2 ideas to improve Gopher football - need feedback

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diefirma

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Read with care if you are a member of the Athletic Directors office or your head might explode!

Here are two easy to implement ideas to improve the Gopher Football experience. I am posting them here because I don't have Fleck's or Coyle's emails. I am hoping someone much better connected than I am can pass these suggestions along. All feedback welcome.

Players break their butts all year. They deserve recognition for their hard work and accomplishments

PLEASE! have printed programs listing players and their numbers. Yes, I know “people can look up the player’s number on their phone” This is simply wrong - not as a factual matter but as a practical matter. Looking something up on your phone is too slow.

Fan A, who has been texting with a friend, notices an especially athletic move by a Gopher player and wonders who it might be. Fan A then switches to his browser, goes to GopherSports.com, waits for it to load, clicks on the Sports tab and waits for it to load, goes to Football and waits for that page to load, goes to Roster and waits for it to load and then scrolls to number 26 and learns the athletic play was made by Zack Evans.

Fan B sees the same athletic move, glances down at his program, and sees player 26 is Zack Evans.

While Fan A was looking at his phone, Zack Evans ran for a touchdown. Fan A missed the entire run. Fan B never missed a bit of the action.

A printed program does not have to be expensive. A minimal program could simply be a 17” by 11” folded in half giving 4 sides to print on. A few more sheets of paper could yield a 12 or 16 printable sides giving room for players for both teams plus room for a few ads. Perhaps the same volunteer groups that sell concessions could sell the programs and make a buck or two for their organization. Perhaps this could be a NIL opportunity for Dinky Town Athletes.

OR

If the printed programs could not be approved then, at least, have someone lay out a nice PDF of a program that fans could download and print on their home computers.


Raise Program Awareness

Hire / recruit a / some journalism student(s) to write multiple articles per week concerning Gopher football. I would think $100 per article would attract some good writers interested in the program.
Examples;

Student spotlight - student with interesting / demanding major
Player of the week - players who flashed during last game
Opponent preview -
Coach spotlight - background, interests outside of football
Misc - anything else that might be of interest

Send via email to ALL newspapers, sports radio stations, TV sports departments, and perhaps high school coaches in Minnesota, |Western Wisconsin, Northern Iowa, and Eastern North and South Dakota. Send to all ticket holders that want to sign up. Email is very low cost, even a paid internship is very low cost.

Minnesota Newspaper Association has a low cost press release service which would be a quick and easy way to get Gopher Football news out to all of Minnesota. https://mna.org/services/press-release-service/

One press release to 260 Minnesota newspapers, 111 Radio stations and 14 TV stations. The newspapers alone have a circulation reaching 1.6 Million. Cost is $350 per press release or, newspapers only, $175. These costs are peanuts for a big time football program. Even if only 1% of the newspaper readers are interested that is still 16,000 potential fans at a cost of about 10 cents per fan.

Again, All feedback welcome.
 

Thanks for putting thought into ideas to promote Gopher football.

For the roster, there's a printable version here. The video board/replay does a decent job of covering who's handling the ball, but I admit it's not great for noting who some of the away-from-the-ball players are, like linemen and DBs.

I haven't been to a home game in a couple years. Are the big glossy printed programs still sold?

I think that targeting radio and local print media are going to reach people who are already aware of Gopher football and either follow us or they don't. Gophers need to get young people hyped about the team, especially students under 18, and the current undergrads. I think we should fish where the fish are and that means things like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

I don't have a magical strategy for social media that the U hasn't tried but that's where the eyes of most of the Gophers' market are at.
 

I know Ohio State currently has printed game programs for sale at each home game. Are you telling me that Minnesota does not?

Ads in sports programs are a huge money maker if you have someone who can sell. The $5.00 or $10 or whatever the souvenir program costs now, pays for the printing. Ohio State sells them for $20 plus $12 shipping after the fact.

Ads are all profit. Request camera ready art from the advertiser. Layout it out in the software designed for this purpose, pop the hit print button....it is pretty dang easy to make thousands of dollars with programs. I know this from doing it as that piddly h.s. AD.

Excellent partnership idea with Dinkytown Athletes.
 

I know there were at one point being sold. My guess is the demand was low and to get didn't make money. Hard to determine how many to print. As others have pointed out, electronic forms have replaced it, and you have the ability to print out what they currently do for each game matchup.
 

Do they still print the media guides that you could purchase? I bought those routinely back during the Mason years. Would like to buy again. I’m sure you could probably download and print like most anything else nowadays, but I’d like that sleek original print if available.
 


