July 30, 2014

COLUMBIA, Mo. - On May 2, 2013, the Southeastern Conference and ESPN announced a 20-year partnership that would maximize the league's exposure with the launch of the SEC Network. While Mizzou and SEC fans were expressing their excitement for an all-SEC, all-the-time Network, the Mizzou department of athletics and Mizzou Network Director Stan Silvey were busy planning.

Silvey and his staff knew that the next year of preparation was going to be key as they prepared to meet ESPN's requirements for what each school should have on campus.

"I feel like we were in a good position because we didn't really have a control room," Silvey said. "We were able to cater it to exactly what they (ESPN) were asking. It made my job easier because I could say: `what do you want us to do? What do you want us to get?"

Silvey, with the help of Mizzou Information Technologies staff and the Mizzou administration, built a brand new, state-of-the-art control room inside Mizzou Arena. It is wired with fiber optics and is a fully-functioning television studio to produce live games, which will be the focus point of the SEC Network.

According to Silvey, there will be nearly 1,000 live sporting events shown across the SEC Network next season. Divide those nearly 1,000 events by 14 SEC schools and you come up with nearly 71 live ESPN-quality broadcasts that each school will be responsible for producing. That's quite an undertaking for a school that did not even have a control room until April of this year, but Silvey and his staff are ready.

"We had to hire some new staff," Silvey said. "We also ran fiber out to all of the venues that we will be doing the events from. Those are the big things. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it took a lot of organizing."

The SEC Network will change the culture of the Mizzou Network. Since its inception, Mizzou Network was strictly a web-based platform, cutting and editing highlight packages, music videos and behind-the-scenes interviews. While that production will still exist, the focus of the new direction will be the live events and basically making Mizzou Network an extension of ESPN and the SEC Network.

After building from scratch, the studio - which spans nearly the entire length of the Mizzou Arena student section - was finished in April. The new control room will be able to communicate with each of ESPN's centralized hubs - in Bristol, Conn., and Charlotte, N.C. and will feature 13 computers and several high definition monitors. A separate control room was built to handle the video board at Mizzou Arena as well.

Also, at Memorial Stadium a Bureau Room was installed where Tiger coaches and athletes can link into Bristol or Charlotte within minutes to do live interviews with the SEC Network.

"I think it's going to be about $2.5 million in total investment," Silvey said. "It feels like a really big number, but for what we built we feel it was a bargain because we built a broadcast facility. This is a 20-year deal between ESPN and the SEC so we are going to get a lot of use out of it. These ESPN productions will be able to give our fans that have SEC Network high quality broadcasts of these sports."

As of today, the SEC Network has been picked up by DISH, AT&T U-verse, Cox Communications, Google Fiber, along with other TV providers across the country. Beginning with the upcoming Fall 2014 SEC sports season, the SEC Network will be the hub for 45 football games, 100 men's basketball games, 75 baseball games, 60 women's basketball games, 40 volleyball games and 25 women's soccer games.

The programming is spread across a both a linear (regular cable television) and a digital platform (via ESPN3). For example, this fall the defending SEC Champion Mizzou volleyball team will have a league-high 10 games on the SEC Network and then six additional contests on the digital platform, meaning that 16 of Mizzou's 18 conference matches will reach a national audience.

Many of those events will be produced in-house by Silvey and his staff. Part of the money spent was to bring in new positions to help with the broadcasts. Mizzou has hired a broadcast engineer, a director and a graphic artist. But even with the new positions, Silvey expects his partnership with the academic programs at Mizzou, such as the journalism school, communications school and sports management program, to be a big part of what goes on with the SEC Network.

"It's a great platform for us to work (Missouri) students in," Silvey said. "There is definitely an academic element here. Students can get real-world experience and it will help them get jobs. We are promoting our sports and our athletic department and our University every time we are up on this platform. And we also get to educate our students."

For the latest information on Mizzou Athletics, be sure to visit MUTigers.com and follow the Tigers on Twitter (@MUTigersDotCom).

Providers That Will Carry SEC Network
- Arthur Mutual Telephone Company
- AT&T U-verse
- Audeamus, LLC (aka Kerman Telephone)
- Ayersville Telephone Company
- BEK Communications Cooperative
- Brookings Municipal Utilities dba Swiftel Communications
- CenCom, Inc. IPTV
- Central Arkansas Telephone Cooperative
- Chickamauga Telephone Corporation
- City of Dunnellon dba Greenlight Dunnellon Communications
- Com Net, Inc.
- Comcast Xfinity
- Cox
- DISH
- Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative, Inc.
- Fulton Telephone Company
- Garden Valley Telephone Company IPTV
- Glandorf Telephone Company
- Google Fiber
- Grafton Technologies
- Greenlight D unnellon Communications
- IdeaTek Systems, Inc.
- Integra Telecom, Inc.
- McClure Telephone Company
- Plains Rural Telephone dba Mid-Plains Communications
- North Dakota Telephone Company
- Northeast Missouri Rural Telephone Company
- Palmetto Rural Telephone Cooperative (PRTC)
- Plateau Telecommunications
- Randolph Telephone Membership Corporation
- Rural Burleigh Cable
- Siren Communications
- Southern Montana Telephone Company
- SPTC Telcom
- Trenton Telephone Company dba Tennessee Valley Network (TVN)
-Tri-County Telephone Association (IPTV)
- United Telephone Mutual Aid Corporation IPTV
- Valu-Net, LLC
- Vaughnsville Telephone Company
- Waldron Telephone Company
- Yadkin Valley Telecom IPTV

SEC NETWORK EVENTS - Fall, 2014 - Mizzou
- Volleyball - 10 Linear, 6 Digital
- Soccer - 2 Linear, 8 Digital
- Football - Linear vs. UCF (Sept. 13)