extra local team?

One big problem that I have seen with CC Tiger hockey is that of the fan base. It seems like most of the fans are from the South West part of the city, which is great, but where is the rest of the city? By playing their games at the old Broadmoor World Arena, the neighborhood following began but I can't figure out why the rest of our city (read: mostly transplants) won't jump on and at least take a look. Sure AF is up north but what about the middle and the east? I am at a loss as to how we should market the team across the city. Praco Limited does their advertising (which will be the subject of a later blog) and they do a decent job, but it just isn't working. I would really like to get in touch with people in Falcon, downtown and along N. Nevada, Stetson Hills and the surrounding areas. I want to see if they even know about CC and how we can reach them better, despite the long drive to the World Arena.

Help from others

Because college hockey is not exactly well covered (even ESPN.com doesn't have a direct link), I think it would be awesome to bring in other thoughts from teams across the country. I would love to turn on the TV friday and saturday nights and watch a college hockey game regularly and NOT on the premium ESPNU that only has them on occasion. Although my focus is just on CC, I ultimately would want all of the ideas to be used everywhere so that we can get college hockey to at least a fraction of what football has in terms of national exposure. If other schools (ie the strong Minnesota schools) have certain aspects that work well, I want to hear em so that we can get this thing going in the right direction. The NHL is working to correct it's image and create a strong brand from essentially scratch. Why can't the NCAA bring it's strong product out into the mainstream?!

Crowd Unity

Have you ever noticed the people at the games wearing completey non-hockey attire? For example, when I was at the Saturday Bimidji game I was fortunate enough to notice a woman in her designer western gear knitting (I have a picture and would post it but unfortunately my memory card is corrupt and the pic is stuck on the camera). I go to school here at NU and, as most people know, Husker football games are full of 80,000 people wearing red. Why not start a tradition of wearing black or gold for home games? We could wear gold against the WCHA and black against all others, or even all white. I just think it would be sweet to get the crowd to be an even bigger part of the game. Remember the opening game at the World Arena with everyone wearing black and waving black pom poms?!!!

Big idea

So, being in Nebraska I have a huge disadvantage because I can't watch or listen to the games very well because of regional differences and time problems. In class last week we discussed the prospect of using podcasts for the games. Basically, we get the college to upload the camcasts onto itunes and we can download it for free and listen whenever. There is also the option of having video (vodast) insead of just audio. If anyone have access to the tapes from the game, this could really be an asset to the increase of awareness.
Also, I apologize for not adding anything to this blog for a week, I was moving all week and was swimming through a maze of boxes and trash in between work and classes. Hopefully I can add a few entries today and Monday and get some of my new ideas out there to make up for my lost week!

Starting to get ideas and write more

So I haven't been working on this too much since I created it, I've been busy with school and work. I really need to start getting traffic to this blog so that we can start formulating ideas. I created a google group for CC fans that will allow people to start their own discussions and give input, pics and other general information. I really want to work together with the other bloggers and fans out there so that we can actually do something beyond just talking or me having a good idea for a class project. I am open to whatever people have to say related the the Tigers and helping raise awareness of the team (and college hockey in general). I plan on sticking with this movement past school if we can get it started!

Let's get the word out

Hey CC fans, I'm working on a class project in which we need to use new technology to get the word out about a cause we believe in. After going to two of the Tigers' games over my Christmas break I quickly figured out what I needed to work on. I noticed that purple dominated the stands more that yellow and gold. I just can't understand this, we have an amazing program that has numerous NCAA tournament appearances and is always very competitive in their conference not matter how much "rebuilding" is going on. Tickets are cheap, the facilities are great (except maybe the white color of the netting) and the team is amazing. I wanted to create a blog where we can come together and discuss, not so much the team and games, but more how to get more people aware of the team, the games and the sport of college hockey. We can suggest things to the athletic department, the advertising agency (Praco Limited) , the World Arena or simply do things ourselves. Let's try to get the games sold out for next season and make a run at the Broadmoor Trophy and National Championship!