By Cheval John | Vallano Media
This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
The final version was reviewed, edited and fact-checked by the author

Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.

With two minutes remaining in the first half of Sam Houston’s Sept. 12 game against Tulsa, the ESPN+ broadcast turned its attention away from the field.

The camera showed the rebuilt west side of Bowers Stadium, centerpiece of a roughly $60 million redevelopment that had kept the Bearkats away from their longtime home for the 2025 season.

Analyst John Harris looked at the new structure.

“That is a beautiful press box.”

It was a simple observation.

But Harris was particularly well positioned to make it.

Years earlier, he had worked Sam Houston games during a considerably different era of college sports television.

In 2016, Harris and Tom Franklin were part of Fox College Sports broadcasts involving Southland Conference programs, including Sam Houston.

By 2017, the pair were calling Sam Houston games on ESPN3.

The difference between those broadcasts and what surrounded Harris at Bowers in 2026 tells a larger story.

Sam Houston had not simply rebuilt its press box.

The media world around it had changed as well.

Video Courtesy of Mellie Valencia YouTube Channel

When Geography Mattered More

For much of college athletics history, following a program depended heavily on geography.

Local newspapers provided game stories and features.

Radio stations carried games within the reach of their signals.

University sports information offices supplied statistics and information to reporters.

Television opportunities, particularly for programs outside the largest conferences, were less predictable.

That placed enormous importance on local media.

Fans outside the immediate market could still follow their teams.

Newspapers traveled, radio signals extended beyond city limits and selected games reached regional or national television.

But geography imposed far greater limitations than it does today.

The arrival of digital media did not eliminate those limitations overnight.

Instead, another layer gradually developed alongside the existing system.

University and conference-produced digital coverage expanded the number of games that could reach viewers outside traditional television distribution.

By the middle of the 2010s, however, the result could still resemble a patchwork.

The Southland Conference’s 2016 football media guide listed television relationships involving ESPN networks, American Sports Network, Cox Sports Television, ROOT Sports Southwest, Fox College Sports and Time Warner Cable SportsChannel.

ESPN3 represented an important part of that transition.

Games could increasingly be accessed through computers, mobile devices and connected televisions rather than depending entirely on conventional television carriage.

The audience was becoming less geographically restricted.

The distribution system was still fragmented.

From ESPN3 to ESPN+

The next decade accelerated that transformation.

Streaming platforms became increasingly central to college sports distribution while conferences and universities expanded their own production capabilities.

Conference realignment and changing media agreements added another layer.

Sam Houston underwent its own extraordinary transformation during the same period.

The football program won the NCAA Division I Football Championship in spring 2021.

The university subsequently moved from the Southland Conference to the Western Athletic Conference before making the much larger jump to Conference USA and the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2023.

By 2026, many Sam Houston games could be watched without a viewer being anywhere near Huntsville.

A game no longer needed a traditional national television window to be nationally available through streaming.

That distinction matters.

National availability is not the same thing as national coverage.

Putting a game on a widely accessible streaming platform makes it possible for someone hundreds or thousands of miles away to watch.

It does not guarantee that national newspapers, television networks or major digital publications will assign journalists to independently report on that game.

Streaming removed much of the geographic distribution barrier.

It did not remove competition for attention.

The Newspaper Changed, Too

While universities and conferences gained new methods for reaching audiences directly, another part of the sports-media ecosystem was undergoing its own transformation.

The way Americans consumed local newspaper journalism was changing.

Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of U.S. adults said they received news from local daily newspapers at least sometimes in 2018.

By 2025, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.

The change in how those readers accessed newspapers was even more pronounced.

Among Americans who used local daily newspapers, 54 percent primarily used print editions in 2018 while 43 percent primarily accessed them online.

By 2025, only 30 percent primarily used print, while 68 percent primarily accessed their local daily newspaper digitally.

Those numbers cannot tell us how any particular newspaper staffs its sports department.

Nor should changes in newspaper readership automatically be used to assume that an individual newsroom eliminated reporters or reduced particular beats.

They do establish the changing distribution environment surrounding local journalism.

At the same time, universities, conferences and independent publishers gained increasingly direct ways to reach audiences.

