ESPNU exposure a bonus for volleyball program
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 | Football, Volleyball, Scott Carter
The top-ranked UF volleyball team faces Tennessee tonight at the O'Connell Center in a key SEC showdown.
Once upon a time, if you lived in Gainesville, you could probably read a short recap of the match in the next day's newspaper, but that was about it.
But tonight, you can watch the match on national television, a drastic change from when Wise played at Purdue in the late 1970s and got her first head coaching job at Iowa State in 1981.
"You were lucky if you got your scores in the paper,'' Wise said. “Matches weren't on television, they weren't broadcasted on radio, and it was obviously way before the Internet. That's why you could be a head coach at 22. No one really cared. No one noticed.
"Now it's a different world.''
At Florida, that world changed before other places. The Gators appeared regularly on what was formerly called the Sunshine Network early in Wise's tenure. At the time, very few volleyball programs appeared on TV regularly.
"I think that really has helped build the program,'' Wise said.
Nowadays, thanks to a contract the SEC has with ESPN, volleyball is getting more exposure than ever before. Tonight's match is live on ESPNU starting a 8 p.m. That's the same ESPN network that aired the Florida-Mississippi State football game on Saturday night.
It really is a different world.
