It was easy back in the early 2000s to follow coverage of the Marist men’s and women’s basketball teams. All you had to do was pick up a local paper, such as the Poughkeepsie Journal, the Times Herald-Record, or the Daily Freeman, and flip to the sports section.
Suddenly, the coverage disappeared.
Before Mike Ferraro became the assistant athletic director at his alma mater, he worked for the Poughkeepsie Journal as a freelance reporter during his senior year at Marist. He observed the intense competition local papers went through to get the best coverage of the MAAC conference.
22 years later, Ferraro has transitioned to the other side of Marist media as a representative of the athletic department. He observed how the coverage of the mid-major conference took a large dip in beat reporting in the mid-2000s from professional outlets. Journalism simply became too expensive for many publications, leading to cuts.
“I think what it turned into is that resources became more scarce last decade. It was tough to have dedicated people,” said Ferraro.
This led to a glaring lack of exposure for teams in the MAAC, including Marist. Since that period in the early 2010s, the growth of social media has benefited the conference, with increasing coverage from obsessive sports fans and aspiring student journalists in recent years.
Despite the opportunities to cover various games both at the McCann Center and on the road at other MAAC schools, Ferraro saw coverage of the Red Foxes dwindle since moving on from the Poughkeepsie Journal. By the time he switched to the sports information department at Marist in 2006, the Poughkeepsie Journal began to cover fewer and fewer games, only sending a reporter to important home games. This was especially true for coverage the Marist women’s basketball team received during head coach Brian Giorgis’s plethora of NCAA tournament bids.
“The one thing I got to see in my time at the journal is that people would leave and their spots weren’t getting filled,” said Ferraro.
Ferraro observed most teams from the MAAC had a dedicated beat reporter. While the Poughkeepsie Journal and others did provide their fair share of coverage on Marist, the Buffalo News had a set reporter for Canisius College and Niagara University at the same time, and the Connecticut Post had a similar setup for Fairfield University.
While print journalism began to abandon coverage of the MAAC, the internet became a more popular place for people to write and post blogs. Jaden Daly, a sports management graduate from St. John’s, saw an opportunity.
A play-by-play announcer at his alma mater, he started a blog in 2009 titled “A Daily Dose of Hoops.” He originally started the blog to cover his alma mater, St. John’s, yet he yearned to expand his coverage and become a well-rounded college basketball writer.
In 2011, he saw an opportunity to begin covering the MAAC. Numerous schools in the MAAC, along with other New York mid-major teams like Wagner and Long Island University, did not have a dedicated beat writer covering basketball games.
“Not only did I enjoy covering it, but half the time I found myself watching better basketball games than I did when covering the Big East,” said Daly.
Daly has now covered the conference for 12 years, amassing over 4,000,000 views on his site and 9,000 followers on his X account. He’s had a rotating staff of contributors who have helped fill the void of coverage for mid-major basketball schools, making articles available online for the “niche” audience of die-hard fans and school alumni.
Though Daly has increased his audience and journalism experience while covering the sport he loves, there’s an obvious catch to covering schools like the MAAC.
“People like to talk about how the industry is dying and how it doesn’t pay well,” said Daly. “The second part is definitely true. But building relationships with players and coaches at this level is something you don’t get covering the Big East [or] covering the Big 10, where you have major daily outlets to take up most of the spotlight.”
Daly has barely made a dime off his writing, yet his website does not have a paywall nor any advertisements, which he describes as being “by design.”
“I do 17, 18, 19-hour days, more often than not during the year,” said Daly. “When you get to be as old as I am, it starts to take a toll on you. But it’s a labor of love. There’s nothing I’d rather do and I don’t even make money off of my site. For pure love of the game.”
Daly’s day job as a freelance broadcaster allows him to finance his travels, which are the most expensive part of covering numerous teams. Come NCAA tournament time, Daly takes a hiatus from his job to dedicate his time to covering various schools across the country. The flexibility in Daly’s schedule makes covering the MAAC possible, even if he doesn’t profit from it. Despite this financial situation, Daly thinks mid-major beats are tailor-made for students at their respective schools.
“For a young [sports] journalist, covering a mid-major is the best way you can get access to doing your job better, building relationships with players and coaches, and getting the experience you need to make it in the industry.”
In recent years, Daly’s audience has largely originated from social media, specifically the account he made for the blog itself. Both Ferraro and Daly mentioned that social media has also helped increase student coverage, helping pass the baton to the new wave of student journalists.
Hailing from White Plains, New York, Sam Federman has a life-long sports obsession that began as early as he could remember. During high school, he began honing in on college basketball, watching games on television in the post-COVID NCAA season. The superfan went to 53 college games alone last year.
“I told myself… ‘I should go to college basketball games when they happen.’ And then I thought to myself, maybe I could get credentialed and write about them and talk to coaches and all that, what the hell else would I do?” said Federman.
In his senior year of high school, Federman became so involved in the MAAC that he decided to write a season preview while getting in contact with coaches from the conference, a preview that totaled 45 pages of player and team analysis. As a freshman at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse, his preview totaled 81 pages, with quotes from every head coach in the MAAC, projected standings, storylines and more.
“I have priorities of teams to watch, things to do that aren’t college basketball, which sounds crazy because college basketball is the greatest thing ever,” said Federman. “I do have to do other things.”
It takes an obsession like Federman’s (and Daly’s) to cover the amount of basketball games they have without any reimbursement. While Daly has the support of his day job, Federman had financial support from his parents to travel to games in the New York metropolitan area. He does it for a similar reason to Daly: the void of coverage.
The conference itself has benefitted from a boost in storylines for recent years; these include the Saint Peter’s men’s basketball team’s Sweet Sixteen two seasons ago, as well as a stint from notorious national champion and NBA head coach Rick Pitino at Iona. This season, Marist alumni and MAAC commissioner Travis Tellotocci revived the in-person media day for men’s and women’s basketball in Atlantic City for the first time in 12 years, a sign of a potential increase in interest in the MAAC.
“If you’re being reactive, you’re waiting for the next Sweet 16 run, or the next Hall of Fame coach to end up in this conference, which may or may not happen again,” said Ferraro.
Media coverage of the MAAC has shifted from professional publications competing for coverage to blog sites and student journalists dominating mid-majors. Social media and dedication to the niche audience of a mid-major conference like the MAAC has survived thanks to the dedication of journalists and fans alike finding a void to fill.
Edited by Marley Pope and Luke Sassa
Graphic by Gavin Hard; Photos from Marist Athletics
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