If You Don't Beleive Me

This past week, The Chronicle of Higher Ed, set down this op-Ed series on What The Hell Happened to College Sports, and in particular, I point out for you In particular the essay of William C. Friday entitled Get Out of Show Business.

Sound familiar?

By the way, if the series title doesn't catch your attention, how about Oscar Robinson leading the list with Don't Treat Athletes Like Gladiators.

Don't start the new year without reading these.

I See A Screen Capture Cache Future

While well intended, betcha the employees of Atos in France make lots and lots of screen captures thanks to the new company policy banning inter-office email.

Oh no, they aren't the latest Luddites. The boss wants everyone to be social with a new Facebook-like system or IM.

That's CNTL-ALT-PrtScn to image the screen so you have that CYA "email" now where a coworker told you something.

Careful What You Tweet

Another episode in the Gallery of Horrors -- a PR firm in Arizona lost Special Olympics as a client in the region because a partner made a tongue in cheek comment that was taken as derogatory to those served by Special Olympics.

And in related, closer to home news, don't threaten cops over the internet. You're gonna lose and get fined. As in, three years probation for trying to say a New Orleans cop was abusive of a woman.

Hmmmmmmm . . . Two local Fox (excuse me, FOX) television stories. Both about internet threats. Coincidence . . .

Here's the PR Advice of the Year

The best public relations executives are the ones who push back on bullies and counsel them on the importance of authenticity and transparency. Stand up to the boss. And, if the boss won't take your counsel, find another one. Life is too short to work in a culture of fear and retribution.

If you like that, read more from Steve Cody's piece off Inc.'s website, "Why Nobody is Talking About Your Company."

That pull quote is from his third point in which he is using Steve Jobs as the tent pole for restating the old cliche in a new way -- tell truth to power.

I highly recommend Cody's addendum above, which I'll aphorism into:

When power doesn't want truth, its time to go.

Words I lived up to.

What's New is Really Old

This just in -- Tom Brokaw says future news consumers can't be couch potatoes.

News flash: Dan Gillmor said that in 2009.

And in 2008.

And I said it in 2007.

Pew Speaks; You Should Listen

Just in time for your Christmas Eve and Day break -- sorry for all of you stuck at the holiday basketball tournaments and the smaller bowl games -- Pew issuedhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif another vital report on the role of the internet.

Shocking: It is central to our lives.

"These findings are one of our main signs about how deeply Internet use has woven itself into the rhythms of people's lives," report author and Pew Internet Lee Rainie said.

Here's the link: a Christmas present you can open today.

Top 10 Social Media News Moments

Everyone remembers where they were at big moments in life. Standing in front of a rear-projection big screen TV in the Scoggin Room in Malone Stadium as Chhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifallenger blew up. Seeing everyone run out of TCU's basketball gym to watch the live feed from Gulf War I's start.

Now we just have more tools to share, and we can hold them in our hands. Still, Mashable provides an interesting look at a very presentist view of history. The top 10 historical moments impacted by social media.

It might be a little to precious. And really runs out of steam on No. 10.

Bringing it All Together

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is part two of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

Right now, we're taking that approach with a purely entertainment product -- our Northwestern State Christmas Gala.

To project to our distant on-line students, I captured the Gala. We don't have the full rights to all the music for distribution beyond our theater, so we didn't stream it live.

In the ticketing this year, we created "advanced" tickets. The Gala is festival seating, but the last two nights tend to sell out. You can't advertise to come to an event 75 minutes away without a guarantee mechanism. To provide that convenience, we put tickets on line for the first time ever, but did so at a premium. No one who was local or didn't mind standing in line had to by the $15 advanced seat; they could still by the $10 one.

After the event, we have put up, one at a time and for free, the videos we could under the rights we own. So in some ways, you didn't have to come at all to see the Gala -- oh my, some were concerned this might cost us future Gala sales.

No. The videos serve as an advertisement for next year, and they are a service.

What if they get downloaded? Great. We hope so. Why? See previous.

Why are you working during the break to create an entertainment product? Because it is our role within our community. The Gala brings the arts to thousands of kids and Northwestern State's Creative and Performing Arts program (CAPA) is that link to culture for this region. CAPA is the symphony, the dinner theater, art gallery.

Just like the athletic department is the sports entertainment in the area.

It is a vital part of the mission of the American university. As created in the late 19th century and executed here in the 21st.

With that, I encourage you to check out our little video series. It's free, unlike the ones I've created in the past for athletic departments -- mostly because they didn't get that more free served both the mission and reached new fans, keeping them connected in ways that the other media could not or would not.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Enjoy the Christmas carols.

