Brown Earns First ESPN/ESPN2 Appearance in 36 Years

Centreville Bank Stadium will be the epicenter of the FCS World on Friday, September 25th, when Brown takes on Harvard for the Ivy League’s first Friday night telecast of the season. The Ivy League released its six-game linear television schedule yesterday, with Brown-Harvard kicking off the slate. The game recently moved to Pawtucket’s sparkling new USL stadium and now has a television stage to match.

Perhaps more notably, the game received an ESPN2 slot, the only Ivy League game to receive such a bump. The move is not unprecedented, with the Cornell-Harvard game receiving an ESPN2 slot in 2023 and 2024. However, the early end of the MLB Wild Card Series bumped those games from ESPNU to ESPN2. This is the first time in the Ivy League’s ESPN contract that the network has selected a game for ESPN2 before the season. While this will be Harvard’s third game on ESPN/ESPN2 since 2018, it will be Brown’s first since 1990.

Brown has not appeared on either of the main ESPN networks since the Ivy League’s original contract with ESPN from 1988 to 1990. The Bears played in the very first game of the contract, their 1988 season opener versus Yale. The two schools played to a back-and-forth 24-24 tie, as Dick Badalato ran for 99 yards and a pair of touchdowns for the Bears. Unfortunately, this was the apex of the season for Brown. The Bears finished the 1988 season 0-9-1, a major regression from their 7-3 1987 finish.

This winless season led ESPN to leave Brown off its 1989 selection of Ivy League games. The Ivy League recommended that ESPN broadcast Brown’s season opener once again, but the network opted to air Princeton-Dartmouth, one of three appearances Princeton landed that season. The inclusion of a game featuring a non-Ivy League school, Holy Cross, added more insult to injury. Brown head coach John Rosenberg’s reaction to the snub made national headlines.

Nonetheless, Brown returned to the ESPN airwaves in 1990. ESPN selected Brown’s October 27 game against Cornell as part of that season’s Ivy League schedule. The Bears would lose to Cornell 34-7 after turning the ball over five times, including a 99-yard interception return touchdown by Cornell’s Mark Broderick. To date, this is the last time Brown has appeared on either main ESPN network. The move to ESPN2 may not seem like much in this age of streaming, but it brings the game to a broader audience. Nielsen estimates that ESPN2 reaches over 20 million more households than ESPNU.

Win or lose, Brown’s appearance on ESPN2 is already a grandiose occasion for the school. The neutral site and rare bump to one of the main ESPN outlets give the Ivy League the closest thing to a bowl game it has had in years.