The Individual Sport Team Coverage on NCAA Division I Athletic Department Web Sites

Abstract

The creation of athletic web sites have become commonplace for athletic departments across the country in today's intercollegiate athletic setting (NCAA Members, 2006). Beyond basic promotional benefits, web sites are critical because they provide athletic programs with the unique ability to build brand equity in their overall product through the provision of equitable coverage to each of the teams housed within their department. The purpose of the current study was to identify the individual team coverage provided on NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic web sites (<i>n</i> = 20) during the three sport seasons (Fall, Winter, and Spring) featured during the academic school year. Overall, from an equity perspective, the results demonstrated that men's and women's basketball received significantly more article and photograph coverage when in comparison to the teams that received negative coverage differences. In contrast, when analyzing the coverage from a financial standpoint, the results confirmed that men's basketball and men's football were underrepresented when in comparison to the remaining 16 nonrevenue teams included in the study.