Unverified Voracity Looks Up, Continues Looking Up

The Bailey case is a great illustration of the human cost of over signing. The SEC is to college football what the assembly line was to American workers. The mechanization of the human being. These kids aren't assets, they're kids.

Brian talks about Special K all the time, but is there actually a picture/profile of this guy? I'm kind of interested to know more about the "man responsible for music at the Big House".....

Also, the idea of charging money for the Spring Game is somewhat ridiculous. At the very least, DB needs to wait until this team has some preseason buzz surrounding it before trying to extract gate money from the 30k who attend.

Double post

I think the Fab Five is exactly the opposite of a John Belein team. If the effective height Kenpom metric existed in the early 90's, my guess is that the Fab 5 was probably pretty high up in that metric. 6'8'' point guards like Jalen Rose have a tendency to do that. Man I miss those teams. It's a shame I would absolutely hate the Fab 5 if they existed today anywhere else in the country.

I would think twice -- or maybe even three times -- if I had to pay for the spring game.  It's a glorified practice.  Charging for a locker room tour might make sense.  But charging for the spring game?  That'd be stupid.

It's for the children, oh the humanity!

DB's Kirby vacuum cleaner sales pitch (you know, block the slamming door with your foot and throw a clump of dirt on the customer's floor) to foul our holy sanctuary with commercials.  Once we get used to the ads, BAM!

Before I go on an anti-DB rant, let me ask a general question:  Do other major university sports departments have a CMO?

Assuming that the answer is "no," rant:  This is yet another example of DB not recognizing the difference between being the AD of Michigan and running a wall street company.  Sure, branding is important, but I get the feeling that he just can't get away from his CEO roots.  Even his approach to the whole coaching change - done the way that the CEO of a corporation would handle it - with a process, that is religiously followed, so that he could say, "see, I had a process and I followed it like I said I would do so you can't be upset at me." At the end of the day, I was happy with the RESULT of his process (even though the timing hurt us), so maybe the new marketing guy will work out fine, but I doubt it.

that was my favorite basketball team - EVAR!

james voskuil, rob pelinka and eric riley, michael talley, maybe demetrius calip, were still hold overs from the great teams of the late 80s and had a really rough year the year before when i think they were 14-15 or something like that.  solid veteran depth plus the energy of the fab five was a fun team.

Oversigning is to the SEC as fire is to the Devil.

of Brian to ask that Brandon work to fill Crisler when he goes on to say that he wasn't even at the game.  And yes.  I do realize that he was at the hockey game, but don't complain about something when you don't even go to the games.

The idea of a marketing officer is terrifying, because he's a gonna leave his stamp on "the brand" by hook or by crook, and dollars-to-donuts it will be based on dollars.

But I did like the following quote from the CMO:

"I want to sell out Crisler," he said. "That's a personal agenda. I've got to get to the bottom of why that doesn't happen. I want to get into the data on why people don't come to the games." via MGoShoe's Diary

The lack of attendance might have something to do with years and years of the program being, uhm, bad and the venue being, uhm, worse.  But the overall lack of attendance is surprising even in light of those obvious factors.

I think it depends entirely how much DB is proposing to charge people. If the ticket cost is $5, I have no problem with it at all.

If it's $10, I think the weather would have to be spectacular for me to pony up. If it's $20, I'm going to do something else, regardless of how good the weather is.

Watching that video and thinking of the bitter disappointment that was the national championship game that year - not to mention the NCAA sanctions - I realized one of the reasons that I just don't get that down about the football and basketball team's recent struggles.  Nothing* could be as painful as the end of the Michigan-UNC game...We Michigan fans ought to be able to ride out a few bumps in the road. 

*Within the context of sports, of course. 

Sounded eerily similar to Homer Simpson's Internet company name development:

That's why I need a name that's cutting-edge, like CutCo, EdgeCom, InterSlice...

How about... CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet 

Minnesota didn't escape Crisler with a win.  They outplayed us, bigtime.  We were fortunate to keep it close.  They outrebounded us 38-13, which is just beyond description.  That was the game that prompted Beilein to go to the "Big men block out so the guards can rebound strategy" since then.

