Behind the Scenes at Big Ten Media Days For Rutgers Football

Big Ten Media Days are important to all of the 14 schools who participate each year. The opportunity to have your school showcased, the coaches and attending players use the opportunity to promote their program, discuss where they feel they have improved, and share their expectations for the coming season.

Reporters who attend get the chance to conduct one-on-one interviews as well as group press conferences, and get their own impressions either confirmed or clarified.

However, despite all that, there is fun to be had as well. Through the course of the days some silliness ensues, and you can tell the participants also enjoy themselves, particularly the players.

Before the event occurs, of course, weeks of preparation go into making it worthy of being on the national stage. Similar to the season itself, kicking off the Media Days is highly anticipated.

One that I enjoyed was seeing the three Rutgers players’ reaction to pictures of Head Coach Chris Ash when he was in high school in Ottumwah, IA. Blessuan Austin, Tariq Cole, and Deonte Roberts really enjoyed seeing their coach.

There is also preparation. For every minute you see on television, many more go into preparing for those few that are televised. It is a rule of thumb that 15-20 minutes of preparation and editing are necessary for 2-5 minutes of finished video. The same would be true of these events. You can always find pictures of people preparing for the events.

Behind the scenes are busy, sometimes chaotic, and always interesting. There is a lot of the “hurry up and wait” aspect to these situations. RVision had a good video to show how these seem to progress:

Nothing is ignored, and everything, even the mundane, seems to be news at this event. The attire of the players is something that gets attention every year.

And you never know when something fun can become a viral sensation. Tariq, are you ready to go international with your shimmy?

It isn’t just Rutgers that gets this attention. In fact, this is always one of the highlights. As you can see from the next clip, Blessuan and Deonte wanted in on the action, too!

Besides the fun, there is business to take care of. The coach and players are busy promoting the school, the team, and the brand.

Of course, one main reason the days are held are to promote Big Ten football. No matter the platform, the conference needs to use these days to make sure the B1G is elevated and shown to be a preeminent brand of college football.

The schools use this opportunity to promote their program. Each school is also promoted by the conference, too. These opportunities are critical to the conference, and so each school, coach, and team are included in this promotion, as shown in this tweet by the conference:

But at the same time, it isn’t just the players and the coaches who are in demand. Other familiar faces also attend these days!

Big Ten Media Days are a great introduction to the 2018 football season. Practices kick off in less than 10 days, on August 2, and the first game of the 2018 season is just over a month away.

Additional Big Ten Media Day Coverage:

Chris Ash Press Conference Recap

Rutgers Player Interviews With BTN

BTN/Fox In Conflict With Comcast