Minnesota United makes small printed roster cards available to fans at the entrances. They are free and I would guess most people don't take one anyway so you wouldn't have to print 50,000 a game.
 

can't say about Gopher football games - but I know that the MN State High School League no longer prints programs for its State tournament events. if you want a program, you have to go to their website and print it out yourself. their stated rationale is that the cost of printing the programs was too high and they couldn't sell enough to recoup their costs.

as far as the press releases, I think most Gopher programs do something like that - maybe not at the scale you're advocating - but when I worked at a small-market radio station, I could sign up to be on a mailing list and receive e-mail press releases for whatever sports I designated. the issue is getting publications to use the material. with the newspaper world struggling, most papers have cut back on space due to falling ad sales, so sports sections are smaller and they don't have room for that type of material. most of them barely have room to cover their local beats.

I understand what the OP is talking about - trying to make Gopher Football feel more special. but in the Twin Cities market, Gopher football takes a back seat to the pro teams.

it's the same old story - in Iowa City or Madison, the local college football team is the biggest thing in town, and it gets covered like that. in the Twin Cities, the Gophers are not even close to the biggest thing in town, and the coverage reflects it.
 


We got roster sheets at the open practices during Fall Camp last year. Really helpful to know who the heck you were watching
 



diefirma said:
Read with care if you are a member of the Athletic Directors office or your head might explode!

Here are two easy to implement ideas to improve the Gopher Football experience. I am posting them here because I don't have Fleck's or Coyle's emails. I am hoping someone much better connected than I am can pass these suggestions along. All feedback welcome.

Players break their butts all year. They deserve recognition for their hard work and accomplishments

PLEASE! have printed programs listing players and their numbers. Yes, I know “people can look up the player’s number on their phone” This is simply wrong - not as a factual matter but as a practical matter. Looking something up on your phone is too slow.

Fan A, who has been texting with a friend, notices an especially athletic move by a Gopher player and wonders who it might be. Fan A then switches to his browser, goes to GopherSports.com, waits for it to load, clicks on the Sports tab and waits for it to load, goes to Football and waits for that page to load, goes to Roster and waits for it to load and then scrolls to number 26 and learns the athletic play was made by Zack Evans.

Fan B sees the same athletic move, glances down at his program, and sees player 26 is Zack Evans.

While Fan A was looking at his phone, Zack Evans ran for a touchdown. Fan A missed the entire run. Fan B never missed a bit of the action.

A printed program does not have to be expensive. A minimal program could simply be a 17” by 11” folded in half giving 4 sides to print on. A few more sheets of paper could yield a 12 or 16 printable sides giving room for players for both teams plus room for a few ads. Perhaps the same volunteer groups that sell concessions could sell the programs and make a buck or two for their organization. Perhaps this could be a NIL opportunity for Dinky Town Athletes.

OR

If the printed programs could not be approved then, at least, have someone lay out a nice PDF of a program that fans could download and print on their home computers.


Raise Program Awareness

Hire / recruit a / some journalism student(s) to write multiple articles per week concerning Gopher football. I would think $100 per article would attract some good writers interested in the program.
Examples;

Student spotlight - student with interesting / demanding major
Player of the week - players who flashed during last game
Opponent preview -
Coach spotlight - background, interests outside of football
Misc - anything else that might be of interest

Send via email to ALL newspapers, sports radio stations, TV sports departments, and perhaps high school coaches in Minnesota, |Western Wisconsin, Northern Iowa, and Eastern North and South Dakota. Send to all ticket holders that want to sign up. Email is very low cost, even a paid internship is very low cost.

Minnesota Newspaper Association has a low cost press release service which would be a quick and easy way to get Gopher Football news out to all of Minnesota. https://mna.org/services/press-release-service/

One press release to 260 Minnesota newspapers, 111 Radio stations and 14 TV stations. The newspapers alone have a circulation reaching 1.6 Million. Cost is $350 per press release or, newspapers only, $175. These costs are peanuts for a big time football program. Even if only 1% of the newspaper readers are interested that is still 16,000 potential fans at a cost of about 10 cents per fan.

Again, All feedback welcome.
Click to expand...
As for the articles, send them all you want, but the press likely won't publish them. in 2024 this does not matter.

Our Athletic Department has been slow and unimaginative since before I was a student at the U in the late 80s, but think about how much easier it is today to share information about the program.

