Missouri alum Hall finds a home in Big Ten
Big Ten Network anchor Mike Hall answers six questions about himself, the network, and his role on it.
Q. Where did you go to high school?
A. Glenbard West, Class of 2000.
Q. You do realize you've jumped from one station (ESPNU) not carried by Comcast cable in Chicago to another?
A. Hopefully for not much longer will that be the case. One of the funny things is my buddies were saying, "We're finally going to get to see you." And I was like, "Yeah, soon … soon."
Q. On its first Saturday, the Big Ten Network carried college football's game of the day (Michigan-Appalachian State), but a Big Ten team suffered one of the most embarrassing losses ever. Was that good or bad for the BTN?
A. I think it's tremendous. I don't believe our stance is we're a shill for the conference, we're going to be biased and barely touch on it and move on and talk about how Ohio State beat Youngstown State. The point is we're a television network and a major, mammoth event happened in our first game on air.
Q. Tell us about your role on the network?
A. Friday Night Tailgate will be my signature show. I'll probably do Big Ten Tonight, our station's signature show, a couple nights a week. I'll do this coaches Q&A show where we gather the best quotes from the coaches' press conferences every week and put them into an hour show. In basketball, things might be a little different.
Q. Would you support Missouri, your alma mater, becoming the Big Ten's 12th team?
A. I don't know. I think it would be interesting. But I don't know if that would make my life easier as a Missouri fan. Because then in football we'd have to play Ohio State and Michigan and Wisconsin and Purdue and Penn State. It's kind of nice facing Kansas and Iowa State every year. I'm not sure if I'm necessarily a fan of that yet.
Q. What are the Big Ten Network's chances of long-term success?
A. It's already a success according to the people we talk to. You should hear the coaches and the players from the Olympic sports when they find out their games are going to be on TV and we want to interview them before the game.
Subscription-wise, we're in 17 million homes for our launch. That's enormous. Do we want to get more? Yeah. The more good press we get about "Tailgate" and the more Appalachian State-Michigan games are on our air, it's only going to continue to help.