National Collegiate Athletic Association |
CommentSeptember 22, 1997
Guest editorial -- New times demand a different approach
BY W. JAMES HOST What is happening today in the marketplace? Some people reading this are probably young enough to think ESPN was always around. Perhaps for others reading this, they remember that there was only one long-distance company and it was called AT&T.
In the past, those three major networks were penetrating 98 percent of the households in the country. When you think about that, all advertisers needed to do was throw money at those three major networks and they penetrated the households. Today, though, those three major networks are reaching just 57 percent of the households. So what's happened with the marketplace? Well, for one, advertisers now have the option of spending money on 100 cable channels or penetrating the marketplace by trying to figure out which demographics they want to target. The fact is, there are so many options out there for corporate America to spend their dollars that the opportunity for corporate marketing and the opportunity to package your product in a different and unique way is certainly here. At the same time, what is happening to our youth group as a result of what has happened with television? I have a daughter who is 32 and another daughter who is 19. I guarantee you the 19-year-old isn't anywhere close to understanding the habits or understanding the marketing aspect as the one who is 32. Let me explain that more. My 32-year-old always read the paper and knew fundamentally what was going on. The 19-year-old has never picked up the newspaper. She can tell me about rock climbing, backpacking, camping, white-water rafting and snow boarding. She can tell me about all these things and I have no clue what she is talking about. But you know what? The 19-year-old has never been in a football stadium or a basketball arena at her institution. And you know what? A whole lot of the others who are involved at her age group have never been in the football stadium or basketball arena. My older daughter never missed a game. My other daughter, who is 19, which is 14 years difference, hasn't been to a game. How many athletics administrators have researched what's happening with students today? How will fund-raising be affected when their current students become alumni? How many athletics administrators have researched the parents to try to find out what's happening with our youngsters and what is happening with their grandchildren? One of the great football institutions in the country, which has sold out 147 straight football games, has an average age of 70 amongst the fans in its best seats. There is another great institution that's involved in basketball, and its average age in the great seats, the mid-court seats, is 68 years old. What does that tell athletics administrators? It tells us that sooner or later, that money is going to dry up. Frederick Wilcox said that progress always involves risk. You can't steal second base while you are keeping your foot on first base. I think to a great degree, college athletics over the last 10 to 15 years has kept its foot on first base in a lot of areas. Athletics departments' competition is not each other in the marketplace. Competition for athletics departments is all of those who are out there that have money and are going into leisure time activities, NASCAR or all the other competitive elements that are out there. For those athletics administrators who are concerned about what the other institution is doing, you had better be figuring out a way to partner with the other institution, because your demographics and those things that corporate America is looking for is the collective aspect of institutions. No more can we have the Georgia Techs of the world worrying about what the Georgias are doing or vice-versa. The Georgia Techs and the Georgias better figure out how they can partner together. They can battle on the field, but they had better figure out how to partner things in their own geographical areas, and figure out how to capture more of corporate America's dollars because that's where the business is going. This past December in New York, there was a historic meeting attended by 10 Division I conference commissioners, the executive directors of the American Football Coaches Association and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, and Cedric Dempsey of the NCAA. These organizations had never sat down in one room and talked about marketing the game of college football together, an initiative begun by AFCA and NACDA. The NFL does, the NBA does, all of the leagues do, but there never has been one component marketing strategy, an umbrella strategy if you will, to market college athletics on a national basis. Cedric Dempsey said, "I will see that this new initiative can utilize the NCAA mark." All the conferences said they would throw in and see if there wasn't a way that we could work under this umbrella. We have been around to most major institutions through the conferences to talk about the same thing, with NACDA's help, with the American Football Coaches Association's help and so on. The objective is that we have to do something about this game, which is one of the major, if not the major, revenue generators in most institutions in terms of college athletics. Frightening figures Today, in the state of Alabama, the number of schools playing high-school football compared to 10 years ago is approximately 20 percent less. There is a T-shirt in Dallas that Steve Hatchell, the commissioner of the Big Twelve Conference, saw that read, "Friends don't let friends play football." Think that's scary? Think athletics administrators have a job to do toward turning this attitude around? College football is an American game; this is not a game that was born overseas or born some other place in the world. This game was born in America and this game is just as much of a fabric of this society as any game can possibly be. Athletics departments that have sold-out football stadiums now have to understand that this is