Anyone who knows me well knows how big of a Notre Dame football fan I am. That means I consume essentially every piece of Notre Dame football media available between games. Between the various blogs and videos, I spend much free time on reliving and looking ahead to each weeks games.
This past week, Notre Dame hosted and beat Michigan State 17-13. Like most weeks WatchND, Notre Dame's official Youtube channel, posted a highlight video of the game.
The video above is clearly Notre Dame propaganda produced by the university. It serves a purpose to create a positive image of both the football team and its players.
For example TJ Jones' 2nd quarter TD catch, (beginning at the 2:09 mark) is replayed 4 different times. There are many reasons for doing this. Firstly, it was an important play in the game, the Irish's first touchdown of the game. Secondly, it was tremendous footwork by TJ to keep his feet in bounds. This is illustrated greatly in takes two through four as the camera angle changes to focus on the back of the end zone.
Another thing that is apparent while watching the video is who made it and who controls the narrative. Michigan State is shown making good or positive plays three times. All three times it was a single clip of the Spartan scoring play, two field goals and a touchdown.
A good play must be defined in order to discuss it. For my purpose, it means either a positive gaining passing or rushing on offense, a scoring play or return of either a punt or kick off of more than 20 yards, and either a negative play or forced turnover on defense.
Besides the aforementioned three MSU scoring plays, every other play on the highlight video is a positive or good Notre Dame play. The plays that are shown multiple times are plays that the football program and video editors decided was especially important and notable. Plays shown more than once include a first down catch to the 2 yard line by Corey Robinson, a touchdown catch by TJ Jones, a 7 yard touchdown run by Cam McDaniel, and the game sealing first down run up the middle McDaniel late in the 4th quarter.
By focusing solely on the Notre Dame plays, the Irish players are highlighted and focused on. The entire media clamor around Notre Dame football can certainly be a positive thing for the team especially in a format such as this video where the team holds the narrative. In recruiting, videos like these can be tools to help convince high school players to play at ND. Players get more exposure and notoriety from these highlight videos and a school like Notre Dame presents many opportunities like these to get your name and face out to the general public.
NBC also gets a lift from these videos. All footage that is used in the highlight reel is from NBC cameras and their logo is prominently featured throughout the film. As the main tv partner with Notre Dame, NBC telecasts all Notre Dame home games. Any advertising, especially cheap or even likely free advertising like this is certainly beneficially for them.
Notre Dame gets a lot out of these videos, but so do I. I had an easy access to replays of important plays of a game that I attended.
Go Irish! Beat Sooners!
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