December in Review: The Coolest things in College Basketball

Today you're in for a treat. We're going to take a quick break from the analysis of basketball programs to take a look at some of the coolest things going on in the world of college basketball online. It's a sample of what I hope you find to be inspiring stuff.

Here we go.

Duke Basketball launches a Twitter Integration of Players and Fans. This is pretty amazing. I've already been a fan of Duke Basketball Marketing (click here for the recap of the #1 team in the ACC). Well, Duke upped the bar again. They created the Duke TweetMixx Channel, which allows fans to join true insiders (current players, former players, coaches, and in-the know fans) in a community on Twitter. And it all lives on the Duke Blue Planet website. That's sweet stuff.

"We wanted to give our former and current players, coaches, and fans a voice that speaks to the hundreds of thousands of Duke basketball followers..." said Mike Cragg, senior associate director of Duke Athletics.

Ridiculous. Click here to check it out or here for the full release.



Eastern Michigan University launches Basketball Marketing Idol!
(Hat tip to Joe Favorito for this one). I did a double-take. Really? Yes. EMU is bringing their business-school students to the front of how they market their men's and women's basketball teams, launching a Marketing Idol Competition.

A panel of EMU celebrity judges will critique ten-minute presentations from five teams of students who have worked together this semester to design marketing plans. They'll outfit the practice gym with a TV-style stage, theater-style lighting, video, and sound to create an Idol atmosphere. And of course there's an audience. The top two teams (as determined by audience voting) will receive cash prizes at a halftime ceremony of the EMU-James Madison game.

How cool is this? I love the concept, and think it gives a great deal of insight to the program at a time when they probably can't afford to invest in things. And the groups working on this are now (or will be really soon) their target consumers. So for very little money, Eastern Michigan creates great ideas from their target consumers while creating opportunities for students to get "real world" experience. Wow. Full read here.

Tennessee Sophomore Launches College Basketball Anthem. Renaldo Wooldridge (son of Orlando) developed a hot college basketball track. He was going to start with just the SEC, then decided to go bigger. Titled, It's College Hoops Time, you need to check this beat out - and hear how he gives a shout out to every conference in D-1 Hoops.

As a bonus, Wooldridge took his track and set to some nice UT highlight videos. As he puts it, "I'd like to open it up and get anybody who wants to do it to make a highlight tape to go with the song," he said, "then whoever has the best highlight tape, I could make a song for their team,too." Definitely worth a click.

Click here to see this tune set to UT highlights. For a full read on this, click here.

Providence is the first team I’ve seen promote their Twitter account on a billboard, link here.

The NCAA is exploring expanding March Madness to 96 teams in 2011. (side note, Hurray!) I love this idea, as it essentially merges the NCAA and NIT together and adds to the excitement. The top 32 teams would receive byes, and would definitely mean more money for the NCAA due to the additional games. According to the article, the NCAA gets over 90% of their annual revenue from the tourney's media deal (wow.) Link here.

The NCAA is introducing a re-invigorated Bracket Town at the 2010 Final Four. To me, the most interesting things are an "AT&T at the Half" TV studio setup - could be cool to be on the CBS Set! and a "large-scale" EA Sports NCAA Basketball 10 gaming area complete with a 2010 Bracket Town NCAA Tourney. With all of the CBS integration in the game (read about those here), it could be pretty sweet at Bracket Town. Read here.

EA Sports Unveiled their first Dynamic Updates for NCAA Basketball 10 (click here). What's cool is that this is the first year we see NCAA video games reflect the real season action. Teams like Texas, Northwestern, New Mexico, and Wichita State are going to be a lot tougher to play now than they were when the game launched. Cool. Here's an excerpt from EA:

“Both Texas and Villanova have climbed the rankings this week sitting at 2nd and 3rd respectively so if you're looking for a new team to roll with in NCAA Basketball 10 you can't go wrong with either of those two teams... The Florida Gators are the most notable movers up the rankings as they were unranked last week and are now sitting at the 13th spot. Billy Donovan looks to be performing his magic down south”.

And, finally, ESPN Introduced a Green College Basketball Game between Kansas and Michigan. The December 19 matchup raised awareness of environmental responsibility within the sports community. This impacted things both on the air and on the ground, including:

• Kermit the Frog led off the “Green Game” telecast with an environmental message, and ESPN followed up with vignettes from Kansas Coach Bill Self and Michigan Coach John Beilein on conservation.
• On-campus initiatives at both schools were highlighted during the game. Kansas uses elliptical machines to generate energy for campus power while Michigan created “Zero Waste Tailgates” for football season this year.
• The host city of Lawrence, Kansas purchased 8,000 kWh of electricity to offset the power use of Allen Fieldhouse for the day through a local hydroelectric power plant.
• ESPN changed their lighting setup to use LED lights for on-air personalities and required every production vehicle to be a hybrid.
• Kansas placed 30 new recycle bins with green footprints leading to the containers throughout Allen Fieldhouse
• Both teams, mascots, and spirit squads wore warm up shirts made from organic cotton.

This was nice to see, both from the message and the fact that the digital and physical worlds came together in a big way. Full read here.

I hope you enjoyed this!

Up next....

The Missouri Valley Conference!

Andy