College Basketball: Digital Big Ten Preview, #5 Iowa

Let's continue our digital minded journey through the Big Ten Conference, from less best to best. We know these programs are out there, waiting for potential recruits to click in. And we'll see who gets it and who doesn't. Thus far, our tour has shown us #11 Northwestern, #10Michigan, #9 Ohio State, and #8 Wisconsin, #7 Indiana, and #6 Purdue.

Here we go.

#5: Iowa

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Inside Iowa Basketball is nicely done, solid presence on Twitter.

Weaknesses: If you have to call it Big Time Hoops, is it really?

Full Scouting Report:

Being a former Iowa athlete (I played at Drake in the late 90's), I was pretty excited to visit the Iowa athletics site, here. The Hawkeyes are very well supported in Iowa, as I experienced each season (they had way too many fans in Des Moines for my taste!) There's a huge callout for the official Iowa Football Blog, which bodes well for hoops coverage come winter. There's really not a lot of interactivity on this page, so let's scroll down the page.


Deep down on the home page we see the tout below to follow the program via Facebook or Twitter. As you know, I'm a fan of elevating this way up on the site -- be proud of it! This is your chance to become a part of your fans' daily lives. To connect. And this is just too buried in the mix with the Iowa Photo store.



Clicking into each of these icons takes you to the Iowa Athletics Twitter and Facebook pages. These are sites that have decent follower numbers (4500 on Twitter and 45,000 on Facebook) but not much original content. This could be much better organized if they enabled fans to see a list of all Facebook and Twitter feeds and choose where to go next, much like we saw with Virginia does on this link. (We reviewed this here.)





Moving into the basketball home page, here, and at first glance you won't feel much difference than what we've seen in previous Big Ten sites thus far, with a video player on the right hand side and a feature story in the middle. But if you're willing to stick with me, you'll start to see some of the separation beginning to happen.

First, I want you to notice the button in the middle of the page entitled "Summer Tour." This is a powerful button that really needs a shiny light on it. (While you're here also note the "GO Hawks" button as we'll cover that next!)



Clicking in takes us here, to a collection of player blogs and updates from the Hawkeyes' trip to Greece this May and June. I was drawn to the list below (or on this link). That's a crazy full list of players to follow.



I began to click around. As you can see from the image below, the Hawkeye players kept journals of their trip. I love this. Now granted we could wish it was image or video driven. Or that it would be updated through the summer. But this simple use of essentially online diaries of a trip really give some insight into the personality of the program. Plus they show off the experience that players get to experience as a Hawkeye. Solid.




I went back to the basketball home page and clicked on the GO Hawks button. It took me here, to an inside Iowa basketball section, here. This site has a separate URL, which to be honest is a little cheesy for my taste: http://www.gohawks.com/bigtimehoops/

I kind of feel like to say "Big Time Hoops" in a URL makes it feel less big time... Sigh. Again, like the player blogs, I had no idea we'd find something like this in the basketball section. Another hidden gem. Clicking in shows you an image of Carver Hawkeye Arena and Coach Lickliter. I also dig the Nike Swoosh in the upper right corner. I just wish that took you to a Nike-Iowa hoops experience. That'd be AMAZING!



Clicking on "On Iowa" takes you to a strong video highlight reel of the squad, shown here.


Going across the top, you'll see a callout for NBA & Beyond. They do a solid job of showing current and former NBA players who came through Iowa City. (I'm not sure what the Beyond means, but I do know this is a solid job of showcasing the talent that's come through here).



The Hawkeye Family tab (nicely named!) shows us access to the team, Coach Lickliter, and the Assistants. I like the team image, shown below. In fact, seeing it made me hope that it led us to an impressive profile page for each player. Sadly though, it just linked to a profile picture and bio information. The layout is cool though - it almost made me think of the starting lineups that we see on TV (why shouldn't we leverage that?)



Here's Coach Lickliter - looks like they are getting ready for some video content... though it isn't there just yet.



The assistants are shown here, in a pretty solid page. You get a soundbyte from them on what it means to coach at Iowa. Cool. What you don't get though is links to their Twitter pages, where Coach Cornette and Coach Jordan actually do a solid job, with roughly 300 followers each and a nice job of updating.


Here's Coach Cornette


And Coach Jordan:



Iowa Basketball also has a Twitter site, though I couldn't find it linked to either the Big Time Hoops site or the athletics site. As you can see by looking below or clicking here, it is a pretty good Twitter site - updated, with personality. They have around 550 followers.




Along the bottom of the site, you'll see a couple of call outs: "Latest Videos" and "Get This." As you can see, the video content is pretty deep. I was pretty impressed, we had quite a few player specific videos here and a nice overall feel. What's missing is really a way to take these videos with you. To subscribe for updates. You just have to keep coming back and wondering if something new is here. That's a miss, but the content and layout is strong.



Clicking on "Get This" takes you to player specific wallpapers. This is simple, but really cool. I know when I was a player we had our poster nights and that was sweet. But this is just a nice touch -- allow fans (or players or family) to have wallpapers of their favorite Hawkeye. Strong! My only challenge is that I would have had no clue individual player wallpapers were under "Get This". I'd also hope we could connect these to each player's bio page!


And that pretty much sums up Iowa. Great ideas. And a lot of great content. But it isn't set up in a way that's intuitive to find, or that is easy to take it with you. If they figure those pieces out, watch out. But I'm a big fan of the pieces that are in place.

And so only four remain -- Illinois, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Penn State. Raise your hand if you saw that coming! Come back tomorrow as we continue to sort this out.

Andy