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.
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.