[NU Sports] BT Network Channel 220 is on.

[Michael Vance]

Well, the launch of BTN had its plusses and minuses, but it was mostly 
unimpressive.

The leadup, at least on DirecTV was sort of cool.  They had a countdown 
timer going and were repeating the extended versions of every school's 
fight song.  Unfortunately, we had to run to an event at the kids' 
school so I didn't get to hear Go U.  That was mainly because every 
couple of fight songs, they would show a 3-5 minute clip about how they 
built BTN HQ on the west side of downtown Chicago, near the old 
Montgomery Ward headquarters building.

The Football Preview show was OK, but not spectacular.  The recorded 
segments with Tom Brenaman were the same ones that Fox Sports had been 
using for their Big Ten Preview show.  They also interspersed that with 
previously recorded studio footage of Dave Revsine from the same show.  
But they edited that rather well with the new studio footage of Revsine 
(in the same suit, shirt, and tie) with Gerry DiNardo (who needs to 
learn to sit up straight if he's ever going to be successful on 
television) and former Illini RB Howard Griffith.

The good: The original studio work was solid, but nothing 
earth-shattering. Couldn't tell whether it was live or not.  Probably 
taped, but if it was, it was taped especially for the segment because 
they had a couple of mentions of the time and the next segment.

The bad: Griffith slipped up and used the first person plural pronoun 
"we" when talking about the Illini instead of the more journalistically 
proper "they."  And at the beginning of each segment, they had a graphic 
with a spinning helmet.  The Gopher helmet magically turned into a 
Wisconsin helmet for a fraction of a second before turning maroon and 
gold again.  Ooops!

The ugly: Not sure if this was BTN or DirecTV, but there was a major 
flub with tape going back and forth fast forward and rewind during one 
of the segments (I forget who), then it went to black, then to 
commercial.  When they returned, it was to taped studio footage of 
Revsine from the Fox show, so they didn't even acknowledge it or 
apologize for it.  That may also be an indicator that it was a DirecTV 
problem, but I don't think so.

One of the regular features is going to be "The Big Ten's Greatest 
Games."  They were kicking off with last year's Michigan-OSU contest.  
They're re-running that multiple times over the next few days.  On 
Monday or Tuesday, they introduce the 1999 Minnesota-PSU game which, I 
believe, was the first of a couple of upsets of the Nits by the Goophs 
over the span of a few years.  For the next two weeks, those are the 
only games we get, but stay tuned for a wide variety of Cardiac Cat 
Classics, I'm sure.  Unfortunately, I'm guessing that last year's MSU 
game will be shown at some point, too.

I look forward to live game coverage.

-Michael

HUDHAIFA3 at aol.com wrote:
> If you go to channel 220 now it says Launch of BT Network 8 eastern. And  
> channel 219 shows Northwestern as upcoming games
>  
> Joe Amore
>
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