Gerald Ensley: In sports promotion, FSU has been a loser

This is a Jan. 2014 article, but noted after the latest logo issues FSU has been dealing with.


Gerald Ensley: In sports promotion, FSU has been a loser


"It's not a surprise FSU postponed its national championship celebration for the second time.
It's typical FSU. Because when it comes to sports promotions, FSU is horrible. And has been forever.
This year has been another great example.
Before the season, FSU bungled a movie night in Doak Campbell Stadium. After much hype, officials canceled at the threat of rain and never rescheduled. In September, FSU asked Hall of Fame running back Warrick Dunn to speak during Civility Week, then didn't advertise his appearance, which drew only 200 people, most of them on-campus students who barely knew who he was.
Then came -- and I know this will sound like heresy -- Bobby Bowden Night.
On Oct. 25-26, FSU held a weekend of tribute to its former coach. The Friday night event in the Civic Center was a mess.
First was the sloppy huddle on stage in which Bowden re-enacted one of his halftime talks. About 20 players formed the huddle -- though the audience was never told who the players were. Apparently, FSU didn't know which players would attend and assembled the group on the fly.
Then came video highlights of the Bowden years and Bowden talking about his career. It was awful.
The sound was horrible, even given the low bar set by the Civic Center. You could hardly hear Bowden; Bowden could hardly hear emcee Charlie Barnes' questions. The show was delayed three times because video wasn't ready -- video that was only occasionally explained. What should have been a night of unending standing ovations became a night of sporadic, muted applause as people asked each other, "What did he say? Who's on the video screen?"
You've got the greatest coach in school history returning after a four-year exile. You have hundreds of his players reuniting to salute him. You've advertised it for weeks. Then you ruin it with sloppy, disorganized presentation.
But that's FSU sports promotions, for whom they invented the acronym "snafu": Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.
In 1997, a celebration of 50 years of FSU basketball was a comic farce, as FSU tried to honor dozens of players in the 15 minutes of halftime. It sent players out haphazardly in groups from each decade, without naming players. The one player introduced was the last: Dave Cowens, arguably the greatest player in school history. But FSU had so poorly planned things that FSU and Wake Forest were back on the floor shooting and warming up. Cowens was lost in a sea of players, as fans asked each other, "Where is he?"
Every football season, FSU stages Senior Day -- then rushes through it as if everyone has to catch a bus. By the time you see the player and his parents on the field, the announcer is three names down the list.
In 2002, FSU held senior introductions before the kickoff of Florida-FSU -- after Renegade and Osceola threw down the spear. Talk about anti-climax.
This is a school that notifies its Hall of Fame inductees of their selection by mail, rather than a personal phone call. It's a school that charges $450 for a football scoreboard ad -- such as a fan's marriage proposal this season -- but cannot tell buyers when the ad will be shown. It's a school that delays team send-offs and welcome-homes by hours, but doesn't announce the delays to fans standing in the cold (or let them warm up inside the building).
Such bungling proves one thing: FSU doesn't care about good sports promotions.
One reason is it doesn't have to. FSU knows it has a product people will buy regardless of promotions. Bobby Bowden Night? Shoot, people will pay $30 to be in the same room with Bowden even if they can't hear him. Basketball's 50th anniversary? Heck, fans were coming to the Wake Forest game anyway. National championship celebration? Who cares, people will still buy season tickets.
The other reason FSU bungles sports promotions is it doesn't have anyone capable of running them. FSU turns promotion events over to the Seminole Boosters, the school's contracted sports marketing company or its sports information office -- all of which have missions other than event planning.
So tribute events are assigned to interns or the lowest employees on the totem pole, who apparently are told, "Do whatever you can; we don't have any ideas."
I don't know about other universities, but every professional sports team hires professional event planners. People who trained at major arenas, theaters and performing arts venues. People with expertise in planning, organizing and staging big events.
That's what FSU should do: hire a staff of experienced sports event planners.
The Bowden Night -- like the 50th anniversary, like Senior Days, like every promotion -- screamed for better planning. It screamed for knowing beforehand which players would attend so the huddle could be scripted, explained and introduced. It screamed for rehearsal, in which videos were timed to the events and ensured to work. It screamed for FSU to test/tweak/adjust a Civic Center sound system that everyone knows is awful but that FSU had months to improve.
Nobody owes fans promotions and celebrations. Bringing back players and coaches to celebrate their careers or a national championship is simply a thank you from a university to its fans. It's a way of celebrating the history of a university community.
But FSU is one of the nation's top public universities. It has an annual budget of $400 million. It's a big-time, professional organization, which expects -- and pays for -- professional performance from its professors, coaches and administrators.
A big-time, professional organization should be big-time and professional in everything it does, including sports promotions.
Bungling the national championship celebration is no surprise. Because FSU is always lousy in sports promotions.
But it's time to start fixing that. "