The demand for sports information did not disappear.

Its distribution multiplied into different forms.

One Game, Many Media Systems

Sam Houston’s return to Bowers Stadium against Tulsa offered a snapshot of what that environment looks like today.

The game was carried on ESPN+, with Jason Metko handling play-by-play alongside Harris and Kendra Sheehan reporting from the sideline.

Radio provided another path.

The Bearkat Sports Network broadcast featured Jason Barfield and Brian Adams, with local carriage through KSHU 90.5 FM and digital access through Sam Houston athletics platforms.

KSAM 101.7 provided another local media presence from Bowers.

SiriusXM subscribers could find the game nationally as well, although the service carried Tulsa’s radio feed rather than the Bearkat Sports Network production.

Afterward, an Associated Press report carrying a Huntsville dateline could circulate through publications far beyond Walker County.

Traditional local journalism remained part of the picture.

So did a growing category of independent digital coverage.

Sidelines–Sam Houston, for example, describes itself as independent from the university while maintaining a digital presence focused specifically on Bearkat athletics.

That represents a form of sports coverage that would have been far more difficult to distribute broadly during the early decades of Bowers Stadium.

An outlet no longer needs a printing press, terrestrial transmitter or television station to build an audience around a university athletic program.

None of these media forms completely replaced another.

They accumulated.

A supporter could watch ESPN+, listen to radio coverage, follow social updates during the game, read newspaper or Associated Press coverage afterward and continue discussing the program through independent digital communities.

One football game had become several different media products at once.

Video Courtesy of Hello Huntsville Youtube Channel

Local No Longer Means Nearby

That may be one of the most significant changes of all.

Historically, local media often described both the subject being covered and the geographic community consuming it.

A Huntsville newspaper covered Sam Houston because Sam Houston was in Huntsville.

A Huntsville radio station naturally served listeners within reach of its signal.

Digital distribution increasingly separated those two ideas.

Today, an outlet can be intensely local in subject matter while serving an audience scattered across Texas, the United States or beyond.

A Sam Houston graduate living hundreds of miles from Huntsville can watch many of the same broadcasts, see many of the same photographs and participate in many of the same conversations as someone living a few blocks from campus.

In that environment, “local” increasingly describes what is being covered rather than where everyone consuming the coverage happens to live.

Sam Houston’s evolution does not represent every local sports market.

But it offers a useful case study of a broader change: geographic barriers around sports distribution have weakened while competition for audience attention has intensified.

The local newspaper is no longer competing for attention only with another newspaper, radio station or television station.

That attention can move among ESPN, university-produced content, conference platforms, independent publishers, podcasts, social media and countless other sources.

More distribution does not necessarily mean more journalism.

But it unquestionably means more choices.

Why the Press Box Still Matters

All of this creates an apparent contradiction.

If audiences can follow Sam Houston from almost anywhere, why does a university need increasingly sophisticated physical media infrastructure?

Because digital media is not actually created in the cloud.

It begins somewhere.

Cameras need positions.

Broadcasters need booths.

Production crews need connectivity.

Statistics have to be generated.

Photographers need working areas.

Interviews have to be conducted.

Game operations and broadcast personnel must communicate.

Sam Houston’s rebuilt west side reflects that reality.

The five-level facility includes much more than traditional newspaper workspace.

Its upper levels incorporate broadcast and production functions, game-day operations, coaches’ areas, suites, visiting administration space and dedicated areas for the press.

The modern press box is therefore not a monument to an older media era.

It is infrastructure for the new one.

When Bowers Stadium opened in 1986, geography placed much greater limits on how people could experience Sam Houston football.

Forty years later, fewer people need to be anywhere near Huntsville to follow a Bearkat game.

Yet reaching all of those distant screens, speakers and phones still requires people working somewhere physical.

The digital game still begins somewhere physical.

Harris had worked Sam Houston games during an earlier generation of college sports media.

Now, looking across a facility built for the demands of another generation, he offered a much simpler assessment.

“That is a beautiful press box.”

It was.

But what mattered more was everything now capable of traveling beyond it.

Graphics created with AI-assisted design tools.
Visual concepts, editorial direction, composition, and final creative decisions were developed by Vallano Media.