Vince Lombardi

Part Time Temporary-Traffic Assistant

 Must have a positive customer service attitude, be detailed-oriented, well-organized & computer proficient with Microsoft Office Word and Excel applications. We are seeking a person with a team player attitude & excellent oral and written communication skills.

If you know anyone who fits this description and might be interested in this position, please have them contact me at fmoore@learfield.com or call me directly at 573-556-1263.

As for me, this is easily my busiest time of the year.  I just got back from an affiliate trip in North Carolina and am in the middle of working on building my various Networks, so with that said I’m going to give this blog a rest until August.  At that time I’ll give you an inside look into our preparations company-wide to get ready for the 2010 football season.  Have a good summer!

Keith Kowalski

Army, Bowling Green, Chattanooga, Clemson, Maine, Missouri Valley Conference, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Southern Illinois, Toledo

Brittany Heck

Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, Minnesota, Missouri, Northern Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin

Adam Froidl

Louisiana Tech, Memphis, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Tulsa

Ryan Suttenfield

Boise State, Fresno State, Idaho, Montana, Montana State, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon State, Utah State, Wyoming

Aaron Worsham, our Vice President of Affiliate Relations and Operations, will continue plying his affiliate relations craft by working with San Diego State, San Jose State, Stanford and Xavier along with focusing on flagship partnerships around the country.   Finally, Jeff Tarman at Penn State and Tom Roberts at Alabama will handle affiliate relations and also play important roles on the broadcasts for their respective schools.    

Personally, I’m very excited about taking over new Networks this season.  I am especially eager about taking over the reigns of the Clemson Tiger Sports Network for the first time since 2002.  In July of that year we were awarded the multi-media rights to Clemson. I was sent out to renew and grow the Network with less than two months before the first football game of the season – it was a whirlwind trip but very successful.  Ryan Suttenfield will get to enjoy the beauty of the mountainous west region as he begins a three week trip covering the states of Utah, Idaho and Montana in mid-April and will then head out to Oregon in May…we’ll encourage him to take his camera.  Brittany Heck maintains her Midwestern roots by adding the Indiana Hoosier and Purdue Boilermaker Networks while Adam Froidl will add Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to his stable of Big XII schools along with Louisiana Tech, Memphis and Tulsa.

As you’ll be able to see on this video (Tournament Memos), it’s a yearly tradition to put the tournament memos detailing each teams possible broadcast times and dates on our Executive Producers (Keith Sampson) wall.  Last week we had so many memos posted that it spanned his entire window offering a wall of tournament possibilities.  The process of formulating all of these broadcasts is like a giant jigsaw puzzle as several steps need to be taken to ensure that the broadcasts get on the air, much less achieve the quality that we promise our affiliates.  Crew travel, rooms and credentials need to be planned and confirmed, logs need to created, lines need to be ordered, a massive amount of affiliate communication needs to ensue and a littany of other tasks go on behind the scenes to make our broadcasts sound top notch. 

Over the past two weeks we have geared up for several men’s and women’s conference tournament games but have also focused our efforts and attention on baseball and hockey broadcasts as well as coaches shows.  The fun doesn’t stop there as this coming week we have over forty teams participating in post-season basketball tournaments along with several important baseball and hockey game broadcasts. 

Good luck to each team, I’m looking forward to watching the play-in-game tonight as well as some NIT games before the NCAA tournament starts on Thursday.  Oddly enough, once college basketball season ends the following day there is a clock in our office that starts counting down to our first college football broadcast of the 2010 season.  There is no rest for the weary here at Learfield Sports. 

I know you’ve all seen the games on ESPN and ESPN2 with two less than household teams vying for their conference’ s automatic bid. They’re playing in arenas fractions of the sizes where most major conference tournament games are contested.  You’ve also probably noticed there is a lot of passion in these games. This is a chance for players to play in front of a national audience for probably the first time in their careers and they are forty minutes away from realizing their dream of making the NCAA tournament.  My favorite scene is at the end of the game where the players are locked arm-in-arm as the seconds count down, and they rush the court when the horn blows.  Mind you, there aren’t thousands of fans joining them ala the Cameron Crazies at Duke, but these players just earned a spot in the “Big Dance” and now have a chance to put on Cinderella’s slipper by beating a team from a power conference in the first round of the NCAA tournament.    

I must explain my bias at this point, I went to Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and I am a HUGE supporter of the Lumberjacks to this day.  Last year SFA won the Southland Conference tournament earning their first ever NCAA tournament appearance in school history.  I vicariously shared in the players excitement after they beat UT-San Antonio and was equally thrilled to see Stephen F. Austin come up as the thirteen seed to play Syracuse in Miami, Florida during the selection show on CBS.  Most people didn’t give SFA a chance to beat Syracuse (they eventually lost to Syracuse 59-44), but as a fan and alum winning the Southland Conference Tournament was equivalent to winning the National Championship. 

Over the next two weeks take some time to watch one of these games, not only will it help you fill out your brackets but it will also give you another reason to love college basketball.

Obviously, we have our storied programs whose fan retention is jaw-dropping. And, we have the teams that maintain their fan bases because they’re just that good – always. But where, when and how does the bandwagon affect take place?

With the NCAA Tournament approaching, what fans will come out of the woodwork to support their supposed beloved? More importantly, can we translate any of this into revenue?

I’ll take K-State and Missouri, for example. The brimming excitement and constant buzz surrounding these teams’ tournament potential is undeniable. Plus, the winning records are here to stay. Each team has talented youth, touted coaches and tenacious energy. They’ll be good next year.  

People are paying more and more attention, which means so are your prospects.

