This year’s “Pack the House Challenge” in Division I is further proof that competition breeds success in intercollegiate athletics.

The initiative that encourages institutions to target a selected regular-season game in which to draw a huge crowd ended up attracting more than 559,000 fans to those games this year at the 184 participating schools.

Efforts at Auburn, Bradley, Central Michigan, Gonzaga, Marist, Memphis, Niagara, Notre Dame and Providence produced sell-out crowds. Sixty-three other programs surpassed their single-game attendance high from last year.

The Pack the House Challenge, which is in its second year, recognizes an institution from each conference (as well as from independents) with the best marketing plan based on creativity and increased attendance.

Auburn was selected the overall winner for drawing a record overflow crowd of 12,067 to its January 25 game against Tennessee. A list of all the conference winners can be found here.

Auburn’s plan included outreach to elementary and middle-school districts in Auburn and Opelika, Alabama, that featured more than 6,200 fliers shaped like a popcorn box. Students could detach the bottom portion of flier to gain free admission for one person and keep the top portion to receive a free box of popcorn at the game. Auburn believes the promotion generated about 2,500 additional fans.

Plus, said Mike Hales, the Auburn assistant director of marketing, the promotion included an opportunity for parents to fill out mailing information, which provides a database for an additional set of fans.

Another component of the promotion targeted Auburn students with e-mail blasts and Facebook requests. The result was a special student section along the south baseline that accommodated almost 1,700 fans. In addition, the first 600 fans through the gates received a bobble-head doll of senior guard and all-America candidate DeWanna Bonner.

“A lot of that was a grass-roots, word-of-mouth effort,” Hales said. “We used everything we could to let them know about the game. Overall, we had a tremendous walk-up crowd.”

So much so, in fact, Auburn officials had to turn people away to comply with fire codes.

But Auburn wasn’t the only success story in the Pack the House Challenge.

Northeastern had 2,500 fans attend its home game against cross-town rival Boston University. While that may sound like a modest number, it was a 281-percent increase over the Huskies’ largest crowd for the 2007-08 season.

“It is a great idea to get the women’s basketball team some exposure,” said Chris Marshall, the marketing and promotions coordinator at Northeastern. “It was fun to reach that end product. Our women’s team doesn’t normally see crowds that big, so our players loved it.”

Part of Northeastern’s marketing strategy was to target youth basketball organizations around the state of Massachusetts.

“We also targeted high school kids to get them to buy tickets through Facebook,” Marshall said. “You can do ads that target specific markets.”

Since the game took place the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, Northeastern also partnered with its on-campus food vendor to tap into that theme.

“We had a free dinner for them,” Marshall said. “There was a nice carving station set up for the fans a few days before the holiday.”

Cincinnati also chose its “Pack the House” promotion to take place against a cross-town rival, Xavier. The Bearcats drew 11,079 fans to the December 7 contest.

While this game wasn’t a sellout like a similar promotion in 2007, the success of Cincinnati’s “Pack the House” game was assured a year earlier through an idea of Bill Keating, who is a local philanthropist and former Cincinnati swimmer.

“(Keating) has been on a two-year mission to try to do great things and honor former Cincinnati female student-athletes who didn’t receive letters prior to the early 1980s,” said Leslie Wenert, the assistant director of marketing and fan development at Cincinnati. “He wanted to invite some of these women back on campus and give them their letter. The platform to honor these women centered on our cross-town shootout game with Xavier.”

This season’s promotion was called, “Celebrating Women’s Sports: Proud Past, Bright Future.”

Former Cincinnati female student-athletes Jenny Kemp (swimming), Mary Wineberg (track and field) and Becky Ruehl (diving), who all competed on U.S. Olympic teams, were honored.

“We also recognized some of our current women’s student-athletes that have done great things,” Wenert said. “Many of our other female student-athletes came out on the court at halftime for a presentation.”