I have dreams. Most of these dreams occur late at night and sometimes they are very scary. These nightmares range from me irreparably scuffing my newest pair of Air Force Ones to Peter MacArthur admitting he was just joking when he guaranteed a national championship by the time he graduates.
But sometimes I have good dreams. Sometimes I dream that our athletic department advertises for home games on campus. I envision getting e-mails once or twice a week from the Dog Pound, telling me when the men’s and women’s soccer games are. I dream that I cannot find a table in any dining hall on campus that does not have a card on it, literally stuck right in my face, telling me when the next field hockey game is.
I picture opening my mailbox to find fliers advertising the next game and full-sized posters that tell me the entire schedule of the men’s and women’s basketball teams-even though I already got this information once a week for the past month.
I envisage walking into my room and seeing small cards that I received at some campus event, pinned to my bulletin board, telling me the entire home schedule of every sports team on campus. I dream that I cannot open a copy of The Daily Free Press without seeing ads for upcoming games.
And then I wake up.
And that’s when I realize these weren’t dreams …… they were memories. Memories of freshman year. Memories of a time before Mike Lynch was athletic director, a time when the athletic department actually feigned an interest in promoting BU athletics to BU students. In other words, memories of a time when, you know, the athletic department did its job.
I know this might be a little hard for some of you freshmen and sophomores to comprehend, but what I described was accurate-there used to be a time when you knew what games were happening when, whether you wanted to or not.
But unfortunately, students didn’t go to games back then either. So the athletic department, in all its infinite wisdom, stopped advertising to students. I’m really glad we employ such strategic problem solvers in that department: their advertising wasn’t working, so they just quit. They didn’t try to step up the marketing campaign to an even higher level, they didn’t try to come up with a new, inventive method of getting students in the seats-they just quit.
Athletic department, don’t you see that this is the worst possible choice you could have made? It makes some sense for you to alter your advertising strategy if it isn’t working, but this isn’t what you’ve done. What you have done, on the other hand, is give a big slap in the face to every student athlete at BU. The very students you are supposed to be working for are the ones you are hurting with this policy. Aren’t you embarrassed that no one goes to soccer or basketball games? It’s time you stop being so insulting to the student-athletes off of whom you profit.
When I arrived on campus this September, I hoped to see some change. Of course this was not to be-there was not a single advertisement in any medium for any sport until several weeks into the seasons.
A few weeks ago, I began to notice advertisements hung on the wall outside of the Warren Towers and West Campus dining halls, as well as in the GSU. But the athletic department managed to screw up this, as well. No one is going to notice one 8-by-11.5 inch piece of paper hung on cluttered walls in obscure locations.
If this is part of the strategy you want to use, at least make them actual poster-sized, put them in locations where students are forced to see them and for God’s sake, hang up more than just one! Put them in every hallway in every classroom building on campus, and outside the smaller dining halls. Put them somewhere in the GSU where people will actually walk by and see them.
Since the beginning of hockey season, Agganis Arena has been sending out emails alerting students with season tickets or Sports Passes when games and ticket pickup dates are. At the bottom of these emails, in very fine print, are brief mentions of upcoming home soccer games. The problem with this, besides the fact that it looks like they are trying to get by with mentioning soccer games simply to be able to say they did, is that not every student receives these e-mails.
Heck, most of the time, not even all the intended recipients of these emails actually get them. What is so hard about just sending out emails to every student, telling them when the home games are for every sport, in big, bold letters?
In fact, what is so hard about just reinstating the former marketing strategy, but with improvements and reinforcements so that, this time, it actually has a chance of working?
If you won’t do this to put some money in your own pockets from an increased attendance at basketball games (not to mention the long-term benefits to your financial status for increased attendance -can you say, “Atlantic-10?”), at least do it for the athletes. Students and student-athletes are who drive college athletics. Every other athletic department in the country has figured out this concept.
It’s time ours does, too
Chris Pasquale, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].