A Modest Proposal, Pt. the Third

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is part two of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

Learn from the entertainment world: No band makes money off records any more. Digital dimes, remember? They make money to support themselves and create a profit from touring. Performing. Selling merchandise. In the past, the world worked the other way around -- the merch was to promote the sale of the record. Now the record promotes the sale of other things.

In the education world, we "make" money from state appropriations and tuition. States want to cut appropriation and play accountability games with what you get. Tuition continues to rise, and students begin to ask, am I getting what I need for the money I'm spending.

In athletics, we are insulated at the top from the realities of economics by the socialistic practices of the conference rights packages. The 99% in non-BCS and below Division I is going broke trying to keep up.

So they propose things like limiting the number of staff that football can have. Sounds a lot like limiting the number of pages in press guides, then eliminating press guides.

Remember when those decisions were going to save us?

People -- money has to be spent and as long as it is coming in by the bushels from the networks, it will be consumed. We all managed to get by with just one or two video coordinators in the past, but because we can, we have three or five.

Once upon a time, we produced events for the people in the stands. Like the record business, they are not the auxiliary profit center to the main audience -- the one that is distant.

The result is we begin to creep up our own costs -- athletic or academic -- through ticket prices or tuition hikes. One day we discover, we have priced ourselves out of the markets we were originally designed to serve.

While free doesn't work, a $12 women's basketball ticket for a team that can't post a winning record in its league and in an entertainment market where far cheaper and better alternatives exist is no better.

We need to start thinking about the "dime point" in the middle. iTunes worked because it was 99-cents to start. Enough to cover the cost if the volume was there. Now it's up to $1.29 for new stuff. That's a dramatic jump -- almost a third of the original price. Over time, will the market bear it?

Sometimes The Obvious Isn't

My own love for CoverItLive aside, I remain somewhat amused by those who continue to try to make Twitter work for something that clearly works better as a live blog.

Oh, say, like any sporting contest.

If you don't believe me, how about the Poynter Institute?

Let me say this a little louder: IF YOU ARE CONTINUING TO USE TWITTER TO ENGAGE YOUR FOLLOWERS INSTEAD OF CIL YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

Or, just read Matt Thompson's more civil, more detailed, more lengthy explanation of same.

Thompson hits every point spot on.

Did I mention you should put down the TweetDeck and open CiL?

Here's another reason: traffic.

Chris Syme posed the question to me the other day (yes, admittedly via Twitter) was there a way to get visitor info on a Twitter page. Not users or subscribers -- actual analytics numbers. Must admit, don't know the answer right now but plan to find out.

Meanwhile, what drove ArkansasRazorbacks.com traffic through the room (as in about a 150% increase year-to-year) was using CiL on our native pages. Re-read please, especially my friends at NeuLion, et al. On. The. Native. Page.

Not on a "game central". Not letting CiL capture those numbers by linking to them. By putting the code on your server, thus generating that nice, juicy latency number ON YOUR WEBSITE.

I will fully admit to frustrated passion here.

If you haven't done it before, Thompson catches the vibe perfect in his story.

Get your account and get with it right now. This isn't just sports -- anything that you seek direct interaction works. Breaking news. Political events.

Eight Words is All You Need

Take responsibility. Tell it all. Tell is fast.

Thanks much to Chris Syme for the notice on Jane Jordan-Meier's book, The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management.

Too bad far to many people at (fill in the blank with your college sports crisis of choice) won't follow those eight simple words from Jordan-Meier.

But, then again, none of us in the clucking class would have jobs (or at least passionate pastimes) without the dunder-headed 20th century spin doctor approach so many still attempt.

Jane's book will be my New Year's Nook addiction.

Quick Notes for Academic Tweets

Something found in The Chronicle, nice starter if you haven't been in the Twitter world.

Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

Or, to just kill myself since my brain has been changed.

Please take a moment to read through this infographic produced by AssistedLivingToday.com.

By the time you get to the end of it you'll be ready to throw away your iPhone, rent your clothes and run screaming to your Kaczynski cabin in the woods.

Then again, you might re-read it and say to yourself, what cockamamie Luddite BS is this?

Here's just one: Social causes you to forget things. That factoid is about a 1/3 of the way down. You know what? I can't remember 1/10th of the phone numbers I once kept in my head. I did that because it was a pain in the ass to pull out the paper list I kept in my wallet or Franklin DayPlanner of media outlets.

