s Story Is Still Being Written
Cheddar did not disappear after the 2023 ownership change.
The brand has continued operating and expanding its streaming distribution, remaining focused on areas including business, technology, finance, and innovation.
That makes Cheddar more interesting than a simple rise-and-fall story.
It began as a startup challenging assumptions about financial television.
Within three years, it was acquired for $200 million.
It subsequently expanded its editorial identity, changed ownership again, and continued operating in a media industry that looks considerably different from the one it entered.
Its trajectory illustrates both sides of disruption.
Recognizing change early can create enormous opportunity.
But eventually, everyone else recognizes the change too.
Final Thoughts
Cheddar’s rise was never simply about creating another financial news channel.
It was about recognizing that the relationship between audiences and media was changing.
The company understood that younger viewers could be interested in business, technology, entrepreneurship, and finance without consuming those subjects in the same way previous generations had.
And in that sense, its story connects naturally with sports.
Sports fans didn’t suddenly stop caring about sports when their viewing habits changed.
Business audiences didn’t suddenly stop caring about business when they moved away from traditional television.
The audience didn’t disappear.
The audience moved.
Cheddar’s bet was to move with it.
That remains a valuable lesson for media companies, sports organizations, entrepreneurs, and independent publishers today.
Getting ahead of the next change matters.
Understanding that you’ll eventually have to change again may matter even more.
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
How 162 Baseball Games Made Regional Networks Essential to Fan Loyalty
By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author
Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.
For six months, millions of fans experience baseball primarily through the teams they follow.
Then October arrives.
The postseason becomes a much more national experience.
The biggest games move onto national television and streaming platforms.
Storylines that have developed locally throughout the season suddenly become part of a national conversation.
That contrast helps explain something important about baseball’s media business.
National coverage gives Major League Baseball (MLB) enormous reach.
But the sport’s unusually long regular season created an environment in which regional coverage could become particularly important for frequency, familiarity and fan engagement.
Baseball does not just provide games.
It provides a relationship that can be renewed almost every day.
162 Opportunities to Matter
An NFL team currently plays 17 regular-season games.
A Major League Baseball team plays 162.
That difference changes the media equation.
Baseball teams play throughout the week, sometimes for nearly two straight weeks without a day off.
Fans can spend an entire summer following the same broadcasters, players, coaches and storylines.
One Tuesday night in June may not attract a massive national audience.
To a fan following that team every day, however, it is another chapter in a season-long story.
Was the starting pitcher able to recover from his previous outing?
Is a rookie beginning to establish himself?
Can the team survive an injury to a key player?
Will a struggling hitter finally break out of his slump?
Those stories accumulate.
And regional media was uniquely positioned to tell them.
That is why baseball became such a natural product for the regional sports network model.
National Reach and Regional Depth Are Different Products
This distinction matters.
The argument is not that national television is somehow unimportant to Major League Baseball.
National distribution gives MLB something regional coverage cannot: the ability to place its biggest games, stars and events in front of audiences far beyond an individual team’s market.
But regional coverage historically performed another job.
It could spend hours talking about one team.
Pregame shows could examine the night’s matchup.
Postgame coverage could break down what happened.
Original programming could explore franchise history, prospects, personalities and community stories.
National coverage is built for reach.
Regional coverage is built for frequency and depth.
Baseball needs both.
The difference is that a 162-game schedule gives regional coverage an extraordinary amount of material with which to build that relationship.
When the Broadcaster Becomes Part of the Team Experience
There is another element that is difficult to measure simply by looking at television rights agreements.
Familiarity matters.
When fans hear the same broadcasters night after night, those voices can become associated with the team itself.
The broadcast is no longer simply a mechanism for delivering a sporting event.
It becomes part of the experience of following the franchise.
That helps explain why regional sports networks became so valuable to baseball organizations.
They were not simply purchasing inventory consisting of 162 baseball games.
They were gaining access to months of recurring attention from a defined audience.
