For many years, UW athletics has had a tough task at hand in the recruiting department, which I believe has been made easier by an increasing amount of exposure on national television.
Understanding recruits’ wants and getting them to the arctic plains we know as Laramie is tough, I would imagine, especially when you’re competing against places that have beaches, people, and/or a large number of amenities. It seems, however, that recruits are starting to realize that Wyoming isn’t a bad place to play, and you can see that with our increasingly better teams every year. I think that this has to do with the rapid increase in TV exposure for Wyoming.
Certainly, Wyoming sports can only improve. Here’s a quick stat that might be painful for long-time Cowboys fans: Wyoming has had exactly four winning-record seasons since 2000 and over the course of four different coaches. Vic Koenning was this first coach during this time, and through his three years of coaching (2000-2002), he didn’t secure more than two wins. Joe Glenn had the first winning season for the Pokes during this period, with a 7-5 record in 2004, and led the team to a Las Vegas Bowl championship.
Kicking off his first year as head coach in 2009, Dave Christensen coached the team to 7-6 record and a New Mexico Bowl win. The next year didn’t fare well for the Pokes (3-9), but in his third year at the helm the team went 8-5 and made it to the 2011 New Mexico Bowl, but lost to Temple 37-15.
This previous year, head coach Craig Bohl had his first winning season. In the 2016 season (and also his third year), the team went 8-6 with a couple of major upsets, and appeared in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, California. And although the team lost the game, it was good exposure for the Pokes, as it was televised on ESPN and was the only bowl game to be played that day.
Regarding national viewership, the 2016 season showed the most nationally televised games during this time period, with seven of their fourteen total games televised on either ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPNU. An additional three games were televised on CBS Sports Network, and the rest were shown on either Root Sports or the Mountain West Network. Looking at the times of the games played, it seems as if Wyoming has entered the national scene by filling the late spot on ESPN channels, with all but one game played before 5:45 p.m. This is a very smart move, in my opinion.
UW Athletics Director Tom Burman had thoughts about the ESPN exposure in a press conference shortly prior to the 2016 Poinsettia Bowl.
“We had the pleasure of playing on ESPN a lot this year, I thought that all the feedback that I’ve gotten, even though we came up short, that it really began to put Wyoming on a national stage,” Burman said. “This is going to be another opportunity, with all the different bowl games stacked up back to back, to enjoy a national audience.”
Millions watched the bowl, and the game was the only bowl played that day. According to the SportsTVRatings website, the Poinsettia Bowl had 2.38 million viewers and was the #10 program on cable that day.
Playing in 10 nationally televised games is a massive increase from 2015’s three on ESPN (six if you count ESPN3, which I don’t because of availability), one on CBSSN, and three on Root Sports. So 2015 showed four nationally televised games. As the years get closer to 2000, UW has had progressively less games on national networks.
In 2010, the team had exactly one nationally televised game, which was hosted by Fox Sports Network and was against no. 5 Texas in Austin, Texas, where they lost 34-7. During this year, two games were televised on as the previously named CBS College Sports Network (a subscription-based service at the time), and the rest were either not televised or were on the previously running Mountain West Sports Network.
What I think Wyoming is seeing is an increasing amount of exposure every year. Just since 2010, the Cowboys have made it onto ESPN and other major networks much more frequently than before, and as exposure increases, I think recruiting will greatly improve. Before, Wyoming may have been seen as a small Division 1 team, but now millions of people will be able to see Wyoming as a potential place to play DI sports.