You know why I don't know them now? Not because social media rewired my brain. Because the cell phone stores more numbers for me and I just have to punch them up without needing to them.

Jezz -- I don't remember how to churn milk into butter and I can't do that today. Oh my God (certainly not OMG -- that would be another ill effect of social media) how will I function?

I'll go to the grocery store and buy butter. Cause it's more efficient. And cheaper. And . . . gasp . . . MODERN.

Sadly, I'm sure more than a few people will believe this stuff.

BTW, if your attention span was really down to five seconds, you would have never made it down to this point to actually get the link to the story.

Wonder if these same folks are still worried about The Red Menace. Maybe that is behind this eeeeeevil plot.

Hey, Gran Torino, get off my internet.

A Modest Proposal, Pt. Deux

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is the next part of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

Stop using distance as a limiter: Too often we confuse the chance for exclusivity with the opportunity to price gouge. Enter here the newspaper group who thinks subscription should be the same whether you get dead trees or pixels. Really? That just pisses us off. Download should be cheaper because we know your costs are that much lower.

I've written for years about how we don't help ourselves with confiscatory price structures and locking up games and content inside pay walls. Oh, but we must pay for the service -- and you just said that yourself, says the reader.

Indeed. Want to know what bulk internet streaming really costs? How much it takes to run a back-end server system? The requirements to create your own network? Digital dimes at work again -- compared to the analog TV truck and OTA network days. But getting the $150K together to do it right is daunting. Much easier to just sign away those rights to the guys who figured out those costs, and are making rather tidy profits off your fans.

You don't think you can do it? Um, Texas isn't stupid. Brigham Young understands. And why in the heck do you think ESPN and Fox lawyers wanted all those digital rights anyway? They didn't get those suits by not knowing what they were buying.

A Modest Proposal, Pt. 1

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is the next part of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

Back in what now seem the dark ages of Web 2.0, the concept of The Long Tail began. It explained how brick and mortar was doomed and digital was the business future.

The downside was the reality that digital dimes do not equal Madison Avenue dollars. In an entertainment economy built upon Don Draper economics, we are beset by tectonic shifts if not wholesale Armageddon.

Look, I think I've made convincing arguments regarding the fact we are in the entertainment business. And, by the way, that includes both halves of the body-brain barrier.

As you and yours head into the new year, consider these ideas:

Admission cost for all: Nothing tells consumers what your product is worth like free admission. A $3 ticket isn't why fans are not attending your volleyball/women's basketball/swim meet. They aren't coming because the product isn't worth it, they don't know it is happening or there is no market for the product in your area.

For over a decade, volleyball could not draw flies at University of Arkansas. Let's be honest. And that was painful, because under Chris Poole the team won more SEC Western Division titles than any other school (and for the longest, more than the rest of the league combined had won). NCAA appearances. All-Americans. The first team to beat Florida for the league tournament title. Uber successful.

Nobody cared.

Why? Because when Arkansas started volleyball, none of the local high schools played the sport. It was not big across the state either.

Meanwhile, soccer had a steady attendance, even when they posted losing seasons. When they were winning, they out-drew volleyball.

Why? Because the largest youth soccer program in Arkansas was in Fayetteville during the formative years of that college team. The high schools weren't just good, they were dominant (and still are the power base) in the state, both boys and girls teams.

There was a local passion for the game, and the Lady Razorback team became the local soccer communities connection to live presentation of it's favorite product.

Aha! The role of the university in the community.

A constant drumbeat among administrators and coaches is to stop charging admission, that's what will bring in the fans.

If so, why did attendance patterns by students not change before and after free tickets began at Arkansas in 2008-09? Prior to the current regime, students paid some nominal fee to attend games because UA did not have a student activity fee. Academic politics.

Guess what sport they students willingly and overwhelmingly paid their hard-earned Starbucks money to attend? Gymnastics.

What sport did they have no interest, no matter how hard we tried, to attend? Women's basketball.

What in the hell does this have with internet rights and new media?

The amount we are charging for fans to attend our events should reflect the costs involved, and it should not be free for that reason.

Football is a very expensive sport. It also happens to be popular. It makes sense the tickets should be higher. The problem becomes when it reaches three digits -- is that to support the sport (or even the greater athletic department) or to simply gouge the public.

This is the truth that old-school journalism has learned the hard way. Unfortunately, in putting up pay walls they are trying to recoup the entire printing press. When the cost is too high, only a handful will pay.

A Little Bit of History

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is part three of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

The American University holds a special place in our cultural history. We began with a European model, but after the Civil War, the role of the American University changed from font of learning to source of culture.

