By the time the Southeastern Conference (SEC) kicks off the fall football season, the new SEC Digital Network will provide fans the ability to access SEC content outside the live-TV-broadcast window in virtually real time.

Last year at this time, Washington State University director of sports video Scott Vik was unpacking the boxes containing a two-camera wireless HD system from IDX. After one year of testing the $6,000 system, Vik’s team will utilize the cameras to their full potential this year, feeding the in-stadium Jumbotron, officials’ replay, local broadcast, and some Webcasting.

The DakStats graphics system from Daktronics continues to find believers in sports venues big and small, as the scaleable system can be customized to best meet the needs of a facility. According to Jon Grann, Daktronics Sports Software Product Manager, the system brings realtime data in from STATS, Inc. and Elias Sports Bureau, making it easier than ever to help fans in the stands keep up with the action.“We have a number of high school, college and professional sports customers that use these types of graphics,” he says. “The graphics can be configured to work on nearly any sized LED video display.”

In college sports broadcasting, the Southeastern Conference wields the lion’s share of power and influence, but at the conference’s football media days in July, the SEC opted to use that power in a partnership rather than branching out on its own. Instead of starting a dedicated television network, as the Big Ten did in conjunction with Comcast, the SEC chose to work with its 15-year cable partner, ESPN, to create a syndicated sports package that both parties are calling “The SEC Network.”

College Media Days are traditional midsummer events where coaches and student athletes meet the press to preview the upcoming season. For Conference USA, Thursday’s Media Day will provide similar opportunities. However, instead of gathering in one central location, the conference’s member schools will host the press at their individual locations — all sites tied together via videoconferencing.

When the Westlake High School Chaparrals open their football season on Aug. 28, the contest will be produced in high definition using its new Broadcast Pix Slate 5016Ghh integrated production system. The only high school in the Eanes Independent School District in Austin, Texas, Westlake recently upgraded its video production capabilities as part of a renovation of the school’s 25-year-old Westlake Community Performing Arts Center (PAC).

Daktronics will design and manufacture an integrated aquatics-timing and video-display system at the University of Iowa, to be completed by next spring at the university’s new Campus Recreation and Wellness Center.

The ACC expanded in 2004 to add Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech for one very important reason: The league wanted to go to 12 teams in order to make sure it didn’t lose its seat at the table—both competitively and financially–with the big boys of college football.

Imagine: It’s late in the third period. The Pittsburgh Penguins are down by one goal. Sidney Crosby breaks free and slips the puck under the goalie’s glove, and the game is tied. You are in the arena. The screens are filled with replays of the goal, but you are watching it on your cellphone — from multiple angles — and you are controlling what you watch.

The Big Ten announced on Monday at its preseason meetings that the five Coalition (non-BCS) conferences will finally have access to the Rose Bowl under the new BCS agreement which begins after the 2010 regular season.

With Yankee Stadium preparing to host four college football games over five seasons starting in 2010, three other iconic baseball stadiums might follow suit.

Looks like the Chick-fil-A College Kickoff is headed for another blockbuster ACC-SEC matchup. Two people close to the discussions told me that North Carolina and LSU have tentatively agreed to play in the Chick-fil-A College Kickoff on Sept. 4, 2010 at the Georgia Dome.

There they were, all shiny and arranged in neat stacks at the ACC football media conference. It’s always fun – in a childlike way, I guess – to glimpse the upcoming season’s ACC media guides for the first time. You try to guess who will be on the cover. You give style points for the best-looking design.

Not dead yet. That's the best way to describe Northwestern's hopes for scheduling a game at Wrigley Field in November of 2010 or 2011. "It is still something we are actively pursuing," athletic director Jim Phillips said. "But there are a variety of issues to resolve."

John Calipari is continuing his quest to take over the Internet. The Kentucky coach launched his new Web site - www.coachcal.com - last week. In addition, UK established a page for Calipari on the social-networking site Facebook. As of Saturday, more than 13,000 users had registered as fans.

College football coaches might not get the poll-voting secrecy they thought was coming. Bowl Championship Series coordinator John Swofford and other key conference commissioners make it clear they prefer the final regular-season ballots in the USA TODAY Coaches' Poll — which helps determine the BCS title matchup — continue to be made public.

