Why What We Do Matters to People

The answer to another question posed by my colleagues at the SEC SIDs meeting: what in the world would you put on a blog and who in the world would care about it?

During the day, there was discussion about how the media has become more and more obsessed with the minutia of college athletics; less focused on the outcome of events. That’s coming from somebody’s surveys of readers/viewers/on-liners.

Or, is it just the nature of a change of mechanism – the connectivity of the internet coupled with the interest that has always been there?

Here’s my answer. On the way to the airport to leave for home, I made a stop seeking an item for one of my hobbies. I’m not going to get into detail, because it wouldn’t be to hard to ID the people involved.

The sales people were friendly, but one of them asked where I was from. Once I said Arkansas and they looked at my department-issue uniform – the addidas Razorback polo – everything changed. So, you’re hear for the SEC thing right? Hey, we heard on the radio today that Spurrier wasn’t giving autographs? What’s he like? What do you do? Oh man, that sounds cool. So what goes on at that thing? Man, we can’t have a terrorist attack in Destin right now – that would take out the SEC coaches.

It was all in good fun, and as it went on, I reminded me that these guys day was just changed and lightened up because somebody from a SEC athletic department came through their shop. I imagine they spent the rest of the morning talking about the former Florida coach, what they thought of the current Florida recruits.

Something that we on the inside find very, very mundane – the annual spring meeting – has a certain amount of excitement to the fan base.