The Morrill Act (1862) and the Hatch Act (1887) are the backbone of our "land-grant universities." The creation of public, state-run institutions of higher learning was a conscious decision of the late 19th century politicians. These colleges were given out as political patronage, local chamber of commerce boosterism or in pursuit of Progressive-style reform.

Why are the state colleges where they are? Because our forefathers wanted to bring culture to the hinterlands, or conversely, to take our youth away from the eeeeeeeevils of the big city into the bucolic purity of the countryside for their protection and education.

Stay with me as we come on around the bend . . . how many times have you watched the Oxford University soccer (excuse me, futbol) team take on Cambridge? That would be, never. Because sporting clubs existed outside of university. University was just that -- studies. And by the same token, symphony societies, theater groups and art galleries -- none in large part inside the educational institution.

Look around your campuses. How many of you have a marching band. A theater group. A cable access channel. And, of course, an athletic department.

How important to your community are those things? Would you have them without the university? In most cases, no.

At the turn of the 20th century when college sports became external and organized -- be it AAU backing Dr. Naismith's new American game or the NCAA following Theodore Roosevelt's lead to preserve football -- it was done so quite deliberately to bring something to each little corner of America that a college or university.

I am amused at the whole idea of "town versus gown". Whenever that flares up, you can bet one side of the equation has forgotten how vital to its survival the other is.

What does it all mean?

Alton Brown's Brush Back

Last week, I was both thrilled and horrified by Alton Brown's Twitter outburst, seemingly against his own appearance on Next Iron Chef. And, it turned out he was only miffed with the result -- not that some delicious train wreck happened in the show or with his own performance (see references to throwing up in his feed).

This week, a decidedly quiet chatter about the show from @AltonBrown.

Actually, my legal team just called. I won't actually be able to talk openly about #nextironchef.

And I got in a bit of trouble last week when I told everyone not to watch #nextironchef, so this week...mouth shut.

Conspiracy theorists can say it was all part of the plan -- fake hype followed by a scripted punishment. Sure, but Ockham's Razor here: Brown really thought he could just talk out loud to his fans.

Kinda what the Honey Badger thought about relationships and one very famous college coach's son thought about Mexican-Americans. On Twitter, you lack even the wafer-thin security of friends or circles provided by Facebook or Google+.

The Problem is Greed

(Realizing my post was getting waaaaaay long, and as a gift in the holidays, here is part two of We Taught A Generation to Steal)

The problem is the greed.

That is what the NCAA tried -- kinda pitifully in a combination of class warfare and the uber-fail past regulatory practice (can you say . . . restricted earnings coach lawsuit loss?) -- the past couple of months in the name of [trumpet fanfare!!] COST CONTROLS. It was really trying to legislate equality and restrict greed.

Let's call names. Texas can establish the Longhorn Network because it has a national following thanks to its extremely large enrollment and alumni base. Texas is rich, both in supporters and assets (remember, the Lone Star State for decades was our own American OPEC -- along with Louisiana). The rest of the region can look upon that as exactly what it was -- a weapon of sports hegemony.

Don't think so? If a kid grows up playing high profile prep games on the Longhorn Network, you don't think that's a recruiting advantage? If ESPN ever decided to field it's own team, even I could coach that squad to a national title with the talent that would line up to be a part of that. (Hmmmm . . . Maybe that William Harrison dystopian future should reboot with different corporations as the global nexus . . . not The Energy Corporation, but NIKE, et al).

Why is Texas doing that? Because Notre Dame did it before them in 1991. And because the SEC exists today. Oh, let's see . . . that was 1991-92. (Another aside -- if you want to laugh and cry about the current state of leagues, Frank Deford's In with the South, Out with the East is must listening. If I'm the president of Greece, I'd want in the SEC also.)

Come to grips with this: We are in the Entertainment business. Capital E. Business. As in making money.

It takes money to support sports departments. It takes money to promote universities. It takes money to fund scholarships -- academic and athletic. It takes money to pay instructors. It takes money to enrich our local communities with pride and common sense of purpose.

Deford on Greeks and SEC

I mentioned Frank Deford's In with the South, Out with the East is must listening.

There is great irony, however, in Deford's mention of the Big East as some kind of warm and fuzzy, good ole fashioned college days.

I remember a different Big East.

The predator that consumed NCAA men's basketball in the 1980s, built for the sole reason of creating a hegemony over the sport that had escaped the power centers (especially the power media centers) of the upper east coast.

