At the same time, we can't expect our coaches and teams to be successful if the final decision on whether to recruit an athlete is based on his or her zip code. With early and frequent exposure to UW, we hope that many more Wyoming high school students will decide to enroll at UW for their college careers. Some, no doubt, will join the pantheon of UW sports heroes. Because we want everyone in Wyoming to be as excited about UW athletics as we are, we've tried to increase fan enthusiasm by increasing the number of televised football and basketball games. But television creates its own set of conflicts.
Smaller attendance decreases revenue at the gate.
It also decreases our attractiveness to national television networks and bowl committees. Consequently, while we would like to televise more games within Wyoming, we will only televise home Cowboy games when we believe we can afford to. We will televise away game whenever we can. We think it's fair to say that the new Mountain West Conference seven-year television contract with ESPN will give Wyoming residents more opportunities than ever before to see Cowboy football and basketball games on television. In order to build broader excitement for UW sports, we will continue to explore ways by which we can better market UW athletics.