For years, Big Ten football tradition dictated that no schools played after the Ohio State-Michigan game just before Thanksgiving. Last season, the Big Ten went 1-6 in bowl games after the long layoffs.

California's severe budget crunch is about to affect collegiate sports in the state. And with preseason practices about to begin, public universities are suddenly scrambling to minimize the impact.

Welcome to the Rose Bowl of the future, a place where the Utahs, Brigham Youngs and Hawaiis of the college football world are welcome. Sort of. According to a modification in the Bowl Championship Series rules, the Tournament of Roses could be forced to take a non-BCS team in the next few years.

Count conference commissioner Jim Delany among the Big Ten fans who would rather see teams play stronger opponents than the likes of Delaware State and Wofford. If the Big Ten expanded to a nine-game conference slate, that beefier schedule could be achieved.

FOX Sports Net (FSN), the nation's leader in local sports, announced a new multi-year television rights agreement with ESPN that expands its long-time partnership with the Southeastern Conference (SEC). ESPN secured the rights of Southeastern Conference content in August 2008.

In an economy that is forcing collegiate athletic departments to cut sports, personnel and projects just to stay afloat, several schools are investing money in their athletics in hopes of a greater return.

Jack Swarbrick said in May that he'd love to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the landmark 1913 Notre Dame-Army game at the new Yankee Stadium. The Notre Dame athletic director indeed may make that happen. But maybe not before the Irish and Army meet in the new baseball cathedral in 2010. So says the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., a newspaper right in West Point's backyard, which cites "multiple Army sources" in its report.

A combined $1.2 million lead gift from Brad and Katharine Stoffer and their Boedecker Foundation will allow George Fox University to begin the first phase of construction on the Austin Sports Complex and moves the university closer to adding NCAA Div. III football and women’s lacrosse teams.

Stan Schultz will do the math for you. He will tell you the number of teams he invites to his youth baseball tournament at Webb Bridge Park and what he charges per team as an entry fee, what he pays umpires and the deal he works with the city of Alpharetta for the use of fields.

Fresh off announcing that its Black Nights football team would take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the first-ever football game at the new Yankee Stadium, the Army Athletic Association announced an exclusive five-year agreement with CBS College Sports Network under which the network will air every home game in HD, along with select neutral site games in which Army is the home team.

Four years ago, conference sports information directors attended a Division III-hosted meeting on Cape Cod to review ways in which the NCAA national office and SIDs assist each other in publicizing those leagues and the Association. Today, eight of those SIDs have been hired as conference commissioners, illustrating a trend worth noting in the Association’s largest membership division.

These are heady days for the Southeastern Conference. Never in the league's 76-year existence has there been more money to go around, and more interest in the league's member schools.

The Boston College football team has its eye on a new recruit: You. The Eagles are sending out a marketing video online that lets you know what it’s like to be a top prospect, right down to putting your name on the scoreboard and painting it – electronically – in the end zone at Alumni Stadium. At the end of the video, head coach Frank Spaziani hands you a telephone and your own phone rings: it’s BC captain Mike McLaughlin, telling you about season ticket packages (starting at only $175!).

A class-action antitrust lawsuit on behalf of former college men's basketball and football players was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeking unspecified damages from the NCAA and Collegiate Licensing Company for the use of players' images and likenesses in video content, photographs and other memorabilia.

In terms of the value of exposure, Charles Bloom doesn't precisely know how valuable SEC Media Days is to his conference. But with this year's event growing as usual, he thinks it just might be time to check into it.

Ed O’Bannon’s last basketball season at U.C.L.A. was in 1995. Fourteen years later, customers can see images of O’Bannon and his teammates on DVDs and selected video games — and O’Bannon isn’t receiving a dime. That may soon change.

ESPN released its 2009 college-football schedule Wednesday, which includes regular-season and postseason games to air on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN360.com, ESPN Regional Television, ESPN Radio, ESPN Classic, ESPN Mobile TV, and out-of-market pay-per-view service ESPN GamePlan.

With a little more than six weeks before the season-opener on September 5, construction workers are applying the finishing touches on the South scoreboard structure at Bobby Dodd Stadium. View the latest photos from Georgia Tech here on RamblinWreck.com.