Agility Matters in TV and Football

 The agility of high-level American football players has always amazed me. 300-pound men change direction instantaneously as they pursue their missions of either protecting or demolishing a ballcarrier.

We saw a lot of agility among the guys in pads as we produced a television program about the College Gridiron Showcase this year. The event, in fact, revolves around former college football players trying to show pro scouts how nimble, strong, ferocious, and/or intelligent they are. They’re high-level performers – young men who excelled as amateurs hoping to show they’re truly elite. So our crew got to see some good football.

We also discovered we needed to be agile ourselves, and not just because videographer Suzanne Wilemon isn’t afraid to push the limits of how close one should get to a pileup involving guys up to a foot-and-a-half taller than her.

We first had to find a way to get the show shot. We didn’t have the financing or distribution in place by the time the event rolled around, and at the time we believed the football calendar to be an immovable object. The CGS had to happen in January in Fort Worth and we had to shoot it. So we called in some favors and pulled a few double shifts. We emerged with a lot of interviews, football footage, and a whole lot of great narratives involving young people trying to realize their dreams.

Our goal had been to create a series in which we would take deep dives into players’ stories using CGS as a common core element. We would conduct additional interviews, go to their hometowns, and generally let the audience engage with their whole life situations.

Then we had to pivot. As we worked on financing and distribution, the production world abruptly came to halt. NFL and CFL calendars normally propelled by pro days and live drafts came to an unprecedented halt.

The pandemic meant we wouldn’t be doing any more interviews or shoots.

So we took a look at what we had. And it turns out we had a lot. One thing we always liked about CGS from a production standpoint was that we could shoot efficiently, with a lot of players in one place. And we had some great stories we could still tell, including:

·     A one-time top recruit confronting the off-field issues that caused him to enroll at four colleges and put his pro football dreams in serious jeopardy.

·     A record-setting running back from a small school, homeless as a kid, who hopes to realize a lifelong dream on the NFL’s big stage.

·     An offensive lineman whose mental health issues forced him to leave the Big Ten school he loved and finish college at a lower-level school in Texas.

·     An offensive lineman who grew up in poverty and became one of the few players to announce he was gay while still competing.

·     A small-school running back who persevered through two torn ACLs.

So we decided to make a show from it. It wouldn’t be a series, but instead a one-hour capsule summary that revolved around the CGS chapter in these player’s lives. Mixed in with the football angles, we worked in how they prepared for life off the field. That part included powerful testimony from rape survivor and activist Brenda Tracy that made these 20-somethings really consider matters of character.

By the end, we thought we had something people would want to watch. Executives at a couple of networks agreed with us, but those deals fell apart when others in the organization didn’t share their vision. That led us to choose to distribute the show via broadcast syndication.

The broadcast syndication process involves placing a program individually on local stations throughout the country who agree to carry it. There are a number of groups who own many such stations and a couple of those, Nexstar and Scripps, agreed to offer it to their local decision-makers.

I was on a Zoom call with one of my business partners in late July and I checked my email when I got done. I’m not sure I had ever before received an email from Grand Junction, Colorado, but the one I read that day was from that city’s CBS affiliate. KREX wanted the show. We had our first broadcast outlet. No matter how many emails I get in the future from Grand Junction, that will always be the best one.

A number of other stations followed and we have gradually built up our coverage to a significant portion of the country. I think one of the things our team is most excited about is that the road wasn’t smooth, but we eventually found our way to where we wanted to be. One has to be agile.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We also try to provide a package to our partner stations to allow them to be agile. We supply promotional spots of multiple lengths (you don’t know useful that is until you’ve found yourself hunched over a computer terminal trying to fill in the holes on the log of a typical broadcast day), social media content (including versions without voiceover so they can let their own sportscasters voice them for added localization), and materials to facilitate earned media. We want to give them the tools to drive viewers to their stations.

Thanks a bunch to our sponsors – we could not have pulled this off without them:

·     44 Management

·     KT Tape

·     One on One Kicking

·     Reveal Suits

·     Service King Collision

·     Space Center Houston

·     Visit Fort Worth

Content Creators And AEs Running The Same Playbook

The Early Days of Football And Ad Sales

For the first four decades or so of American football, play selection had its limits. The introduction of the flying wedge in 1892, wherein a ballcarrier ran behind a massed wall of blockers, was the height of innovation. Then, in 1906, John Heisman finally convinced Walter Camp they needed to add the forward pass to the rules and everything changed.

