Is The UCLA Marketing Department Undermining John Wooden's Basketball Program?
by Nestor on Dec 8, 2009 6:18 AM PST
in Basketball
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PrintWe have had a lot of interesting discussion on the poor attendance issues on the part of both students and alums in our basketball games this season. Yeah, I get it. It's finals week. Our record is not great. So enthusiasm for our program is not sky high. However, threading through the discussion it is also becoming clear how inept the UCLA marketing department has been in terms of ginning up interesting in our program.
The UCLA's marketing department's track record is kind of a joke. These are the geniuses who drew up the infamous monopoly ad (which put Neuheisel in an awkward spot and made our football program a laughing stock in CRN's first season). These are the same people who took out ad in Fresno Papers, inviting Fresno fans to flood the Rose Bowl in our home game. If you don't remember that you can refresh your memory here. Now we are learning that apparently these guys have been going out of their way to quash enthusiasm among students and stiffling Howland's efforts to boost our program (emphasis added):
CBH took us to marketing in response to the Arizona schools last year. Those games were among the most pathetic attendances in recent memory, especially for a pac-10 game. As yo may recall, we were edged by a slim margin, a margin that a full student section could have changed.
When talking to him while we were camping out for the next BB game, he wanted to know why there was no interest in our team. He mentioned his years at Pitt and how students would flood the arena regardless of record, but couldn’t understand how a team, one that had gone to 3 straight final fours, drew no interest. We explained to him the new ticket situation (one where marketing literally cut almost all packages in half, including seniors) and how people go home on weekends rather than come to games (there are plenty of other reasons to explain this, many inexcusable).
CBH ended up marching into marketing with a few of us. We talked to the head of recruitment (forget the name) and the head of marketing, Scott Mitchell. The first reaction from Scott was: get the students out because it is above us. CBH insisted that we stayed because it affects us. Coach argued on our behalf all of the points we shared with him earlier. Had this not happened, the Den would likely not have been allowed to meet with marketing and convince them to change some of the ticketing policies (attendance based for one). However, from my understanding and information, CBH isn’t the favorite coach in marketing….
Can any one explain WTH is going over here? What is the excuse for the UCLA marketing department in standing in Howland's way to boost UCLA basketball by having a filled up student section?
GO BRUINS.
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Depressing, but not surprising.
These guys are all lifers with a huge sense of entitlement, little creativity and even less accountability.
You have the best and the brightest at Anderson, and yet you insist on turning marketing over to a moribund bureaucracy.
"when you've seen how big the world is, how can you make due with this?"
I get the sense
Some of these guys didn’t go to big time athletic programs. Their actions seemed to indicate they have no clue how to take advantage of the UCLA brand (which is what it is today thanks in large part to our athletic history). These guys have shown no clue how to market our programs using today’s communication tools. They have also proven to be completely tonedeaf when it comes to the zeitgeist of larger Bruin athletic community. I
I used to work at CTO several years back
and it was always strange to tell customers that the game was sold out or close to it, when in fact there were tickets available. There is a whole system in place at the Athletic Dept. and I don’t know exactly why it’s that way.
I still have Bruin alumni friends ask me if I can help them get tickets for UCLA events because they have this impression that football and basketball tickets are hard to come by.
Whenever something doesn’t make sense in life, just follow the money trail. I think the booster/season ticket system doesn’t work very smoothly at UCLA. If an alum can’t make it to a game, they should either donate to the students or sell at face value on Bruin Ticket Exchange. Something rubs me the wrong way when Bruins are trying to price gouge other Bruins. This also creates huge pockets of empty seats at games.
When we are competing against the Lakers, Hollywood, and other entertainment options, the UCLA program needs to market itself better and make it easier for the consumer.
by UCLA Championships Made Here on Dec 8, 2009 7:38 AM PST up reply actions
agreed +10000000 x infinity
As a student, I’d love for the university to reimburse season-ticket holders for a game they don’t attend, and after the first quarter (or if the person notifies beforehand), they give them to the students.
However, I also understand that for CTO, this is ALL about $$$. Therefore, at the very least, I agree with you in reimbursing season holders for a ticket that gets resold at face value last minute. This would make Bruin fans happy that normally wouldn’t be able to go to games. It would make Pauley Pavilion look significantly better to have a full crowd instead of this 1/2 capacity BS for 80% of our home games. It would make those ticket holders happy since they’d get some money back if it’s resold, and if it isn’t they have nothing to complain about since they would have lost out anyway. Heck, even CTO will be happy since they won’t lose any money if the ticket can be resold at face value!!!
