At 3 p.m. Saturday – game day – Jack Miller Stadium was almost entirely vacant. The Ashland Eagles were set to play against the Ferris State Bulldogs and there was no doubt that by the 7 p.m. kickoff the stands would be bursting with dedicated fans decked out in purple and gold ready to cheer the Eagles to a victory.

However, at 3 p.m. the iron gates were latched shut and the stadium was seemingly noiseless apart from the idle groaning of the titanium bleachers.

At 4 p.m., men in white AU t-shirts moseyed around the field, gesturing randomly, and casually chatting with their hands on their hips.

At 5:30 p.m., football players jogged out on the field to perfect passes and stretch out their hamstrings.

Around 6 p.m., the cheerleaders strolled onto the sidelines to practice stunts and rehearse cheers.

Finally, at 7 p.m., enthusiastic fans sat impatiently in the stands eagerly awaiting kickoff.

But four hours earlier at 3 p.m., way back towards the far end zone, behind the bleachers, sat a massive white van, ambitious producers and directors, and a crew of ready and willing Journalism and Digital Media students.

This game was different than the rest for the JDM crew. Not only would it be the first game of the season, and not necessarily because they were doing anything differently than they normally do, but because Saturday’s game would be the first AU football game ever to be broadcast on live TV and the second game streamed online.

“I’m going to take everything we do at an ESPN show, just scale it down,” John Skrada, the operations manager for the JDM department, said. “It’s going to be cut the same way, called the same way.”

The main reason AU is going to start streaming all of the games online is because the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference demanded it.

“The league instituted it,” said Skrada. “Not much is different, but now a company that handles sports streaming for other colleges has put a pipeline in place. They were already covering the games for JDM but now they’re just taking the same footage and streaming it out over the Internet.”

Skrada’s work didn’t begin on game day.

“This is why my week’s been so crazy,” he said. “We actually had to install a transmitter and receiver.”

Two days before the game Skrada and a team of workers went on top of the AU library to begin installation; because Ashland is in a low area the signal wouldn’t reach Mansfield directly from the stadium.

“We had to bounce the signal from the stadium, over to the library and they’re bouncing it from there all the way to Mansfield and then it’s going online,” Skrada said.

It was the day before the big game and Skrada was swiftly connecting cables and arranging wires as he answered questions. There are five cameras and two replay systems.

“We have three cameras up top,” he said. “One at each 30-35-yard line outside of the second floor of the press box near the stairways, and the third one is on top of the press box at the 50-yard line. The other two camera positions are at the back of each of the end zones by the near hash marks of the playing field.

“Essentially,” he said, “what you would see live on WMFD (during the game) is exactly what you would see on the Internet.”

The JDM students sat on the bleachers chatting and eating pizza, relaxing before the action started. They wore professional-looking black t-shirts with bold white letters spelling out “CREW” on the backs. Later they would be busy checking microphones, adjusting filters for sunset, recording, and making sure everything ran smoothly.

“Student positions are as follows: five camera operators, one graphics operator, one audio operator, one parabolic dish operator,” Skrada said. “For the next game we will be adding a student to run replays.”

The JDM students would have their hands full by kickoff. If they hadn’t already applied graphics, set up cameras, designated roles, and more, pizza wouldn’t have been a possibility.

Just a few feet away sat John Skrada’s famous white van. It looked simple, calm, and ordinary from the outside, but in reality, it is where all of the production magic happens. Numerous screens, multicolored buttons, control panels, and wires covered the van’s interior and were visible when the back was propped open.

Dan Sevic, Skrada’s business partner and a professional sports director, and his colleagues scrambled around inside the van preparing for the game.

Sevic said the van is, “essentially a live mobile television production control room.” The information from the van goes three places: WMFD Live, the Internet and, eventually, AUTV20. Inside the truck the crew sets up graphics for scores and sponsors, accesses replay footage, and monitors all of the cameras filming the game.

Around 4 p.m. someone yelled, “There’s nothing in the viewfinder for camera three!” and Sevic went to investigate.  Like any other line of work, the producers at AU run into their fair share of problems.

The closer to the game they get, the more problems arise. The ultimate goal is just to cover the game and make sure they are getting accurate information back about penalties, fouls, etc.

“Whatever problems we run into during the game we just have to work through,” Sevic said. “If we lose a camera, we’re short a camera, if a microphone dies, we try to work around it. When you take this and multiply it by 50 there’s probably four or five people waiting for something to break.”

But with a small crew and much, much less equipment they don’t have that luxury. Sevic isn’t too bothered by all of the obstacles of being a producer when he is at AU, although lightning during a game is enough to make him cringe. He particularly enjoys working with the AU JDM students.

“When I work with the students there’s a little more of an appreciation,” he said “They have fun, they make mistakes; they’re not always going to be the best. But what it can turn into is five years from now I see one of these guys and they’re like, ‘hey I’m doing this’ or ‘I’m doing that.’ Then this was all worth it.”

Around 6 p.m. the back door of the white van was lowered to about a foot above the van’s base. Legs of a folding chair, a half-drank water bottle, multiple pairs of tennis shoes and stray wires could be seen from the opening. Muffled conversation and hurried tones could just barely be heard over the excited action of the football game going on just a few feet away.

The JDM students were now spaced out at different sections of the stadium doing their jobs. Their cheerful smiles replaced with concentration and focus as they stared into enormous cameras, listened tentatively into oversized black headphones, stood steadily with fishbowl-like devices and tried not to be distracted by the thrilling game going on right in front of them.

Much like in football, the JDM crew had to use teamwork and play to each other’s strengths or the outcome wouldn’t have been successful. The students and producers were working as hard and dedicatedly as the football players out on the field, only they were working towards different goals. The football players worked towards a touchdown, and ultimately a victory, and the JDM crew towards a successfully recorded, cut and called football game.

The online streaming of the game can be found at http://www1.ashland.edu/cas/jdm-department-home/streaming.