Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, has worked with the New England Sports Network (NESN) for eight years, producing its basketball and hockey games to air on the regional sports network. This month, however, Quinnipiac took that relationship to the next level, producing the first of three 30-minute segments in a new feature series, Bobcats Unleashed in HD.

With the beginning of next fall’s academic year, Shawnee State University is joining the Mid-South Conference. The move, according to newly named Athletic Director Jeff Hamilton, gives the Ohio school stronger competition and greater media exposure and will save dramatically on travel budgets.

Division 2 college football does not have a reputation as a money-making venture, but Gorden Blaine, owner of PA SportsFever Television Network, has found a way to turn in into just that. Blaine started a Pennsylvania high school sports magazine in 1994 that quickly expanded to a Website, and has since become a full-fledged television network, covering college games throughout the state of Pennsylvania.

For the fifth consecutive year, Fox College Sports (FCS) will present live broadcasts of the 2009 U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam, beginning with the semifinals on Sunday, Nov. 22. On Monday, Nov. 23, FCS will air the consolation game and the championship game which will be a simulcast with Fox Sports Net (FSN).

The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) is using JVC Professional Products GD-463D10U 46-inch 3D HD LCD monitors as part of its next immersive visualization system, which was prototyped in June at the University of California, San Diego, with the first full-scale version installed at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.

The University of Michigan’s Digital Media Commons department expanded its implementation of ViewCast Media Server to support growing usage by faculty, students, and staff of its BlueStream digital-media infrastructure. Users on the university’s Ann Arbor campus are able to take advantage of VMS’ digital-asset-management capabilities to manage and protect their digital-media assets.

Dallas-based MetroPCS Communications is the new presenting sponsor for SportsNet New York’s annual high school basketball tournament, and the wireless communications provider and regional sports network will team up to donate $70,000 in scholarships and funds to deserving students in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

CBS and ABC are both garnering strong ratings during the current college football season, Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life reports. CBS is having its best NCAA football season since 1996, with its Southeastern Conference games averaging a 4.0 Nielsen household rating, but ABC’s Saturday-afternoon games aren’t far behind, posting a 3.8 so far this season.

New York’s Times Square currently hosts a 40-foot-by-40-foot billboard featuring a picture of a college football player and reading, “Blue Mountain State’s Thad Castle: The nastiest sack in college football,” as part of the “Thad Castle for College Football Player of the Year.”

Cedric Brown, a part-time staffer for The Cincinnati Enquirer and a University of Cincinnati student set to graduate in June with a bachelor of arts degree in communication, along with certificates in public relations and journalism, was chosen to work as an operations/productions runner for ESPN’s Saturday Night Football telecast when his school’s Bearcats took on Connecticut Nov. 7.

CBS didn’t completely ignore the arrests of three University of Tennessee freshman football players for armed robbery last week during its telecast of the Tennessee-Ole Miss game Saturday, but Phil Mushnick of the New York Post feels that the network did the bare minimum.

The good news for the University of Northern Colorado: Its basketball game at Hawaii will be televised nationally by ESPN, giving the Bears some rare exposure. The bad news, reports Dusty Saunders of The Denver Post: The game will air at 2 a.m. MT, as part of ESPN’s second-annual College Hoops Marathon, made up of 12 games in 24 hours.

High-school-sports Website MaxPreps.com will team up with cable operator Comcast to bring football highlights and other content to Houston-area subscribers on a video-on-demand basis, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports.

As we approach who will play in college football's title game — an exercise that can make judging figure skating seem cut and dried — CBS' lead analyst, Gary Danielson, argues that any team from the powerful SEC that survives, even with one loss, should get in.

On the afternoon of Oct. 31, I was sitting in the Autzen Stadium press box prior to that night's USC-Oregon game, checking my Twitter feed, when the following tweet popped in from a user named @hometimrunner. "Did you see Brandon Spikes trying to poke out [Washaun] Ealey's eyes on the play before UGA's 2nd TD?"

The NCAA and Sports Media Exchange have entered into a new editorial partnership designed to provide comprehensive coverage of NCAA championships on NCAA.com. Sports Media Exchange will provide NCAA.com with exclusive and original written content, including previews, feature stories and daily roundups for approximately 300 championship events covering nearly 400 event dates.

The Division I Recruiting and Athletics Personnel Issues Cabinet plans a comprehensive review of the entire recruiting model, with the goal of building a new paradigm that will set the appropriate level of regulation in each sport. The cabinet hopes legislative proposals can be available for the 2010-11 legislative cycle.

Comcast announced an exclusive partnership with CBS Interactive to distribute content from CBS's high school sports site MaxPreps.com to Comcast Houston. Throughout the 2009-10 school year, MaxPreps.com is expected to produce hundreds of short-form features on high school sports teams and athletes from the Houston area and then make them available on Channel 1 On Demand.

Circle System Group was a staple in New Jersey high school sports for decades, receiving millions of taxpayer dollars, in part to ensure the soundness of football helmets protecting the heads of young athletes. About a year ago, however, its president, David Drill, became a federal felon when he admitted to quarterbacking a massive financial fraud against high school athletic departments in New Jersey.

New York’s state university system is among the largest in the country, but it has never been known for athletic prominence, unlike major public institutions in states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan. SUNY officials aimed to change that in 1986, when the trustees lifted a ban on athletic scholarships and cleared the way for the system’s four research universities — Buffalo, Stony Brook, Albany and Binghamton — to upgrade their sports programs.

To fans who say they could watch college basketball 24 hours a day, ESPN is once again giving you that chance. The second annual 24 hours of hoops continued through midnight Tuesday. Even if you didn't catch the start of the marathon, there were a couple of marquee games at the tail end of the schedule.

ESPN has reached a multi-year agreement (through 2011-2012) with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) for coverage of men's and women's basketball and Olympic sports across ESPN's multimedia entities. It was announced by Burke Magnus, senior vice president of college sports programming for ESPN, and MAAC Commissioner Richard J. Ensor, Esq.

Cal State-Fullerton's wrestling program had to raise money to survive this season. It has four scholarships and a $1,000 recruiting budget. But it will have stars aplenty on its mats this weekend. The school is hosting Sunday's All-Star Classic, a pairing of top collegians put on by the National Wrestling Coaches Association.

Since 2007, the historical KU versus MU Border Showdown has played on neutral turf at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., and it will remain there until 2012. The game used to alternate its location annually between Columbia, Mo., and Lawrence. Schools, fans and players have all benefited from the move to Arrowhead Stadium, but local businesses have also been affected.

The Southern Connecticut boys’ and girls’ basketball tournament semifinals and finals, and two hockey games, will be played at Quinnipiac University’s TD Bank Sports Center early next year. The SCC girls’ tournament semifinals and final will be held Feb. 22 and 23, and the boys March 1 and 2.

Penn State, Indiana and Missouri are the first schools to participate in a USA Today initiative meant to test how students respond to electronic versions of printed newspapers. The ''e-Edition'' is free for students, faculty and staff. USA Today says it's identical to the newspaper's print edition but with additional interactive and exclusive content.

Never mind that it was 5:58 a.m. and the sun would not rise for another 47 minutes. St. Peter’s College had a big basketball game Tuesday morning, and the reserve guard Brandon Hall took a spot at midcourt to give each of his starting teammates a lusty chest bump during introductions.