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NEWS, NOTES &
COMMENTARY
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The Bradsher Beat
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
By Bethany Bradsher |
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A little hype, good or bad,
can go a long way
By
Bethany Bradsher
©2012 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
View the Bonesville Mobile Alpha version of this page.
It’s a quote
often attributed to circus promoter Phineas Barnum, and some East Carolina
athletic officials have put it to the test in recent weeks.
“There’s no
such thing as bad publicity.”
With Jeff
Lebo’s basketball team still playing NAIA opponents and the football season
over and done, there would normally have been no reason for the nation to be
talking about ECU this December. Until the Pirate Club announced its “Virtual
Bowl” promotion.
As part of a
push to raise the remaining funds for the planned basketball practice
facility, the Pirate Club issued a challenge to its members in mid-December,
asking them to use money they would normally spend on a bowl trip to buy $50
tickets to the “Virtual Bowl.”
It actually
wasn’t a new idea in the halls of the Pirate athletic department. ECU raised
nearly $20,000 for athletic scholarships with a
similar promotion in 2004. But this
time around, the sports world has taken notice in a big way.
Sports
Illustrated named the Virtual Bowl as “Sign of The Apocalypse” in the Dec.
26 issue. Jim Rome ranted about it on his show. Just about every major
sports website — as well as message boards for fans from every conference in
the country — weighed in on the idea of selling fake tickets to a fake game.
Some of
the comments were negative, like the contributor on
www.lostletterman.com who wrote, “It would be more dignified for someone
in the department to stand in downtown Greenville with a beggar’s cup.” But
for every puzzled poster online, there was someone else who called the idea
an innovative fundraising strategy.
A
www.bleacherreport.com item went a
step further, saying, “Props to ECU for thinking outside the box in its
fundraising efforts and for poking fun at the watered-down nature of the
bowl season in general.”
Not
even Chris Johnson’s rapid ascent as an NFL rookie brought ECU this much
press. And even if the Virtual Bowl is an odd way to garner national
recognition, ECU Assistant AD for Major Gifts Mark Wharton has this answer
for the detractors: Nearly $15,000 from 146 donors. It might not have come
close to the stated goal of outselling the actual bowl tickets at rival
C-USA schools, but the drive brought in needed money for the basketball
facility with no overhead.
“Some of the
negative articles said we were desperate and we didn’t have any other way to
raise money,” Wharton said. “But we’ve already raised most of it.”
The “Step Up
to the Highest Level” campaign has already raised $12.8 million for the
basketball gym, which is being designed to alleviate the crowding caused by
both basketball teams and the volleyball team sharing Minges Coliseum for
practice and games. Ground is scheduled to be broken on the building in
March, and Wharton feels confident that the full $15 million will be
collected by this spring.
As for the
prominent recent treatment in Sports Illustrated, ECU sports information
director Tom McClellan had only one beef — the writer referred to ECU as
“Eastern Carolina.” McClellan fired off an e-mail to the magazine taking
issue with the misprint, and he received a heartfelt apology from an SI
staffer who said he considered the gaffe as bad as misspelling the name of
Notre Dame.
ECU
officials and fans can take the criticism in stride, whether they bought
Virtual Bowl tickets or not. Because if all publicity is good publicity,
things go south for a team when no one is talking at all. As Irish writer
and poet Oscar Wilde once opined, “The only thing worse than being talked
about is not being talked about.”
If the jury
has been out on the effectiveness of the Virtual Bowl, no debate at all has
been sparked by the other major ECU marketing strategy over Christmas break
— $5 tickets for Pirate holiday basketball games. All of part of my family
went to every one of those $5 games, and the crowds of families were
impressive even against obscure opponents
like Virginia-Wise.
Scott
Wetherbee, ECU’s director of marketing, said that he and his staff realized
they needed to think creatively when they saw four games on the schedule
during the period when students and the Pirates band would be off campus on
break. The results, Wetherbee said, have been good for ticket sales and,
since the Pirates won every game, even better for
momentum leading into the Conference USA slate.
“The goal
was to have as many people get hooked as possible, and hopefully they had a
good enough time that they realized it was worth it to charge full price
when the conference schedule gets here,” Wetherbee said. “The Thursday night
game (against
N.C. Central) was one of the largest walk-ups we’ve had.”
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