At 22 feet wide and 12 feet tall, the new, state-of-the-art digital video scoreboard at Titan Stadium will bring a dynamic surge of in-game information and entertainment to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s premier sports complex.
But, behind the scenes, there is no discounting the high-impact, hands-on, educational tool the massive video monitor will be for a team of creative, tech-savvy students.
On game days, it will take a seven-person crew to command the new “Titan Vision” video board, with that team of students working like a finely-tuned television production crew maximizing the board’s game information and marketing potential.
“It’s a seven-person crew in order to make it work,” said UW Oshkosh Director of Athletics Darryl Sims. “We’ll have a production meeting the day of an event to go over everything that will go onto the video board – much like a TV station. The executive director runs the production and follows the script. So, everything’s mapped out, and everybody knows. Everybody is on headsets, they are on the ground in the crow’s nest, in the press box and on the field with cameras… We’re happy we can offer this up (for students).”
Titan Vision makes its debut at the Sept. 3 UW Oshkosh football home opener against Central College (IA) at the Oshkosh Sports Complex.
The video scoreboard brings an entirely new dimension of spectator information and interaction to Titan Stadium. For years, the venue made do with a conventional electric bulb scoreboard, offering limited game information, advertising opportunities and entertainment value to a game time audience.
The new video board changes the game entirely, Sims said.
“It gives us an opportunity to really enhance the whole experience between messages we can create to share with our fan base about what’s going on with Titan Athletics, what’s going on with merchandise sales and what’s happening with our student athletes and our campus as a whole,” he said.
Sims said the board will function as most modern stadium video boards do: As a kind of large TV screen augmenting on the field play and stadium entertainment. Board operational crews will use it to replay game highlights just after they happen. Video board operators tested that function Wisconsin Football Coaches Association high school all-star football game this July, Sims said.
Titan Athletics will continue exploring ways to seamlessly weave the video board into men’s and women’s soccer matches and is developing a system to make the feature available to Oshkosh high school athletic teams that use Titan Stadium, Sims said.
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