NCAA.com will kick-off the 2011 college football season on Thursday with a wide variety of exclusive online features, video and content as part of an effort to expand the site's reach.
Last December Turner Sports relaunched NCAA.com as part of a wide-ranging, 14-year digital partnership with the National Collegiate Athletic Association. That deal set up a joint venture between Turner and NCAA for NCAA Digital, which includes NCAA.com.
Since then, Turner has been looking to build up the site into a major year-round portal for college sports fans. The expanded fall coverage of the 2011 college football season will be a major test of that strategy, which has already seen increased traffic.
Gameday coverage on the site will include NCAA Football Saturday, a dashboard for football content that will offer video highlights from the day's top games, a live blog titled From the Stands, trending topics, expert analysis, fan polls and photos.
NCAA.com also will feature GameCenter, the site's live scoring application, which will allow fans to track key scores and stats from college football, including scoring drives, team and individual real-time statistics, play-by-play logs and social media features.
"It's an exciting week for NCAA.com as we dramatically expand our college football presence and begin to offer fans new and innovative products and content franchises," said Mark Johnson, VP of business operations, Turner Sports, in a statement. "On NCAA.com, fans will be able to enjoy a fully interactive experience while staying informed about their favorite teams throughout the entire college football season."
Beginning Sept. 5, the site will also offer ongoing regular weekly features. Each Monday, for example, the site will offer a new version of the NCAA Football Plays of the Week and on Tuesday the site will offer its weekly NCAA Football Power Rankings.
For the first five days of the season, NCAA.com will also travel to five different states and feature exclusive content from five different games, beginning with the Sept. 1 matchup between West Alabama Tigers vs. South Alabama Jaguars in Mobile, Ala.