I love this university, but I deplore the bureaucratic idiots who run the ticket system and embarrass the great name, UCLA.
They need to take some classes
from the Oregon Sports Marketing program. They really know what it means to market their entire University. I know most people hate it, but I think it’s pretty remarkable what they have done with the uniforms because, regardless of your opinion on them, everyone remembers that they are Oregon. They then market their entire University around a single letter. All of their commercials, the way their fans cheer, it all revolves around the letter “O” and the department wants to get it to the point where everyone eventually associates “O” with Oregon. How is that for initiative?
Oregon's official athletics website
Is really amazing. I am not a big fan of their uniforms, however have to agree with you about their success in marketing their university and its brand. They have done a remarkable job.
Hey that’s a good point. why not have an Anderson student marketing project? You could actually measure the results. Seems like a great b-school project.
Go Bruins!
hey wait.
yeah I am. And I’m taking a marketing class this upcoming quarter. Lemme think about this one.
Go Bruins!
Yep
Kill two birds with one stone. Write up something for school based problems identified here, incorporate some of the solutions with your own, get more feedback to your proposals, refine it some more, and then boom launch it both in classroom and on BN.
We then get to push your ideas hard.
If you're looking for total attendance, not student attendance only
You can hope on the official site. Check out each box score and attendance is on there. Revenue figure should be a matter of public record.
Formerly ryebreadraz
by Ryan Rosenblatt on Dec 8, 2009 2:41 PM PST up reply actions
Be careful with attendance figures
As I understand it, the American League used to (and maybe still does) count ticket sales, not turnstile turns. So if you had a nice season ticket sale of 10,000 tickets, that would be your minumum attendence. I remember 20 years ago or so, some team had to make up a game on basically no notice on an afternoon that was rainy and crummy. The announced attendance was enormous, even though there were less than 1,000 people in the park.
Marketing guys will say whatever they have to say to prove their point, so they may well manipulate those attendance numbers. See if you can get an actual turnstile count.
UCLA does not report tickets sold
It is actual attendance, although I’ve heard that for football, that number isn’t always accurate. For basketball, my understanding is the actual attendance is what is reported.
Formerly ryebreadraz
by Ryan Rosenblatt on Dec 8, 2009 8:10 PM PST up reply actions
Let me know if you need extra hands / minds for analysis....
I’m in management consulting right now, so I might be able to help.
Another Great CBH Story
He really is the Caretaker in every sense of the word.
His respect for the students, going with them to Marketing, and fighting the order that they be excluded from the meeting, says a lot about him as a person.
Having spent a great bit of time on a faculty, I can tell you that that type of respect for students and what they have to say is not universal on most campuses.
As for the real topic in this thread, calling these guys “Marketing” is like calling CTS “coach”. We need better name for them, like the Clueless Department.
sjh
I think it's time to name names
It’s a little difficult for anyone not on campus to do something about this. Where is the Daily Bruin? Doesn’t the journalism department have a course or two in investigative journalism? I think it’s time for someone to start turning over rocks in that department.
What’s the overall objective of the marketing department? It would seem to be marketing UCLA athletics. So why on earth is marketing making it so difficult to fill the basketball arena of the number one athletic program of all time, with the most storied and legendary basketball program of all time as its centerpiece? In the law business, strategy like that generally resulted in losing. Do you think that sort of marketing department exists at Proctor & Gamble?
Daily Bruin – justify your existence. Get in there and fight for the students. This is a fight you can win, and it’s for a good cause, and it will make you look good to all your constituents (except maybe the marketing department.)
Minor quibble
You mentioned that marketing had a strategy and it is a losing one. I don’t even see a strategy here. I just see laziness and a willingness to accept the status quo because it’s easy. Where is the accountability and why haven’t these guys had a fire lit under their asses yet?
