Big Ten Network documents Fran McCaffery's first-year journey at Iowa

IOWA CITY - Cameras followed Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery from the moment he stepped inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Wednesday through his postgame news conference four hours later.

The cameras filmed him talking to fans and radio broadcaster Gary Dolphin at his weekly radio call-in show on Monday. The film inside those cameras document the life of Iowa's first-year men's basketball coach and his approach toward restoring the program to its previous success.

The Big Ten Network will feature McCaffery as part of its award-winning 30-minute weekly documentary series “The Journey” at 7 p.m. Sunday, just minutes after Iowa's game concludes at Minnesota. The series examines life on and off the basketball court in the Big Ten. Sunday's episode is the second of 10 this year and showcases Minnesota, Purdue and Wisconsin along with Iowa.

Bill Friedman, senior producer for original programming at Big Ten Network, said he took a two-pronged approach toward filming Iowa.

“One is talking a little bit about Coach McCaffery's background at Siena, how he had success at Siena against a Big Ten team when they beat Ohio State in the tournament, and then he built a really good home-court advantage at Siena," Friedman said. "And how when the opportunity came up at Iowa, it was something he couldn't pass up and really jumped at.

“The second thing we're doing is showing how Coach McCaffery is making a real commitment to reach out to fans. We went to his radio show and shot his radio show live on location and talked to (senior) Jarryd Cole a little bit about Coach McCaffery's different coaching philosophy and style in terms of the tempo of play and what he can expect to see from a Fran McCaffery team and how he won him over and his teammates.”

“We thought the logical place to start with Iowa's storyline this year was its change at the top”

“The Journey” was the Big Ten Network's first - and highest-rated - original series and enters its fourth installment since the network's debut in 2007. Initially, the “The Journey” followed individual programs such as Illinois football and Minnesota basketball. But the last two years the series has focused exclusively on the league's 11 men's basketball programs.

“I think one of the advantages of basketball is ... we just feel basketball is a great fit right now for this type of show,” Friedman said. “Part of the reason is the schedule. That sounds simple but that's really what it is. There's kind of constantly games; there's no build up. It's irregular in a good way.

“One of the things we found early in the series with those first two seasons is when we cover the games, we couldn't get them on the air fast enough. That's the thing that this show allows us to do, especially in this day and age when people are tweeting the scores in almost real-time blogging.”

The series concludes following the Big Ten Tournament in March.

“The bigger picture, the goal of this show, is to really document what happens during a Big Ten basketball season,” Friedman said.