Sure, the quote doesn't make sense, but that's probably because most marketing trolls tow the line on the perceived super awesomeness of social media, and in so doing fail.

Nevertheless, Michigan athletics is a huge brand. Having someone in charge of that brand, messaging (through all channels, including social media) and advertising isn't just smart, it's normal. College sports is a big business, for better or worse. Having someone who's responsible for the marketing of a brand is ultimately much more rewarding than pushing out some half-crocked marketing soup. Especially when a brand is still recovering from angry factions and embarassing losses.

It's easy to think that as soon as you have a good team that the stadium or arena will be sold out every game, but for whatever reason, it doesn't work that way, at least in Ann Arbor.

In the 20 years prior to Bo's arrival in 1969, Michigan Stadium had capacity crowds only for MSU or OSU, with the only exception being Army in 1955. Even during good seasons like 1964 and 1968, it was common to have crowds under 70K; in '68, the attendance for the Navy, Illinois, and Wisconsin games was under 60K. The Wisky game saw a 7-1 Michigan team ranked #4 in the polls, but only 51K could drag themselves out to the game.

Bo blows into town like a hurricane, and quickly establishes Michigan as one of the two dominant teams in the conference. From '69 through the '73 season, UM was a cumulative 48-6-1. Regardless, for those years, the only capacity crowds were for MSU or OSU. In '73, for the November home games against IU and Illinois, the attendance was just a bit north of 76K, and that was for games when UM was undefeated, ranked #4 in the country, and headed for another huge winner-take-all game against OSU.

The first game against a team other than MSU or OSU that one of Bo's teams drew a capacity crowd for was in 1974 with Navy. Still, Michigan went into the November Purdue game that year undefeated and ranked #3, and yet only ~89K showed up. In '75 we were 4-0-2 and ranked #7 heading into the homecoming game against IU, and 93K showed up. It was only after that Indiana game that we started the streak of consecutive crowds over 100K, with every one of them after the '76 Navy game being listed officially as a capacity crowd. So in other words, we had to have seven consecutive top-notch seasons—'69 through '75—before we started selling out each and every game. And that was even with the widely acknowledged marketing genius of Don Canham at work.

It wouldn't surprise me if we would need a similar streak of consecutive successful seasons in basketball to sell out Crisler every time.

Haha how about Chris Webber jacking up a last second shot when they are already up 8 points. Classic.

"but i don't see anything!"

/retro metro detroit PSA w/ isiah

Chief Marketing Officer.  take it further Marketing,  what the hell do Marketers do? Oh! wait I'll answer that.   They find ways to sell you shit and if you don't want that shit they will find a way to convince you that you need that shit.  How do Marketers ultimately determine their effectiveness?  By how much shit they can get you to buy wether you want it or or need it or not.

Having said that in an inappropriate way, If a marketer tells you that he is not a Pimp and that he will not whore your traditions, values, and sacred culture then disguise this lie in  language  that only other Pimps understand then will do the opposite.  

Rant over!  Go back to your regularly scheduled programing.

when it comes to advertising in the Big House.  I don't like it.  Period. 

I'll swallow my displeasure and content myself with disgusted looks if it brings us the Big Chill or benefits Mott's, but there is a VERY fine line there that is constantly being almost-crossed and it scares me.  It could be one of those things that happens slowly enough that nobody notices, until all of a sudden in 2022, SuperRecruitRunningBackTouchdownTimTheThird scores a touchdown and Usher blares from the speakers as NewHipVersionofCarl proudly announces, "michigan touchdown!  Brought to you by ARBY'S!!!!!©  scored by...   Now who wants some FREEEEE PIZZZZAAAAA, sponsored by DOMINOESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!© and the scoreboards split time flashing "Mihcigan Touchdown" and ads in a 1:5 ratio.  OK.  It probably won't ever be that bad, but you get the picture.  It's a slippery slope.

That being said, according to MGoShoe's diary, only the very last bullet point had to do with marketing with sponsors and that was the only mention of it, so I think it's pretty fair to say that if the transition occurs, it won't be so much the new CMO.  Either way, if he decides he has to consistently fill Crisler before working on sponsorships, we might not have the above doomsday scenario until 2222...