Athletics VP using Facebook as tool
Ask any person on any college campus in America to tell you about Facebook.
Chances are they not only know about it, but probably could describe it with in-depth detail. The Internet social networking site has expanded to become the most visited site of its kind and currently draws the fifth-highest amount of traffic of all internet sites globally. The site offers features such as creating your own personal profile, adding other people to a list of friends and joining groups for people who share common beliefs or interests.
ASUSU Athletics VP Lance Brown has begun utilizing Facebook’s networking capabilities for things that stretch far beyond simply reconnecting with old friends or staying in touch with current ones.
In the past several months Brown has been the founder of two groups that each took little time in becoming some the largest groups on all of Facebook that related to USU.
Brown’s first go-around with starting a Facebook group came over this past summer when he started a campaign for student support of this year’s current gameday shirts and the words on back to read, “I’m proud of my A.” Brown rallied the support of more than 900 USU students and fans online in just a matter of days to support a battle between Brown and school administrators over the possible double-meaning of the saying on the shirts. The controversy made national news before finally ending in a compromise between both parties involved, but not before more than 900 students were both aware and supportive of Brown and his push for the shirts to be printed with his design.
Now for the second time in the last several months, Brown is attempting to reach a massive number of the USU student body to take a stand for something he feels is important for the school’s athletics.
“Facebook really has developed a way to reach a number of people and kind of get a message out there with different kinds of groups,” Brown said.
Reaching a number of people to get a message across is exactly what Brown has been aiming for with his most recent group titled Save USU Football Program which, in just over a week, has gained more than 750 members for the cause.
The group is a call to action for the USU student body to make their way out to home games in support of the football program with the goal of meeting NCAA attendance requirements.
“It’s been a great way to rally students and kind of get the word out there,” Brown said.
The cause for concern in attendance numbers is the possibility of a probation being imposed on the football program, which Brown says USU is potentially facing.
“The NCAA has requirements for Division-I football teams,” Brown said of the current attendance situation. “That minimum attendance is 15,000.”
The 15,000-fan mark must be the average attendance for all of Utah State’s home games over the span of an entire season, and according to Brown’s research on the matter, would call for an average of 7,000 students to attend each home game to meet the 15,000 minimum.
While meeting the attendance goals is the primary purpose of Brown’s group, spreading awareness of the possible repercussions of not meeting the attendance requirement is also a main priority for Brown. He said some people have a hard time fathoming the impact of what football does for the university. He has received some feedback from people who feel that the school would be better off by simply dropping the football program altogether and using the money spent on the football program towards other aspects of the school.
“What they don’t realize is that if we scratch the football program, that scratches the whole athletics department,” Brown said. “They (the football program) are the money makers of the athletics department, and without the football program a lot of other varsity sports would not exist. It’s kind of a domino effect if athletics suffers. It’s common rule of thumb that athletics is the window of a university.”
Brown hopes that the group will continue to spread awareness to the student body about the importance of their presence at home football games. Brown also said he is working at new ways to draw the student body out to football games.
“We’re going to try and implement some ideas to try to get students there and provide some incentive for students,” he said.
As for making students aware of those possible incentives, Brown isn’t too worried about getting the message across.
“The great thing about a Facebook group is you have a way to e-mail all those people,” Brown said. “I’ll send an e-mail that usually gets checked pretty frequently by college students, if not daily. So I instantly have an e-mail to five or six hundred students who cared enough to accept the invite to the group.”
–matt.sonn@aggiemail.usu.edu