Watching sports on television or from a stadium seat is one thing, but playing sports and experiencing first-hand the thrill of competition can be a whole other ballgame.

To allow collegiate sports fans to fully understand the excitement of a championship, two fan festivals were developed to enhance the NCAA's championship events and give fans a look at what it's like to compete at the highest levels of collegiate athletics.

The NCAA Beyond the Game tour, presented by CBS Sports, is the offical tour and includes five simulated sports areas in addition to several other interactive booths featuring various sports-related activities.

The Coca-Cola Spirit of Champions tour is smaller and more customized, but it also features simulated sporting events and other interactive activities.

Beyond the Game

The Beyond the Game tour allows collegiate sports fans to attempt a lacrosse shot on goal, catch a ball hit to deep left field, dodge a defensive rush to complete a forward pass and row a scull on a river against the clock.

From March through June of this year, the Beyond the Game tour stopped at 13 events and attracted 125,758 visitors. It went to five NCAA championship events, two college campuses and six community events. The tour is expected to make 11 more stops between December 2003 and June 2004.

"I loved the tour," said Kevin Flaherty, a senior at the University of Kansas who took part in the event when it came to his school in the spring and wrote about it for his college paper. "It was a great amount of fun for someone who hasn't played much besides the big three sports of football, basketball and baseball."

Flaherty said before he went through the Beyond the Game tour he knew little about sports like lacrosse or rowing, but he walked away with a greater appreciation for what those student-athletes do.

"I have so much more respect now for the rowers and lacrosse players in particular because I was specifically unskilled at those sports when I tried them," he said. "It was extremely hard to row in time with your partners, and it was awfully tough to catch and shoot a lacrosse ball without previous experience."

And that's an important goal of the tour: To expose fans to sports they may not know much about and promote the full spectrum of NCAA sports.

"The Beyond the Game tour provides CBS and its NCAA corporate champions the opportunity to interact with sports enthusiasts on a grass-roots level," said Ellen Ross, vice-president of promotion marketing for CBS. "It's a terrific platform for CBS Sports, Cingular, Coca-Cola and Pontiac to promote the values of education, sports and sportsmanship to everyone -- from families with young children to college students and alumni -- in communities throughout the country."

NCAA corporate champions support many of the sports' experience zones and provide prizes and give-aways to fans who participate in the event.

In addition to the five sports zones, the CBS Sports "Play by Play" allows fans to select one of seven memorable moments in NCAA championship history and walk away with a DVD of their performance. Selections include the 1992 NCAA Tournament East Region final between Duke and Kentucky and the 1994 NCAA Women's Final Four championship game between North Carolina and Louisiana Tech.

Other features include: The "Pontiac High-Performance Plays" zones, which allow fans to recreate a memorable moment in NCAA history, such as Valparaiso's Bryce Drew's three-pointer at the buzzer in the Crusaders' 70-69 win over Mississippi in the 1998 NCAA tournament; "Champions Theater," which features video highlights; the "Coca-Cola Photo Cafe," which gives fans the opportunity to e-mail a personalized photo to friends and family; and the "Coca-Cola Contour Prize Bottle," where fans have 30 seconds to grab as many tickets for prizes as possible.

Jack Diesing Jr., president of College World Series of Omaha, Inc., the local nonprofit organizing committee of the Division I Baseball Championship, said the Beyond the Game tour was a big hit at that event in June.

"It was a very good add-on for people to experience as they're hanging out around the College World Series," he said. "It was a nice thing to have and it was very interesting, especially for the young people."

Diesing estimated about 70,000 people went through the Beyond the Game tour during the 11-day Men's College World Series. The tour is scheduled to be back at next year's event.

"It certainly met, if not exceeded, my expectations," he said.

Spirit of Champions

In an effort to reach even more people, Coca-Cola, one of the NCAA's corporate champions, developed its own tour to travel to events not reached by the Beyond the Game tour.

"We wanted to have something that was our own that we did with the NCAA that was just Coca-Cola," said Jim Dinkins, managing director of sports marketing for Coca-Cola. "We see this as a way we're investing incremental resources in an event like this to try to take not just a Coca-Cola message, but an NCAA message, to broader people around the country."

The Spirits of Champions tour rolled out in May and has been to seven events. In addition to NCAA championships, this tour has also been to state fairs and other festivals around the country. More than 300,000 people have taken part in the Spirit of Champions tour.

Dinkins said this event is often tailored to fit the events its visiting. For example, he said, at a soccer championship, the main "Field of Champions" would feature a soccer-related activity. Also, he said, Coca-Cola will send out vans promoting some of the activities before the event so people will know to look for the Spirit of Champions tour.

Like the Beyond the Game tour, this tour also has interactive features such as video screens for NCAA games and a booth to
e-mail pictures to friends and family.

"It's been great," Dinkins said of the Spirit of Champions tour. Not only does it promote Coca-Cola, he said, but it provides a "new thought process and a new perception of how fun and exciting the NCAA can be, to try and help their thought process about the NCAA brand, not just the Coca-Cola brand."