Inside Division III’s Most Remarkable TV Deal

Cleveland is known for many things: lake views, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Drew Carey. Many college football fans may not realize it is also home to what may be Division III’s best television contract.

Ohio’s over-the-air regional sports network, Rock Entertainment Sports Network, aired 37 John Carroll University sporting events last academic year in football, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and volleyball. The network aired four Blue Streak games live in 2025 after airing four on tape delay in 2024.

Rock Entertainment Sports Network is a venture born out of necessity from the collapse of the Fan Duel Regional Sports Networks. The network is the television home of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Gray Television operates the network, and it has affiliates in the Cleveland and Columbus markets, with plans to expand to Cincinnati. Essentially, it is a throwback to sports broadcasting before the cable boom of the 1980s and 1990s. The network also has cable carriage across the state of Ohio.

John Carroll and Rock Entertainment’s partnership is unique and forward-thinking. The decline of regional sports networks has seen professional sports leagues bring vast amounts of live events to traditional, over-the-air television.

However, college sports have yet to see a transition of this magnitude. Schools below the FBS level face the greatest impact from the loss of regional cable networks needing filler content.

Hence, John Carroll is leading the charge. This type of over-the-air access is almost unmatched across Division III. With Ohio being the cradle of Division III football with programs like Mount Union, Wittenberg, and Oberlin being time-tested household names, one may wonder, “Why John Carroll?” Depending on who you ask, some John Carroll connections in the right place or a desire to create a broadcast talent pipeline may have launched the unique arrangement.

John Carroll head coach and athletic director Brian Polian touted the strong connections John Carroll has in Northeast Ohio when reflecting on the partnership. Polian recalled, “There was a John Carroll alum that worked for the Cleveland Cavaliers and adjacent to the Rock [Entertainment Sports Network] folks that kind of put us together and thought, ‘if they're looking for programming, you guys play a high level of Division III football. Is there a partnership that could be found here?’”

Sometimes, all it takes is being in the right place at the right time, but the Executive Vice President of Rock Entertainment Sports Network, Michael Conley, saw more than just filler content in John Carroll sports. He saw a powerful regional brand.

Conley remarked, “When you think about what John Carroll means to Northeast Ohio, it means more than academics, it means more than athletics. It means it's an important partner in the ecosystem in which we exist. So for us, when we launched this network, it was about giving back and bringing back the celebration of the community aspect of what sports means to, you know, not only the individual people within these institutions, but to the total addressable market as a whole."

The partnership between Rock Entertainment Sports Network and John Carroll was a natural match, but the use of tape delay seems unconventional in the age of the internet and on-demand streaming.

Coach Polian saw the tape-delayed broadcasts in a positive light. He remarked, “Being tape delayed was not ideal, but we had to prove to our partners that we could produce a good product for them, that it was going to be attractive to the eye, that it was going to be seamless in terms of the production that goes into it. For us, there was nothing to be lost, whether it was tape delayed or carried live. If prospective students, not just student athletes, if prospective students happen to be flipping through channels and found our game and saw our logo and saw our student athletes featured, where's the negative in that?”

Rock Entertainment Executive VP Michael Conley reasoned the players and coaches benefited from the tape-delay arrangement, stating, “These players could now go back, and they can watch themselves and see [themselves] celebrated in a way that they don't get to see otherwise.”

John Carroll’s marriage to local, over-the-air television is an intriguing contrast to streaming’s growing takeover of Division III sports. An increasing number of Division III conferences, including John Carroll’s home, the North Coast Athletic Conference, are partnering with FloSports.

The Blue Streaks’ over-the-air partnership gives them a substantial advantage over their conference counterparts and other schools in the region in accessibility. John Carroll is the only NCAC school with a linear TV partnership.

While Coach Polian called the financial benefit of the deal with Rock Entertainment “limited thus far”, he finds its impact to extend beyond mere dollars. He ultimately views a linear television agreement as necessary for recruiting.

“I'm not a believer in putting D3 sports behind a paywall. I think that is short-sighted. I think it shrinks your access to people who want to consume your content. Certainly, it's a barrier when you're reaching prospects. 18-year-olds aren't going to pay to watch games”, Coach Polian argued. Coach Polian also felt that John Carroll was taking the best approach in the long run.

He predicted, “I think we're going to find in a year or two, when the data is really presented. I think whatever short-term financial gain has been made by some of these conferences is going to be lost in terms of exposure and the amount of people that are actually engaging with the content."

Arguably, the greatest benefit of the Rock Entertainment agreement is not the exposure but the development of broadcast production talent at John Carroll. The university produces all of the broadcasts in-house, saving Rock Entertainment money, but also developing future potential employees in the process.

Conley gave insight into this mindset by saying, “We are selfishly invested in the next generation of professionals that are going to be working in this space, and [with] the evolution of technology and everything, we want to build pipelines that [are] going to help us evolve this network over time. And there's no better place to do that than in higher ed with these kids getting experience."

He also detailed that Rock Entertainment Sports Network is in talks with other Ohio schools to build similar partnerships and continue developing broadcast talent within the Buckeye State.

In an age of streaming and overallocation of sporting events, John Carroll and Rock Entertainment Sports’ partnership is a refreshing throwback to a different time. Not only does it bring Division III football to the forefront in Ohio, but it could be the blueprint for other schools in the division.

The quotes came from interviews that will release in the subsequent days. Please subscribe to my podcast, Hardware Pod, linked here to catch them when they come out.