Email those articles out to Season Ticket holders. To members of the Alumni Association, to students, to faculty and staff. Do it for all sports. Have the J School create a class for this - students could get both class credit and marketable materials for their efforts - best articles get published, that kind of thing.

And doen't stop there.

There's this thing called social media that we could leverage with articles, videos, etc. Do it well and it could help with NIL deals. There is so much you can do to promote the program at low to no cost, but we don't. I'm not a fan of Mark Coyle at all, but he is only the latest in a long line of ADs that seemed to be more interested in undermining the program than promoting it. I don't get it, and never will.
 

60's Guy said:
I know Ohio State currently has printed game programs for sale at each home game. Are you telling me that Minnesota does not?

Ads in sports programs are a huge money maker if you have someone who can sell. The $5.00 or $10 or whatever the souvenir program costs now, pays for the printing. Ohio State sells them for $20 plus $12 shipping after the fact.

Ads are all profit. Request camera ready art from the advertiser. Layout it out in the software designed for this purpose, pop the hit print button....it is pretty dang easy to make thousands of dollars with programs. I know this from doing it as that piddly h.s. AD.

Excellent partnership idea with Dinkytown Athletes.
Click to expand...
Perhaps realistic, perhaps not. Advertising dollars are not always that easy to get. Sometimes you get more for an advertising dollar by putting it someplace that benefits the program more along with the advertiser.
 

caliGopher said:
think about how much easier it is today to share information about the program.

Email those articles out to Season Ticket holders. To members of the Alumni Association, to students, to faculty and staff. Do it for all sports. Have the J School create a class for this - students could get both class credit and marketable materials for their efforts - best articles get published, that kind of thing.

And doen't stop there.

There's this thing called social media that we could leverage with articles, videos, etc. Do it well and it could help with NIL deals. There is so much you can do to promote the program at low to no cost, but we don't. I'm not a fan of Mark Coyle at all, but he is only the latest in a long line of ADs that seemed to be more interested in undermining the program than promoting it. I don't get it, and never will.
Click to expand...

THIS !! Getting LOTS of exposure should be cheap and fairly easy. So many obvious things are not done or, as far as I know, not even tried. Listen to caliGopher - email, for all intents and purposes, is free. Lord knows, I'm bombarded with marketing emails everyday - if I were to get one about the football program I would actually read it and, if it were good, I would share it with friends and colleagues.

It should be a no brainer to print a low cost program - a few 8 1/2 pages - and, as someone pointed out - put coupons on them - not just for Stub and Herbs but also for Cub and Target. Would that work? Don't know, but for pity's sake, at least TRY!!
 

Right before the opener I print two rosters from the link above--one in numerical order and one by position. Takes about 2-3 minutes to print. Binder clip. Done for season.


I will sell you one for $20 plus $12 shipping.
 



Go to Madison.com guranteed to have badger stories on front page every day of the year. Go to strib.com almost never a gopher sports story outside of game days.
 

Spaulding!No! said:
Go to Madison.com guranteed to have badger stories on front page every day of the year. Go to strib.com almost never a gopher sports story outside of game days.
Click to expand...
I agree with you - for kicks and giggles I went to both newspaper websites. Different formats but just went with the major headlines.

Madison.com
1) Where Wisconsin football is expected to finish
2) Jordan Love - Packers
3) Kenny Clark - Packers
4) Jordan Love - Packers
5) Jordan Love - Packers
6) Olympics
7) Badgers at Big Ten Media Days

Star Tribune
1) Joe Mauer - Hall of Fame
2) Joe Mauer - Hall of Fame
3) Twins game recap
4) Where Gopher football is expected to finish
5) Timberwolves summer league
6) Dallas Turner signs - Vikings
 

diefirma said:
Read with care if you are a member of the Athletic Directors office or your head might explode!

Here are two easy to implement ideas to improve the Gopher Football experience. I am posting them here because I don't have Fleck's or Coyle's emails. I am hoping someone much better connected than I am can pass these suggestions along. All feedback welcome.

Players break their butts all year. They deserve recognition for their hard work and accomplishments

PLEASE! have printed programs listing players and their numbers. Yes, I know “people can look up the player’s number on their phone” This is simply wrong - not as a factual matter but as a practical matter. Looking something up on your phone is too slow.

Fan A, who has been texting with a friend, notices an especially athletic move by a Gopher player and wonders who it might be. Fan A then switches to his browser, goes to GopherSports.com, waits for it to load, clicks on the Sports tab and waits for it to load, goes to Football and waits for that page to load, goes to Roster and waits for it to load and then scrolls to number 26 and learns the athletic play was made by Zack Evans.