The Daily Bruin
Will they write an article about UCLA marketing department “falling apart” or “firing blanks”?
there is no journalism dept at UCLA =/
Also, the daily bruin is unable to justify its own existence. It can’t even sustain itself with revenue from the ad space it sells. Just last year a fee increase was voted through which made students pay more to subsidize the daily bruin’s ineffectiveness. TBH, I’ve never spoken with a person that liked the daily bruin for anything other than the sudoku puzzle, it really isn’t very good (I’m being nice here)
That's disappointing
The two sports edtiors during my time at DB were:
Alan Shipnuck
Eric Billigmeier
Both Alan and Eric were solid. They reported on our football/hoops team interest, enthusiasm and were not afraid to dish out due criticism (IIRC Eric was fairly critical of how Donahue didn’t prepare our team for the Rose Bowl well in 94 and his handling of Homer Smith/Neuheisel/Toledo carousel). From what I read these days, the current reporters/editors don’t seem to be very plugged in or passionate about our teams.
They're too busy
reading their Twilight novels.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
It's like we have USC alums working in our marketing department...
…and they’re purposely undermining our program.
I always felt the same way.
some time ago, around 2003 I got tickets to a UCLA v SUC game through a Trojan friend of mine that was no longer going to use them. Where did she get them? From someone in Pete Dalis’ office.
I know, I know. I’m the conspiracy theorist around here. But with all these indicators is anybody surprised I’m this paranoid.
The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. John Wooden
Can you blame them?
If you wanted to work in Education…would you work at U$C?
Then again, it makes you wonder how UCLA hired someone with a U$C degree :)
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
What the F%#k is going out there?
With this crap and the new Pauley stuff, we might be down for years!?!?!?
Bakersfield game
We flew out for the Bakersfield game, then ASU at the Rosebowl the same weekend. I was miffed that the only tickets available to us at Pauley were in the top corner section when plenty of seats were empty in the lower levels and even top courtside. Very strange to see a program with so much history and winning tradition with such little interest. It’s too bad fans aren’t all moved closer to the floor to have some sort of home court advantage.
Yeah, if you want the good seats ...
You have to go to the legalized ticket scalpers (Stubhub, VIP Tickets, Barry’s, etc.) and pay double face value — no shortage of tickets there.
It seems disingenuous to disallow student ticket transfers due to “blackmarket” concerns when the big bucks are being made by those who purchase the prime season tickets with no intention of going to the games. But perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe these fans are just trying to recoup the exhorbitant cost of what amounts to a personal seat license that’s a prerequisite for being able to purchase these tickets in the first place.
I get what you're saying, but it's not exactly like a PSL
Only b/c the donation to the athletic dept required to purchase seats is 80% tax deductible.
But I completely agree with your assessment that it is disingenuous to disallow student ticket transfers given the concessions made to prime season ticket holders.
by insomniacslounge on Dec 8, 2009 9:10 PM PST up reply actions
Is this how ticket sales worked back then?
In my four years here, basketball ticket sales have been an incoherent and jumbled mess. UCLA seels enough Den packages to fill the two student sections, both the floor seats and the top seats. The school, however, knows that the section won’t fill up, and thus they sell basketball tickets to students after tip off to fill in the remainder of the seats at Pauley Pavilion. Many students however, don’t know about this method, and think that if they don’t have Den, it’s almost impossible to get into games, hence the top section never being full. That message just doesn’t get out.
That's crazy!
When I was at UCLA (88-92), student tickets were sold first-come, first-served. Students would line up on the first day of winter quarter (you could go to CTO earlier, if you wanted) to get season basketball tickets. This guaranteed that the students who wanted the tickets the most, got them. These are the students (myself included) who filled up the student section for every game! Today, you can only get half a season? WTF?
N
Thank you for putting this up. I was shocked, disgusted, depressed, pissed…all sorts of things when I read bkbruin’s account of this. The incompetence, laziness, and arrogance displayed by Marketing is unacceptable. CBH, the players, the fans, and the University are sufferring for thir piss-poor efforts, and you know this extends to football and every non-rev sport at school.
Teams will go through ups and downs due to injuries, players, opponents, fickle fans, whatever. The least we can give them is a consistent and solid foundation within the admin, and it is appaling they do not have that.
My question now is, what do we do about it? I already have some thoughts for them when they call for donations, but there has to be more we can do about this.
greg in denver - UCLA guy for life
This sickens me
All I can say is thank god for this site—without it, we’d have no idea about issues like this.
by Westwood Wizard on Dec 8, 2009 12:09 PM PST reply actions
And people wonder why TGFBH is a mantra around here...
