As of Fall 2026, the National Esports Collegiate Conference (NECC) has launched its Second Stream initiative: an opportunity for collegiate esports casters to commentate on official league games. Second Stream’s first season is starting by showcasing students from the University of Oklahoma and Paradise Valley Community College.
Second Stream gives college students the opportunity to cast esports matches from colleges all over the league, which allows these colleges to have airtime even if they don’t have a dedicated production team.
Members of the NECC governing board came up with the program idea and approached OU and Paradise Valley specifically. Sam Graziano, the OU Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation (ECCI) Dynamic Media Coordinator, was excited to be approached for this program.
“(NECC) came up with our program and Paradise Valley as two specific programs with dedicated production initiatives that would work well for what they’re trying to do,” Graziano said.
Second Stream’s inaugural semester is a test run to determine how successful the program would be for future semesters with an expanded roster of collegiate programs. For now, OU Esports is producing biweekly matches, with Paradise Valley casting for the other week of matches.
OU Esports is currently only streaming NECC Valorant matches, but if the program proves successful, this could expand in the future.
“Adam (Choles) and TinyShiny handpick the matches that we’re doing,” Graziano said. “They’re trying to focus on matches between schools that don’t get on stream very often.”
Graziano is excited for the skills OU Esports casters can learn, as well as any future opportunities this program could bring.
“I hope they take out some quality information that they can put forward in their own casting to expand their portfolios,” Graziano said. “I really want to see how TinyShiny works with our casters and what she does to further their skills.”
Graziano admits that, historically, OU ECCI hasn’t had many opportunities to grow its casters’ skills. Himself and many of his previous leads have been more experienced and focused on the technical side of streaming: production and observation. Casting is equally as important as the other two sides of streaming, and with this added experience, OU ECCI’s casters will grow more skilled.
NECC’s use of vMix, a live video streaming software, is another big adjustment for OU ECCI. ECCI typically uses Streamlabs and OBS as its main avenues of recording.
“We’ve always planned to move over to vMix,” Graziano said. “It’s just an expensive piece of software. I didn’t want to switch because I have so much on my plate and didn’t want to add learning vMix to it.”
Second Stream is a few weeks into its trial run, and it is going well so far. OU Esports streams every other Monday until the end of the Fall 2026 semester.
“TinyShiny was really impressed with our casters, Eli and Caden,” Graziano said. “I think there’s real value in a student-run production program because, at the end of the day, what is esports if nobody’s watching?”
NECC Second Stream is still in its early stages, but stay tuned for further developments as the semester progresses.
