College Football Kickoff 2024: A New Era Dawns at Big Ten Network as the Conference Welcomes Four West Coast Programs

A remodeled studio, hires behind and in-front of the camera, and a new graphics package for Olympic sports highlight one of the biggest years in network history

The 2024-25 academic year is not just a new chapter in the history of college athletics (particularly college football). It’s a whole new book.

Supersized power conferences. An expanded playoff. NIL money pouring in. This isn’t your father’s fall Saturday.

To welcome its 18th season – and four new member schools – Big Ten Network debuted a new studio set at its Chicago headquarters earlier this month. (Photos Courtesy of BTN)

One of the conferences undergoing one of the most significant transformations is the Big Ten Conference. The traditionally Midwest brand is now fully a coast-to-coast juggernaut with the addition of four glamour West Coast programs in UCLA, Southern Cal, Oregon, and Washington.

This growth to 18 member institutions makes the 18th year of the Big Ten Network (BTN), arguably, the most significant one since its first.

“It is certainly an important moment for us,” says Mark Hulsey, SVP Production/Executive Producer at Big Ten Network, a veteran of BTN since 2009. “When you look at the overall landscape of college athletics, we feel fortunate to be in this position. This year we’ll be able to televise events at the Rose Bowl, the Coliseum, Husky Stadium, Hayward Field and Autzen Stadium at Oregon; we couldn’t be more excited. We feel like we’ve worked very hard over the past six months to get ready but it’s definitely humbling to be a small part of this as we approach what is a very big year for us.”

New Studio, At-Home Control Room Upgrades Highlight Chicago HQ

Named “Studio D”  in honor of former Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, the remodeled studio space was developed with Dimensional and Jack Morton Design Group, one of the industry leaders in studio set design. Its the same design firm that helped map out the massive, innovative Studio A for FOX Sports in L.A. Jack Morton SVP, Senior Design Director Larry Hartman and his team collaborated with both BTN and the network’s parent company FOX to create this new set.

“It will give us so many more options in how we present our studio content,” says Hulsey, who noted that BTN also received help on the space from NEP Sweetwater and Airtime Lighting. “The LED backgrounds give us much more flexibility to keep the look fresh for all of our shows. The collaboration with Fox on these projects is always so beneficial to us. We’re really pleased with the results.”

BTN’s Chicago HQ is also home to four centralized “at-home” production control rooms. These spaces are used to produce a tier of live games (including select football games) and also runs the network’s traveling Saturday football pregame show BTN Tailgate. The network has invested in some upgrades in those rooms, adding updated Grass Valley switchers and upgrading its Evertz Dreamcatcher network to support the addition of super slow-mo on at-home produced live games.

Hulsey says BTN doesn’t shy away from using at-home models on football games, with those shows tapping out at about 10 cameras (plus the super slow-mos).

Welcome to the Party

As for outside the four walls of BTN Studios, big changes are coming to the operations side of the house as four new campuses are added to the rotation. Plus, there’s the not-so-subtle integration of live events in the Pacific timezone.

VP, Operations John Sugihara, VP of Remote Production Alex Bertsche,and VP, Remote Events Sue Maryott have grown a relationship with their vendors, including Mobile TV Group and Rush Media, who have expanded their truck offerings to accommodate the four additional locations. They are also both building new at-home-friendly trucks to live in Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest.

Having parent company FOX out in Los Angeles and being comfortable with covering major events from these four schools has also been a nice help.

“They’re always there to assist and they’ve always have been, whether it be crewing or any operational needs that we have,” praises Hulsey. “That’s given us a reassurance that we’re going to get off to a smooth start.”

We know you’ve been waiting for this one…

“Maps” is here and it’s beautiful. #B1GWelcome pic.twitter.com/vPfVeEdonn

— Big Ten Conference (@bigten) August 2, 2024

The addition of UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington has also led to staff expansion at BTN, both behind and in front of the camera. The first hire the network made after absorbing the four former Pac-12 schools was to an old friend. Senior Director, Remote Operations, Sarah Backerman, is back at Big Ten Network, where she first got her start in 2010 as a freelance producer and coordinator for the network’s Student U program. After a decade leading operations at Pac-12 Networks, she’s returned to her roots and has proven quite valuable to BTN’s expansion.