not always going to exist unless programs come up with a method and a vehicle to better promote the game. We are not talking about promoting the game to get more people into the stadiums today. Athletics departments need to be going back to grassroots initiatives and figuring out ways to go back into the high schools and go back to young people and talk about what a great game college football is -- to get more participation and get more interest from those groups. As a result of that December meeting, we have worked over the past several months with all the vital component groups that exist in college athletics that have to do with promoting the game. The revenue from the licensing of this initiative and the revenue from the corporate marketing from this is all going into a pot that is going to be turned around and used to promote the game. It's not going back to institutions, it's not going anywhere else. It's going to be used to promote the game for the first time. Hopefully, in a period of five years, we will see the attitude with young people beginning to turn. Four-part program This initiative known as NCAA Football is not the only thing we are going to be doing in marketing college athletics over the next five years. I call it the four legs of the stool. The second leg will be NCAA Basketball. Athletics administrators face many of the same issues there. Then, we are going to talk about women's athletics, because the biggest single marketing opportunity that we have in college athletics today is women's athletics and the building of women's athletics in the college community. We are going to work on that as one of the legs of the stool, and then NCAA Olympic Sports. What we commonly have called nonrevenue sports, the opportunity that young student-athletes have to participate in all realms of sports. There are 81 NCAA championships, and over the next couple of years we are going to be working on every level to promote the sports that make up these championships. Many have heard this before, but I want to quote it again because I think it is important. Vince Lombardi said, "Winning is not a sometime thing, it's an all-time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit and unfortunately, so is losing." Sometimes we look at things and think of things and work on things because it's habit. We don't use the intensity level that we should use to make sure that we want to win. For the first time in college athletics, everybody is singing from the same sheet of music. Everybody wants to win, and these initiatives are a major step forward for college athletics. We must work together, create alliances with each other, talk to each other, fight on the field, fight on the court, fight in the baseball stadium, fight on the track, but pull our resources together. It is nuts that an athletics department is out raising funds and separately you have an engineering school raising funds, too. It all ought to be pooled. Every institution should have its own asset base and every institution should be raising, using and leveraging all of its assets. What is a better affinity group than an institution of higher education? After World War II, one percent of the nation's population were college graduates; today, its about 21 percent. The group has doubled in the last 10 years. Those are great, positive statistics. How do you use them, how do you build it, how do you do it? How do you cause all this to come together? Create asset bases for every institution, create asset bases for every athletics department, create all the assets you have got. You've got, and we've got, more assets to sell corporate America than any professional league or professional team ever will have. The fact that we should refuse to accept that and that we should be winning, should be the thing. Victor Hugo said, "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come." I am convinced that this is an idea -- NCAA Football, and behind it eventually all other NCAA sports -- whose time has come. "Did" is a word of achievement, "won't" is a word of retreat, "might" is a word of bereavement, "can't" is a word of defeat, "ought" is a word of duty, "try" is a word of honor, "will" is a word of beauty and "can" is a word of power. The Power of One -- collegiate athletics. Letter to the Editor -- New format needed for women's tennisOn two occasions -- at the 1996 NCAA championships at Florida State University and at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association coaches convention -- a straw vote showed 90 percent support for an eight-team/eight-regional format for the NCAA Division I Women's Tennis Championships. Despite this overwhelming support, the NCAA Men's and Women's Tennis Committee keeps pushing for a four-team/16-regional format. The purpose of this letter is not to get into a full-scale debate. That already has taken place at the coaches meetings. However, here are just a few of the reasons that coaches overwhelmingly support the eight-team/eight-regional concept.
It is our feeling that the majority of Division I coaches favor an eight-team/eight-regional format. We know that the teams that traditionally qualify for the tournament are overwhelmingly in favor of this format. We ask that the NCAA Men's and Women's Tennis Committee and the NCAA Championships/Competition Cabinet consider our wishes in this matter. Coaches at 61 Division I Institutions Sponsoring Women's Tennis Opinions -- Nature of wrestling provides good lessons for life
Kurt Angle, Olympic gold-medal wrestler "Wrestlers remain humble. "Wrestlers are good sports. What you find in a sport like wrestling is that you're always going to lose (some matches); nobody ever wins all the time. You learn how to be humble. When you see the WWF and they're very cocky and arrogant, that's not a true wrestler. "If I wanted to start up some form of company, I would hire all wrestlers. The reason is because of their work ethic, their focus, their dedication and also their motivation. Discipline is the key in wrestling. And that's the key to success in life in anything you do."
