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Mentorship Journal

#4 May 25: News release, logo prototype – 1 hour

Logo of the ICC at present. (International Cultural Consortium)

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my bedroom has doubled as my office. I use my gold Macbook here not just for checking Facebook or YouTube videos but also for my work projects. And Zoom meetings. Lots of Zoom meetings. The walls have but paint on them, so that makes for a nice backdrop. Finally, all my business calls are conducted on my personal cell phone. I kind of like being able to work from home, though I do miss getting out there and making a difference with my colleagues and the community.

Quarantine would not make that big of a difference with the International Cultural Consortium (ICC), since the partners of the organization are scattered across the country. Liston Bochette, who I mentioned the other day, is in Florida; we also have Dr. Bonnie Tiell, the professor of Sport Management at Tiffin University in Ohio, then there is Josh Henson, an attorney based in the Washington, D.C. area. Meanwhile, Iowa is where my office/bedroom is located, but I do not hold a financial stake in the ICC and thus am not a partner.

Even so, I have an important role in this venture, working to get the partners’ message across through such initiatives as a news release and looking at the ICC’s present logo, both of which I have done on this Memorial Day. In a short amount of time, I am learning a great deal more about what Liston, Josh, and Dr. Tiell hope to accomplish with their work, and I take those objectives just as seriously as they do.

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Reflection

Week 2

Before coming here to type up this week’s reflection, I wandered over to the analytics section, and it seems I’m rather popular in Canada according to the metrics. That’s one of the nice things about web analytics, which was covered in the book I read this week. It gives you a sense of where people are coming from, how they’re finding you, and what they’re looking at. It can even track things like sales, as Newman, Peck, Harris, & Wilhide (2013) point out. Of course, that is a bit advanced for me and I’m not selling anything at the moment per se.

Other highlights from Newman et al. (2013) include some practices I have great familiarity with like photos/video and marketing via search engines and e-mail, as well as mobile marketing, which is a concept I have some knowledge with but would not consider myself to be the utmost expert on. As I look to build upon my communications background, the reading was a nice review of those elements that make a campaign effective. Speaking of communications and journalism, you might notice that I have a few more entries over at the Siguenza on Sports blog this week, dealing primarily with sports and COVID-19. One post examines the starting up of youth competition this summer. Reopening business in the United States is a hot-button issue right now and while I don’t want to come across as overtly political in what I write, I think it’s very important to address the potential drawbacks to any plan with tact.

It was nice to hear about the NBA’s plans to return to action from an agent in the field on Friday. Justin Haynes gave a glimpse of what that might look like during his appearance on Tiell Total Sports’ Go Time show (personal communication, May 22, 2020). I would be interested to see how the league pulls off the completion of this season with another one looming in late October. It would certainly be a quick turnaround for the participants of the NBA Finals.

I think in general, things are picking up but I’m also starting to ease in a little bit here so I like where I’m at and onward we go.

Reference

Newman, T., Peck, J.F., Harris, C., & Wilhide, B. (2013). Social media in sport marketing. Scottsdale, AZ: Holcomb Hathaway, Publishers.

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Mentorship Journal

#3 May 23: Web hosting research and news release – 1 hour

Releases intended for print and broadcast media are among my duties with the ICC. (Photo by cottonbro from Pexels)

By day, I am a mild-mannered nonprofit communications specialist. My LinkedIn profile explains a little more in-depth on what that involves but just to summarize, I work on distributing my agency’s message throughout our service area through various methods like social media, print & electronic mailings, and the traditional news media, of which I had been part of before jumping into the nonprofit sector.

Based on the document I have that lists the needs of the International Cultural Consortium (ICC), I will be doing a lot of the same work for their specific project. This means that for the most part, I do not have to teach myself an entirely new set of skills, which is nice. Case in point, I am working on an announcement to the media about the project. I have written many press releases over time so for me, it is a bit like riding a bicycle.

Still, there are some tasks that I cannot say I have never performed before, but I would not call myself an expert on the matter. Like building a new website for the ICC. Now you might be thinking, hang on a second, you built this website, didn’t you? It is true that I can make words and sometimes pictures appear on a screen with the push of a button, but that is about the extent of my knowledge.

It is not, I suppose, a bad thing to learn basic web design because having that ability comes in quite handy in this ever-increasing digital landscape we live in. So I welcome the opportunity to try my hand at it and all the parts to the ICC’s communications efforts.

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Siguenza on Sports

A Premier payout to broadcasters

It’s no secret at this point that the absence of live sports has been catastrophic for the people who organize them. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told CNN last week that clubs would collectively lose $4 billion if no season were to be held. It has also hurt the media corporations who have paid good money to carry games, only to be reduced to digging deep into the archives for substitute content.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, a report that the current members of the English Premier League were expected to pay back $367 million to the organization’s broadcast partners. The estimate is divided among the twenty clubs that make up the EPL and proportional to the number of appearances on television. One of the more popular teams, Manchester United, announced its total bill to be around £20 million, equivalent in US currency to $24.5 million.

