Built To Last

After starting as a small project, Sports Link has developed into an industry leader

Chris Taylor, ’96 MA ’98, remembers canvassing the halls looking for students to join Sports Link, a new endeavor at Ball State University. Mr. Taylor had just returned to his alma mater from Nashville and was given a 10-month contract to get the program started.

Now, 15 years later, only a handful from the hundreds of applicants each year are selected to join this elite, award-winning program—which has roughly 60 students participating any given year.

Housed within the College of Communication, Information, and Media’s Department of Media, Sports Link began in 2008 as an Immersive Learning pilot program in which students would tell stories and produce video content as the modern industry was just beginning to take shape.

Today, with its impressive track record of helping graduates find meaningful sports production work at top-rated organizations—including ESPN, Turner Sports, FOX Sports, Tupelo Raycom Sports, Indy Car, NASCAR, MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and NCAA athletics departments across the country—Sports Link is a built-to-last program.

“We started as an extracurricular club, and then we added the academic component behind it,” said Mr. Taylor, senior director of Sports Production. “Students were enrolled in a class and earning academic credit for it, and we started to see those numbers grow. We were pulling people out of the hallway to build this thing in the early years, and then about four or five years into it, we realized we could actually turn it into a major and into an academic track.”

What helped launch the program, according to Mr. Taylor, was having key supporters on campus, including former President Jo Ann M. Gora, and Dr. Joe Misiewicz, Emeritus Chair of the Department of Telecommunications. Support also came from coaches, student-athletes, and others in the Athletics Department, with whom Mr. Taylor had familiarity after having served as a communications director in the department in the years prior.

“We also had great support and access from Athletics to tell stories and produce events,” he said.

At the beginning of Sports Link, the program received space in the lower level of the Ball Communications building—a small studio and an area to hold classes, plus the necessary equipment to produce Sports Link’s work.

The program got its first taste of success early after winning a student Emmy Award for a feature story on a men’s basketball player at Ball State. During the next decade, students began earning professional Emmys and college sports video group awards—something that has become a regular annual occurrence.

Since the program’s inception, students in Sports Link have earned more than 200 state, national, and international awards for sports production—including 43 Emmy and/or student production awards and 14 Sports Video Group and Best of College Sports Media awards.

The program has also garnered the respect of the nation’s most prominent outlets. Martin Khodabakhshian, a director and producer at ESPN since 2001, has seen firsthand how Sports Link’s students evolve in their time in the program.

“I think they’re elite,” Mr. Khodabakhshian said. “I wish I had a program like Sports Link when I was going to school and learning the craft. The students are ahead of the game in terms of video production and storytelling. They ask very smart questions. They want to take educated risks in their storytelling opportunities.

“They’re shooting videos, editing, and building graphics among many other responsibilities. Because of that, they’re very equipped to take on anything in the sports production and storytelling world.”

Through the years, the program has grown immensely after receiving expanded studio space and high-end equipment to stay ahead of industry trends. Sports Link took that support and ran with it, creating the nation’s first and only sports production academic track.

“There are schools who have sports broadcasting and there are schools who have sports journalism,” Mr. Taylor said. “We have elements of both of those—that’s part of who we are and what we do—but we’re the first and still the only four-year academic track (in the country) in the production aspect of sports.”

With the ever-changing field, students from the Sports Link program produce around 50 live events per year, including those that appear on ESPN digital and various Sports Link platforms. Opportunities to work on production crews for live events, as well as tell stories about various Ball State Athletics programs can happen right away when a student steps on campus.

“What I think is courageous about the program currently is the way that it gives students the opportunity from the moment they walk in the door to craft, write, and tell the stories,” said Dr. Paaige Turner, dean of the College of Communication, Information, and Media (CCIM).

Dr. Turner recalls an early memory about the program when she began serving as dean of CCIM.

“I was at a basketball game, and there is a first-semester, first-year student down there shooting pictures of the basketball team,” she said. “That takes a lot of courage to hand over equipment to a student and to hand over the story to the students. And even more importantly, it takes courage on the part of the student to step up and say they will cover and tell a story in their first week or first month.

“I believe the reason they have that courage is because our faculty and staff are going to be there every step of the way, so if the story doesn’t turn out the way they hoped that time, it will the next time. We are committed to them as learners,” Dr. Turner said.

As further evidence of Sports Link’s evolving reach and courageous nature, the program in 2019 successfully developed a unique partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales to create an immersive learning, global storytelling project called “Transatlantic Storytelling.” Through the partnership, students created a feature-length documentary in 2020. The 76-minute film received national and international airtime, including linear television in the United Kingdom.

Additionally, the two programs agreed to a five-year understanding, which recognizes the mutual benefits of an educational partnership and will lead to collaboration, opportunities, and faculty and student engagement.

While Sports Link has been ahead of its time and ambitious in its scope, it has a keen eye to the future.

“We’re going to be seeing students expand more into multi-platform production,” Dr. Turner said. “Originally, it would have been photos or the packages where they’re showcasing individual athletes. But now, what we’re seeing is layers of information through the use of media vehicles such as Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram, as well as the short-form documentary that tells the athlete’s story.

“The future is over-the-top programming or multi-channel storytelling. Our students learn to tell outstanding stories and to use all media channels.”

Mr. Taylor points out one key element that has been the backbone of the program as it looks to the future.

“We’re in such a society that is so instant and instant gratification. You’re scrolling, you’re sliding, or you’re flipping channels and the story gets lost,” Mr. Taylor explained. “But what we’re really seeing into this new era, is that storytelling has always been there. Long-form storytelling is growing in terms of documentaries and programming.

“That’s the thing that separates us truly from everyone else: we can go take a story on a Ball State student-athlete, and we can go layers and layers deep about a story to make this a memorable piece of content that serves multiple purposes.”