Initial-eligibility standards
Mike Jarvis, men's basketball coach Discussing how NCAA initial-eligibility standards affect minorities: "Is it something that people really want balanced? Most of the time things like that are by design. It's like projects -- they're by design, and they're not done to benefit the poor. We've got to start dealing with this reality, and communities have to start not only taking back the streets but taking back the schools. The only way it's going to happen is by the people doing it.... "What the numbers point out is what all of us are saying, that the (standardized tests) are economically biased, and they're also culturally biased because the majority of poor people happen to be minorities. It was predicted and it is a danger. But college is a business, and in order for them to keep the doors open, they need paying customers, and the majority of customers aren't poor people."
Turning pro early
Kelvin Sampson, men's basketball coach Discussing plans by the Continental Basketball Association to encourage players to join CBA teams out of high school: "Where does it all end? These kids are recruited all their lives, by shoe companies, by agents, by coaches, and they never understand what real life is. Now, we have the CBA out there recruiting kids. I don't like this idea. To me, it's akin to child labor."
Mike Boaz, sports editor "As you can imagine, (the CBA action) has caused quite a storm between the 'stay in school' and 'pay for play' forces currently found in college basketball. "It's a tough call because there are two images. There is the kid who enters college to play sports and discovers that learning is fun. I have met more than a few of these in my long career, by the way. Then there is the kid who treats the university like a nice hotel with free food and willing women available through room service. I keep running into way too many who have no more business attending a university than I do a ballet class. "Why are they there? Why are they even on a campus where education supposedly is so important that tests are given to reward those who worked hard in high school just for the chance to further their knowledge? "Over the years, I have come to believe that it's almost time for universities to apply the same guidelines they use to admit the rest of the student body to the athletics department. If a player would get into the school normally, that's fine. If he or she cannot, so be it. "That may be harsh. It is not, however, any harsher than spending a winter in Sioux Falls, South Dakota."
Early signing period
Jim McCullough, associate commissioner Discussing the idea of establishing an early signing period for football players, similar to the one that is available for basketball players: "That idea has come up many, many times. Our conference would like it, but the rest of the nation doesn't feel they want to have a signing period during the fall. They feel that because that's their regular season, it doesn't give them an opportunity to coach their own team and to recruit. "The other reason is that the South and Far West get recruited a lot by Northern and Midwestern teams, and they wouldn't have the opportunity to contact players and get in their early visits."
Title IX
Kathleen LaRose, senior associate athletics director Discussing cost factors that complicate comparisons on spending by gender: "It costs over $1,000 to equip a football player. It's top-of-the-line stuff. We do the same thing with a (female) volleyball player. But we're talking about kneepads. "We're providing the best darn kneepads we can find, but they cost a heck of a lot less than helmets and shoulder pads. "...We have to find new sources of revenue, we have to be more creative, and we have to juggle what we have and maybe reassign some of the dollars. We have to take a real hard look at ourselves and see if what we're doing is right."
Disciplining athletes
Bo Bahnsen, compliance officer "Any time you take the ball out of their hands, you stand a good chance of controlling them in the future. It has to help as long as the punishment is consistent and the player understands the reasons why.... "When we get these athletes here, we get to see first-hand some of the problems that come with them. We go over the rules, but sometimes they break them. It's a tough job, especially because we have to deal with a lot of issues. We will work with them, but they also have to realize that we mean business."
Jeremy N. Foley, athletics director "Our job is not to sit back and wait for the NCAA to come in and tell us what to do. Our athletes and coaches are expected to set and follow the rules. When our kids misbehave, they sit. Our athletes are held to a higher standard." |
Take a moment and think about the fact that just 15 years ago, only 15 years ago, there were three major networks. Today, there are the three major networks, which are now four, and about to become five and maybe six.