Terrific piece of reporting by Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun. It really illuminates how teams, universities, players can help shift opinions in the modern media world.

Barker writes:

The University of Maryland anticipated most fans would initially react “emotionally and negatively” to last year’s decision to join the Big Ten Conference. So the school sought to influence the debate with a plan to lobby media pundits and plant positive comments into fan message boards.

Scores of documents and emails, obtained by The Baltimore Sun in response to a Public Information Act request, detail a public relations strategy that was as secret as the Big Ten negotiations themselves.

Maryland announced on Nov. 19, 2012, that it would depart the Atlantic Coast Conference after 60 years and join the Big Ten, effective in July 2014. It, as school officials predicted, led to fans expressing sadness and anger over losing popular ACC-related traditions such as facing rivals Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.

The public relations campaign was meant to help turn the tide in favor of the move. It included hiring a corporate communications consultant to help shape the message and also working to prevent news of the negotiations from getting out before the move was imminent.

“So far, this is unfolding just as we expected,” Brian Ullmann, the university’s assistant vice president for marketing and communications, wrote in an email to deputy athletic director Nathan Pine on Nov. 18, one day after negotiations on the impending move were disclosed in the media. “We knew that in the absence of our messaging during this initial stage, most fans would react emotionally and negatively. That has occurred and clearly the message boards and comments sections skew heavily negative. Several of us placed comments on boards and media sites last night to help balance it out.”

The Scott Van Pelt angle:

In the days before the Big Ten discussions were made public, Maryland and its consultants considered how to release the story.

“Scott Van Pelt is a powerful voice in the media and a loyal UMD grad,” public relations consultant John Maroon wrote to a Maryland communications official before the story broke. “It would be in our best interest to let Van Pelt break the story and talk about all of the positives.”

Van Pelt is an ESPN television and radio commentator who attended Maryland and remains involved with the university.

In an interview Wednesday, Maroon said his thinking was that Van Pelt had a “national platform” and could have helped introduce a conference move expected to produce “varying emotions.”

News of Maryland’s negotiations with the Big Ten was reported on ESPN.com under the bylines of several reporters, but not Van Pelt’s.

“The consultants provided many suggestions, of which that [giving the story to Van Pelt] was one,” Pine said in his email to The Sun on Wednesday. “We decided not to pursue it.”

Van Pelt could not immediately be reached for comment.

There is a telling scene in Schooled in which UCLA running back Johnathan Franklin is shown playing a college football video game. And who is carrying the ball? None other than Franklin–at least the animated version.

Franklin, of course, lights up, knowing full well he won’t see a penny for his image being used.

“It really showed how he felt at that moment,” said producer Andrew Muscato.

Schooled: The Price of College Sports is full of many moments that examine what college sports is (big-money) and what it also is too often (failing athletes). The documentary debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Epix, a premium cable channel that is following the mode of HBO and Showtime of using sports as a vehicle to widen its audience. The film also is available at epixhd.com,  iTunes and will be out as a DVD.

Former baseball manager Bobby Valentine is listed as the executive producer; the film is being done by his production company. Muscato said it was inspired by Taylor Branch’s 2011 article in The Atlantic detailing how athletes are being, well, schooled. Branch also is one of the executive producers in the film.

“Taylor made it more than just about money,” Muscato said. “He made sense. As soon as he said yes (to doing the film), we hit the ground running.”

Muscato’s goal was to show “how the sausage gets made.” Indeed, it can be a meat grinder for those involved.

The biggest challenge, he said, was getting athletes, past and present, to agree to be interviewed. A break-through occurred when Arian Foster, formerly of Tennessee and now with Houston, decided to participate.

Foster told the story of being hungry as a student-athlete, requiring him to get money on the side while at Tennessee. His comments created early headlines for the film.

“He kept telling us how hungry he was,” Muscato said. “He was projected to be a second-round pick (after his junior year). If he was so hungry, why did he stay in school? We kept pressing him on that, and finally he said, ‘Yeah, I got paid.’ It all made sense. We knew we got something special.”

And there’s much more here, and it goes beyond money. There is a compelling segment about the academic angle and problems at North Carolina. It isn’t news that schools compromise standards and just push athletes through the system. However, it becomes more vivid when faces and names are attached.

“If (getting a scholarship) is the compensation for the athletes, fine,” Muscato said. “Then make sure their education isn’t compromised. Make sure they are getting the education as promised.”

The film concludes with an extensive discussion of whether athletes should be paid. ESPN analyst Jay Bilas stands out, chiding college administrators who say a proper payment system can’t be put in place. Bilas said that shouldn’t be an excuse.

“The problem is the athletes don’t have a voice,” Muscato said. “They need a seat at the table. Right now, you have one group telling other people, ‘We know what’s right for you. This is the way it should be done.'”

The NCAA declined to have a current representative be featured in the film. Why, if they think why they are doing is right?

Ultimately, the NCAA and people involved in college sports have major accountability problems on many levels, according to the film. Again, that won’t come as a great shock.

What makes this documentary work is, well, seeing how the sausage gets made.

“We hope people will look at college sports differently and wonder if they do enough for the athletes,” Muscato said. “We hope this furthers the national conversation.”