By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The telecast of today's football game between Miami University and the University of Cincinnati has been canceled due to the strike by custodial, food service and maintenance workers that began on the Miami campus early Friday morning.

The game was scheduled to be telecast by ESPN Plus and shown locally on WSTR-TV (Channel 64).

"The people working the game wouldn't cross the picket lines," Miami athletic director Brad Bates said Friday.

Miami officials had hoped the telecast would go on after the workers' union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract late Thursday afternoon.

But when the membership rejected the agreement, the telecast was scrapped late Thursday night.

"We got the people producing the game to wait as long as they possibly could," Bates said. "We scrambled yesterday afternoon to secure a truck and a crew and had it locked up. When it fell through, that's when it became official that the game would not be televised."