Larry D. Lauer

My university is having a fantastic year in football.  We are undefeated and number 3 in the nation! For professionals in marketing and communication, this always means questions from almost eveyone about just what it all means for advancing an academic institution? 

Does it help student recruiting?  How about fund raising? And what about building  academic reputation?

With respect to student recruiting, a sustained winning streak can certainly help stimulate more applications. For some universities, unneeded applications may just add overhead processing costs. For many others, however, a well developed marketing and communication program can use this new found positive visibility to effectively target appropriate market segments with an impressive academic story.

A winning season certainly stiumlates fund raising for athletics. But what about support for academic programs? Here too experience teaches that a professional advancement staff can use a very positive overall alumni atmosphere to steer donors toward academic programs. How well this works, however, will depend on the make-up of the donor base and the priorities of the immediate fund raising campaign.

The matter of how well winning athletics can help build academic reputation is more uncertain.  Athletics imagery alone does not advance academics, but it can convey a tone of campus vitality and welcoming community. And when the marketing and communication staff is prepared to target appropriate media and specific image influencing audiences with well crafted, interactive, relationship-building, academic messages, visibility and name recognition will certainly be an advantage.

In addition to being undefeated, our last several winning seasons have been challenging the BCS control of the national championship game. This produced significant visibility for us in Washington, DC, where I have been spending a lot of time these days. I have been able to witness first-hand how this ongoing visibility helped open the door to educational and political opinion leaders, and how effective it has been when we walked right through telling the rest of the academic story.

The bottom line lesson here, then, is that a winning athletics program provides visibility and opens doors, but only highly professional marketing, communication, admissions, and development work can sustain enrollment and fund raisng over time, and build lasting academic reputation.