By Alysa TeichmanThe Daily Northwestern
As of Sunday night, neither ESPN nor Northwestern University Information Technology could explain the technical failure that prevented the sports network from airing NU’s Saturday football game against the University of Wisconsin at Madison, as it had planned.
The event was scheduled to show for free via ESPN360.com , ESPN’s online sports channel. But come gametime, nothing was broadcast.
“Northwestern made every effort to provide the service, even though there was some risk that the bandwidth would stop students from using other services online,” said Wendy Woodward, director of technology and support services at NUIT .
NUIT supplied ESPN with the necessary IP addresses to access the network, Woodward said, but for an unexplained reason, the game did not air online in Evanston.
A spokesman for ESPN said he did not have a specific explanation for what went wrong.
“We had intended for the game to be available, and there were technical problems we’re looking into,” said Paul Melvin, a communications representative from ESPN.
Many NU football fanatics who couldn’t make it to Madison for the day planned their afternoon around watching the matchup.
“I was looking forward to watching it,” Communication sophomore Michael Casas said. “I am just a college football fan, and I really wanted to watch that game.”
But fans like Casas were let down when the broadcast failed to work. Students received another e-mail Saturday afternoon after NU played Wisconsin – this time an apology – that said, “Northwestern University Information Technology (NUIT) made every attempt to facilitate this connection, but it appears that ESPN had not made the necessary adjustments to their systems to allow our students to connect.”
The letdown left many students angry.
“Northwestern seems to have a problem with motivation for football,” McCormick sophomore Rick Oleszczuk said.
“There are a lot of people who are sometimes in and sometimes out. If the game is available to watch, it is so much easier to motivate school spirit.”
Reach Alysa Teichman at [email protected].
