Feb 01, 2024
St. Bonaventure University students will be making a buzz at the Super Bowl again this year. That’s “buzz” as in WSBU 88.3 FM The Buzz, the student-run campus radio station.
Six SBU students will join the throng of media professionals from around the world who will flock to Las Vegas next week for Super Bowl LVIII. The students will travel to Vegas on Saturday and spend the week before the Feb. 11 game on radio row, conducting interviews and preparing features for nightly three-hour broadcasts on The Buzz.
WSBU is one of a select few college radio stations among dozens of national and international news outlets welcomed to radio row during Super Bowl Week. This marks the sixth time since 2018 that The Buzz has sent a team to radio row. (Access wasn’t allowed in 2021 because of COVID protocols.)
It will be a busy week of early mornings and long days that extend into the evening hours as the SBU team races deadline each day to collect and package programming for the nightly broadcasts, but the reward is being immersed in one of the country’s most popular sports and entertainment spectacles.
“It’s really cool just to see it and be part of it all,” said Steven Stutz, a senior marketing major from Buffalo who has been with WSBU since he was a freshman and station manager for the past year and a half. “We’ll attend Monday’s Opening Night (formerly known as Media Day) when you get to see the teams and players. We’ll set up our microphone with all the others and get to ask questions.”
Radio row is set up in the Las Vegas Convention Center, a short distance from Allegiant Stadium, where the game will be played. The students will arrive each day at 8 a.m. and spend the next eight hours conducting interviews and packaging content for broadcast.
Some guests are already scheduled, Stutz said, including four NFL players, a sports betting and prediction expert, and the president of a slap boxing league in Nevada.
Other guests will include former players and other notables who “table hop” down radio row, as well as other people the SBU team can snag for an interview. “We’ll pick interesting people out of the crowd and pretty much just play with it and see where it goes,” Stutz said.
During the day Stutz will be packaging content for each evening’s radio broadcasts, which will air from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday on WSBU 88.3 FM. The live stream may be accessed from the station’s website:
https://wsbufm.com/.
The students, who will be missing a week of classes back on campus, will work online each night to keep up with their studies. “Professors know this is a great opportunity and are excited for us. They’re very good about making accommodations,” Stutz said.
Students conducted fundraisers and sold on-air ads to help pay for the trip.
Other students making the journey include Thomas Baia, a senior from Wilson, New York; Isaac Howson, a junior from Buffalo, New York; Stephen Scheppner, a junior from Erie, Pennsylvania; Nathan Solomon, a senior from Freeville, New York; and Jonathan Walker, a senior from Webster, New York. All are sports media majors in the Jandoli School of Communication.
They’ll return to campus on Saturday, Feb. 10, in time to be among the three in four Americans expected to watch the Super Bowl on TV.
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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure University is a community committed to transforming the lives of our students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a lifelong commitment to service and citizenship. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).