Warriors Football Gets National Recognition

by Kim Dickson
SC Staff Writer

East Stroudsburg University is not considered a large campus. There are a lot of students here, but the campus itself is not that large and the school doesn’t get much public recognition outside of the Pocono region. That includes sports as well, until lately that is.

East Stroudsburg University has had a partnership with SPORTSforever since 2007, which had allowed certain ESU football games to be aired nationally on television. Instead of the games being shown on local television to only a couple thousand viewers, SPORTSforever allows the games to be shown across the country on DIRECTV and DISH Network.

Not every game is broadcasted, but the exciting Homecoming game against West Chester was one of the games this season that was televised nationally.

The game was tied until the last couple of seconds when ESU had the game winning touchdown making the final score 35-28. The game was played on Saturday, October 6, and was televised on Wednesday, October 10. The game was shown on ROOT Sports, known formerly as Fox Sports Pittsburgh at 5 PM and also on the Comcast Network at 8 PM.

The ROOT Sports channel is available nationwide on DIRECTV and DISH Network. The channel is also carried locally throughout Pennsylvania on Blue Ridge Cable, Service Electric and Comcast.

Other football games were shown on those channels as well, such as the Saturday, October 27, 45-37 win against LIU Post, which was shown nationally on television Sunday, October 28 at 3 PM on Blue Ridge Cable channel 13. The game was also aired nationally Tuesday, October 30 at 8 PM on ROOT Sports.

Being on television can usually lead to bigger recognition, especially for a smaller school. The networks that aired the games nationally gave the Warriors something else to be proud of.

On Friday, October 19, the team was shown on ESPN’s SportsCenter for an unusual situation that occurred during the game against Bloomsburg University.

Two players got their helmet cages stuck together during the game and ESPN thought this was worthy of making their “Not So Top 10 Plays” for that days broadcasting of SportsCenter.
The play was listed at #10 and even though it was a “Not So Top 10 Play,” the football team was proud of themselves.

“I thought it was funny to see our team on SportsCenter,” said ESU’s defensive end Tarik Haddad. “We definitely deserved it.”

Maybe one day we will see them on SportsCenters “Top 10 Plays.”

Email Kim at:
ksd8013@live.esu.edu