Louisville won a football game 34-24 over Arkansas State between all the technical difficulties Saturday.

The ESPN3.com experiment is doomed from the start if missed kickoffs, screen freezes and partial outages are what fans are expected to tolerate.

Begin watching the game at a Highlands establishment. But the big screen is constantly shrouded by warnings that a browser plug-in needs to be updated. Constant fits and starts in the transmission, Bilal Powell starts out running the ball and all of a sudden he’s catching a pass.

Finally the big screen goes blank. The observer, praising himself for a smart decision, running to the parking lot to dig the laptop out of the car trunk. Ah, perfect reception, except for the screen freezes.

Quite an offensive show between all the reboots, U of L leading 31-7 at the half. Arriving at home for the second half. Switching between two different computers. Maddening, the inconsistent focus, the blank air for all the unsold commercials, the delays, and late returns to game action.

Finally getting some consistent coverage in the fourth quarter, amidst fears of a possible overtime. But Shenard Holton will make a crucial interception, Chris Philpott will boot a vital 46-yard field goal, and Bilal Powell and Victor Anderson eating up more ground and clock, winding up with 157 and 108 yards, respectively.

Putting an end to a 10-game losing streak on the road was not supposed to be easy.

Listening to the radio the next time an ESPN3 event occurs will be a breeze.

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By Charlie Springer

Charlie Springer is a former Louisville editor and sportswriter, a public affairs consultant, a UofL grad and longtime fan.

11 thoughts on “Louisville wins, but ESPN3 experiment gets a failing grade”
  1. Glad I stuck with the radio- I started to head to town for a coffee shop/ laptop hookup
    sounds like I avoided some frustration:] Lets give the coaches & players a chance-
    This is not the same football team!

    Looking forward to seeing them live v Cinn.
    Go Cards!

  2. I tried to watch the game at a local establishment, but the reception was miserable. I ended up leaving and listening to the second half on the radio.

  3. I’m really sorry that all in attendance at the Highlands game watch had such a bad experience.

    My own efforts over the months to use ESPN3.com from my home for various broadcasts have been very successful. Most of the time I have used Google Chrome, but I think I’ve watched games using Internet Explorer as well.

    I did not try to watch yesterday’s game so I can’t speak to how it would have worked for me yesterday.

  4. I watched the game using Mozilla Firefox, and the only problem I had was the jerky transmission. The picture quality was actually much better than I expected. I will try Chrome next time.

    Since I am old enough to remember the days when we had three channels and only one or two games every Saturday–rarely the team I wanted to watch–I am happy to see ESPN make an effort to broadcast almost literally every single game on one platform or another, even if they don’t get me a perfect HD transmission with expert announcers ever time.

    A bad telecast beats the hell out of watching a game I don’t care about just so I can see the scores scroll by. I’ll take it.

      1. I agree that ESPN does itself no favors by refusing to let local stations carry the telecast, especially if it interferes with no league contract or other agreement (say, with a Big East Network).

        But I wonder what you would say about an agreement which, for example, allowed local TV to carry the game, but blacked it out on the internet. Many people would complain about this, and prefer to watch on line–at least once the transmission quality is better.

        ESPN wants to dominate sports broadcasting over the internet. They are preparing the audience and the technology, and they want people to be accustomed to this method of consuming sports media. They have to have exclusive audiences to test viewership, I think.

        If we had Japan’s internet connectivity, ESPN could give us virtually every game, all in HD, and streamed as if you were watching cable–Sumo fans have no trouble finding their game. This is coming to the US, but in this case the market only slows things down, since no private company will invest the billions needed to wire everyone.

        But ESPN is on the right track. Just give them a few more years. We may come to regret the commercialization, but we’ll be able to see the Cards play every week.

  5. Ran it on Chrome on windows 7. fresh install, without any plugins or all that jazz, and it ran great. I didn’t have a single issue watching the game, or listening to the audio stream when I walked away from the screen to answer the door. http://www.google.com/chrome if you haven’t tried chrome I highly recommend it. its small, fast and 10x better than internet explore (runs great on even old machines.) And before you ask, no I don’t work for google :P.
    Go Cards!

    1. I totally agree with using chrome. I was the dummy today that watched it with IE8. Chrome gets the shot next weekend.

      It bugs me when people think they really know what’s going on with UL athletics, when in reality they don’t have the slightest clue. If you think AD Jurich had anything to do with the game being on ESPN3, you really need to lay off the weed. He had as much to do with the game being on the Internet as I did. You can thank 3 years of decline in the product on the field and the opponent being from the Sun Belt conference. Plus, this game was at the opponents place and I can guarantee you ASU tried just as hard if not harder than UL did to get this game on TV.

      I was tickled to death with the 1st half of play by the Cards. 2nd half, not so much. They have yet to quit on themselves, the coaches, & the fans.

      Charlie, I seriously recommend watching the game on a big screen hooked to your or a friends laptop. That plug-in update you saw at the establishment was for the Adobe Flash player, which is used in part by ESPN3.com. Funny that they didn’t update it before the game. If the suits at ESPN want to drive traffic to their web sites to watch games, they’ve got a ton of work ahead of them. It was bad at times, especially the 4th qtr. where I was at.

  6. I am sure Jurich was behind this. He thinks that by being on espn is big time. But we got the shoved to the bottom of the bucket. We should have been on one of our local home channels. This Espn3 sucks. Might as well been watching it on a tv with and old time outside antenna. These people needs to come down off their high horses and get real.

    1. How is Tom Jurich behind this? All of the Jurich bashing gets a little ridiculous, what will he be blamed for next? This university and it’s entire athletic dept. has NEVER thrived like it has since Jurich has been here. Give the guy some credit. The ESPN3 broadcast is due to the contract the Big East has with ESPN. Even PITT was an ESPN3 “exclusive” today.

  7. Maddening! But all the more incentive for the team to return us to top billing so we get airtime with the big guys. Still, GO CARDS!

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