Wall Street Journal Sports on Twitter

An incomplete season would result in a return of £750 million (SportBible, 2020), which converted to American dollars is just shy of $1 billion, thus giving the EPL a billion reasons why it can’t declare Liverpool the champion when it has a clear lead over the field.

Miguel on Twitter
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Mentorship Journal

#2 May 22: Follow-up meeting – 45 minutes

Liston Bochette ran bobsled for Puerto Rico at the Olympics. Here, an image of the American team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. (Photo by Pixabay from Pexels)

Among one of the great Disney movies that you can find on the studio’s streaming service is Cool Runnings, which chronicles the journey of four Jamaicans to compete in the Winter Olympics as bobsledders. I remember seeing the film–notable for being one of John Candy’s last before his untimely death–when it was released in theaters.

The person I am working with on the initiatives of the International Cultural Consortium (ICC) has a similar story. He competed in the bobsled at the Olympics, but not for Jamaica. Instead, he represented Puerto Rico, which is on the opposite side of the Caribbean from Jamaica.

Liston Bochette ran track at the University of Florida, where he later was named to its athletic program’s Hall of Fame; and made three Olympic Games with the Puerto Rican team. Outside of competition, Liston has made a name for himself as an artist as well as a political figure, running for office in his hometown of Fort Myers, Fla. The ICC, which Liston started and serves as its chairman, closely reflects his passions of art and sporting competition so again, it is a real thrill to be able to work with him as he looks to advance the goals of his organization.

We had another conversation today in addition to the one yesterday about my role in those efforts. Still cannot share all the details with you to preserve the integrity of this project but I like what Liston is doing and I think this is going to be a great project.

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Siguenza on Sports

Too soon to resume sports?

A youth baseball game in Denver. (Brian Siguenza)

Part of the overall push to start normal activities in American culture has of course been to bring back organized sport, and we’re starting to see signs of competition picking up again. NASCAR held a race at Darlington this week, and Major League Baseball eyes a July opening. Then there are youth sports, which some states will allow to happen as early as the end of the month.

KPRC 2 Houston on Twitter
Iowa High School Athletic Association on Twitter

Pat Toomey, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, weighed in on the matter with a discussion he hosted today with sporting officials, athletes, and a doctor.

Senator Pat Toomey on YouTube

But is it a good idea to be starting up youth sports so quickly when we’ve seen so many summer events like Wimbledon, the British Open, and the Olympics either moved or outright canceled due to coronavirus? Not to mention the analysis by scientists that the virus hasn’t left and could exacerbate again come fall. How will youth games be conducted: do the athletes get tested as vigorously as major leaguers are expected to? Will there be spectators in attendance? In Texas, as KPRC reports, the proclamation suggests that it will be left up to the teams to decide. Finally, is it really fair to the kids that they end up being guinea pigs in this experiment to debunk science?

Perhaps that last question is not for me to answer. One thing is for certain, a lot more variables are at play here than just people wanting sports again. Dismissing this crisis makes it that much harder to fight it.

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Mentorship Journal

#1 May 21: Introductory Meeting – 45 minutes

People shaking hands in latex gloves. (Photo by Branimir Balogović from Pexels)

So close, yet so far away.

I anticipate graduating with my Master’s in Business Administration from Tiffin University at the end of this year. To accomplish that, however, I must complete a couple more courses. One of those is a mentorship with a sports organization in which I work closely with someone on a project. This could have been taken care of with a trip to Tokyo this summer for the Olympics but as most of us know, it was tabled to next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fortunately, I was able to make alternative plans and latch on to an organization that is closely related to the Olympic movement instead. It’s called the International Cultural Consortium (ICC), a not-for-profit group incorporated in Puerto Rico but operates out of Florida. There is a lot that I am not at liberty to share with you at the moment because it involves a product that has yet to be released to the public. And as I am just starting to work on it, I do not know a whole lot about it myself.

What I will say is that I am quite excited about the work because it fits nicely with my experience in the communications field, which I intend to continue long-term in some fashion. Today I held my first meeting with the individual who heads up the ICC, and we will be talking again tomorrow. He has a very interesting background himself, and I will tell you more about it in the next post.

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Communication & Fundraising in Sport

No joy in London as MLB cancels its UK series

View of the British Parliament from the London Eye taken July 2, 2016. (Brian Siguenza)
London has played host to a Major League Baseball series.

There’s something fascinating about North American sports leagues taking their game to international markets. I remember being in the UK when the NFL held a regular-season contest in London. While I was not in Wembley Stadium when the Chargers took on the Saints, I watched on the BBC, which itself was very different from the American broadcasts I’m used to.