CBH totally has the die-hard students’ backs.
M
"In this program your passion bucket must be full to play SC." -- CRN, to Dan Patrick, 1/2008
The fact CBH has to worry about this stuff makes me embarrased to be a Bruin
Three final fours, and the coach has to ask the students why they don’t come to basketball games? I have heard so many stories about him engaging the students on this kind of level and I think it’s ridiculous that for whatever reason it is, we can’t fill Pauley for him. Do you think that he would have ever imagined that after taking his dream job and leading the team to incredible success he would be playing in an empty arena? If he ever leaves Bruin fans are going to have to reflect on whether they have done enough to support this basketball program in any way we can. That might not only mean coming to games ourselves; it may mean voicing our concerns to the university about the way they distribute tickets. I could not blame CBH if he chose to leave after having “fans” throw him under the bus during tough times and failing to show up to games. I also worry about what recruits are think when they walk in Pauley and see it half empty. Think of all the courts in the country you could play on and tell me if an empty Pauley Pavillion would be your first choice.
The more I’ve read about the way UCLA is managing attendance the more it becomes clear to me that there are probably ways to fix the problem other than criticizing students for lack of interest. That said, IMHO if you’re a student and you “go home on weekends rather than come to games,” you’re wasting your college experience (and you’re kind of a loser), and you definitely shouldn’t be a season ticket holder.
Regardless, as long as student tickets are non-transferable I think trying to boost student attendance is kind of a lost cause. Can you imagine if all the seats in the Staples Center had to be filled by the season ticket holder who bought them? Even the Lakers couldn’t fill the place. Generally speaking, nobody can go to every game for four years, and making tickets non-transferable guarantees empty seats. If marketing and CTO has really created the current student ticket system in order to maximize revenue, and CBH’s work, Dan Guerrero’s work, and the team’s work is being wasted, what’s the payoff? If you are able charge a few thousand students an extra twenty bucks by doing things like dividing their ticket packages you might only add $50,000 of revenue a year. It doesn’t make sense to me. If I were CBH I’d wish I could pay the $50K myself if it meant playing in a packed arena every night.
I really hope we can do something to fix this problem and show CBH the support he deserves. If we can come up with a solution I will be the first one to write a letter and call the athletic department in support of it.
Go Bruins.
Well Done! A very strong post.
This should not be on CBH’s agenda any more than planning the training table menus or making sure that the restrooms in Pauley are clean. These are jobs that other people do.
I’ve often wondered why when UCLA goes on the road the place each foreign venue is jammed — because people want to see us play — yet we cannot fill our own stadium.
CBH and our team are entitled to a “home court advantage”.
This thread is beginning to give me an idea of why this is happening. But, I cannot grasp how we are letting it happen.
sjh
+1
and LOL at the mental image of CBH in the Pauley restrooms with a mop… although if it helped us win you know he’d do it.
Selling non-transferable season tickets to students absolutely does mean empty seats, but here’s how whatever geniuses in charge of the ticket plans rationalize it… Students are able to buy tickets for empty seats in the student section after tipoff. You have 0 chance of ever being in the Den, you have to line up and wait to buy them, and you’re going to miss significant minutes of the 1st half… Theoretically this enables those students who only want to attend a few games instead of buying season tickets to do so, and it enables those denied season tickets the opportunity to get into Pauley.
This system is a stupid way to fill up the student section in Pauley. There are two possible outcomes with it:
a) All the students who line up early to buy leftover student seats and sacrifice the beginning of the game are always able tickets.. which means your season ticket holders aren’t showing up and Pauley still isn’t full because everyone in line got in too.
b) Pauley fills up and you discourage everyone still in that extra ticket line from doing so again by turning them away, making them less likely to line up in the future, and now by the time they make it to a TV it’s nearly halftime.
Also, there is virtually nothing done on campus to promote these events. There are a few propped up signs near the morgan center… which isn’t even a high traffic area…. guess who sees them… THE ATHLETES.. and they attend games whenever possible as it is. There needs to be signs on bruin walk, in ackerman, in the Wooden Center, in the freaking dorms and dining halls. Honestly every high school in the country does a better job promoting their athletic events with those cheesey homeroom announcements I’m sure everyone loved….
