There are many ways to watch an Ashland Eagles football game, and this year there is a new option for fans of Eagle Nation. 

The university has signed a contract with Sports Time Ohio to broadcast all five Eagle home football games on their regional sports network. 

The broadcast will be a mix of Journalism and Digital Media students from AU and professionals. This experience will give students an opportunity to work with professionals in the field to gain knowledge, grow their skills, and make connections with others in the field. 

The games will be on a tape delay and will play on the Sunday evening following the game. 

Broadcast professional Brandon Wells will call play-by-play alongside and senior Derek Wood who will be color commentating while senior Kate Siefert will be on the sideline.

The season opener against Mercyhurst was broadcast on STO on Sept. 4 at 8 p.m. and came in with an average rating of 0.5 in the Cleveland area. This means that the game was seen in 40,000 homes in Cleveland alone.

The AU football game beat out ESPN, ESPN-2, and FS-1 in Cleveland on Sunday night. 

The Journalism and Digital Media department at AU produced record content last year and says they hope to do even more this year. The contract with STO will greatly increase the content produced as the department hopes to start broadcasting other sports than just football.

“We want to be the predominant collegiate Journalism program, not only in Northeast Ohio, but in the state,” said Journalism and Digitial Media chairman Dave McCoy. 

On Sept. 11 the game against Wayne State will be shown at 7 p.m. on STO. The following week on Sept. 18 the Findlay game will be played back at 6pm.

On Oct. 9 and Nov. 6 the games against Northwood and Walsh will air on STO at a time to be determined.