Britain’s capital has become a popular spot for staging North American sports. Last year, the Yankees and Red Sox brought their storied rivalry across the pond. This year was to be a Midwestern matchup between the Cubs and Cardinals before Major League Baseball scuttled those plans on account of the coronavirus (Pavitt, 2020).

A Google search on the MLB London Series offers several stories from US sources like USA Today, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, and ESPN. The first British source does not appear until the second page of the results, from the Evening Standard, the newspaper hawked through the streets of London at the end of the workday. The Evening Standard story, written by Flood (2020), is to-the-point regarding the cancellation of the series. It mentions the previous year’s affair along with other major events that will not run during the summer, including the Olympics and Wimbledon.

The article from CBS Sports, on the other hand, is much more in-depth about the status of the MLB season in general. Axisa (2020) reports that games in Puerto Rico and Mexico City were also axed and that those events plus London could potentially be rescheduled for one year later. Meanwhile, on the chance the season started before June 13, the Cubs and Cardinals would meet at Busch Stadium, as St. Louis had given up those home games.

Compared to soccer and cricket, baseball simply is not a priority in Great Britain. Says Katz (2019), “baseball has not developed a mass following–in part, perhaps, because it seems impenetrable to people who didn’t grow up with the sport. It appears that soccer fans find baseball too slow and cricket fans find it too fast” (para. 6). As media works to cover items of interest to as many people as possible, the British audience may not be keen to hear too many details about what happens on the baseball diamond. There is also the matter of time–most baseball games anymore are played in the evening in the US and Canada, which is the middle of the night for Britons. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t spend the overnight hours following a sport when I have to be to work at eight a.m., save for perhaps the playoffs.

Still, baseball has its share of fans in the UK and even enjoyed demand from time to time, including last year when the Yankees and Red Sox sold-out London Stadium (Katz, 2019; Flood, 2020). Hopefully, MLB will get another chance to play games there and maybe I can attend then.

References

Axisa, M. (2020, April 1). Coronavirus: MLB cancels 2020 London Series between Cardinals and Cubs scheduled in June. Retrieved from https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/coronavirus-mlb-cancels-2020-london-series-between-cardinals-and-cubs-scheduled-in-june/

Flood, G. (2020, April 1). MLB London series 2020 between Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals cancelled due to coronavirus. Evening Standard. Retrieved from https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/mlb-london-series-2020-cancelled-coronavirus-a4404306.html

Katz, G. (2019, June 28). British baseball strictly minor league despite proud history. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/british-baseball-off-proud-history-64014484

Pavitt, M. (2020, April 2). MLB London Series cancelled amid coronavirus crisis. Retrieved from https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1092737/mlb-london-series-cancelled-coronavirus

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Siguenza on Sports

Tom Brady’s cringe-worthy pitch

Timing is everything.

Perhaps no one should understand this better than Tom Brady. The quarterback, drafted in the lower rounds out of Michigan, was certainly in the right place at New England when the man he backed up, Drew Bledsoe, suffered an injury early in the 2001 season.

Almost 20 years and six NFL championships later, Tom Brady has subjected himself to some rather bad timing. We’re not talking about his move to Tampa Bay during a pandemic that may alter the season, but the launch of his immune supplement during the said pandemic. Called Protect, HuffPost reports the product boasts ingredients like vitamin C and zinc, which according to Brady will work to keep the immune system “healthy.”

Tom Brady on Twitter

Needless to say, some people in the medical community were not amused.

Seth Trueger on Twitter
Mean Mary Jean DNP, RN on Twitter

While generally, I am not a fan of the “stick to sports” rhetoric that is heaped upon athletes on social media and the only mention of COVID-19 appears in the disclaimer that shipping may be delayed, I have to admit that the introduction of this product when there is so much conflicting information about the virus and whether there’s an acceptable treatment probably wasn’t the best idea. For someone who has had a lot of success in his career, Tom Brady did about as well here as his final pass as a Patriot.

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Siguenza on Sports

Remembering Phyllis George

I was working on another post when a news alert flashed across the top of my computer screen informing me of the passing of Phyllis George at age 70. A Miss America winner, she was best known for her work on The NFL Today with Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder.

USA Today on Twitter

You think about the aspects of sports broadcasting that are commonplace today–the breakdown of every matchup and factors to consider going into the game, which can be useful for placing bets–those came to be during the Musburger/George era of the CBS pregame show. But more than that, what George’s presence on The NFL Today showed was that women could co-exist in a male-dominated field, paving the way for the likes of Lesley Visser, Hannah Storm, Michele Tafoya, Beth Mowins, and so many more. For that, Phyllis George is a true pioneer in the world of sports media.

Here are a couple of videos to show you: a 1977 broadcast with Musburger, George, and Cross, then Musburger recalling the show’s first few years to Rich Eisen.

Classic Sports on YouTube
(original footage from CBS Sports)
The Rich Eisen Show on YouTube