New BIG Travel Website Omits Minnesota as a Team in the Big Ten

alltimetwinsfan

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Pretty entertaining here. We laugh and joke sometimes about being left out in the Big Ten pecking order, but somehow they left off the University of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis.

The Greater Columbus Sports Commission and The Ohio State University Department of Athletics has partnered on a new website, Cities of the Big Ten (www.citiesofthebigten.com), to promote the destinations that represent the member institutions of the Big Ten Conference to visiting fans.

The website includes both Rutgers and Maryland, but says nothing about the University of Minnesota or Minneapolis as a city. See below photos:

Cities of the Big Ten 1.jpgCities of the Big Ten 2.JPG

Here's the full press release:

COLUMBUS (September 26, 2014) - The Greater Columbus Sports

Commission and The Ohio State University Department of Athletics has partnered on a new website, Cities of the Big Ten (www.citiesofthebigten.com), to promote the destinations that represent the member institutions of the Big Ten Conference to visiting fans.

Nearly 120 years after its inception, the Big Ten remains a national leader in intercollegiate athletics on and off the field. The Cities of the Big Ten
host hundreds of athletic events throughout the year and continue to extend the ultimate in hospitality to the enthusiastic followers of conference teams.
With the introduction of Nebraska in 2011 and Maryland and Rutgers in 2014, there was no better time to create
a landing-page website that will direct visitors to each city’s information on transportation, hotel, dining and
entertainment options when traveling to Big Ten Conference events. Each city agreed to collaborate in cross-promoting each other with the goals being to increase travel by fans to Big Ten events and enhance the sports tourism experience for fans by providing easy access to information needed in planning.

“We applaud the cities of the Big Ten for taking the initiative to build this website for fans to use when traveling
to each campus,” said Big Ten Deputy Commissioner Brad Traviolia. “This will be a great resource for each
school’s fan base, especially the new fans that we’ve welcomed to the conference over the last few years.”
“Columbus and Ohio State are proud to partner with our other fellow cities and universities of the Big Ten
to provide top-notch resources and destination information to visiting athletes and fans,” said Greater
Columbus Sports Commission Executive Director Linda Logan. “Our city has a lot to offer in hotel, dining and
entertainment options and we’re excited to showcase our convenience and amenities to the great fans of the Big
Ten.”

About the Big Ten Conference: The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member
institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public
service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce
the priority of academics in student-athletes’ lives and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness.
The broad-based athletic programs of the 14 Big Ten institutions provide nearly $200 million in direct financial aid to
almost 9,500 student-athletes for more than 11,000 participation opportunities on 350 teams in 42 different sports.

The Big Ten sponsors 28 official conference sports, 14 for men and 14 for women, including the addition of men’s and
women’s lacrosse as official sports for the 2014-15 academic year. For more information, visit www.bigten.org.
Since 2002, the Greater Columbus Sports Commission has hosted more than 270 new sporting events that have
generated close to $345 million in visitor spending, while retaining annual events that have generated an additional
$225 million in visitor spending to benefit our local economy. For more information, visit www.columbussports.org.
 

This is an outrage!

We shall have our revenge on 15 November.
 



Domain is registered to "Gina Speckman". Maybe someone can send her a nice email.

Gina Speckman
[email protected]
Executive Director
Chicago's North Shore Convention and Visitors Bureau

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginaspeckman


WHOIS search results for:CITIESOFTHEBIGTEN.COM(Registered)
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Domain Name: CITIESOFTHEBIGTEN.COM
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Admin Name: Gina Speckman
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Admin Street: Suite
Admin City: Skokie
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Tech Street: 8001 Lincoln Ave
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Tech City: Skokie
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Umm, you forgot to include <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gophers?src=hash">#Gophers</a> "<a href="https://twitter.com/OSU_AD">@OSU_AD</a>: collaborative effort for Cities of the <a href="https://twitter.com/bigtenconf">@bigtenconf</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/Columbus_Sports">@Columbus_Sports</a> <a href="http://t.co/b4Q1QDWuWK">http://t.co/b4Q1QDWuWK</a>”</p>— GopherHole.com (@GopherHole) <a href="https://twitter.com/GopherHole/status/517694500589019136">October 2, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Umm, you forgot to include <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gophers?src=hash">#Gophers</a> "<a href="https://twitter.com/OSU_AD">@OSU_AD</a>: collaborative effort for Cities of the <a href="https://twitter.com/bigtenconf">@bigtenconf</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/Columbus_Sports">@Columbus_Sports</a> <a href="http://t.co/b4Q1QDWuWK">http://t.co/b4Q1QDWuWK</a>”</p>— GopherHole.com (@GopherHole) <a href="https://twitter.com/GopherHole/status/517694500589019136">October 2, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This should be good...

