Tufts football fans may have been distraught when they heard that Monday Night Football was moving from ABC to ESPN - a channel that today's Tufts students had never enjoyed.
But that all changes today.
Students in Miller and Bush Halls will be able to watch tonight's ESPN Monday Night Football Game between Jacksonville and Pittsburgh from the comfort of their dorm lounges.
"Tufts has the NASA channel, the Russian TV station, the Discovery Health Channel, and the soap network," Bush Hall resident and sophomore Mike Dolacky said. "It's about time we have ESPN."
Tufts Computing and Communication Services (TCCS) is also working closely with the Office of Residential Life (ORLL) and Residential Facilities to add ESPN to a number of other dormitories as quickly as possible. These include Hodgdon, Carmichael, Haskell, West, Houston, Lewis, Stratton, South, Wren, and Sophia Gordon Halls.
Until now, much of Tufts' on-campus cable TV has focused on foreign language and news programming. But the administration is well aware that sports programming is important to many students and is excited to be able to offer ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN News to undergraduates this fall.
Dawn Irish, Manager of Information Technology Training at TCCS, said that ESPN's network's rigid and expensive pricing structure - which would have doubled Tufts' cable TV costs - kept the University from offering the channel in recent years.
Negotiations led by Tufts' satellite TV company, Falls EarthStation - helped by the administration - snagged Tufts a better rate.
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate did not participate in the negotiations, but TCU President Mitch Robinson is happy with the way the administration responded to student desires expressed through the senate.
"ESPN has been something the student body has wanted for a long time," Robinson said. "It is therefore a great achievement for the student body and the administration because it shows that they are working together to make changes and better the quality of life on campus."
Senior Jon Glass said he voted in last year's TCU Senate elections largely because of the ESPN issue. "Everyone was really excited to have ESPN in the dorms and then it never happened," he said.
Reflecting back on her time at Tufts, senior Sally Greenwald wished ESPN had been available during her time in Miller Hall as a freshman.
"Although ESPN.com is great, it's just not the same reading about sports via internet. Luckily, I had friends living off-campus who had ESPN, but it would have been nice to throw back a brewski and watch NASCAR racing in my own room."
