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Post by blastingsand on Sept 30, 2006 21:56:48 GMT -5
How can Men's Volleyball grow in the US? There's only a handfull of college games, only the postseason is seen in ESPN and other than that beach vball. And the game is rising far too slowly. How should this sport be promoted?
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Post by Mac on Sept 30, 2006 23:28:02 GMT -5
This has been a topic many times on this board. I have a few thoughts after being around this for a few years: 1) The old guard has to understand that they need to do something to mass market the sport and to invigorate it for the group coming up behind them. The young guard coming in need to get aggressive and understand that this sport needs to grow and become more popular because there's no guarantees that it'll be around forever. 2) The fastest way to get more D-1 programs at the big schools where there is football money is to get their club teams and supporters to put an intense effort together to get their ADs to step up and to see the light. Other Pac Ten teams taking on a D-1 team would be a huge boost for the sport. Cal already has a strong club program and they have a natural rival across the Bay in Stanford. The state of Arizona has a lot of quality players coming out of their high schools but no D-1 team. Arizona St. and Arizona would compliment each other and keep their good players at home. Arizona has arguably the best club program in the country over the last decade. These schools need to work with their ADs and then demonstrate popularity for it in their local markets, and most of all, show their ADs how it would benefit their schools to have a real D-1 program. 2-b) There are a couple of schools that would be ripe for a Men's VB program. One is CS Fullerton. CSF doesn't have football, has an AD who loves Men's VB, and sits smack in the middle of the best hotbed for talent in the country, Orange County. It has natural rivals in LBS and UCI. With a good coach, (and I know one), they could be nationally competitive in two years, 3 tops. UC Riverside would be another to consider taking it on. If these Big West schools took it on maybe more would be inclined as well and another conference could be born. 3) Wouldn't it be great if the National Team would play in So. Cal to help promote the sport and encourage more boys to take on the sport. 4) I'd like to see the various schools tap into the academic marketing/business departments of their respective schools to use their programs as a real-life laboratory for learning grass-roots marketing, and using real marketing professors as mentors and for continuity as the churn of students in the groups occurs. 5) The schools should get their local cable channels to run video taped matches on their local access channels. They are all in dire need of programming. But use really good cameras and invite aspiring sports announcers to do the matches to enhance their reels. The key to introducing the sport to more people is to get more mass awareness via broadcast and mass media in the papers. FSN has broadcast one UCLA vs. USC match in two of the last 3 years. They then replay it about 20 times. That's great, but not enough. That MPSF final with LBS and UCLA was really entertaining. It was on CSTV. The schools should try to get CSTV to run those "classic" type matches on regular cable. The UCLA vs. Penn St. NCAA Final should be run again and again, but where? It could run on ESPN Classic. I don't care if it's late at night. But someone's got to be in talks with them in order to make it happen. 6) There is virtually zero coverage of Men's volleyball in the L.A. Times. What's up with that? All the S.I.D.s of all the L.A. area programs need to put a plan together to woo the editors of the L.A. Times to cover the sport, and to do it well. They already cover the high school version very well. Why not college? ? It's despicable, and further, the people responsible for getting the news out at each of the area schools is asleep on this. Use the power of ganging up on them! 7) The schools need to woo the high school and club directors and coaches. Get their teams and their parents to want to come to the matches. 8) Encourage and motivate each regular fan attendee to bring one additional friend to each match. That would automatically DOUBLE attendance. 9) Get each school's spirit squads to encourage more student attendance. 10) We need more coverage in Volleyball Magazine, and it needs to be higher quality. It's clear they cater to the female side and give the Men's side lip service... most of the time. The coverage of the Finals was pretty good this year. 11) We need to get busy and convert women's VB fans to Men's fans. They already appreciate the sport and understand it. They just need to be enticed to the men's matches. The schools have data bases of their women's fans. 12) Look at the demographics of fans. There are a lot of seniors. Cater to the seniors in your respective areas and bond them with your teams. There are a lot of empty nestors who could use some sort of relationship with a team they could "adopt" and get close to. 13) Cut sponsorship deals with the local bus companies where they use their buses to go to senior centers to pick up groups who want to come to the matches. Send them over to places like Leisure World (UCI and LBS) and bus them in 'en masse. Do the same with the high schools. In return, publicize the bus programs at the games. That's it for starters. Below are links to a number of very good posts on this very subject. The sport really needs a Marketing Czar to put it all together. Each school is busy doing its own thing with their limited resources. And of course they are all trying to keep all their advantages to themselves. That's understandable, but it doesn't bode well for using synergies to make the sport more popular. If they could form a marketing council and pay a salary to a Czar it would be nice. volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?board=menvb&action=display&thread=1083037278&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1140255390&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1138743870&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1136386730&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1134535147&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1129827109&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1125647242&page=1volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1107885993&page=3volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1107885993&page=2volleytalk.proboards88.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=menvb&thread=1085325299&page=1
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Post by peluche on Oct 1, 2006 8:43:03 GMT -5
It would be nice to get some quality varsity teams in the south. Florida's losing a lot of talent to out of state schools where most of them end up unable to afford. There are a lot of major universities in Florida so it would be nice to see some of them begin programs.