How about this, when there aren’t any events going on in Pauley during the day, have a soundreel playing so everyone walking past it to and from class hears what athletic events the week has in store. Have the game announcer from our bball games do it, he could definitely do it in a way that would get students fired up to come watch… I even like the way that guy says DRAGOVIC lol
War on terror
My spouse and I have season football and basketball tickets and have had them for like decades. I am unimpartial (new word, it’s shorter than nonimpartial or semi-impartial but not as short as partial) on this—the failure to fill up Pauley is immoral.
But let me give you the other side of the story. These mean nothing to me but here are some other reasons for the outrageous failure to fill Pauley: no national championships in more than a decade; star power players leave and go pro (where would be this year with Love and whatever his name who left last year?); Pauley has lousy restrooms; the pizza is awful; the diet coke machines don’t always work; it’s $10 to park and I don’t write the checks in the family but I assume the tickets are expensive (and they ought to be because its great to be a Bruin and greatness has its costs); West L.A. and 405 traffic is the worst in the history of Western Civilization (prove I’m wrong); particularly for Thursday night games, it’s immoveable gridlock; and when it rains, plan to take 90 minutes to get to the game. And don’t forget, these games are almost always televised. Add in the problems we are having this year winning and these other factors militate against showing up.
But there is more, audiences vote with their feet. It is possible that intercollegiate sports at a school like UCLA has lost its appeal to a large percentage of the current student body. Tastes change and perhaps what we viewed as exciting life altering events (do the numbers 13-9 or Coach Wooden with that rolled up program yelling "Gracious sakes alive" after some thug from you know where virtually assaults Bill Walton or Lewis now Kareem under the basket mean anything to you?) to us are not viewed the same way by an 18 year old from Memphis or Lancaster or Thailand or Topeka.
If this is a case of tastes changing, then it’s a real tragedy. UCLA is a place of real history. And UCLA athletics is a place of real history. The young often do not understand history and its role in placing events on and off the field or court or in and out of the pool in context as part of the human experience. (Read Coach Wooden’s books if you want to know about life.) But it may be that in Los Angeles at this time and place, students and alumni alike are no longer overwhelmed by the joy of UCLA basketball.
Now if you cannot be thrilled by the great performance of Reeves Nelson animalistically working over Cole Aldrich the great Kansas center last Sunday or watching Tyler Honeycutt patiently honing his craft (because he will lead us to the Promised Land) or last year’s great seniors absolutely playing their hearts out, then you have no heart as far as I am concerned. And while you’re up, if you feel that way, student or alumni, go surrender to the terrorists.
Give up your tickets.
Why do you have them if not to use them? Thats the exact reason the place is empty and the costs are kept high. At least list the ones you don’t want and sell them so the seats gets filled.
Keep your tickets, go to jail!
It ought to be felony to not give up your tickets if you are out of town or it will be just too stressful to drive in the rain to see the Bruins. I mean we don’t want season ticket holders to undergo any undue pressure because they are afraid to drive in the dark—just give the tickets to someone who has a spine.
PS69 I Think You May Be Right, But I Don't Want to Believe It
I have been wondering, silently, if tastes have changed and if going to our games — BB, FB, non-revenue, is no longer viewed as a part of the bigger university experience, by a large segment of our students.
Obviously, most of my education took place in classrooms, libraries and study sessions — but I also learned a lot about life from Coach and Tommy Prothro. And, going to all of these games was a big part of my Bruin life. I remember some great teachers and even some of the great things they taught me — but I remember more winning the Rose Bowl and watching Coach with that rolled up program.
If tastes have changed, so be it. I really wonder what, in the complete college experience, is replacing this excitement, passion, and diversion in the lives of those who no longer care about sports.
And, if tastes have changed, maybe it’s time to reallocate space within Pauley to make it easier for non-students to attend.
BTW — I’m not ignoring the problem of alum’s who buy season tickets and treat them as profit centers instead of attending the games. That’s an issue for another thread.
sjh
PS. I may be warped because I live in Texas and have been living “Friday Night Lights”, in person, for 4 years. The kids in Jen’s high school, which is academically rigorous and competitive, use sports the way my generation used them.
If I were in the marketing department, I’d be doing focus groups and surveys to see if, in fact, tastes have changed, and if so, what might be done to encourage the students to take advantage of this unique experience — being a rah rah student.