For a business, that is an enormously powerful proposition.
Instead of asking, “How many people can we reach tonight?” the model also allowed teams and networks to ask another question:
How often can we matter to the people who already care?
That question would eventually help turn some baseball franchises into sophisticated media businesses of their own.
When Baseball Teams Became Media Brands
Perhaps no example illustrates the potential of regional baseball media better than the New York Yankees.
The YES Network launched on March 19, 2002.
Today, YES says it owns the exclusive regional media rights to the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets.
Its ownership includes Yankee Global Enterprises alongside Main Street Sports, Amazon, RedBird Capital, Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities business and Mubadala Capital.
That ownership structure is important.
YES should not simply be described as a television network wholly owned by the Yankees.
The more interesting business story is that the Yankees helped demonstrate how a franchise could hold a significant stake in the media operation built around its own content.
And the content extends well beyond nine innings.
YES carries Yankees pregame and postgame programming, spring training games and original Yankees-focused shows in addition to game broadcasts.
The baseball team supplies the central product.
The media operation expands the world around it.
Boston Shows How the Model Can Evolve
The New England Sports Network (NESN) provides another useful example.
NESN is owned by Fenway Sports Group, owner of the Boston Red Sox, and Delaware North, owner of the Boston Bruins.
But what makes NESN especially relevant now is how far it has moved beyond the traditional definition of a regional cable channel.
NESN and NESN+ still serve the six-state New England region, but fans can also access the network through NESN 360 via direct subscription or television authentication.
NESN also operates a national service and a free ad-supported streaming channel.
That evolution matters.
The regional relationship survived even as the method of distribution changed.
A fan does not necessarily need the same cable package that would have been required two decades ago to have a regional sports relationship with the Red Sox.
The technology evolved.
The demand for team-specific coverage remained.
The Cubs Provide an Even Newer Example
The Marquee Sports Network offers a more recent version of the same strategy.
Marquee is a joint venture between the Chicago Cubs and Sinclair and serves as the exclusive home of Cubs broadcasts.
It now distributes Cubs coverage through its linear television network as well as direct-to-consumer and streaming options.
Again, the interesting story is not simply that the Cubs have their own regional network.
It is that the definition of a regional network is changing.
A regional sports network once meant a channel buried somewhere inside a cable package.
Increasingly, it can mean an ecosystem.
Linear television.
Streaming.
Mobile access.
Original programming.
Social content.
On-demand viewing.
Different technologies can serve the same underlying purpose: keeping a fan connected to a particular team.
The Business Lesson Was Bigger Than Baseball
This is where MLB’s regional media history becomes useful outside sports.
Businesses frequently become obsessed with total reach.
How many impressions?
How many followers?
How many views?
Those numbers matter, but they do not tell the entire story.
Regional baseball networks built their businesses around a different type of value: repeated interaction with a highly interested audience.
They were not trying to convince everyone in America to watch the Cubs, Yankees or Red Sox every night.
They were serving the people who already cared about those teams and giving them reasons to return.
That is an important distinction.
A niche audience is not necessarily a small opportunity.
If the audience cares deeply enough and returns frequently enough, specialization itself can become an advantage.
But the regional sports network business eventually ran into a major problem.
The audience relationship remained valuable.
The economic structure supporting it began to crack.
The Cable Model Cracked. The Regional Relationship Didn’t.
The story of regional sports networks could easily be mistaken for a story about decline.
Cord-cutting weakened the traditional television bundle.
Distribution disputes became increasingly visible.
Some fans struggled to find or afford their local team’s games.
Then came one of the biggest disruptions in regional sports television.
Diamond Sports Group, the company that operated the Bally Sports regional networks, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2023.
But stopping the story there would now be misleading.
In November 2024, a bankruptcy court approved Diamond’s restructuring plan.
The company subsequently moved forward under the FanDuel Sports Network branding.