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Post by giba911 on Oct 1, 2006 17:53:12 GMT -5
You have to keep in mind that most of the Colleges could pull off having a varsity volleyball team. The thing is that with the gender equity rule in the NCAA, there have to be an equal amount of men's teams and women's team at each college.
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Post by Mac on Oct 1, 2006 23:16:52 GMT -5
giba, no disrespect, but we know that. You have to work around that. There are two issues. 1) marketing existing programs (which have nothing to do with Title IX, and 2) getting more teams going, which has everything to do with it.
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Post by Mac on Oct 22, 2006 21:57:07 GMT -5
Well, I'm surprised there isn't much comment on this. Are there no coaches, admins, or anyone else responsible for growing the sport or their attendance figures?
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Post by IdahoBoy on Oct 22, 2006 22:41:17 GMT -5
Thanks for bringing this back current, I missed it the first time around.
A question to your point 11, bringing over women's fans. How do you suggest 'selling' it to the women's fans? It's a lot different atmosphere, which is a big selling point for women's vb. Men's volleyball matches often lack a lot of excitement that women's brings into the match, still haven't pinpointed why.
I think a HUGE thing to tackle is the feeling that goes around most male athletes, that "volleyball is a woman's sport." I cannot tell you how many times I had weird looks from people when I told them I played men's volleyball. Some even asked if we wore spandex. Others asked why I played a girl's sport.
Growing up in high school, our state didn't even OFFER boy's volleyball. We asked our high school coach to let us put together a team, he said sure, if you can find enough teams to play against. The nearest boy's team at that time was in Seattle, I believe, which is at least 5-hours from where we were... and in a different state.
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usav
Sophomore
Posts: 154
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Post by usav on Oct 22, 2006 23:28:15 GMT -5
There are a number of good points above but it still seems very California-focused. I think the opportunity is in middle America, not necessarily the coasts. If you look around the country, the small growth that is taking place is taking place outside of California. While Cali has some of the best players around and there are a ton of D-1 NCAA and collegiate club teams playing, I believe the opportunity is east of Cali.
It scared me to see that you are suggesting that "mass media/promotion" of the sport should take place in our nation's newspapers. Newspaper circulation in almost every single market is on the decline. Fewer and fewer people are subscribing to daily newspapers so why promote our forward-thinking sport in a dying media???
TV is also not the answer...the AVP is already covered well on TV thanks to NBC and Fox Sports, they have made a commitment that we should be very thankful. But in order to reach NEW people, we need to reach the younger generation who can become lifetime players of the sport. You're not going to reach this younger set via TV or newspaper. We have to think outside of the box on this one, it may be internet-based or out-of-home media in order to reach this ever-mobile market. People are not sitting home anymore watching TV and reading newspapers...they're TiVo-ing everything, eliminating commercials, and reading the news and content on the internet. Potential players need to know their options and know that there's a huge network of opportunities to play, from rec to semi-pro.
Volleyball is the 2nd most played and popular sport in the world yet living in the US you would never know this. Now, to be honest, we'll never overtake football, baseball, NASCAR, or basketball...but we should aim to be in that 2nd tier of sporting options behind them. The rest willl take care of itself.