PPS. When I watch games on TV, I see arenas filled with students. The Big 10, the Big 12, ACC, and of course Pac 10 schools are filling their student sections. I’d sure like an empirical study to show why we are not. Another term project for a marketing student.
sjh
Agree
I don’t want to believe it either. One point though, I’m only talking about wicked Los Angeles. As they say where you live, “Things are different in Texas” and they really are.
Two points
PS. I may be warped because I live in Texas and have been living "Friday Night Lights", in person, for 4 years. The kids in Jen’s high school, which is academically rigorous and competitive, use sports the way my generation used them.
Your view isn’t necessarily warped, but I would have to assume that the school in Texas is very different demographically from UCLA. With different demographics come, to a certain extent, different interests. I don’t think it’s the only factor, but it would be silly to pretend it doesn’t make some difference.
PPS. When I watch games on TV, I see arenas filled with students. The Big 10, the Big 12, ACC, and of course Pac 10 schools are filling their student sections. I’d sure like an empirical study to show why we are not.
Is it certain that those schools are filling their student sections? After all, the cameras in Pauley aren’t properly positioned to show the empty parts of the student section. Is much of the 300 level ever shown on TV? I wonder if the same is true at other schools.
by SuperBruinMan on Dec 9, 2009 12:34 AM PST up reply actions
I wholeheartedly agree
with 99% of what you said. Star players going pro is something that’s going to happen in any program at any school with any coach right now, unless the coach simply doesn’t sign them. It’s a double-edged sword – it would have been great to keep Love around, but he was a boost to the team while he was here. The majority of players that go pro early are ready to do so, and coaches for the most part see it coming. (I think Jrue is the exception that proves the rule.)
Anyway, I don’t want to nitpick too much. Your comments about Bruin history, RN, and TH are great!
formerly AZBruin
Problems I see as a senior
In no particular order:
- Longtime season ticket holders (that are often alumni) are going to lose their spots with the Pauley Pavilion renovation that they paid thousands for. This is unacceptable and could cost the loyalty of some longtime alums.
- Student tickets are not transferable. They are on the BruinCard and when some people miss games, they can’t give it to a friend that can go to a game. When I went into Pauley once, I overheard that someone had to go get a new BruinCard to get in because they couldn’t read the BruinCard, which I found to be bizarre. They couldn’t have just checked the ID number?
- Buses to football games have left students before. A few of my friends were left behind at the game in the Coliseum two years ago, because the bus driver had apparently thought the USC game was over and left them stranded. The same year, my friend who was a senior and who had gone to every game possible was nearly denied a ticket to the USC game – he finally got one in the final week before the game.
- Den season tickets often don’t encompass every basketball game (as Fludrick has mentioned). It’s unfortunate for those like me who want a chance to go to every game, but the Blue and Gold packages each only cover half the Pac-10 games and we have to find our own way in and miss the first quarter or so of the game at the CTO (mentioned by Chris09).
- This year, my friends and I weren’t sent an email to get our USC game tickets until a week after. This didn’t inhibit us from getting tickets (we rushed to get them the next day), but it could have for some people and is something that needs to be fixed.
"I never watched baseball on TV. It's slow and boring. I'm not a fan. Never was." - Jeff Kent
Wow, the ticket rules are rough now...
Yeah, they need to change some of their policies, this is just crazy.
That's strange
When I went into Pauley once, I overheard that someone had to go get a new BruinCard to get in because they couldn’t read the BruinCard, which I found to be bizarre. They couldn’t have just checked the ID number?
If your BruinCard isn’t working, they do have a list of ticket-holders. Maybe that’s only if you’re going in upstairs, though.
by SuperBruinMan on Dec 9, 2009 12:37 AM PST up reply actions
Marches into office with students in tow
Who says Howland doesn’t relate to today’s kids! I love this guy more and more!
There was a girl I knew who worked in that department that was fond of telling everyone how nice Karl Dorrell was but how much of a stir Ben Howland created upon his arrival in Westwood. The general feeling among the staff was that he was NOT a nice person. I told her that perhaps, dear, Ben Howland is only nice to people who do their JOB!
I haven’t spoken to her since.
Oh UCLA you sweet bitch, you've BRUINed me for anything else.
Exactly!!!
Its awesome Howland is causing a stir over this!