Let’s start recruiting. Let’s start recruiting post season billing and annual deals beginning with the 2010-11 athletic season.

A Conference, NCAA or NIT Tournament gives new sponsors a chance to be part of the broadcast. Finally, they can tap into the hype and be the backdrop for something big.   

A post season package also offers the opportunity for your station to demonstrate how radio – sports radio – can achieve marketing goals for clients. Especially in first rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Recall, many games are played during the day while people are at work. Often, entire games aren’t even televised in particular regions. So for fans, loyal or bandwagon, radio is required.

Likely, these four, five, six or more games will give Mr. Sponsor a sweet taste of your station and his future role as a Network sponsor. Now, do you have room in local avails next season? Can you make some? Did your price just go up? The process has only begun.  

Want a post-season one-sheeter to hit the streets with? Ask me. bheck@learfieldsports.com

So let me get down to the motivation of the post.  As you may or may not know we introduced a new affiliate web-site at the start of the 2009 football season.  We’ve taken a lot of pride in this site trying to create optimum communication with our affiliates to ensure that you have all the necessary tools to air a quality broadcast.  Along with going to a paperless system for logs and affidavits we also input several audio pieces and news items to allow our affiliates to be fully engaged with our product. 

Even though we are in the midst of a great college basketball and hockey season and still have plenty of athletic broadcasts yet to be aired we want to know what your thoughts are on our affiliate site.  What items do you use the most?  What would you like to see added for the 2010-2011 athletic season?  What could we change on our affiliate web-site to make it easier for you to carry our programming?

Now that you’ve had a chance to poke and prod our affiliate web-site, how can we manage the affiliate web-site in the future to serve you better?  Email me at kkowalski@learfield.com.

Every year I think our affiliate reps could write a book with stories concerning their trips.  My most vivid memory from last year has to be the time I spent on a beautiful highway in western North Carolina/Eastern Tennessee.  After finishing my meeting in Bryson City I was well on my way to the Asheville area for my last meeting of the day.  I had been on the road before and wanted to take a different and more scenic route to Asheville.  I knew that my next meeting was two hours away and that my GPS device was screaming at me to stay on the same path.  However, there was a sign pointing to a route going through the mountains that beckoned me saying that Asheville was only 90 some miles away.  I listened to my inner Robert Frost and took the road less traveled.  What a mistake, I ended up getting extremely lost on a very narrow two lane highway that was reminiscent of a roller coaster.  By this time it was me and a ton of joy riding motor-cyclists.  I had no cell phone or GPS service and because the road had so many twists and turns I couldn’t find a spot to turn around. 

I was mad!  I had an important affiliate visit to get to and I was kicking myself for trying to be adventurous.  For literally twenty minutes I kept going and going without finding a single spot to turn around and grew furious because I couldn’t call the GM at my next meeting to let them know I couldn’t make it.  Finally, at some point I just said to heck with it.  I knew I was going to miss the meeting and I was smack dab in the Smoky Mountains.  My attitude changed immediately.  I turned the windows down, threw in a CCR CD and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day in North Carolina (or maybe it was Tennessee at the moment).  Once I finally made it back to the road I was supposed to be on my cell phone coverage and GPS system came back and I called my next appointment in Asheville asking if I could re-schedule.  I’m glad I finally took advantage of this unplanned excursion and the road I was on will go down as one of my most favorite I have ever been on. 

Below are just a few of my other favorites that I’ve had over the years:

Favorite city:  Enterprise, OR – This quaint town with a population of just under two thousand is located in a beautiful area of north-eastern Oregon.  Felt like I could touch the mountains when I was there and the people I met were incredibly friendly. 

Favorite affiliate visit:  Elizabeth City, NC – Went sailing on the Atlantic Ocean with the General Manager in 2002.  Neat story here, the GM signed up with the Tar Heel Sports Network the year before and she did so well selling the local spots that she used her commissions to buy the sail boat we took out.  If any of my affiliates want to top this experience during one of our meetings this spring/summer, please feel free to do so.   

Favorite car accessory:  GPS device – Not sure how business travelers ever went around the country without this device.  I used Map-quest print outs when I first started traveling and can’t believe I never got into an accident trying to figure out exactly where I was.

Favorite restaurant:  Subway – It’s pretty easy to pack on a few pounds when you’re on the road.  We normally don’t get to our hotels until after 8 p.m. and most of the time it is just easier to go by a fast food place.

As we begin our travels, I look forward to finding some new favorites along the way only this time I’ll listen to my GPS device.

In the Learfield Sports affiliate relations world we hear and repeat too many unoriginal phrases. It comes from broadcasters, general sales managers and Universities alike. We spew the stuff right back out infecting the entire office. Symptoms sound like, “at the end of the day”…“as a good-guy”…“doing our due-diligence.” Can I be quarantined?

Likely, station sales managers and their staffs suffer in the same way. Some of the buzzwords and phrases they share just make me hungry. (McDonald’s, medium rare and citrus all at the same time).

“Sales is a numbers game”

“Value-add”

“Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle sizzle and steak”

“Low hanging fruit”

“It’s about relationships”

I’m thinking a new tactic, approach or way of saying it would have more clout. A creative concept, hot package, or good articulation is more likely to bring on a new partner than the repetition of clichés that mean nothing.

We’re lucky. Learfield Sports offers its sales folks cutting edge training. And cutting edge is exactly what we strive for; honing in on hot consumer trends and targeting untapped business categories. Of course, we’re holding on to the core of what works. I’ve committed myself to asking for referrals when prospects aren’t a fit. I also find Greg Bennett’s mini steps useful and even amusing.