Fan B sees the same athletic move, glances down at his program, and sees player 26 is Zack Evans.

While Fan A was looking at his phone, Zack Evans ran for a touchdown. Fan A missed the entire run. Fan B never missed a bit of the action.

A printed program does not have to be expensive. A minimal program could simply be a 17” by 11” folded in half giving 4 sides to print on. A few more sheets of paper could yield a 12 or 16 printable sides giving room for players for both teams plus room for a few ads. Perhaps the same volunteer groups that sell concessions could sell the programs and make a buck or two for their organization. Perhaps this could be a NIL opportunity for Dinky Town Athletes.

OR

If the printed programs could not be approved then, at least, have someone lay out a nice PDF of a program that fans could download and print on their home computers.


Raise Program Awareness

Hire / recruit a / some journalism student(s) to write multiple articles per week concerning Gopher football. I would think $100 per article would attract some good writers interested in the program.
Examples;

Student spotlight - student with interesting / demanding major
Player of the week - players who flashed during last game
Opponent preview -
Coach spotlight - background, interests outside of football
Misc - anything else that might be of interest

Send via email to ALL newspapers, sports radio stations, TV sports departments, and perhaps high school coaches in Minnesota, |Western Wisconsin, Northern Iowa, and Eastern North and South Dakota. Send to all ticket holders that want to sign up. Email is very low cost, even a paid internship is very low cost.

Minnesota Newspaper Association has a low cost press release service which would be a quick and easy way to get Gopher Football news out to all of Minnesota. https://mna.org/services/press-release-service/

One press release to 260 Minnesota newspapers, 111 Radio stations and 14 TV stations. The newspapers alone have a circulation reaching 1.6 Million. Cost is $350 per press release or, newspapers only, $175. These costs are peanuts for a big time football program. Even if only 1% of the newspaper readers are interested that is still 16,000 potential fans at a cost of about 10 cents per fan.

Again, All feedback welcome.
Click to expand...
I agree with you on the programs and it would be nice to have, but each year our fan base gets a little younger and I am guessing it is hard to justify the cost and time it takes to make a program when you can get all of the information on multiple sites for free and from your phone.
 

diefirma said:
It should be a no brainer to print a low cost program - a few 8 1/2 pages - and, as someone pointed out - put coupons on them - not just for Stub and Herbs but also for Cub and Target. Would that work? Don't know, but for pity's sake, at least TRY!!
Click to expand...
I think the problem is for every one person that would actually take the program and use it the way you describe, there would be 10,000 people who just grab it and walk with it for a bit and then toss it at the next trash or whatever. Or worse, just let it sit on their seat for someone to clean up later.

I don't think paper coupons are the answer either - you're focusing on the wrong demographic.

And like @highwayman said, anyone can print their own right before the first game, when jersey numbers and such are final.

As for your other thought about multiple articles per week...there's probably a reason why the media is going with other stories. You'd be better off having the intern student make a youtube channel where they can post interviews, highlights, etc. and somehow work to get people there, kinda like Nadine did with this website. I wanted more than the local media was providing, so I came here.
 

Spaulding!No! said:
Go to Madison.com guranteed to have badger stories on front page every day of the year. Go to strib.com almost never a gopher sports story outside of game days.
Click to expand...
Clearly a different culture over there. Wisconsin is about football and drinking while Minnesota newspapers cover the various issues, cultures, theater, and yes sports along with other outdoor activities such as hiking, protecting our waters.

Personally, I believe a newspaper should cover a variety of items; it is not a sports newspaper. If that is what you want, then perhaps someone should start a sports newspaper.
 

caliGopher said:
As for the articles, send them all you want, but the press likely won't publish them. in 2024 this does not matter.

Our Athletic Department has been slow and unimaginative since before I was a student at the U in the late 80s, but think about how much easier it is today to share information about the program.

Email those articles out to Season Ticket holders. To members of the Alumni Association, to students, to faculty and staff. Do it for all sports. Have the J School create a class for this - students could get both class credit and marketable materials for their efforts - best articles get published, that kind of thing.

And doen't stop there.