Specifically targeted at the former center of the men's basketball universe -- the ACC.

Deford kind of gets it right. The Big East lost its way when it became involved in trying to be a football league. Trying to capture for itself the SEC's position as Lord Dominator of All Things Pigskin.

But it is only because men's basketball -- which again, Deford nailed -- stop being the driving economic force in college sports.

We still love March Madness, but now, it is more reality show. It's no longer about who among the anointed stars get to take the center stage in the sitcom. Which quirky character actor will take over and run the island, or board room, or win the rose. No longer about Georgetown; who is the next Butler or George Mason.

Football has returned to its place at the top of the food chain.

Do wonder if Greece joined, would that allow Missouri to shift into the SEC West.

We Taught a Generation to Steal

Listening to another great episode of TWiT (This Week in Tech), the point was made regarding the new "anti-piracy" bills in the U.S. Congress that they are just moves by the industries to grab rights and try to reassert control.

Information wants to be free, and fans of your institutions want to participate. I spent a lot of time defending and trying to close down leaks in our streaming rights through ArkansasRazorbacks.com. As a content creator, I do believe it's in my rights to ask for compensation -- especially since making and distributing content is FAR from free.

That's not to say I didn't sympathize with fans.

We have taught a generation to steal? Not sure. We taught them you can steal remotely. The same tools that allow The Man to propagate content gives The People the power to be there.

It is no different than when parents would call and ask us to lay down the phone next to the radio so they could hear their kids games back in the 1970s. It's just that today with SlingBox or UStream, fans can "repurpose" the game on TV and get it out to distant friends.

The fight is over the cost, and that was where the TWiT crowd was going -- because we overprice content, we drive the true fan to great lengths to save a money. Thus, are we better off making lots of dimes off easy to use and distribute methods (think iTunes) or holding out for the potential of bushels of dollars by restricting content into proprietary distribution tools (think your cable company).

This contest between revenue and fan is as old as outfield fences and hedgerows around playing fields. You want to watch? Buy a ticket.

I'm not being cold about that. It is reality. Electricity costs money. Insurance costs money. Facility upkeep costs money.

Does anyone really think you can see the BCS for free? That it's a right as a fan?

The good news is the internet shreds the barrier of distance and digital recording destroys the concept of time.

More to come tomorrow

This is My New Favorite Phrase

It may not displace the Adam Savage School of Public Relations ("I reject your reality, and substitute my own"), but it certainly gives a level of scientific panache to the same mindset.

Overheard on TWiT, I am certain this is not a new concept, but one I'd not heard expressed in this way: Reality Distortion Field.

As in, Steve Jobs often believed if he simply said it, it would simply be so. For example, I want a stainless steel band around the iPhone 4 and the physics of that being the devices antenna be damned.

Think: Yule Brenner Ten Commandment's performance -- So Let it Be Written, So Let it Be Done.

The Reality Distortion Field's power in direct relationship to the amount of real political or economic power of the individual or institution. Thus, if the government tries really hard to say black is white, many might be taken in to agree. If I say black is white, I would simply be scoffed at.

As you can suspect, it is the narcissist's dream, and real potential problem for leaders and institutions. Because, once invoked, the RDF has a serious negative impact that you begin to believe in your own BS.

Educators Running Away from Facebook

An interesting story on NPR last week regarding the growing number of teacher firings in the non-higher ed community based on inappropriate Facebook comments.

As we work to move toward the social media playing field for increased interaction that would enhance recruiting and relationships -- thus hoping to aid retention of students -- the New Jersey public teacher's union is advising the exact opposite.

Run like the wind away from your students on-line.

Steve Wollmer, a spokesperson for the union, in the NPR story:

"Don't ever friend or follow your students on Facebook or Twitter, never post during work hours or using work materials such as a school computer, and certainly never post anything about your job online, especially about students."

OK, one should NEVER violate FERPA by using Facebook for assignments. We encourage that faculty understand the power dynamic created by friending students, and they should have a stated policy in their syllabus. As for posting during work hours, when we are encouraging social, we can't call out its usage unless it is excessive or not for the institution (ie, if you are a manager of a page for Northwestern State).

The social media tips provided by the union aren't very helpful except to the most novice users, and themselves have a CYA tone. See, we have this list of do's and don'ts, so don't get mad at us if you violate them.

There was one line at the end that I found extremely illuminating:

As educators, we are held to higher standards than the rest of the working world. . . . never post anything you wouldn’t want read out loud at a school board meeting.