O1zDJ.gif
 

You would think we would be on their good side after annihilating their rival on national television.
 

Should have included RedditCFB on that retweet.
 



Laughing at Gene Smith right now. Obviously didn't bother to actually look at the cities cited before he chimed in on how great it is. I know OSU folks don't have a high opinion of him and now I see why. As for this Gina Speckman character, seems she's just an idiot.
 



Laughing at Gene Smith right now. Obviously didn't bother to actually look at the cities cited before he chimed in on how great it is. I know OSU folks don't have a high opinion of him and now I see why.

Now you see why? Because of a tweet?
 



Now you see why? Because of a tweet?

Not because of the tweet itself, but because of the ignorance the tweet shows (ie...didn't even bother to notice not all the conference schools are even listed). Ohio State fans felt much the same way about Mr. Smith during the whole Jim Tressel saga.
 

Ok, we actually got to the bottom of this. I emailed a representative of the site and it seems they didn't include MN because the MN CVB didn't provide content. They didn't want to make the other cities wait, so they launched.

I see so many things wrong with this. Nobody in their office is capable of writing a hundred words to describe a major metropolitan area? Or maybe they could do "coming soon"? Laziness.


EDIT: I removed some of my previous post that included verbatim from an email.
 


And I guarantee Meet Minneapolis would LOVE to partner on something like this. They promote the city so well, I would be surprised if they turned down the offer to help. Someone should reach out to them.
 

Explore Minnesota is the sponsor of the Brick by Brick series, how was this missed?
 

I sent a brief email to Ms. Speckman.
 

This gives new meaning to the old crack of "Nice going, Columbus"

What do you expect from Gina & Gene. They live in a city named after a guy who thought he was on the other side of the planet when he "discovered" the New World
 


I remember when Buster Rhymes found out he was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings: "I love Ohio!"
 


Well done people. Minnesota added with a coming soon message
 

Well done people. Minnesota added with a coming soon message

Ha, ha! Nice. Honestly, whoever osu contracted with to do this website was obviously just being extremely lazy, imo. You could have easily built the U of M/Minneapolis Convention Bureau portal along with the others even if the Mpls Convention Bureau hadn't responded to you in a timely fashion. Looking at most of the other hyperlinks to the other city bureaus there is not necessarily a bunch of stuff on those landing pages that couldn't have been built without bureau input from each city's convention group. Obviously you would like to get their direct input if you can, but to just completely omit and not include a charter university of the B1G and go ahead and launch the site is pretty pathetic and amateur hour by whoever built the site for osu.
 

I was wondering if Panther&$@($)? was the creator of that website.
 

I contacted Meet Minneapolis right after I saw this, and they said they would jump on it. Looks like they did.
 

Ha, ha! Nice. Honestly, whoever osu contracted with to do this website was obviously just being extremely lazy, imo. You could have easily built the U of M/Minneapolis Convention Bureau portal along with the others even if the Mpls Convention Bureau hadn't responded to you in a timely fashion. Looking at most of the other hyperlinks to the other city bureaus there is not necessarily a bunch of stuff on those landing pages that couldn't have been built without bureau input from each city's convention group. Obviously you would like to get their direct input if you can, but to just completely omit and not include a charter university of the B1G and go ahead and launch the site is pretty pathetic and amateur hour by whoever built the site for osu.

I disagree with that line of thinking. These guys are offering free publicity, and all that they asked was for timely submission of the information they were going to publicize for no cost. Every other city pulled it off, so clearly it wasn't too burdensome. We've only got the Minnesota end of this equation to blame for the U's absence.
 


Looks like we're all fixed up now:

If there’s a sport, there’s a spot for it in Minneapolis. At the core of this city beats the heart of a sports fan. Professional teams? We’ve got five. Major collegiate feel? How about the University of Minnesota. Amateur sports complexes? We have the Minneapolis Convention Center and the world’s largest amateur sports and meeting facility.
 




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