The Cleveland State Vikings are becoming "Davids" as they continue to upset the "Goliaths" of college basketball. Gary Waters, who inherited a team in disarray and had one top 25 win in the history of the program, has knocked off ranked opponents 5 times now in his tenure with the most recent coming at #7 Vanderbilt yesterday. The funny thing about the victories has been the timing as Northeast Ohio sports fans had other things on their agendas during each of the Vikings' biggest conquests.
CSU knocked off Butler in February of 2008 to reclaim some respect from sports fans who had been drawn away from a basketball program that had been irrelevant for two decades. Cleveland State once again got national attention when the team shocked Syracuse on a Monday night in December of 2008. The win over the Orangeman was televised on SportsTime Ohio but the vast majority of Cleveland sports fans attention was focused on the Browns upset win against the New York Giants on Monday Night Football the same evening.
The Vikings, of course, defeated Butler to win the 2007-2008 Horizon Championship and earned the right to play Wake Forest in the NCAA Tournament. The Vikings knocked off the Demon Deacons, but were relegated to second billing in Northeast Ohio as they were playing on the same time slot as Ohio State and were relegated to WUAB while the mighty Buckeyes played in front of a bigger local audience on CBS.
History repeated itself again yesterday. While most Clevelanders were agonizing over another gut-wrenching Browns loss, Cleveland State basketball diehards were celebrating the Vikings' victory over its highest ranked opponent in school history.
Why does it seem like no one paying attention? In my opinion, it's a variety of factors ranging from lackluster print media coverage and subpar television coverage, which will be highlighted in subsequent paragraphs.
The first hurdle for the Vikings is the lack of television exposure. CSU can't seem to find a stable home on local television despite enormous success on the basketball court. As a Vikings observer for most of my lifetime, I remember the Kevin Mackey era having a stable home on television despite the fact there were a fraction of frequencies to air from in today's satellite and cable era. The Vikes typically have a handful of of nationally televised games, but a local outlet that would have some type of regular schedule would do wonders for the visibility of the program. The visibility, in turn, would likely increase attendance in my opinion.
The other factor involved seems to be the dismissive attitude of the program by the folks over at the Cleveland Plain Dealer who run the only newspaper that reaches the entire Northeast Ohio region. While the Vikings were clearly on the rise, they dumped their day-to-day beat reporter on CSU sports - Joe Maxse - and replaced him with Elton Alexander. Alexander is a solid reporter but has a lot of other things to cover besides the Vikings as he handles MAC football and basketball. Maxse had covered CSU sports for 3 decades and the folks at the Plain Dealer gave him a kick out the door right when the program was relevant again after years of lackluster play. The Vikings basketball program is so much of an afterthought to the daily paper that their gigantic win over Vandy, which garnered front page stories on ESPN and CBS Sports, was buried on their webpage as the featured stories of the day centered around yet another Browns loss.
While the Vikings have become a Mid-Major power, and Waters believes the biggest achievements are still to come, the local media still hasn't seem to come on board. I personally have been covering the Vikings for 4 seasons and the same cast of characters have been coming to the media gatherings. On occasion, you may see a face from local television but for the most part it is a half dozen people who have seen a program rise up from the ashes. The city of Cleveland boasts two all-sports talk radio stations and they have one Gary Waters combined visit to a media gathering this season. Both were a no show to the exhibition game that featured local Division III program John Carroll last week.
Until the Vikings land a television contract that will get more eyeballs on the program that has earned the right to be seen, CSU will struggle to fill the magnificent 14,000 seat arena that has to partitioned off due to lack of attendance. The local media hasn't done its job promoting a program in its backyard, and local television stations should be ashamed of themselves for not trying to work out a deal with Cleveland State University. The Plain Dealer should focus less on what is happening with Ohio State's basketball program that plays 2 hours downstate and give attention to the real local team in the area. How many more wins over "name-brand" opponents will it take for the mainstream media to take notice? We are at 5 and counting.
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