Saturday’s ESPN360 broadcast Syracuse-Wake Forest season opener will be available on the Orange Television Network and can be seen in all residence halls or any campus television, the university announced in a news release Friday afternoon.

Thus ends a week-long saga of whether the game would be available to SU students. ESPN and Time Warner never reached a deal to carry ESPN360. The game is still only available to Verizon DSL subscribers in the Syracuse area. Students with a Verizon e-mail and password from their hometowns may access the broadcast.

The broadcast will begin at 6 p.m. on OTN Channel 2. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m.

‘We’re thrilled that the Syracuse University campus will be able to watch the season opener on the Orange Television Network,’ SU athletic director Daryl Gross said in the news release. ‘We really appreciate the effort that went into pulling this together over the past week.’

On Tuesday, Paul Melvin, a spokesman for ESPN, said there was a plan in place to make ESPN360 available to students on campus. But the plan fell apart Wednesday when ESPN and the Syracuse Information Technology and Services department were unable to set up a secure connection.

‘The main issue became not jeopardizing the university’s network system for this weekend,’ assistant athletic director for athletic communications Sue Edson said Wednesday.

But talks resumed Thursday between ESPN and the university.

‘When I left (Wednesday) night I thought it wasn’t going to work,’ Edson said at 6 p.m. Thursday and as reported in Friday’s print edition of The Daily Orange. ‘(Thursday) when I came in to work the tech people got together again and thought of some other ideas to pursue.’

The last Syracuse game not televised was Nov. 12, 2005, against South Florida. The last road game unavailable on television was a September trip to Virginia in 2004.

Return to dailyorange.com for updates

Published on September 1, 2006 at 12:00 pm