How to watch the UVA Hoops season opener: It starts with $30

How is it possible, in this Year of our COVID-19, that a college basketball game involving the #4 team in the country is only available by paying $30 to something called FloHoops?

That’s the situation with the season opener for #4 Virginia on Wednesday.

The 2 p.m. season opener against Maine is only available if you plunk down $30 for FloHoops, a streaming service that you’ve never heard of, wouldn’t otherwise care about, and certainly won’t ever need again after about 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Yeah, you could listen to the game on the radio.

You could also just skip it altogether, which is what most of you are going to do.

I first heard about this from a regular reader who brought up the broadcast issue in the vein of asking me for my FloHoops password.

I just assumed, naively, it turns out, that someone among the many broadcasters that I already pay for would pick up the game.

But looking at my Xfinity program guide for Wednesday afternoon, I have the option to watch Fairfield-Providence on FS1, North Carolina A&T-Illinois on the Big Ten Network, Memphis-St. Mary’s on ESPN2, Drake-Kansas State on ESPNU.

And then over at the ACC Network, which I pay extra for, through YouTube TV, 2 p.m. Wednesday features the North Florida-NC State women’s hoops matchup.

I’m not complaining about this for me. I can write off the extra costs as business expenses, according to my accountant, J. Samuel Dewey, of the firm Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.

Bada bing.

Times are tough for a lot of folks, with unemployment still double what it was at the beginning of COVID-19, and the prospects at least in the near-term not looking much better.

I get it that times are tough for college athletics programs, so I hope that a few of the bucks I plunk down for the one-time use of FloHoops funnels back to the university.

I can guess that a lot of y’all who won’t be able to justify $30 for one game given the circumstances are just going to be left out on Wednesday.

And that sucks, considering how many of us have been so looking forward to seeing our guys tip things off.

Story by Chris Graham