The local Northwest Arkansas Naturals (AA affiliate of the Royals) are beginning to challenge the San Diego Padres for the number of alternate jerseys the team dons in a year. Today, the club unveiled their jerseys and caps for "What Might Have Been Night" on June 8, when the team becomes the cumbersome Northwest Arkansas Thunder Chickens for a night. (Hopefully Springsteen's Thundercrack and AC/DC's Thunderstruck will be played over the loudspeaker more than the Chicken Dance).
This was the runner-up nickname to the Naturals, as voted on by residents, in 2007. Jerseys will eventually be auctioned off.
I attended the Naturals game on two nights ago on Saturday, May 5 when the team wore "teal" jerseys as a fundraiser for Ozark Guidance. The team reported attendance at 6500 for that game.
Credit the Naturals for creating unique promotions which engage the local community and stimulate demand from a fan base which is one of the smallest in Minor League Baseball. Last year, Sports Business Journal ranked ($) Springdale, Ark. as the 184th minor league market (out of 241), in part because the market, which only has AA baseball as professional sport, was 212th in attendance. In fairness to the Naturals, SBJ measures attendance as a five-year average, and the Naturals are playing their 5th season this year.
Now, if only Minor League Baseball would do something about that the ridiculous Brut High Five Promotion...
While reading today's New York Times story ( http://nyti.ms/Ki2Vik) on Mariano Rivera's unfortunate injury, I came across this quote from Yankees manager Joe Girardi toward the end of the article. “This is bad, there is no question about it,” he said. “This is not what you come to Kansas City for, to hear." Why include the reference to Kansas City? Is Girardi suggesting it was something with the field conditions? Surely that isn't the case, but that is the way it reads to me. Earlier in the article Girardi is quoted that Rivera shags fly balls all the time, presumably even when the Yankees played in KC each of the last 15 years Rivera has been the team's closer. So the assumption is Rivera has done this before in KC. I'm willing to accept the reporter placed Girardi's comment out of context, but the inclusion of it at all is strange to me. Why even it say it in the first place? Is there anyone out there who heard the full interview with Girardi who can explain?
I've become fascinated by the image repair strategies individuals, particularly those in sport, use when they make poor decisions. Just this week we have seen apologies from John Terry for his foolish red card in a critical Champions League match and Metta World Peace for his flagrant elbow in an NBA game which may have hampered his team's chances to advance in the postseason. I won't even attempt to go back a week and discuss Raffi Torres's apology for laying out Marian Hossa.
Neither athlete this week seemed particularly genuine in his apology or concerned about the well-being of the person they harmed. Borrowing from Benoit's (1995) Image Repair Typologies, I offer a look into their strategies.
Terry was quoted in the Daily Mail:
'Sanchez was darting in behind me, I've seen the replay and it does look bad, but I'm not the type of player to go out and intentionally hurt anyone,' said the skipper.
'I've raised my knee, which I shouldn't have done in hindsight, but hopefully the people out there that know me, as a player and a person, know I'm not like that. I'm disappointed but delighted for the lads. I've apologised to them and I want to apologise to the fans as well. At the time, I was bewildered because I was trying to protect myself a little bit, but looking at it on the replay, I've no complaints.
'I've let the lads down. They've performed brilliantly, so hopefully this doesn't take it away from the players."
Terry first tries to reduce the offensiveness of the action by suggesting it "looked" bad (minimize strategy), and suggesting he was "trying to protect" himself (provocation). Further, he stresses his reputation that he is "not like that" (bolster). It's not until well into the quote does he actually apologize to the fans and teammates, but not to Sanchez.
MWP took to Twitter before eventually apologizing, sort of.
When he did finally release a statement, MWP said (as quoted on ESPN.com):
World Peace still hasn't answered media questions about his actions, but he issued a brief statement on his website, promising to follow up with a podcast.
"I apologize to the Oklahoma City Thunder fans and the OKC organization," World Peace wrote on ronartest.com. "I look foward (sic) to getting back on the floor with my teammates and competing for the Lakers' fans."
Other than his Tweet in which he hope Hardin (sic) is "ok", MWP has not publicly apologized to Harden, nor really even apologized for his action. He apologized to the Thunder, but not publicly to anyone else.
MWP's image repair strategy thus far has consisted of suggesting his action was an accident ("Didn't even see James") and minimizing the severity of it ("Looks bad").
When will athletes who make poor decisions in the heat of a competition realize their best approach is to man-up and accept responsibility, act human and apologize? After all, they were man enough to knee someone from behind away from the play, or elbow someone after a dunk?
At least MWP expressed mortifcation with his "OMG" tweet. LOL.
