We often talk about marketing here so I just saw where we hired a new Director of Marketing responsible for marketing efforts and fan experience for all 15 sports..His name is Marcus Mercer and it says he has experience at Ohio State, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Was brought on board to "look for ways to improve our fan experience and generate revenue". Also brought on board was a new Academic Adviser. It would appear that AD Steve Watson has had enough time to take LUs temperature and is now starting to make his mark. Lets hope this will be a plus.

That's funny. I was just getting ready to put together a pitch to Watson for a position just like that.

One of the suggestions I had was to incorporate sports to the university's generic advertising, like many other schools do. The athletic department is a significant student amenity, and an attraction that is (or should be) a large part of campus social life. The Newhart-voiced spots have been running for several years, quite often during sports broadcasts, and I think they're past their prime. In all of Loyola's major generic advertising (print, video, audio, etc.) you'd never know we have an athletic department-- let alone that we're in the MVC, or that we recently won two national championships and the CBI.

My other longtime pet peeve is getting a message sign facing Sheridan promoting campus events. According to the City of Chicago Data Portal, 41,200 vehicles pass by the intersection of Sheridan and North Shore every day. It's probably more than that at W. Sheridan and Kenmore.

https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transpor ... /pf56-35rv

Something also has to be done about broadcasting/play-by-play, events (double-headers with volleyball or women's basketball?, revenue events, etc), and engaging students.

JCT,,,,all great ideas.......and now we know where to send them!!!

I preemptively nominate JCT for AD when Watson leaves.

Another point of emphasis: Loyola has about 150 Twitter accounts for micro-audiences. There are accounts for each dorm, groups, dining, majors, etc. Getting them all to compete to get students to the games would be a good place to start reinforcing student attendance. I like what Michigan State does in giving students game notes for each contest, matching T-shirts, and appointing student section cheer directors to make noise.

The vibrancy of the students at a college game is a huge attraction for non-student attendees.