Ask The AD - November edition
12/02/2014 | 12:00:00 | General
CARBONDALE, Ill. - SIU's Director of Athletics Mario Moccia offers his final installment of "Ask the AD." He begins his new position at New Mexico State next month.
Could SIU return to daytime football home games? Some of us alumni have over a two-hour drive to return home, and at night, during deer season, it can get somewhat dangerous. One never knows what may pop up out onto the roadway.
I understand the concern with overnight driving. As I have discussed in this forum, we did extensive focus groups studies with a broad spectrum of Saluki fans, and they were pretty consistent with wanting night football games. After the season we did a quick analysis and found that our single-game ticket revenue increased 25 percent and our overall football ticket sales were up 9 percent. Also, our overall attendance increased by 7 percent, while our student attendance increased a whopping 49 percent! So while I am sure a robust discussion will take place next year, I would anticipate that the game times will be set based on data-driven information.
Why was the Saluki Mascot - Brown Dawg - naked at the Homecoming football game and the recent University Mall pep rally? Can the athletic department provide a football, basketball and baseball uniform for both mascots?
Grey dog is the father-type figure between the two mascots -- the stoic, stately head of the household, while Brown Dawg is considered the baby or puppy. Brown Dawg is instructed to act like a puppy, and to my knowledge was never labeled as male or female, so I don't think the term "naked" applies.
I was in town for Homecoming. My suggestions are: move it a week earlier, like it was the last two years, to avoid conflict with Halloween activities that a lot of people with children had to miss this year; and please move the game from 6:00 to 4:00 so there is time to tailgate, but not TOO much time to kill between the parade and the game. Your thoughts?
I agree that Oct. 25 is a late Homecoming game, but these dates are set by a University Homecoming committee not the Department of Athletics. I know there are many factors that go into the selection process, including not scheduling games on Fall Break, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Halloween. The committee works to find the best possible dates for Family Weekend and Homecoming based upon these limitations and the football schedule itself. As for the game time, I would consider an earlier start time to minimize the gap between the parade and the game.
During football games, why doesn't Mike Reis ask an SIU Alumni Association trivia question, and why don't people email him anymore so they can get a "shout out" and have Reis say who's listening and where they are listening?
According to Mike, we were among the first Division I broadcasts to do the trivia questions, and at its peak, we averaged around 75 emails per game. Then, interest lagged and there weren't as many emails. T-shirts went unclaimed and questions went unanswered. Then, listener criticism followed saying we were interrupting the play by play too much just to read emails. We've discussed doing something similar with Twitter in hopes of attracting additional and younger listeners. The trick is making it fun and interesting while not detracting from the broadcast.
