43 years ago, UCLA @ Saint Louis soccer was the first collegiate sporting event on ESPN

[Brighton]

 

[slu72]

10 minutes ago, Brighton said:

First forward pass and first on ESPN. Now lets get our first sweet 16. 

 

[Brighton]

SLU won 2-0 BTW

 

and slu72, first BB program to be ranked #1 in the AP Poll too.

[thetorch]

The game was actually played 6 days earlier.

[RUBillsFan]

15 hours ago, thetorch said:

The game was actually played 6 days earlier.

I saw that the broadcast was a 12:30 AM and assumed this had to be a re-play.

Kind of wild that in 1979 the soccer game was recorded to be re-played 6 days later.  Was the game originally broadcast on another channel and ESPN picked it up to replay it?

[Lord Elrond]

I think back then replays was mostly what ESPN did, I don’t think when they started they had rights to live broadcast anything

 

[majerus mojo]

In the ESPN oral history they mention the early days were mostly about filling time slots with anything they could get the rights to. Nothing live for a bit/was also a decent amount of dead air. One of their bigger breaks was getting the rights to televise the early rounds of the NCAA tournament. Believe CBS was only airing the ~Elite 8/Final 4 initially if that