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Post by BearClause on Oct 23, 2006 0:19:28 GMT -5
giba, no disrespect, but we know that. You have to work around that. There are two issues. 1) marketing existing programs (which have nothing to do with Title IX, and 2) getting more teams going, which has everything to do with it. It's hard to market. It was frankly a very complicated set of circumstances that got me interesting in playing VB, then watching it as a spectator sport. I'm a diehard fan, but volleyball has to compete with lots of nonrevenue sports. Men's VB is an even tougher sell and the limited number of teams doesn't help it grow. Someone who might have watched a varsity HS team might not have an NCAA team to root for in college. As for the Title IX argument - I remember a Title IX series in the San Francisco Examiner back in 1999. They interviewed several people including the captain of the Cal men's club team (had the talent to play D-I) and the athletic director. The AD flat-out said, "The Title IX numbers don't work out" even though he admitted that there would be adequate funding.
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Post by scmb19 on Oct 23, 2006 2:18:57 GMT -5
I think that one of the best things that USA volleyball could have done for the sport was to move the headquarters for the Mens' National Team out of Colorado and to Southern California. I'm not trying to say that SoCal is better, but i feel that when people all over the country think of the roots of volleyball, they think of SoCal. The change is already sparking more SoCal players to come out for the national team than in years past.
I see the American public as only interested in sports where the US is at the top of the world rankings. Look at basketball, Team USA was considered a failure after not winning either the Olympics or the World Championships. What is basketball doing, bringing in younger players who are still growing up in an age that basketball has become a much more physical game. This is what USA Volleyball needs to do.
I watched some of the matches in the Olympics, etc and didn't hear anyone who had graduated college in the past 4 years. None of the recent big college names such as Sean Rooney, etc. When a nat'l team can't draw the biggest names from college to the team, the sport is failing.
With the additions of Hildebrand and the recent graduates who were doing very well in the AVP this past season, I feel USA Volleyball is back on the rise. These players, while very good already, still have some potential room to grow. They are a younger generation of new, more athletic and versatile athletes that other countries are taking advantage of and leaving the US behind. The improvement of the national team will bring the press to volleyball and slowly cause it to grow in the US.
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usav
Sophomore
Posts: 154
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Post by usav on Oct 23, 2006 8:18:16 GMT -5
I wouldn't say that the move to Anaheim was the panacea that everyone was hoping for as evidenced by the horrendous showing the US Mens National Team had in the World League. I hope this isn't a trend but so far it hasn't been great after the move.
Comparing basketball to volleyball is completely unfair. No one cares about Olympic basketball because they have the NBA to watch their favorite players. When you have players who make millions per year, there isn't much incentive to play hard on the National Team, or play at all. Volleyball has far more of a daunting challenge than basketball does...not only do we need to win gold medals (like basketball does) but we have the added challenge of raising awareness/interest in the game.
And title IX is killing the mens game...the rule is that a NCAA program must have the same amount of mens athletic scholarships compared to womens athletic scholarships. Football throws everything completely into whack. Each football program eats up nearly 100 full scholarships so there needs to be a TON of womens teams in order to make up that difference. So adding mens volleyball is quite tough even though the overall cost of running the program is quite inexpensive (cheap jerseys, already have nets/poles, only 4.5 full scholarships, etc).
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Post by gobears on Oct 23, 2006 12:26:38 GMT -5
I have jumped on with items and issues in the past and will likely do so later this week, to discuss some of the above noted items. An indepth discussion of where Cal is in this process of marketing and movement to D1 is included in one of the above noted threads.
However, as I am needing to be 'out the door' at the moment, I will just add one bit for how to work at getting the women's fans to see and be interested in the men's game.... ----this year the Cal men's vb team have an exhibition match off season at Haas Pavilion, following the Stanford vs Cal women's match, Nov. 3. We will have more than the normal # of fans (we have been averaging 650+ each women's match this year), at the Stanford/Cal women's match....likely well over 1000. Hopefully a bunch will stay and watch. We will promote the men's team like crazy at that match....taking names/emails of anyone who will give them... providing schedules for our spring season..... etc etc.
