ZachTheZip

I think I understand now. The marketing department wasn't working on building a fan base or creating an exciting product, they were focusing on getting the money from businesses. While you do get some good money that way, it's not sustainable long-term. What is sustainable is high attendance at a quality event. It's not as much money, but it is steady and if done right it draws in the business money on its own. They're building from the top down and it's going to collapse if they don't build a solid base soon.One thing I've noticed is that actual marketing departments don't do all that much visibly at the college level. What they do that isn't seen, though, is get small businesses to vocally support the program. Infocision and Summa aren't small businesses and are therefore not as endearing to the public when they throw their support behind something. What needs to happen is for the local bars to start advertising themselves as gameday destinations on the radio and TV. They do that, or if even one does that, then other businesses will follow suit. They might not be pledging huge sums of money to the athletic department, or perhaps even no money at all, but every time they mention the Zips it's advertising that the marketing department doesn't have to work for and it builds a sense of these events really being something in the minds of the people you're trying to reach. OSU doesn't need to market themselves because everyone else does it for them. That's the type of thing that the UA marketing department neeeds to emulate, even if it is on a smaller scale.

I managed to find a copy of the job posting that Eastman-Beaudine has written up for the AD job.

Well, we do have ads on those electronic billboards that show just long enough to wonder what it says before switching to another ad. There's one on Route 8 right by the stadium, and one on I-77 near Copley Road.

Not sod. It doesn't work on a sloped bank. That's what they've said. Grass seating won't be available this season. Fall is a good time to plant grass. It lies dormant over the winter and begins to grow in the spring. It should be ready for 2010.That is going to disappoint a hell of a lot of students. It's been the thing they have been talking about the most with the Stadium is the grass berm seating and if they don't have that for the students it's an epic fail on the part of the program.They're dropping the ball here. I'll stand on the bare dirt if it means being behind the endzone.

Cool.Only name missing that I can see is OT Jake Brandt.

Now we're competing with UNLV.

Interesting that Marshall went the mediocre AD with school ties route. We can and will do better than that.

Where have you seen/heard marketing efforts by the athletic department?I know they've been putting pictures of Infocision Stadium on the cover of the phone books for a while now. There's billboards along Exchange for the stadium, but I don't think it does much good when the actual stadium is right there doing a better job than any billboard could ever do.I haven't seen any TV commercials or heard any radio commercials recently. Not even any radio promotions giving away tickets as prizes.Anything else that i'm not seeing?I'm a firm believer that if you're going to do something, you should do it right not not do it at all. No half-assing it like putting up an empty tent with brochures or other types of "passive marketing". People don't like something until you tell them they like it.

School starts on August 24th.The game on August 21st is at 7:30PM. The next home game after that is the Indiana game on Sept 18 at 7:30, which will be full of Indiana fans that came for the football game the next day, along with the Hoban-SVSM football game being played at the Info at the same time.

Seeing some of those goals again gets me pumped up for this season. August 21st is the first Men's home game.

Grand Opening T-shirts, Inaugural Season souvenir drink cups, and the like should be all over the place to purchase.

I think the scoreboard is big enough to put a camera on top of it, and they can use the endzone building, too.

Good point. Most athletic department websites I see are run either by CSTV or nmnathletics. Both are pretty crappy.I think GoZips.com should be hosted by the university, not outsourced to a subpar contractor. A few grad students from the Computer Science department could design a better website in no time, and keep it up to date.

I read that on the horribly designed Pennlive.com forums and they seemed pretty certain that he would be gone. Maybe it was just speculation, but some of the posters were pretty mad about it.Kid, the most up-to-date article on PennLive seems to be this one from 10 July. Says nothing about a one-game suspension. Would be interested in seeing a link to the story you mentioned. Thanks!http://blog.pennlive.com/bobflounders/2009...ge_timmons.htmlNot a story, but the message boards there. Here's the post istelf. http://www.pennlive.com/forums/psufootball...t?artid=1290050 It was in reply to something else, but the board is so terrible that I can't figure out to link the whole thread.

I read that on the horribly designed Pennlive.com forums and they seemed pretty certain that he would be gone. Maybe it was just speculation, but some of the posters were pretty mad about it.

Stairwell doubles as bomb shelter! and the original slabs of concrete that they laid down on there (before they covered it with tar and poured more layers of concrete on it) looked on cams like they were over 12" thick.That bunker could sustain a direct hit.Seriously though, I am assuming they were worried about a standing crowd of a thousand people during or just after a game. That's not the sort of roof you make out of sticks and thatch.You mean we can stand on top of the stairwell roof? AWESOME!!!!!lulall this time I thought you guys were complaining about how many layers they were putting on the endzone facilities. ... and yes, I'm sure you can stand on the stairwell bldgs (they could have designed them as tiki huts)The roofs have to be designed to hold up the weight of 14,000 extra seats and fans. I think they should throw on a few more layers for good measure.

Let her know about it. Nothing will change until somebody gets an earful.

I understand that Penn State LB Navorro Bowman will be forced to sit out the Akron game.

I'm thinking tht if we all show up in lot 14 and create a tradition, they will start gearing all the activities towards us.It's up to us to make gameday into something special, and then the university can react to that. We're the ones who will create the traditions, and it starts on Sept 12th. Keep that in mind when we're all planning on what to do for gameday. If we choose Lot 34, is there a place to put other stuff and create a gameday environment? Not really. I think Lot 14 offers more potential thanks to its location. It's right across the street from the Union walkway through campus that leads straight to the Info, and you can put all sorts of stuff along that corridor. You can walk down that sidewalk, the Info's press tower in view in profile the whole time. There's a big, shady grass area right across the street next to Olin to tailgate in. It just seems like a better spot than lot 34 to build something special around.What do you guys think?

There are 5,500 student seats. I don't know if that includes the grass hill or not.

We should just start a "GoZips.com Sucks" thread and throw all the problems into one place for the people to see.They have had all summer to update their info about the Info. I know it's not the website coders, because it's fairly simple to do. This is something involving the people in charge being reluctant to do anything, or even being completely unaware that there is a problem.

Written by Graham Watson, even. It's her job to cover non-BCS schools like Akron. Why couldn't she have used us as the example instead of Minnesota?

http://www.ohio.com/sports/51031102.htmlThe scoreboard will be completed by August 1st.

It's a complicated programming procedure to subtract a week off of a javascript countdown. :lol:In related news, something called "Football Gameday Central" is coming soon to GoZips.com

How is it that the men's basketball roster up fully up-to-date with Zeke, while the football roster still doesn't have any of the incoming freshmen yet?