Dear Athletic Department

[Crong]

Why can a relatively small-time athletics program like William and Mary get seven minutes' worth of Richmond game highlights posted online by Saturday night, whereas we still don't have any video highlights posted of any game since Tulsa?

http://www.youtube.com/TribeAthletics#p/u/0/kRCSNG0Guqk

Why can they also get highlights of their penalty-shootout soccer tournament win posted with similar speed, but SMU has no highlights posted since the regular-season match against Tulsa?

http://www.tribeathletics.com/story.php/11315/

Am I missing something? This seems like a no-brainer.

P.S. If you're not going to put up "highlights" of the Houston game, that's fine, but please at least take out the "First Place on the Line!" promo video for SMU-Houston. It should have been gone at kickoff, but certainly by the end of that debacle.

I have to agree. It's the little things that can set you apart or put egg on your face. This is similar to the Ole Miss and Miss St mix up for basketball ticket sales a few weeks ago. Since people outside the SMU bubble look at the site it doesn't reflect well. I couldn't image that flying at my company. Top 25 in everything.

Involving students with the site, marketing, operations is a great idea. I'm sure they could set it up to get credit for a class project.

[Longtime]

We have an athletic director who does not value what an Athletic Media Relations (formerly Sports Information) Department can do for you. If he did, we would have more full-time staff.

My guess is W&M has a big SID staff because otherwise no one would pay attention to them. We also get buried in our media market, but at least the DMN feels obligated to give us bare-minimum coverage whether we have an SID staff or not.

For a lot of years, SMU has relied on the DMN to be an extension of our marketing department. Why spend money on advertising when we know the DMN will give us a preview story and headline on every football game?

As for getting SMU students involved, that only gets you so far on this campus. SMU kids aren't known for their work ethic. Working for the SID office isn't the most glamorous job, either. It's not like we're a Big 12 program or are a Top 10 football program like TCU - that would draw more students. God bless the few kids who do work for the SID department.

[solomouse]

Just a few years ago,the Chairman of SMU's Marketing Department visited with me and assured me the SMU graduate school program students would be happy to do an analysis of our sports marketing program....they need a few months lead time to assign the project to the students ....the students actually get some sort of compensatioon for the work plus credit toward their MBA.....the cost was pretty minimal but ...as you would expect, I was told to stop pushing the effort as it was an insult to our Athletic Department....what a joke...these grad students could be of immense help in understanding our attendance problems,our merchandizing needs and donor benefit issues...

[PonyKai]

It's a very simple fact that the department that would be putting these things out, is extremely understaffed, underfunded, and asked to do far too much as it is. If you have a beef, gotta take it up a level and demand more funding and staff to reflect a growing program.

[smuphotoguy]

Just a few years ago,the Chairman of SMU's Marketing Department visited with me and assured me the SMU graduate school program students would be happy to do an analysis of our sports marketing program....they need a few months lead time to assign the project to the students ....the students actually get some sort of compensatioon for the work plus credit toward their MBA.....the cost was pretty minimal but ...as you would expect, I was told to stop pushing the effort as it was an insult to our Athletic Department....what a joke...these grad students could be of immense help in understanding our attendance problems,our merchandizing needs and donor benefit issues...

The AD actually emailed the student body about a month ago a survey that dealt with attendance at football games. Said the data would be compiled by sports management majors for some case study/project.