Geezer moment
Coach Howland is closer to my age than most students, and back when I was an undergrad the Free Speech Movement was just starting. Demonstrations, sit-ins, and all that were the order of the day. (Alas, it seemed that all the naked parties and free love must have been going on elsewhere, because I never saw any of that.) But to return to the point, one of the mantras of the demonstrators was “There are no bystanders in a revolution!”
That’s exactly what Coach Howland did when he took over. He was about getting character guys who could win. And when that revolution came, people who thought they would just be bystanders, like the Marketing department, found out that there are no bystanders. You are either going with the inexorable drive to progress, or you’ll be swept away by it.
Bottom line – Coach Howland is a student radical! How many guys on our basketball roster – 12? Our new rallying cry should be “Free the Basketball Twelve.” Geezers will recall the connection.
Comments Complaints, Suggestions and siding with Peggysue69
Compliant: UCLA is known for not using its allotment of tickets to bowl games (including the Rose Bowl) and long distance away games in the b-ball tourney. I will tell you that I have gone to those games and in many cases was told I could not order tickets from the CTO and THEN found out UCLA return tickets. I have never understood why I could not request more tickets and have an incremental order filled after all the season ticket holders filled them. This is a CTO issue (sorry to criticize you Dave) Further, having gone to away bowl games and away tourney games, I have to say UCLA fails completely in making it an event. Wisconsin arranged a News Years party at Universal Studios for their fans before the Rose Bowl in the 90’s. The NCAA assigned a bar for UCLA in Indy. UCLA did nothing for the San Jose Regionals or Phoenix regionals (actually let me be fair….as a ticket holder I was not made aware of any events associated with these games….there may have been something)
Observation: Marketing’s job is to sell the seats. As a B-Ball season ticket holder, I can tell you that the remaining seats that are not sold as season tickets are fairly poor even compared to my nose bleeds. For basketball, I would say they are doing well.
Observation: Marketing is getting much better and aggressive. They regularly communicate about the Stub-Hub as the place to sell tickets you are not going to use. They regularly are offering packaged deals (the upper level seats in the student section during the holiday break etc).
Complaint: I dont know if it is Marketing’s problem or a larger university problem, but the outreach is quite poor to energize the base!
Peggysue 69: Times have changed. My wife and I figtht all the traffic to go to a Thursday night game THAT IS ON TV. We spend hours in traffic to see us play a nobody until the Pac 10 season and the games are on TV. We go to all the football game, sweat in the heat, and the games are on TV. It really is different. UCLA is making it less and less worthwhile to actually attend the event (though we never miss them)
Suggestion: Empower the Den to get the seats filled. My son was one of the founders of the Den (he claims to have designed the original logo). He always joked that the Den could get 100’s of students to the more obscure sporting events and Athletic Marketing couldn’t. How? They offered food, Marketing offered emails and posters. How about a DEN shirt (maybe with a barcode on it) as the ticket. Den and Athletics split the cost of the shirt/ticket. They can then be passed around. Admission limited to availability but that will not really be a challenge.
by Bruin Dad and Grad on Dec 9, 2009 10:05 AM PST reply actions
For Phoenix Regionals
there was a Bruin Bash which they held at a nearby bar. I thought it was okay. Elise – I mean the Dance Team was there posing for photos with Bruin fans. I can’t quite remember the name of the bar.
I totally agree with you about CTO btw. For the game at Notre Dame in 2006, CTO charged an exorbitant amount for both the game ticket and the Bruin Bash. I believe it was $50 for the Bruin Bash for all you can drink beer and all you can eat hamburgers. There was NO option to just purchase only the game ticket. Now I don’t drink, so it was already NOT worth my money to purchase the Bruin Bash portion of the event. Still, the line for food – a cheap burger – was very long and only allowed all but the most patient of people more than one helping. Hence, I paid $50 dollars for one burger which is to this day the most expensive burger that I’ve ever devoured – which again was something cheap you’d purchase in the frozen foods section of your local supermarket.
To add insult to injury, CTO’s presence at the game in South Bend had a stack of unsold tickets to the game for about $40 a piece. In essence, one could have gone to the game sans the $90 Bruin Bash/game ticket combo, and just made it into the game for 40 bucks. I was not impressed.
Oh UCLA you sweet bitch, you've BRUINed me for anything else.
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