There's this thing called social media that we could leverage with articles, videos, etc. Do it well and it could help with NIL deals. There is so much you can do to promote the program at low to no cost, but we don't. I'm not a fan of Mark Coyle at all, but he is only the latest in a long line of ADs that seemed to be more interested in undermining the program than promoting it. I don't get it, and never will.
Click to expand...
I get a minimum of eight emails a month from Gophersports right now, in the Summer. It increases once school starts. All different kinds of info and content. I have Gophersports.com bookmarked and have the app on my phone. There's a tab called "Fans" and "Media" that has a ton of stuff. They put out a very comprehesive electronic Media Guide every year (2023 was over 200 pages). They also put out Game Notes for every matchup. Here is the one for Wisconsin last year:

Point is that there's plenty of good info put out frequently by the AD's media/communications staff.
 


Minnesota collects a gazillion dollars every year for B1G TV, and "can't afford" to print game rosters? Don't ever try to claim you care about the fans.
 

A single sheet handed out with maybe some coupons on the back would be way too creative for the department. I get that we should always have our phones plastered to our face. Pulling out your device every time you want to reference something is anti experience.
 

You would think a sponsor would support a free program/line-up card.

I agree there needs to be more writing of the personal side of the athletes, especially in the era of NIL. Most Gopher content is x's and o's and how they will do on the field or playing surface. I love to see where the kids come from, what their major is, what they want to do in life.

They do a weekly story of players who grew up on farms on the radio pregame which is cool.

Listening to the Twins pregame last night and they even cover the wives' of players in a "Better Half" segment.

They also need to add some bars/restaurants to the East upper deck!
 

PMWinSTP said:
I get a minimum of eight emails a month from Gophersports right now, in the Summer. It increases once school starts. All different kinds of info and content. I have Gophersports.com bookmarked and have the app on my phone. There's a tab called "Fans" and "Media" that has a ton of stuff. They put out a very comprehesive electronic Media Guide every year (2023 was over 200 pages). They also put out Game Notes for every matchup. Here is the one for Wisconsin last year:

Point is that there's plenty of good info put out frequently by the AD's media/communications staff.
Click to expand...
Same here. Not sure how I got on their list, but I like it. To the OP's point, not sure how to get this to people who are marginal or not currently active fans. If you are a fan, easy enough to go to the website and get it. Each year I print out a Gopher roster sorted by number and another by name. I agree with OP about doing SOMETHING (more) to promote Gopher sports. I suppose the Gopher athletic department thinks they do. I doubt we understand the issues - always easier to do the other guy's job.
 

Change the tailgating laws in Mpls, rent part of those rail fields or whatever you need to do to make a big per-use tailgate lot and Football Saturdays will get better fast.

All this complaining about the Vikings in their big fancy domed stadium and the perennial question “how do you compete with that?”

You compete with it by creating fun differentiations with it. Opportunities to tailgate would be a big advantage over U.S. Bank Stadium and an avid tailgate culture makes winning and losing a less important ingredient for filling a stadium with fans.
 

Schnauzer said:
Change the tailgating laws in Mpls, rent part of those rail fields or whatever you need to do to make a big per-use tailgate lot and Football Saturdays will get better fast.

All this complaining about the Vikings in their big fancy domed stadium and the perennial question “how do you compete with that?”

You compete with it by creating fun differentiations with it. Opportunities to tailgate would be a big advantage over U.S. Bank Stadium and an avid tailgate culture makes winning and losing a less important ingredient for filling a stadium with fans.
Click to expand...
There's plenty of tailgate areas already.
 

Spaulding!No! said:
Go to Madison.com guranteed to have badger stories on front page every day of the year. Go to strib.com almost never a gopher sports story outside of game days.
Click to expand...
Not seeing many sports options in Madison other than Becky.
 

We need to have a NIL sugar daddy for the Gophers.
 


PMWinSTP said:
There's plenty of tailgate areas already.
Click to expand...
Can you show me a map of the “plenty” pay per use tailgate spots? I want to tell my friends that keep asking about that when they tailgate with me.

I go to an away game about every other season and when I do, we usually drive and haul all our tailgate gear (even all the way to Happy Valley a couple years ago). I am amazed at the ease of reserving a per use tailgate spot at many other B1G schools or others, where you can just drive up with no reservation. Understandably some of the barriers come with being an urban campus, but find a way to at least add a meaningful number of per use tailgate spots within walking distance. Perhaps there will never be nearly unlimited grass fields to use like Nebraska or Penn State, but there might be a way to work with the city or railroad to create a decent number of per use spots.

Quite frankly, I talk tailgating all the time and this is the first time I have ever heard the word “plenty” used to describe home Gopher tailgating opportunities. For the tailgating that does exist, almost all of it comes with high donation levels or suites.
 

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