FB: Southern Athletic Association

[albatross]

Berry will always have one of the best home field advantages in the conference because the school is larger (save Trinity and Rhodes) and seem to have a decent amount of community support. That unofficial number suggests that the home stands at minimum were probably pretty full, and many schools would love to have that number.

Hendrix, for example, doesn't charge admission to any sport but has to compete with an FCS team (D1 in every other sport) across town. The school used to have a stellar SID, but he left this year to be the Assistant Commissioner for the ASC. The new SID is a pretty young and still learning the ropes.

Hendrix does have a beat writer for the town paper, though. In fact - he was inducted to the school's athletics Hall of Honor for his decades of work and service this past Saturday while Gray Stanton (DE, '17) was honored for being the SAA Man of the Year in 2017.

[BerryCollegeFan]

Berry's game stats show attendance at 2,382 for the Centre game. That's disappointing.  Maybe the count is only the folks that purchased tickets and excludes the freebies such as player's tickets for family etc.   I expected 5,000+ for two undefeated conference rivals going head to head after a 21-19 thriller last year.  I thought Centre would bring a bigger crowd.     

This week I kept looking in the Rome newspaper for a pregame article.  There was nothing.  So how are people to know?  Most local news sports departments have few people.  They rely on the high school coaches or AD's, and area college SID's to feed them information.  One has to write the article for them in order to get it published.  Come on Berry.  When Hendrix comes to town in a few weeks, feed the local paper the week prior to the game.  Get the word out there and lets pack Valhalla.  It's a great venue, tickets are cheaper than the high school games, and the atmosphere is electric.  It's a fun time.

Welcome to the reality of Division III sports coverage many of us face.   Some local media will only focus on the "upper" colleges in town, some won't cover D3 even if it's the only game in town because it's non-scholarship, some just don't care, and some still actually do a decent job despite all the challenges they face in the current environment and should be treasured.

http://johndruckenmiller.com/blog/2017/09/24/chick-fil-a-dwarf-house-sports-berry-remains-undefeated-this-season-shorter-falls-to-delta-state-falcons-at-detroit-today/  This site normally has a comment or two every week about Berry sports.

[BerryViking92]

Valhalla's capacity is given as 2500.  Per the stats on the Berry website, attendance was 2432.  That is 97% capacity, not too bad when UGA played against a ranked team at basically the same time.  The home stands were packed, as usual.  Others were standing or sitting in chairs behind the end zone.  It was a great home crowd and Centre brought some folks too, although the away side was not full.  And thank goodness we have an away side, some of our conference rivals do not.

As for the other issue Clark mentioned, the school could do better.  One season we got a "Coach's Corner" video before each game.  Another year we could watch the coach's post game interview online.  Last season there was at least a preview post before each game.  Now, we get none of the above.  There is certainly some room for improvement.

The local paper was bought out and now you have to pay to read any of the articles anyway, but they used to have some good original content.  I suspect that is now gone.

[Bombers798891]

The reality is, newspapers don't need D-III sports to sell.

The good news is, D-III teams don't need the local media anywhere near as much as they did. Every college is different, but at Ithaca, there was the following:

Game preview- http://athletics.ithaca.edu/news/2017/9/15/football-heads-to-st-lawrence-for-liberty-league-opener-on-saturday.aspx
Game notes- http://athletics.ithaca.edu/documents/2017/9/15//2017_Football_Insert_SLU.pdf?id=1508
Recap with video- http://athletics.ithaca.edu/news/2017/9/16/nabi-gladney-have-career-days-as-football-tops-st-lawrence-24-13.aspx

I know there are going to be some people who don't like going to a web page, and prefer the local media. But the landscape is shifting, and rather than, as Pat pointed out, send something out and hope the local media run with it, schools have the ability (if they choose) to just do it all in house. More and more, I think this is what you're going to see; sports info offices that become a centralized place where this stuff is collected, as opposed to being the distributor.

[albatross]

The SAA was represented well on the D3Football Team of the Week.

Mitchell Globe (LB - Trinity) made it for his game-changing scoop and score, and Cole Murphy (LB - BSC) made it for an outstanding game that included an INT.