Reuters reported that the restructuring reduced Diamond’s debt from nearly $9 billion to approximately $200 million while the company reached revised arrangements involving several MLB teams.
That distinction is critical.
The financial crisis demonstrated serious weaknesses in the traditional RSN business model.
It did not demonstrate that fans suddenly stopped wanting local baseball coverage.
The problem was increasingly about how that coverage was packaged, distributed and financed.
Video Courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence YouTube Channel
MLB’s National Strategy Is Changing Too
At the same time, Major League Baseball’s national media strategy is also evolving.
Beginning with the 2026 season, MLB entered new three-year national media agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering the 2026 through 2028 seasons.
Under those agreements, ESPN acquired MLB.TV and a midweek game package.
NBCUniversal obtained Sunday packages and the Wild Card round, while Netflix added the Home Run Derby and selected special events.
The change is visible immediately this postseason.
The 2026 regular season ends Sunday, September 27.
Two days later, on September 29, all four Wild Card Series begin with national coverage through NBC, Peacock and NBC Sports Network.
That transition almost perfectly illustrates baseball’s two media worlds.
For 162 games, fans largely experience their teams through an accumulation of local and regional stories.
Then the postseason arrives and those stories are presented to a much broader national audience.
One model does not eliminate the need for the other.
They complement each other.
Streaming Doesn’t Eliminate Regionalism
There is a temptation to describe streaming as the replacement for regional sports networks.
That misses the larger point.
Streaming is primarily a distribution technology.
Regionalism describes the audience relationship.
The two can coexist.
NESN can remain focused on New England while offering NESN 360.
Marquee can remain focused on Cubs fans while offering direct streaming access.
YES can remain centered around Yankees coverage while its content moves across digital platforms.
In fact, YES announced in August 2026 that DAZN would become the exclusive direct-to-consumer streaming home for YES and MSG Networks beginning later that year.
That is not the disappearance of regional sports media.
It is regional sports media adapting to another distribution system.
What Baseball Can Teach Businesses About Audience Strategy
For businesses, there is a larger lesson hiding inside all of this.
Technology changes quickly.
Audience needs often change much more slowly.
A company can make the mistake of confusing the platform with the relationship.
Cable television was enormously important to regional sports networks, but cable itself was never the fundamental reason baseball fans wanted local coverage.
They wanted to follow their team.
They wanted familiar voices.
They wanted context that mattered specifically to them.
They wanted someone covering the ordinary Wednesday game in July with the understanding that, to that team’s fans, it was not ordinary at all.
That principle applies well beyond baseball.
A business may build an audience through a website today, a social platform tomorrow and some technology that does not yet exist a decade from now.
Those platforms are tools.
The relationship with the audience is the durable asset.
Final Thought: 162 Games, One Long Conversation
Four days ago, all 30 MLB teams have played their final games of the 2026 regular season.
Two days ago, the postseason began.
For the teams that advance, the audience becomes larger and the national spotlight becomes brighter.
But those postseason moments do not appear from nowhere.
They arrive after six months of games.
Six months of broadcasts.
Six months of injuries, debuts, winning streaks, slumps, trades, surprises and conversations.
Regional sports networks became important to baseball because they had the opportunity to tell that entire story.
The traditional RSN business model may never look exactly as it once did.
Cable bundles are changing.
Streaming is expanding.
Rights agreements are becoming more complicated.
But the fundamental audience demand remains remarkably familiar.
Fans still want to follow their team.
Night after night.
Game after game.
Season after season.
That is the business lesson hidden inside baseball’s 162-game schedule.
National exposure can make a team visible.
Sustained, relevant coverage can make that team part of someone’s routine.
The platform can change.
The relationship is the asset.
Sources and Further Reading
Major League Baseball — 2026 postseason schedule
Major League Baseball — 2026–28 national media agreements
YES Network — About YES
NESN — Network and streaming distribution
Marquee Sports Network — Cubs distribution and streaming expansion
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