Marshall athletic director Mike Hamrick and his staff took a look around the college athletics broadcast landscape and glimpsed into the future. In some places, it wasn't a pretty sight.
The conference, through its latest two-year deal, will earn only a fraction of what it did in previous deals. And with Fox Sports out of the group, the challenge to get eyes on the product got even more difficult.
Marshall athletic officials weren't waiting for a miracle, weren't sitting around waiting for a magic spell to be cast to make everything all better. The time came, Hamrick said, to get creative.
"When I saw we weren't going to get the exposure and the revenue we'd been getting for years and years, I said we've got to figure out a way to do this ourselves," he said.
There will be plenty of ways to watch Marshall sports in the future, just not always in the traditional manner. Call it thinking outside the cable box.
The athletic program's willingness to try something new - and at the same time investing other things new - are what Hamrick believes will keep eyes on the Thundering Herd.
The Marshall football team owns a bit of broadcast history. It hosted the first college football game streamed live on Facebook. That came through a partnership between Facebook and Stadium, the conglomeration of Campus Insiders, 120 Sports and the American Sports Network.
The Facebook broadcast had the look of a traditionally televised college football game, but viewers logged on to the social media juggernaut to watch. And plenty did. Hamrick said his game garnered about 760,000 views on Facebook. They might not have watched the entire game, but those eyes were fixed to the screen at least part of the time.
Marshall will have two more games broadcast over Stadium's Facebook page - Oct. 28 versus Florida International and November 18 at the University of Texas San Antonio. Two more, Sept. 30 at Cincinnati and Oct. 14 versus Old Dominion, will be broadcast on another streaming network, ESPN3. The Herd already played North Carolina State on ESPN3.
There will be four games on traditional television. The Herd's Oct.20 game will be on ESPN2, its Nov. 3 game at Florida Atlantic will be on CBS Sports Network, its Nov. 11 game versus Western Kentucky will be on beIN Sports and its Nov. 25 game versus Southern Mississippi will be on Stadium.
But the goal is to get every game in front of some sort of camera, and that's where Marshall is putting its money where its mouth is. The university has invested nearly $500,000 in broadcast equipment and is building a production and broadcast studio to introduce "HerdVision," the university's in-house broadcast outfit.
"When we get everything worked out, the quality will be at a level where it will ESPN3 quality," Hamrick said. "And we'll have the ability to put anything we want on Facebook, Twitter and cable."
It allows Marshall to broadcast not just football, but men's and women's basketball and Olympic sports as well, sports that find it even more difficult to find television real estate. Some content will be free. Some Marshall plans to put behind what Hamrick says will be a "very reasonably priced" paywall through CUSA.tv. Then the university can gain revenue through subscription fees and possibly extra advertising.
"My son lives in Portland, Oregon," Hamrick said. "He's watched all three of our football games - the first one on Facebook, the second one on ESPN3, the third on HerdVision. He was able to watch all three of our games, and the way it looks right now, he'll be able to watch all 12 of our games."
Marshall fans got their first taste of HerdVision with its broadcast of the Marshall-Kent State game. The broadcast wasn't without stumbles. The picture froze just before halftime and viewers missed Marshall's first touchdown of the game. Hamrick said there likely will be a few glitches along the way as the channel takes its first steps into broadcast. But glitches can get fixed.
And it's a much better scenario than standing pat and waiting for conference TV deals to rebound. That probably won't happen. Major sports networks are already looking for places to save a few bucks. Recently came the announcement that the upcoming ACC Network will not be based in Charlotte, North Carolina, the epicenter of the league, but in ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.
Is that a major thing? Probably not, but it's a sign that a network like ESPN isn't blindly throwing around dollars like it used to. And this is the conference that houses the defending NCAA football and men's basketball national champions. If the purse strings tighten there, what becomes of smaller conferences like Conference USA and the Sun Belt?
The solution is to not worry so much about traditional means of broadcast and follow three letters: DIY.
Now as Marshall looks to its broadcast future, it's a much rosier picture.
"If you don't stay ahead of the game, then you're going to get left behind," Hamrick said. "[Staying ahead] is what I believe we've done here and it's only going to get better."