Ask the AD - December/January edition
01/22/2016 | 12:00:00 | General
CARBONDALE, Ill. - This is the latest installment of our monthly feature called, "Ask the AD." If you have questions for Saluki Director of Athletics Tommy Bell, feel free to submit them by e-mail.
Many other universities reserve student seating for the first rows behind the team benches for basketball games. A few reasons are it makes for better television and provides more noise for the opposing bench. Any thoughts to making this change?
I appreciate your suggestion, but feel our students can make the most impact on the game from the end zones where we have bleacher seating right next to the court. The seats you are referring to on the sides are chair-back seats that are sold to the public. They also include a Saluki Athletic Scholarship Fund donation, which is a critical fund-raising piece that helps pay for scholarships for student-athletes.
I love being able to see games at no cost on ESPN3, however there have been a few games where this was not an option. I tried listening to the games on-line but purchasing a package for a few games a year is not worth the money. Why does SIU charge a subscription for its radio broadcasts?
There is an expense involved in streaming the games, whether it's the radio broadcasts or ESPN3, and we've decided to dedicate all of our financial resources toward making ESPN3 available and free for everyone. For that reason, we're charging a nominal fee for radio broadcasts.
I love our Saluki font, but we've moved away from it on the current uniforms. Also, the dawg logo has all but disappeared from campus. I can only imagine this would help with merchandise sales and marketing beyond the SI region. Plans for the future?
The football and volleyball teams used the recognizable Saluki font (known by designers as Serpentine) on its jerseys, and baseball will do the same this spring. We allowed both our men's and women's basketball teams to experiment with a different font. We've heard both positive and negative feedback and will reevaluate our jersey (and helmet) look prior to next year. The dawg-head logo is making a bit of a comeback. We recognize its distinctive look as essential to our brand and that's why you see it being used much more on TV and in our publications. I know that it is also a top seller in apparel.
The ESPN3 deal with the MVC appears to be a super idea. Our teams get national exposure and great training for our TV students. Is this a revenue builder or an expense to the University?
That question is difficult to answer at this point. There were substantial up-front costs for equipment and infrastructure. We've also learned many lessons this year about how complicated and expensive it can be to produce ESPN-caliber broadcasts. Each conference school will receive an annual monetary distribution from ESPN that we hope will help cover our costs going forward, but it is unclear whether we can recoup our investment.
Now that the 2016 football schedule has been released, what are the chances that some of the early season games will be scheduled in the afternoon?
Our early-season games will likely remain in the evening, due to the potential for hot weather and because we generally do better at the gate with early-season night games. Our late-season games will be in the afternoon. We've yet to make a decision on Homecoming.