[Clark Kent]

You folks have sorta made my point for me.  I've had this discussion with sports editor friends for the last 10-12 years.  My point to them is technology has changed everything.  People don't need local papers, local radio, or local tv stations anymore to get news about national events, the Braves, Falcons, UGA, etc.  The read local papers or listen to local radio to know what is going on in their community.  They want to read about local news, the local schools, who won the big high school game Friday night, and they want to see the names of their kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, neighbors in the paper.  Heck they'll buy 10 copies when that happens. 

So, for a small school in a small town market, ala Berry, it would pay huge dividends to cultivate relationships with the local news media.  It's called selling the program.  It's not collecting information and waiting on the writers to call, but it's being proactive.  Why not have Coach K on WRGA radio every Tuesday night for 30 minutes during the drive home?  Why not go speak to the Rotary Club, Kiwanis, Quarterback Club etc.?  Why not send out articles of reasonable size to local media outlets highlighting the upcoming game?  Then when ole Joe picks up the paper Saturday morning to see if Rome High, Cartersville or Calhoun won on Friday night, he might just see an article about Berry hosting Centre on Saturday and decide to take the family. 

In a nutshell, I'm high on the potential of Berry's athletic programs.  I don't want Berry to be happy with 2,400 attendance for a football game nor content with being co-Champs of the SAA.  Lets shoot for 5,000+ attendance and National Championships.  With the talent in the states of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, the facilities and the campus, the coaching staff, and the reputation of the school itself, it can happen.  But ya got to get out there and sell it.  You folks probably won't believe it, but some of Berry's players played before much bigger crowds in high school....regularly.  And nothing makes a better impression on a recruit than standing on the sideline with a big, excited crowd behind you. 

I'd like nothing more than to see Valhalla being enlarged 5 years from now.  Hook 'en Vikes!

[Pat Coleman]

You folks probably won't believe it, but some of Berry's players played before much bigger crowds in high school.

This conference has schools in Texas. They also have high school football.

[Ralph Turner]

You folks probably won't believe it, but some of Berry's players played before much bigger crowds in high school.

This conference has schools in Texas. They also have high school football.

Thank you, Pat. Back in the day, one of my favorite things to do was to take in three High School playoff games (of which my kids' high school was in one) in the old Texas Stadium for an admission price of about $10. Attendance would be 25,000 fans who usually took in one game plus a portion of another.

Here is the link to the new stadium in Katy Texas. He mentions a thousand kids per night in competition. That would be 2 games, about 300 football players on 4 squads and about 700 band/drill team/pep squad members from 4 high schools.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/take-look-this-72m-high-school-football-stadium-katy-texas/

The Allen (High School Texas) Eagle Escadrille had 800 members in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Y7o0JEgU4

[Ron Boerger]

Great Sewanee feature from Brian Lester in this week's Around the South.

[Ron Boerger]

You folks probably won't believe it, but some of Berry's players played before much bigger crowds in high school.

This conference has schools in Texas. They also have high school football.

And at least ten stadiums (not including facilities under construction in McKinney or Katy) seating 15K or more: http://www.wideopencountry.com/10-biggest-high-school-football-stadiums-texas/

[BerryViking92]

Clark Kent:  Very good points and I like and agree with every word.

[albatross]

Yes - I have to be honest. It was quite the transition from playing in front of tens of thousands (several times in Cowboys Stadium) at a 6A Texas high school to playing in front of a one-sided stadium with 2000 people in the stands in Conway!

[awadelewis]

Great Sewanee feature from Brian Lester in this week's Around the South.

That was a very nice piece by Mr. Lester.   Many of us around the Mountain had hope coming into this year for a better season.   Will see what happens over the next two Saturdays with Hendrix and Berry coming to Sewanee.   Low probability of an upset but hope to see us more competitive over those two games.

[albatross]

Great Sewanee feature from Brian Lester in this week's Around the South.

That was a very nice piece by Mr. Lester.   Many of us around the Mountain had hope coming into this year for a better season.   Will see what happens over the next two Saturdays with Hendrix and Berry coming to Sewanee.   Low probability of an upset but hope to see us more competitive over those two games.

playing on the mountain will always be memorable for me. those games getting more exciting will only make the experiences better in the future for the kids at every school now...

[Clark Kent]

A new DIII record of 37,355 fans saw St. Thomas (MN) defeat Saint John's (MN) 20-17 on Saturday at Target Field!!