“The first and most important thing we had to look at was our staffing and we felt it was very important to add staff that had extensive and institutional knowledge of the four new schools,” says Hulsey. “[Sarah] has come in and made an immediate impact. Her relationships with the four incoming schools and vendors got us off to a smooth start.”

That institutional knowledge will also show itself on camera with the hiring of ex-Pac-12 Network talent like hosts Ashley Adamson and Yogi Roth.

“We needed on-air talent that just immediately knew those four expansion schools,” says Hulsey. “They had those relationships with the coaches. There wouldn’t be a learning curve at all with them. Ashley and Yogi have meshed so well with the people that have been here for such a long time.”

“We always stress two things here: people and process,” Hulsey continues. “If you’ve got a great process in place and great people, most of the time things will work out fine.”

New Graphics Package Supports New Expectations on Campus For the Newbies

The move of these four schools also brings with it a whole new set of expectations for the respective athletic departments, most notably on the broadcast and streaming front. Previously, during their time in the Pac-12 Conference, the Pac-12 Networks used its robust centralized production plan to produce all live games from football to all of the Olympic sports for linear and streaming distribution. The respective athletic departments were not on the hook for producing live broadcasts, as is the case in other major conferences aligned with ESPN like the SEC and the ACC.

That’s a much different story now for USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington as BTN does ask its member institutions to produce many of the live broadcasts of Olympic sports that are streamed to the network’s streaming service B1G+.

The infrastructure or culture for in-house broadcast was generally not expected of these four schools prior. Oregon, however, did produce many of its live events for linear and streaming from its own control room during its time with P12N. The remaining campuses rather quickly have begun to adjust in the growth of both technical facilities and staffing. UCLA, for example, is already producing live streams of events like soccer from a newly built mobile production truck. Control rooms are nearing completion at the others.

“I’m really impressed with the amount of talented people that, from a crewing standpoint, we’ve seen so far,” says Hulsey. “I think overall nothing has really surprised me as far as just the quality of the people and how much they care about it and the genuine enthusiasm behalf for joining the Big 10. And it is been that way since the first time we were on campus.”

To both give the network a clean, new feel and to better supply the schools with templates for a consistent look across all broadcasts, BTN has launched a new wall-to-wall graphics redesign for all Olympic sports. Senior Director, Graphics, Richard Kuban, and BTN’s in-house graphics team partnered with the design agency |drive| studios to develop insert graphics, animations, scorebugs, and more to be used on all sports outside of football and basketball (BTN will continue to share the national FOX packages for those sports). |drive| studios has worked with FOX on many of its sports-focused graphics packages, as well.

Plus, there’s the network’s StudentU initiative that fosters student-only crews on streaming productions.

“The student involvement at the four new schools has been remarkable,” Hulsey adds. “To see how excited the students are; they want to be involved in these productions. That part has been, I think, the most rewarding over the past couple of weeks. It’s certainly a different business model for [the four new schools], but it’s one that they’ve embraced and so far – as evidenced by the productions we’ve had on the year so far – it’s been very successful.”

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Football returns to Big Ten Network on Thursday night. The network will produce 21 football broadcasts in the first three weekends of the season.

Here’s a look at the network’s opening weekend schedule:

Thursday, Aug. 29
Howard at Rutgers | 6pm ET/5pm CT/3pm PT | Big Ten Network
Eastern Illinois at Illinois | 9pm ET/8pm CT/6pm PT | Big Ten Network

Friday, Aug. 30
FAU at Michigan State | 7pm ET/6pm CT/4pm PT | Big Ten Network

Saturday, Aug. 31
Illinois State at Iowa | 12pm ET/11am CT/9am PT | Big Ten Network
Indiana State at Purdue | 12pm ET/11am CT/9am PT | Big Ten Network
FIU at Indiana | 3:30pm ET/2:30pm CT/12:30pm PT | Big Ten Network
Miami (OH) at Northwestern | 3:30pm ET/2:30pm CT/12:30pm PT | Big Ten Network
Idaho at Oregon | 7:30pm ET/6:30pm CT/4:30pm PT | Big Ten Network
Weber State at Washington | 11pm ET/10pm CT/8pm PT | Big Ten Network