"It Just Means More?": Depiction of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in ESPN Signing Day Coverage (2015-2018)

National Signing Day (NSD) is a mediated spectacle that, for decades, was reserved annually for the first Wednesday of February. Its purpose is to highlight college football's "second season" where schools battle for sometimes three and four years with the hope of signing a top high school player to a National Letter of Intent (NLI). Nearly forty years ago, Rooney explained that in some regions of the country—especially in the South—NSD could generate more media coverage than a school's major bowl game appearance and was likely to trump any sport that might be playing on that day on any campus and lead to varying feelings of triumph and disappointment (2). With the advent of online and social media, this "silly season" of player decommits, flips, and performances full of props and trickery can result in hostile fan resentment or elated celebration (Love et al. 241-43). In the end, the day signals the conclusion of a player's successful high school career as he transitions to what he—and the school signing him—hopes will be an All-American career leading to playing days in the National Football League.

Websites such as Rivals.com and 247sports.com generate significant traffic throughout the season and signing day. However, it is ESPN who owns the performative spectacle and media narratives for NSD. Before the NCAA allowed an early signing period in December 2017, ESPN would annually televise eleven consecutive hours of programming devoted to player announcements, college coach reactions, and analysts debating how a given signee would not only fit into a school's roster, but also how it affected a school's cumulative ranking. As show host Joe Tessitore said in the opening montage for the February 2017 broadcast, NSD is "what fuels the sport, boyhood dreams, high school heroes, and the soon-to-be big man on campus." It also provides a direct correlation between recruiting victories and on-field success (Bergman and Logan 597).

Tessitore's opening statement was followed by a story outlining how and why Alabama and Clemson reached consecutive national title games: the answer was recruiting. As reporter Matt Schick said, despite Clemson dethroning Alabama in 2017 on the field, "there is no question who remains the king of recruiting." His story describes that thirty-six of Alabama's twodeep roster of forty-four players in 2017 were ESPN 300 recruits. Following this story, a map depicts that eight of ESPN's sixteen on-site reporters are at SEC schools for the entire day of coverage. This glimpse of perceived SEC favoritism in ESPN's coverage provides the impetus for this research.

Given research that correlates successful recruiting with winning—and the recent dominance of SEC schools in both areas—this study examines forty-two hours of NSD coverage on ESPN between 2015-2018. It explores two overarching topics: total television exposure and descriptions of recruits' traits. First, does ESPN favor SEC schools over non-SEC schools by providing a disproportionate amount of coverage to athletes signing with SEC schools, ESPN analysts discussing these players, and by displaying graphics of SEC recruiting class statistics more frequently as a non-verbal form of favoritism? Second, when comparing attributions of athletic (a) successes, (b) failures, and (c) physicality/personality, do ESPN personalities taxonomically favor players signing with SEC schools versus non-SEC schools?

Literature Review

Conceptions of Media Framing

Framing theory aids understanding how and why information reaches heightened circulation in the public sphere. Goffman divides frames into two categories: primary and social. Primary frames occur at an individual level to "locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences" (21). Social frameworks provide context to these occurrences, influencing both motive and intent. Thus, framing offers a method to synthesize potentially fragmented, minute moments and analyze them to determine whether they collectively form meaningful interactions or events (Goffman 21).

Media play a significant role in organizing information for individual consumption and perception as it becomes...