Andrew Murphy has been to a Syracuse University football game every year since he graduated in 1987, so after he heard the football team would be playing in the New Era Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium Thursday he quickly arranged for himself and five of his friends to go to the game.

‘Wherever the bowl game was going to be I was going to go,’ said Murphy, who lives in Bridgewater, NJ.

With a winning season and a bowl game there’s been more of a reason to pay attention to SU’s football games—and more reason to promote the team.

SU Athletics has used marketing campaigns like Orange Empire and Orange in the Apple to promote the team in New York City and throughout the state. A holiday greeting e- mail with a photo of the team was sent out the week before Christmas to a listserv of fans, a change from last holiday season. On Wednesday night, the North and South sides of the Empire State Building were lit orange and white and the East and West sides were lit purple and white for Kansas.

Alumni Relations is behind a number of events in major cities across the country to watch the game and its’ website encourages fans to volunteer to promote SU football on the Early Show, Good Morning America, and the Today Show.

At least 44,000 tickets had been sold Thursday morning, said Michael Margolis, media relations manager for the New York Yankees. There was no break down available on who was purchasing the tickets, Margolis said.

The Argus Group, which represents the Yankees, managed a volunteer-based marketing campaign for both Kansas State and SU the week before the game. Students and alumni were invited to become part of a marketing team around the city, as part of street teams handing out fliers in New York City and cheering on morning television shows.

Planning for the alumni and student volunteers began in early December, said Dave Shoer, who has been organizing the volunteer campaign. The first SU event, a welcoming committee at the Grand Hyatt for the football team’s check in, had fans show up with facepaint and cheer in the hotel’s lobby. Despite the weather, Shoer said about 25 fans were there.

The costs for the campaign have been nominal, Shoer said. About 10 to 15 students appeared on the three major morning shows Thursday holding handmade signs, supplies for which cost about $30, Shoer said. Shoer said 165 fans for Kansas and SU participated, and each received a free ticket to the game, although he said that has not been a cost associated with the campaign.

The importance of the campaign was allowing fans to participate in the bowl game and the excitement leading up to it, Shoer said.

‘It’s a historic event, it’s important for New York City and exciting for the students,’ Shoer said.

Lizzy Sarshik, a senior public relations and political science major, said she heard about the opportunity and signed up at the beginning of winter break. She was out distributing fliers in an SU beanie hat at Rockefeller Plaza Wednesday afternoon. It was cold and difficult to get people to pay attention, but Sarshik said she did it for the chance to go to the bowl.

‘I really wanted to see the game,’ Sarshik said.

Playing in the Pinstripe Bowl in New York City is a great way for the team to start gaining more attention, said Ed Russell, an SU professor of advertising. With a change in coach and a winning season, Russell said he has seen a renewed interest in the team. ‘People like to pay attention to teams that are on their way up,’ Russell said.

But marketing the team can be difficult and costly. Russell said he has always thought of the university as more of an intellectual school than a sport school like Michigan State or Ohio State, schools he said are ‘hardcore rooted in their sports traditions.’ And it will be difficult to compete with schools with a historically big football presence because SU is not in same league, he said.

The Orange is in the Apple campaign, which has a website and does advertising in New York City, has been one way SU Athletics has tried to expand its fan base. Although the football team has done advertising in New York City, Russell said it is expensive to go compete for attention in the largest city in the country and make a significant impact.

One element of a successful advertising campaign is promoting ‘something unexpected,’ Russell said. That SU’s football team is calling itself New York’s College Team is the one advertising move that stuck out for Russell.

‘To be honest it’s a very interesting idea and a potentially very good idea,’ Russell said, adding that since many SU grads go on to live in the tri-state area there is a marketing base for the campaign.

In advertising terms, what the football team is doing is ‘positioning themselves,’ Russell said. But despite the advertising, Russell said he doesn’t think any New York college team has secured the position of being the college team. There are other area college football teams, like St. John’s University, that seems to have a wider appeal within the state, Russell said.

The basketball team is definitely a contender for being New York’s college basketball team, Russell said, but the football team needs more time. Becoming a contender for the title will take a few winning seasons, seeing more of SU’s players recruited for the NFL and more fans from outside the alumni base, Russell said.

Although used more frequently as of late, branding the team as New York’s college football team has been in use for the past few years said Scott Sidwell, executive senior associate athletics director. The term came into use since SU is the only in the state Division-I college team in the state, Sidwell said.

Sidwell said he believes there are SU football fans who are not affiliated with the school. Now that the team is going to the bowl and playing to a national audience, Sidwell said the team will gain even more attention and popularity. SU and the players themselves will ‘capitalize’ on the heightened attention given to the team after a winning season and the bowl, he said, but did not say how much marketing would change.

The athletics department spends a ‘significant’ amount of money—somewhere in the six figure range—on marketing and advertising for all of its sport teams, Sidwell said.

Sidwell did not have the specific amount of marketing money put towards the football team and said calculating the cost of the marketing campaign is difficult because of free publicity. Additionally, within the past year SU Athletics has begun using more free social media, like Twitter and Facebook, for promotions, he said.

Murphy, the fan from the class of ’87, said he has noticed the football advertisements this season.

‘I’ve been in Manhattan and I’ve seen it on top of taxi cabs, you see it on television a lot,’ Murphy said.

Murphy said he encouraged five of his friends, none of who are SU alums, to go to the bowl because it is more of a national event than a regular SU football game. He and friends usually go to the SU games played close to his home against Rutgers University

in Piscataway, NJ, Murphy said. But he doubts non-SU alums would follow a regular SU game.

Said Murphy: ‘You would really have to be alumni to go to a Syracuse game.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

Published on December 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride