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#12 Louisville
The Digital Scouting Report
Strengths: As simple as it is, I love the Cardinal Clips concept of your daily watercooler talk.
Weaknesses: I wish the site itself was set up to be a watercooler topic.
Full Scouting Report:
The Multimedia Menu expands to reveal a few pieces beneath, across a long menu. Don't worry, I'll go through each of the areas you need to check out here, starting with my favorite one - "Cardinal Clips."
I love the area Cardinal Clips mostly because it offers a real benefit to the Louisville fan: It's a hub for all things related to the programs in one spot, updated every day. Never again do you have to worry about that awkward moment that starts with your buddy asking "Did you see that...?" and you are left wondering. This is fresh, current, and very simple. I just wish there was an easy way to subscribe and get that information out to you!
The U of L Facebook page (shown below and here) is more of a fan page than it is a way of getting updates about the programs. While it is an active fan page (18,000 or so strong), it could be so much more. From what I can tell, the sharing of program updates stopped in July. Bring it back!
Clicking on Twitter takes you to the U of L Athletics Twitter page (link here). With 626 followers, they do a solid job sharing game updates and articles on each of the Cardinals programs. That said, if you look closely at the boxes in the lower right of this image, you'll see that they follow a very weird mashup of sites including Paul Pierce and the NFL. Nothing against either of these, but I feel there is an opportunity to drive a U of L point of view on the world that gets lost here.
Moving right along, I clicked on Cards TV, which took me to the experience below. As you can tell, for $9.95/month, you can get Audio of Live Games, Coach Pitino, and Press Conferences. Along with live game video for a lot of other sports, including Women's Basketball and Baseball. I'm sure there's a TV-deal holding this up, but to me they have this model a little mixed up from the basketball side. Listening to audio content on your computer should be free. If you want to take this with you on your iPhone, I see an opportunity to deliver an experience worth paying for... and as you'd guess I want to see basketball included in the live video side.
Beyond that, I'd love to see the ability to subscribe by sport. This feels a little like a cable TV package to me, where they bundle up channels you really aren't interested with the ones you are to make you feel like it's a better deal. Just let us pick what I want.
You can extend this conversation of subscribing by sport here, to the Louisville Podcasting Menu is shown below. You can download an individual episode, but as of now there isn't a way to subscribe for only one sport.
Backing up to the home page. I loved seeing the word "Recruits" in grey. I clicked in. There's something wrong with Recruits content that begins with some version of this, "Thank you for your interest in becoming a Cardinal." This is a high school athlete that is exploring your program, and it should feel all about a personal touch. As you can see below, this feels very cookie-cutter, not very dynamic and personal. And, do you think the first thing Coach Pitino would say on his first phone call to a recruit is "Thank you for your interest..."?
OK. My basketball hunger is getting pretty big by now. So I moved on to the basketball home page, shown below and here. What surprised me was that there really wasn't much information on the program. But I'll show you what I could find.
Scrolling down the page, you get access to the Cards TV experience (shown below). And you have the ability to watch selected videos on the site. They do not extend these videos to YouTube or Facebook... and don't yet offer the ability to easily share what you see with others.
You can also access the U of L Basketball Media Guide, by clicking on any of the links shown here. And these links could also be a little more dynamic. Don't just tell me "Coaching Staff", tell me "How the U of L Coaching Staff Prepares Players for Game Day and Life." (for example)
Which is what excited me to check out Coach Pitino's bio. Here is a legend, one of the best of all time, and I was pretty much dying to see how he was built up on the site. As you can see here, as of now the bio is here but the passion isn't shown just yet. This is a miss, as many programs would love to be in a spot where they could sell a coach of Pitino's caliber!
So I kept looking. I was able to find that Coach Pitino has a website, shown here. (No, it was not linked in to the image above, nor the U of L Athletics site at all from what I could tell). Talk about a powerful visual expression!
There is a News section of the site which pumps in on the bottom of the site and is really powerful. As you can see below, Coach Pitino gave a breakdown of what the team worked on in their first practice. If you can't see it, sample this excerpt, “Preston’s motor did not stop running for two hours and 45 minutes.” Solid!
I just wish he had updated it since the first practice!
I moved on to "Cardinals" and got the image below... making me realize that the site may be a work in progress, and one that I'm eager to check back in on. I just wish they told me it was in development - maybe giving me a way to sign up for updates on this?
Which summarizes the U of L Hoops experience well. Powerful visuals become less powerful when you can't sign up or raise your hand to connect with the program and/or the coaches.
Come back next week as we keep rolling through the Big East!
Andy
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