Mountaineers360 Debuts Friday
September 02, 2010 04:37 PM | General
September 2, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mike Parsons has never been against the idea of tweaking a good thing, and that’s why he decided it was time this fall to do some minor renovating to West Virginia University’s award-winning football television show Mountaineer Magazine.
Renamed Mountaineers360, this year’s show will be more geared toward the hard-core Mountaineer football fan.
“We wanted to try and revitalize the show a little bit,” explained West Virginia University’s Deputy Director of Athletics, who also serves as the show’s executive producer. “We had been doing the same format with minor tweaks since 1989, so the main thing was to give it a fresh, new approach.”
What that entails is more interaction with football experts Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning, more reporting from Mary Ravasio, and then having studio host Tony Caridi tie all of those pieces together. The show will also have a presenting sponsor this year for the first time in BrickStreet Insurance.
“With BrickStreet joining as the presenting sponsor the Mountaineers360 name goes along with BrickStreet’s marketing themes,” Parsons explained. “The show will look at WVU football from every angle. When you look at the features, when you look at Tony’s knowledge of the team, when you look at Mary’s reporting skills, and when you look at including Dwight and Jed’s insight into it, it’s the perfect team.”
Parsons has always thought outside of the box when it comes to television. In the 1980s when it was popular for schools to have its football coaches on the set diagramming plays, Parsons wanted West Virginia’s TV show to do much more than that by telling stories in a magazine format, thus the name Mountaineer Magazine.
Caridi sees this new concept catching on quickly with Mountaineer football fans.
“It’s going to be more football and it’s going to be more analysis,” Caridi noted. “There will still be features, but then there will be follow-ups to those features.”
The season debut this weekend will highlight West Virginia’s dynamic duo Noel Devine and Jock Sanders, who sat down for a joint interview earlier this week at the Milan Puskar Center. Also, Mountaineer fans will get reintroduced to Dave McMichael, back for his second stint in Morgantown.
Tony and Jed Drenning will discuss the 2010 season, followed by a segment on the reorganization of the Mountaineer special teams that took place last spring. Finally, Coach Bill Stewart will join in by offering his thoughts on this weekend’s season opener against Coastal Carolina with longtime MSN contributor Hoppy Kercheval.
Caridi envisions more elements being introduced to the show as the season progresses.
“Later on, we might do a Jed and Dwight round-table discussion on first-year starting quarterbacks from a coaches’ perspective and from a guy who was once a first-year starter: what’s going on in their mind and what they know now?” Caridi explained. “Those are the kinds of things we will incorporate into the show down the road.”
Parsons sums up the changes this way, “It is just involving more of the people who are close to Mountaineer football and getting them into the program.”
Mountaineers360 will air this Friday in Charleston/Huntington on WVAH at 11:30 p.m., in Oak Hill/Beckley/Bluefield on WOAY at 11:35 p.m., in Parkersburg on My 5 at 11:30 p.m., in the Northern Panhandle on RTV9 at 5 p.m., and nationally on Fox College Sports at 10 p.m.
Mountaineer fans outside West Virginia markets can also watch Mountaineers360 on the Internet through MSNsportsNET.com at 5 p.m. on Fridays.
The show will air on these same stations, as well as additional markets, on Saturday mornings. For a complete listing of airtimes and markets, click here.