Damage control: Schools must handle fallout when scandals occur | Tulsa World
<blockquote class='posterous_medium_quote'>The preliminary program schedule is provided in the following documents. Once it is finalized (at the end of March), it will be re-formatted for the website, and will include links to the abstracts prior to the beginning of the conference.</blockquote>
NEW ORLEANS — The unveiling of the NCAA tournament field included few notable surprises and continued to underscore the selection committee’s strong message to schools big and small in recent years: There is no exhibition season in college basketball.
The 10-member committee rewarded teams in the seeding and selection process that scheduled aggressively in nonconference play and penalized teams whose nonleague schedules were considered soft.
What is not said in the pull quote above is that those schools who scheduled aggressively in nonconference play had to WIN those games. This stuff befuddles me. Iona v. Purdue is a good nonconference game?!?
What incentives are there for top-tier schools to schedule mid-majors? The top-tier schools know if they win, they are supposed to. If they lose, it hurts their chances. Where is the reward?
What top tier school is willing to play Wichita State? Or Creighton? Or VCU? Heck, those conferences had to combine with ESPN to create a made-for-TV schedule of games each February (Bracketbusters) just to increase their chances for getting in.
As we walked up to Estadio Vicente Calderon to attend Sunday night's La Liga match between Atletico Madrid y Barca, the experience was similar to any American event. Sixty thousand folks were engaged in a sort of pre-match tailgate, minus the tailgates or restrictions on open containers. Similarities end there. Calderon, like its more historic neighbor to the north, Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, has little in the way of amenities. Let's begin with in-house concessions. They don't exist, at least not for the commoners (I did not get in the suites). This would explain the mass volume of vendors set up outside the stadium before the match selling everything from scraves to nuts to scarves to bottled water. Did I mention scarves? Apparently scarves and futbol are a thing, much like cheeseheads and Packer games. (See also photo from Real Madrid match last year).   Next, the video board is a misnomer. It does not play video. It does not provide stats. And frequently, it does not even tell the score. It would be nice to know who got one of the six (!) yellows issued to Atletico Madrid. It would be nice to see a replay Cesc's cross to a sliding Dani Alves for the first goal. Nope. We got 90 minutes of ads for taxis and whatever else. The board did constantly display the time (40th min.), and often had the score, but not always. Replays, while common in the U.S., do not exist in futbol matches. Easy pre-match ingress? Not at this gate. Pre-match card stunt with world's largest bedsheet? Check. Post-match garbage? Lots of it. Atmospherics included pre-match music which was largely AC/DC, broken up by Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side (really!) and in-match chants set to the tunes of Yankee Doodle Dandy and Da Doo Ron Ron. The biggest atmospheric element was the smell of cigarette smoke. While smoking is banned in Madrid inside most bars and restaurants, because the estadio is outside, smoking is not only tolerated, it is almost ubiquitous. Nearly everyone around me was smoking. So much so, it necessitated hanging clothes near an open window in my room afterward. Finally, what is with Atletico Madrid's crazy candy cane jerseys, and how difficult is it to read a player's number? Even if I knew the club's players, I would not be able to see the number from my seat in the lower deck (let alone in the upper deck). Light blue outline on the back of the jersey. I've come to decide that, with no offense intended, Atletico Madrid is the New York Mets and Real Madrid is the New York Yankees in many ways: fans bases, payrolls, success. The appeal to attending this match was because, well, I'm in Madrid and I should do as the Madrilenos do. Enjoy futbol. That, and Barca is the reigning UEFA Champions and the side sports many of the Spanish heroes from the 2010 World Cup championship (Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, etc.). The experience of attending a European futbol match is wonderful and all sports fans should endeavor to do it. Just don't expect garlic fries, hot dog vendors, clean restrooms, or in-match highlights.
Unfortunately, in my experience with sports organizations, feedback usually doesn’t happen, and if it does, it is most often related to a specific incident that has been publicized and brought to the attention of management. The approach is lacking in terms of strategy, consistency and ultimately effectiveness in sports, yet is an important component for most businesses that provide products or services through both brick-and-mortar stores and online sites.
As a former sport PR professional, and co-author of sport public relations text, I am a proponent of feedback in the form of dialogue between a sport organization and its stakeholders. While I don't champion the revenue side as much as Bill Sutton does, he is absolutely on target with this post in the Feb. 13 Sports Business Journal (sub required).
Grunig and Grunig (1992, p. 291) boldly stated, in an era before the internet, that two-way symmetrical models of public relations described how excellent public relations should be practiced.
These two-way models have much in common with relationship marketing in that they are dynamic and seek to cultivate long-term relationships between an organization and its stakeholders. Feedback, or dialogue, is a hallmark of both. And the internet has spawned tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and others that make engaging in this process so easy.
Sport organizations must run, not walk, to implement Sutton's suggestions. If not for the revenue results Sutton advocates, then for the PR benefits.
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