On Friday, ESPN said the 47 games in the Division 1 NCAA volleyball tournament will be live on one of its platforms and will include commentators.
The company previously planned to stream the first two rounds of the event to its digital platforms without game-by-game advertisers or analysts, a setup that several event coaches criticized Thursday, saying it could continue to give an unfavorable light to the treatment. of female athletes by the governing body of university sports.
“I really hope they look at it more closely. I have a feeling it could explode as much as the weight room stuff in women’s basketball did,” Wisconsin’s Kelly Sheffield said, referring to criticism of the NCAA. for not initially providing any full bodybuilding area for women’s teams. “It’s awesome that they don’t have a broadcast team. To me it’s lazy … that you’re just watching the silence as you watch NCAA tournament games.”
ESPN adjusted its plans Friday and said in a statement: “ESPN is committed to presenting the NCAA Volleyball Championship for the first time this year, including first- and second-round games. Despite the variety of challenges related to the pandemic, 47 matches will be broadcast live on an ESPN platform and will include commentators. “
The NCAA, as it did with the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, moved the volleyball tournament to a single location as protection against COVID-19. The game in Omaha, Nebraska, begins Wednesday.
The tournament was moved from the fall due to the pandemic and will be held at the CHI Health Center with 48 teams instead of the usual 64. The first three rounds will be played on the courts installed in a convention hall. The rest will be played in the adjacent arena.
National semifinal and championship matches will be televised on ESPN2.
Sheffield, whose badgers are No. 1 No. 1 after finishing second at Stanford in 2019, had said the lack of advertisers for the first two rounds diminishes the tournament.
“It’s going to be like a kind of high school offering,” he said. “It has to feel special. For a lot of people this won’t be the case.”
The NCAA said earlier in a statement that ESPN is not required to produce any first- and second-round coverage and that COVID-19 restrictions create technical challenges.
The information from The Associated Press was used in this report.