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Telling Their Story: Athletics Communications and the New Media Landscape
College athletics has always been a storytelling enterprise. What has changed is the number of platforms, expectations of audiences, and media resources available to departments at every level of competition. The two institutions highlighted here have approached the new media landscape from very different institutional contexts, but both have recognized the same fundamental truth: the ability to tell a team’s story well is not a nice-to-have. It is central to recruiting, community connection, revenue, and the student-athlete experience itself.
What one person with creativity, consistency, and a clear vision can build is evident at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, where Director of Athletic Communications Mike Abasolo has transformed a traditional sports information operation into a full multimedia enterprise. Under his leadership, Southwestern launched Game Day Live, which provides live pregame coverage at every home football game; Courtside Countdown, offering live pregame coverage for home women’s and men’s basketball games; and Builder Sports Live, a weekly show dedicated to telling the stories of Southwestern Athletics throughout the academic year. Away-game basketball previews, coach and student-athlete interviews, and live postgame coverage rounded out the operation. Southwestern became the first KCAC institution to routinely produce a live pregame football show at every home game and one of the few conference institutions providing consistent live pregame basketball coverage.
The numbers reflect a genuine audience built over time: 121,279 total views across 171 streamed events, averaging 709 views per event, with more than 80% of them coming live—a figure that indicates real-time audiences choosing to watch, not archived content occasionally browsed. Graduate assistants and student workers are not simply helping behind the scenes; they are gaining real experience in broadcasting, production, social media, and live event operations, developing career-ready skills in a professional media environment built specifically around the programs they represent.
The University of California operates at a different scale—30 varsity sports and the financial pressures of modern high-major athletics—but was grappling with a version of the same underlying challenge: a fragmented model of communications, marketing, and creative services that was no longer adequate for the environment shaped by revenue sharing, NIL, the transfer portal, and mounting pressure to develop new and sustainable revenue streams. Strawberry Creek Studios is the result.
Rather than simply asking each existing unit to perform its traditional function more efficiently, Cal reimagined leadership, responsibilities, and team structures around two shared objectives: authentic storytelling and revenue generation. The initiative is built around four strategic pillars—student-athlete recruitment and retention; brand and revenue partnerships; donor, fan, and alumni engagement; and elevating the Cal and UC Berkeley brand—each of which is now served by integrated teams rather than siloed departments.
Strawberry Creek Studios also enables a 365-day approach to audience development: rather than concentrating storytelling around six or seven home football games, the model treats recruiting classes, transfer additions, student-athlete personalities, and offseason access as year-round opportunities to build affinity and commercial value.
In today’s recruiting environment, prospects evaluate not only coaching and facilities but how an institution will help them build their personal brand and develop NIL opportunities. By making individualized storytelling and brand development part of the athlete experience from the moment they arrive, Strawberry Creek Studios becomes both a retention tool and a competitive differentiator—proof that in modern college athletics, the communications operation is no longer just supporting the program. It is helping to build it.