We are thankful for a supportive women's program/players and coaches. We have not had this opportunity before for a match after a women's match. Two of our players (well one current and one former) are student managers of the women's team. This is a big help in getting the depts closer together.
Even if a college's women's program is not particularly supportive/close to the men's club program (and there are a LOT who are not), working with the head of the rec sports program and the facility staff dept could likely result in an approval for piggybacking a men's offseason match to be held right after a women's match. It might take a year or two of talking, politicking, but certainly worth working at.
Our men's team also found this past year that a 2 inch x 2 column ad in the student paper every match day increased our attendance a lot. Student paper ads are cheap to run for student groups....and a big campus has tons of students who have no clue that men's vball exists, but a lot of them read the daily campus rag.
Gotta run...more later... Cal men's vb
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Post by scmb19 on Oct 23, 2006 12:31:50 GMT -5
I agree, Title IX is killing the Mens' game, I play college club ball so i know exactly what you are saying.
However, in my comparison to basketball, i agree that it the public can watch their favorite players every season, but what about in the days of the "Dream Team". Those guys cared about playing, as do the new, younger generation. I guess I'm just saying that volleyball needs to look to draw the younger (by that I mean recent college grads) to the nat'l team.
The reason I think the move to Anaheim is key is due to the fact that most of the SoCal players tend to want to stay in SoCal. They end up playing on the AVP for a few years while doing some coaching here and there. The move to Anaheim will allow them to still live in SoCal and play international volleyball, the best of both worlds instead of having to choose between SoCal life or Colorado life, a vast contrast.
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Post by wisky4 on Oct 23, 2006 13:22:08 GMT -5
Thanks for bringing this back current, I missed it the first time around. A question to your point 11, bringing over women's fans. How do you suggest 'selling' it to the women's fans? It's a lot different atmosphere, which is a big selling point for women's vb. Men's volleyball matches often lack a lot of excitement that women's brings into the match, still haven't pinpointed why. I think a HUGE thing to tackle is the feeling that goes around most male athletes, that "volleyball is a woman's sport." I cannot tell you how many times I had weird looks from people when I told them I played men's volleyball. Some even asked if we wore spandex. Others asked why I played a girl's sport. Growing up in high school, our state didn't even OFFER boy's volleyball. We asked our high school coach to let us put together a team, he said sure, if you can find enough teams to play against. The nearest boy's team at that time was in Seattle, I believe, which is at least 5-hours from where we were... and in a different state. first off i think womens volleyball is somewhat boring at points and lacks excitement, idk about you but i would rather see a huge hit or seeing one of those huge hits be dug or someone just get housed. A good men's match does anything but lack excitement. also if you are in the hot zones for volleyball players i dont think you get a weird look or ask why you play a girl's sport. the midwest and pretty much wherever there is a beach there are good volleyball players and people taking some interest in the sport. from experience in high school and college i have had football players and basketball players that I'm friends with come and watch the matches cuz they like it. more and more kids are picking up the sport when they get cut from the "popular" sports in high school because of so many kids trying out and they come to volleyball, also kids in college pick it up in inter murals and then carry it out to the beach and just get better. the sport is catching on but just a little bit slower than most volleyball players would like.
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Post by bunnywailer on Oct 25, 2006 1:54:54 GMT -5
The theory that a rise in popularity in men's volleyball overall is tied to the success of the USA Men's National Team can be debunked by the fact that, even when the USA was the most dominant men's team in the world and won back-to-back Gold Medals in '84 and '88, along with the coveted Triple Crown ('84 Olympic Gold, '85 World Championship Gold, and '86 World Cup Gold) and had two of the most recognizable faces in volleyball with Kiraly and Timmons, none of that translated into any real long-term boost in the popularity of men's volleyball in this country.
To grow men's volleyball as a sport, you have to start looking at the grassroots level. Get real volleyball to be taught in PE classes by coaches who actually know how to teach the sport correctly. Start up more youth-based programs like the USYVL, petition to have it add to more high school athletic programs in all parts of the country. The more boys you get playing this game at an early age, the more interest you can generate for it long-term.
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