Michigan Stadium, home of the 2023 national champion Wolverines, you know why it is nicknamed "The Big House." At the largest sports stadium in the United States and the third largest globally, the university has a continual need to elevate the fan experience. The school’s sports production team upgraded multiple sports facilities on campus, most notably Michigan Stadium with the help of CTI and Canare, among a slew of others.
Systems integrator CTI installed Canare 32MDST-4U patch panels to monitor all the feeds going in and out of the production team’s video routers, which is crucial in this type of SDI router environment. The University of Michigan production team is led by assistant athletic director for broadcasting and production Collin McCarty, and director of game presentation and fan experience Jake Stocker.
[A (San Francisco) Giants-Sized Audio Makeover]
I wanted to have everything patchable to ensure that we can work around problems in case other equipment goes down, and the Canare patch panels allow us to do that,” explained McCarty. “When we need to do quick checks, we can patch into monitors or quickly route around problems, if necessary, to provide fast fixes, which has proven to be very helpful. One of our switches went down during a recent soccer game and we used the Canare patch panels to very swiftly route to another feed and it was fixed within a few minutes.”
With Michigan Stadium and its sports teams being so prominent, the gear that is used is vital to guaranteeing smooth game-day coverage. “Canare is the safety net needed to ensure there is never any fallout. With so much on the line, our production teams cannot risk system failure. Canare provides peace of mind that no matter what, the game goes on,” said Ryan Brodie, CTI branch director for broadcast productions.