Welcome to the team, teachers. Those of us with sports backgrounds have lived with that for decades.

As a side note, I noticed with the NPR story was a back-track to a story I missed as Missouri repeals the law that banned contact with students via social media.

Branding is the Devil?

At least that's what Geoffrey James dared say in Inc a couple of weeks ago.

Be still my heart. The 140 takeaway line in James' short screed:

Bottomline: Your brand is the emotion that a customer feels when thinking about your product.

And James went from there, roundly thumping the concept of "branding" versus brand.

Highly recommend.

Train Wreck or Brilliance? You Decide

Alton Brown may be late arriving and sometime conscientious objector to Twitter, but tonight he is either a genius or on the edge of breakdown/firing.

Earlier tonight, a series of tweets began in which he told his followers to NOT watch tonight's episode of Iron Chef America. Then proceeded to give hints as to why -- his own horrible performance, ending apparently with his throwing up.

Result: @altonbrown hashtag is on fire. The search is averaging two to three comments or retweets a second.

One of the messages from Alton:

No, I'm serious DO NOT WATCH #nextironchef tonight. Things are going to happen...awful things. @foodnetwork.

So, of course, myself and thousands who would not have thought about it are heading to the train wreck. Alton's live blogging (at one point needing another bourbon to continue to relive this) added even more fuel to the fire.

And here's the worse part: next week is worse #nextironchef @foodnetwork

Genius or next Food Network personality dismissed?

Who Watches the Watchmen

For the security conscious, two important bits of news. The most recent involved Twitter, and an attempt to prove that direct messages held the same level of privacy as mail or phone calls. The courts found that by joining, members agreed to reveal their IP addresses, thus their privacy, to Twitter, with no expectation of privacy. They key -- the reveal to a third party. In this case, how long until messaging via Facebook ruled the same.

The other important bit regards Facebook, and that it has submitted to 20 years of monitoring of its privacy policies by the FTC. This on the heels last year of Google forced to do same.

This case involved proving what I saw as self-evident: Facebook was selling personal profile information to marketers. By giving in to FTC, Facebook proves my point that it is in reality the greatest data harvesting and consumer marketing tool in the history of mankind.

And remember, just like Twitter, you volunteered for it when you clicked YES on the EULA.

But why the Alan Moore reference to open?

Think it through. Facebook and Google for years collected bits and pieces of your personal information. Now, the U.S. Government will oversee that, and make sure those two private firms comply.

So then, who watches the FTC?

As an aside, take care with your DM's. There appear to be some more leaky APIs associated with third party apps that might put your DM's out into your main stream.

Bleeping Fights

Everyone saw the Xavier-Cincinnati fight. What I found interesting - ESPN's pixelating of the Cincinnati coach and one of Xavier's players so we couldn't clearly lip-read them.

Reaction to CBS' treatment of Bobby Petrino in the LSU game?

Probably not, but still a real contrast. Usually, the "E" of ESPN would drive the clear view of the F-bombs, and the Tiffany network's status as a broadcast entity and fear of the FCC would have led to bleeping.

Social Works

It's been some busy days here working on projects related to the Northwestern State Christmas Gala -- more on the story-telling aspect of our strategy later in the month. Sorry for less posts, but one tonight to remind you that social works.

Yaser Elqutub was named the Allstate Good Works team captain tonight. He won because the Northwestern State fan base organized, stayed motivated and drove this deserving young man across the finish line.

Not many non-BCS players on the Allstate team. Northwestern State isn't a large institution. It is an intensely social one; however, and one that will rally around its own. For decades, this is a school that takes pride in its family.

Ready made to take on the "big schools" in a social media throwdown. Our Facebook following is a modest 7,500, but Yaser's classmates got behind the push. His teachers and administrators joined in. And his win was built the old fashioned way.

Friends asking friends to help for a good cause.

It worked for us at Arkansas, taking Ryan Mallett from 15th to runner-up in the Davey O'Brien on-line in 2009. I contend he would have won if the campaign hadn't been internally slowed for a day and a half -- with the closing speed we made on the supposedly insurmountable winner, I don't have a doubt.

Here, the dedication of a handful of administrators, teachers and friends of Yaser took that same formula and never slowed down.

Slow and steady wins the social race. Yaser got national facetime for our FCS team tonight as a result.

The lesson: whether you are the flagship institution with all the advantages or the regional university with a determination to succeed, social works, but only if you plan your work and work your plan.

Congrats to the NSU Social Media Committee who took lead and assisted the Louisiana Scholars' College folks to bring the honor home.