Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Open House - JMU's Sport & Recreation Management

Greetings from the James Madison University School of Hospitality, Sport and Recreation Management!

As an alum of sport and recreation management, you and your family/friends are cordially invited to an open house and JMU football game on Saturday, November 12. The open house will be held in Godwin Hall room 354 from 1 – 2:30 pm; the football game vs. Rhode Island will kick off in the newly expanded Bridgeforth Stadium at 3 pm. Parking is available in any of the general lots (http://bit.ly/nhlIt6).

To purchase discounted football tickets, visit http://bit.ly/nyXAtz and enter “JMUSRM” as the promotional code. Please RSVP by November 4 if you are attending the open house. All attendees at the open house will also receive a 20% coupon for the JMU Bookstore.

We look forward to having you back on campus November 12! Go Dukes!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

"ESPN Explores Wider World Of Sports With Kenny Mayne Web Series"

From ReelSEO








Review by Kody Farr in KIN 332 (Section 1)


Sports marketing has dramatically changed since the Internet has emerged. Technology innovation and branching out to other cultures has brought sport to the corners of the earth back the United States. For my sports marketing project I chose an article written by Chris Atkinson. It is titled, ESPN Explores Wider World of Sports with Kenny Mayne Web Series. The article describes how Veteran ESPN anchor (writer, comedian) Kenny Mayne travels the globe and explores new sports and brings American sport’s knowledge to several cultures. He travels to different countries and performs skits with random people. From these people he learns about their culture but more importantly their different sports that are probably unknown to people of other parts of the world. The article then goes into examples of Mayne learning ‘Footvolleyball’ or ‘Dancefighting’ in Brazil. Once he learns these sports he then in turn educates youths and adults on American sports. This is a type of sports marketing that is bringing sport to a more globally-centered idea and light. While Kenny Mayne and ESPN explore world sports they are promote themselves and American sports. This brings about an increase in the global market for American sport and other nations’ sports. It also gains more international fans for American sports-which is the most important to the US market. Unknown cultures and sport are learned and ESPN is promoted more than ever on a global scale-which is already the most viewed sport’s network in the world. I personally believe this type of marketing in sports by using comedy and real-life situation is highly affective. Many American sports are not known to citizens of certain countries. By Mayne bringing ESPN and America to these countries this can be achieved.

"Big East Teams Leave Conference for Sports Allies With Lucrative TV Market"

From Bloomberg


Review by James Hemphill in KIN 332 (Section 1)


Two of the most important universities from the Big East Conference decided to leave the conference for the greener pastures of the Atlantic Coach Conference. These institutions are Syracuse University and the University of Pittsburgh. With this realignment, the ACC is attempting to blanket the entire east coast from Boston to Miami with its product. The ACC commissioner is attempting to move the conference tournament to the Mecca of basketball: Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The departures of these two crucial universities from the Big East has upset many pure college sports fan because they are leaving the tradition of the league and the rivalries that have grown since the inception of the league. Syracuse is one of the founding members of the Big East, and will be very difficult to replace. Not only did the Big East lose these two schools, but there is talk that Rutgers and Connecticut could be next to leave. Just yesterday, the Big East received some more bad news as Texas Christian University decided to forgo their acceptance to the Big East for the more appropriate conference geographically speaking in the Big Twelve. With the departures of these marquee programs, they will have to be creative to rebuild the league. The Big East is still intending on expanding their football conference by potentially offering bids to Central Florida, East Carolina, Navy, Temple, Air Force and even Villanova. The Big East is simply in turmoil as a football conference at the moment and has a lot of work to be completed to fix the perception of the league.

The ACC is booming right now with fourteen universities going forward and possibly two more when realignment is completed. By reaching ninety million people along the Atlantic Coast, it has a lot of bargaining power to ensure that a much larger television deal is agreed upon in the upcoming years. It is conceivable that the ACC could become the first super conference with sixteen institutions and that ultimately could allocate for four super conferences of sixteen members each.

Where does the Big East go from here some may ask. They are already hurt by the fact that they are the only major conference that puts more emphasis on basketball then football, because football ultimately makes more money for the conference. They need to react quickly to these departures and figure out a method to lure the best football programs and rejuvenate a conference that has been decimated by realignment over the past decade.

From a marketing perspective, the Atlantic Coach Conference will have a much broader audience to appeal to fans with Syracuse and Pittsburgh joining the conference. This will allocate the ACC to market their product to the large media outlets of Pittsburgh and New York City. If the ACC Tournament is moved to Madison Square Garden, the conference will be able to promote the event to strong alumni bases in the New York City Metropolitan Area. On the other hand, the Big East will be hurt significantly with the departures of these two vital universities. They must lure in popular schools to ensure that the Big East brand, especially in football, does not fall apart and cause further departures to occur. They must hope for the loyalty of the conference to take precedence over the fact that two of its most popular universities have abandon the conference for basically more money and better opportunities.