Winning Pays Off

The Feb. 24 BGA blog detailed slumping attendance in recent years at home contests featuring Dartmouth's "revenue sports" (those that charge for admission), and the potential income lost as a result.

In the midst of a stretch that has seen the University of Vermont men's basketball team advance to the NCAA Tournament, the UVM women's basketball team make it into the NCAA field, and the always popular Catamount men's ice hockey team earn a berth in the Hockey East semifinals, a story in the Burlington Free Press reminds us that tickets sales are hardly the only economic benefit of successful athletic programs.

A few outtakes from the Free Press story, headlined UVM cashes in on Catamounts:

Sponsorship revenue in early 2003 hovered just under $130,000. By 2008, that number boomed 81 percent to $700,000.

And ...

According to data UVM provided to the NCAA, annual athletics marketing revenue rose 29 percent since 2005 to $609,600 in 2009. Despite the recession, that figure was off only 6.7 percent from 2008’s high-water mark of $653,862.

Add in licensing revenue, UVM Vice President of Marketing Chris McCabe said, and the figure rises by as much as $72,000 annually.

And that's been accompanied by a dramatic attendance jump...

The number of season ticket holders for men’s basketball has grown tremendously, rising ... from 338 in 2003 to 1,402 in 2009.

More ticket sales ... more merchandise sales ... more sponsorship ... more exposure for the school. ("The three or four televised games in 2003 has grown to an average of 25 televised sports events in recent years, McCabe said.) It's certainly a win-win proposition.

Most important of all, of course, is that it provides a much better experience for the student-athletes. What's not to like?

(Editor's Note: That certain Hanover High sophomore and his mom spent a teacher in-service Monday together in Burlington and, you guessed it, they added to the UVM coffers by coming home with an America East Champions T-shirt.)

We've all received offers to be included in the Who's Who of Something or Other books for just $49.95 or more and, oh, by the way, how many would you like to order? So I took the e-mail I got this morning with a grain of salt. Make that a trainload of salt.

That said, I like a car wreck I couldn't not look and clicked on the provided link to find the Big Green Alert blog listed as one of the 100 Best College Sports Blogs, right there after the New York Times blog, The Quad. I suppose I owe it to the folks who tossed BGA up there to give you this link to the list.

Troubling news out of Cornell these days where there have been three students jump to their death in Ithaca's gorges since last month. Inside Higher Ed has a story under the unfortunate headline, A 'Suicide School'?

While in no way diminishing the significance of what has happened, I think this quote from Timothy Marchell, the school's director of mental health initiatives, is worth noting:

... “Suicide that occurs in most communities is not something that happens in public, is not visible. ...

(W)hen a death occurs at Cornell in one of our gorges, it’s a very public experience. It’s observed by people, many people hear about it, whether or not it is in fact a suicide, and the reality is that when it becomes visible it can create the sense of a higher frequency than it actually is. And so over the years, that has contributed to this perception. And part of that picture is that when non-Cornell-members die in the gorges, it’s sometimes perceived as a Cornell death when it may in fact not be.”

From the Cornell Daily Sun:

The University said Monday night that security personnel will remain posted on the bridges for an average of 18 hours per day until the end of the week when students leave campus for Spring Break. The Cornell University Police Department is coordinating those efforts.

Officials from Gannett Health Services also participated in a live webcast that was recorded and e-mailed to the Cornell community on Monday and posted on the University’s new website, caringcommunity.cornell.edu.

And finally, it's hard not to admire German engineering. Granted, the VW bus of old wasn't exactly a showpiece of engineering, but our faded yellow 1984 VW camper that had been parked on planks in the woods and covered with tarps all winter once again started yesterday on the very first turn of the key. I used to pull the battery and put it on a trickle-charger in the basement but I think this is the fourth year in a row I simply left the battery in, turned it once and the old feller fired right up. If you are around Hanover between now and early November, keep your eyes open for it ;-)