Gopher Football: The Experience

Welcome back to The Sports Ace, where Little Leaguers who stand, watch and showboat after hitting home runs get benched. And then suspended. No matter what game or tournament they're playing in. (we need to teach kids today to Respect The Game!)

It won't come as a surprise to most of my readers that my beloved Minnesota Golden Gophers are opening a new stadium this fall, back on campus. It's a rare thing these days: a brand new college football stadium. And, as a season ticket holder (and former letterwinner), September 12 will be a happy, happy day indeed.

But why am I most excited about this? Well, it's all about the experience...the ability to be on campus, tailgating, going to pep rallies and parades, hanging out with fellow rubes, being outdoors, establishing new traditions and adapting old ones, etc. If you've been in the Metrodome for a college football game, well, you know what I mean. I marched in the band, and we had to bus it over to the Dome from campus. Talk about an atmosphere killer..."Hey, let's get on the bus!" And even being on the field playing pregame and halftime shows, I could barely hear myself play...to say nothing at all for the people in the seats. Damn those acoustics.

But, thinking about this a bit broader, there is a lesson here that all of us professional marketers (and beyond) need to keep in mind. These days, when word-of-mouth marketing is even more the gold standard than it's ever been, is there a better way to promote/advance your company, product or brand than to get people excited about it through a positive experience? I dare you to find one. An advocate's endorsement carries more weight with a prospective buyer than anything else in their buying decisions. And first-hand knowledge/experience of a product/company/brand will deliver more return business than any other interaction with that product/company/brand.

Congrats to the University on this seminal moment in its history. Ski-U-Mah indeed. And congrats to those who figured out that the continued success of the Gopher football program depended on a common, shared, positive experience with the team...and then did what they needed to do to ensure that experience would take place every fall Saturday at home for the foreseeable future. Let this be a turning point for Gopher Nation, not only on the field but for the good of the University and the state she serves.

I'm out like Sage Rosenfels and Tarvaris Jackson.

Breaking News on Twitter

Welcome back to The Sports Ace, where Erin Andrews and everyone else can live their lives without fear of being videotaped through a peephole. Seriously, throw the book at that sicko(s).

Twitter...it's all the rage these days. Mark Madsen of the Timberwolves told the world he was getting traded. Mark Cuban said goodbye to a player today via Twitter. Ocho Cinco...well, he's being himself. And Drew Rosenhaus incurred the wrath of the Vikings today by Tweeting that Aundrae Allison, a WR (and his client), would be released by 5 p.m. today if not traded before then. Of course, with the Tweet going out, his trade value evaporated and the Vikings had to release him.

For better or worse (I think it's for the better), Twitter and other social media are here to stay in the sports world. Athletes, teams and leagues have unprecedented opportunity to engage their fans and build communities around their teams. And lately, sports figures of all kinds have been using Twitter like in the above examples to break news. What are we to make of this, and what implications does this have on the news cycle of the sports world.

First, now the people doing the Tweeting have the opportunity to break their own news. Basically, this gives them the power to shape the message exactly how they want it to come across, which in the case of some of these examples could be quite helpful/valuable. For example, Drew Rosenhaus, in screwing over the Vikings, protected his client's interests...he did his job. And Mark Madsen was able to break the news of his trade to his fans and thank them for their support. This messenger role has typically been reserved for the media, but technology has enabled these sorts of direct correspondences. As Twitter becomes more mainstream, one has to wonder if these examples could usher in a powerful change in the role of all types of sports media...will their roles change significantly, and - maybe even - will they be needed at all?

Second, it's already starting to prompt a series of policies from teams/leagues regulating how their athletes use Twitter and other sites. If athletes have the power to correspond directly with audiences without a filter or an editor, teams/leagues then should feel the need to exercise some "quality control," for lack of a better term. So teams, just like companies everywhere, are adopting policies governing how their employees use social media, and what they can and cannot say online. The Green Bay Packers just became one of the first sports organizations to do this.

The debate has just begun over whether or not teams should have the right to do this to their players, and how media like Twitter should be integrated into the fabric of professional sports. This is a conversation I'd love to encourage here on The Sports Ace. I can see how athletes could want to use Twitter to build their own fan bases and their own personal brands, but I also don't blame teams for unveiling policies designed to keep their players focused on their jobs. One thing's for sure - it's going to be fun to watch all of this unfold.

Anyways, these are a couple of interesting talkers that I've been thinking about recently. What do you think?

I'm out like Stephon Marbury's marbles.