So often black college sports fans complain about the direction of their athletic department. And colleges, to their credit, rarely adopt any quantitative measures to gauge customer satisfaction on sports.
So let’s throw some numbers at the problem. Over the next ten days or so, I’ll be posting daily polls that will be open for 30 days going into the new year. They will ask your opinion about the state of your athletic department, without the name of your school being published.
The objective is to show a consensus on how fans feel about their collegiate athletics, and hopefully, inspire these departments to do more. That’s the quantitative part. If you would like to go the qualitative route, feel free to comment below about your specific department, official or program. Check out the previous polls on presidents and athletic directors.
Eric Moore 6:55 pm on December 7, 2009 Permalink
Faulty question.
How do you define “efforts”? Is it a successful venture or time devoted to the process? And how would you define success?
Does an SID in a one person shop get credit for putting out releases for a football game, men’s and women’s basketball game played in two different locations vs. an SID who has three times the staff (three people) allowing one person to cover each sport individually?
Unless people have a direct line to the activities of a school’s SID they have no idea about the behind the scenes effort. An SID may be doing all he/she can but without the resources to duplicate those efforts over time, the promotional results will be difficult to measure.
JC 9:08 pm on December 7, 2009 Permalink
Great point. I guess the objective was to capture the fans’ mentality on how the word is getting out about their sports. I know that situations are different from school to school, but I think it could be judged pretty evenly based on website, media guides, presence on-campus, etc.
That doesn’t make the question faulty. I think fans are engaged enough to know what their SIDs are capable of, specifically if they seek out what the office is required to produce on a regular basis. Usually, even for small programs, the proof is in reported game scores and athlete profiles in the media.