Television ad sales and TV show production have behaved much the same way. For about the first four decades of the technology, the brute force proposition of four networks selling the only available video inventory dominated the game. Then, in the 1990s, the rapid growth of cable penetration and online options introduced the video equivalents of multiple sets, spread offenses, and jet sweeps. 

National TV reps used to come to work with a (relatively) simple job to do. They’d look at the last Nielsen book (or maybe a three-book average if they had an especially demanding buyer) and service a group of existing agency customers who wanted to match up their clients’ :30 second spots with the (relatively) simple demographic numbers in those perfect-bound manuals. Sometimes you’d add in a sales promotion or some opening and closing brought-to-you-bys. They competed in a (not relatively) small universe of networks, and while they did have to counter threats from outdoor, print, and radio advertising, TV had the hammer. They had the richest content (pictures PLUS sound!) and nobody could deliver audience numbers like they could.  

Content creators also had a (relatively)straightforward mandate. They needed to deliver 22-or 44-minute shows that could make the numbers Nielsen recorded large ones. Barring the occasional product placement or an actor on stage at the upfronts, that’s mostly how those who produced programming serviced sales reps.

Digital Spread Offenses 

Today, digital has gone all run-and-shoot on traditional ad models. Audience segmentation has become more fragmented, though that has also come with new, more targeted measurement tools. There are more networks, and they’re delivered on multiple devices. Advertisers even have their own channels, thanks to social media and websites. 

In addition, the consumer’s buyer journey has changed. A :30-second spot that used to drive people to a store where a clerk would complete (or foul up) the sale now pushes people to visit a website and/or a search engine to contemplate (and potentially execute) a purchase decision. 

So ad salespeople now face a world where their :30-second spots on linear television still have some value, but media buyers want to see more. They want more ways to speak to consumers than just one-off ads attached to content. Content creators have to help AEs deliver.

We still need to create compelling 22-minute shows, 2-hour films, or six-episode miniseries, because that’s still sellable. But we need to also think, “What else can we supply to help the network rep when she’s in that meeting with her client?” 

Content Creators As Team Players

Can we create some supplemental digital content to enable a deeper dive for the viewer and an opportunity for the advertiser to retarget the digital consumer that tuned in for the full piece? Can we make content available for an advertiser to use on their own channels? Can we offer directors and principals to participate in B-To-B functions? And what can we do to make sure viewers don’t want to skip what content we’re using to help the advertiser engage prospects? 

Producers can get sophisticated about truly helping network sales departments service their clients. How do clients’ prospects progress down a sales funnel? Much is made in the sales enablement world about having content to target (and retarget) consumers as they make their ways through their buyer journeys. If a network could supply buzz-worthy content (and video related to a network show should be a lot cooler than your standard testimonial vid or infographic), could such innovation cement a larger share of a media buy for your network partner? If so, then it might be worth some thought in planning a production. 

Football Analogies At Work

An advantage of having viewers who’ve signed up for, say, an SVOD account with you is that you’ll know more about them than the Mad Men boys knew about their mass-appeal audiences. And online services have the ability to serve content based on identifiable patterns - if they’ve got the right content to serve. It’s not too different from a middle linebacker who’s studied his opponent’s offensive tendencies out of certain formations and quickly processes that data to put himself in the right place to stuff the ballcarrier.

This can be fun for content creators. We got into this line of work because we love to tell stories, and here’s an opportunity to make even more of it, in innovative and efficient ways. The rise of subscription services who don’t show ads has helped drive cord-cutting. But ad-supported content isn’t going anywhere, because sellers of goods and services still have to communicate about what they do. Networks, including streaming ones like Tubi, Quibi, and Peacock, want to continue to be the ones to help them do it.

Ad-supported networks have to compete for eyeballs with ad-free services like Netflix. They also have to contend with Amazon Prime and Walmart’s Vudu, who have the ability to facilitate direct sales through their e-commerce platforms. Certainly content creators can make content for Amazon and Walmart, and they should be thinking about how to best drive sales there, too. But when we’re working for networks, we need to use every tool we can to help our partners succeed. That means getting in lockstep with the needs of their sales departments, kind of like quarterbacks do with receivers . . . or safeties do with cornerbacks . . . or holders do with kickers . . . or whatever football analogy works for you. 

Rush Olson has spent more than two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.

MintFarmFilms.com

https://www.linkedin.com/company/mintfarmfilms/

RushOlson.com

Football Takes More Courage Than You Realize

This post originally appeared in the Blotch section of the Fort Worth Weekly's website. To consume it there: https://www.fwweekly.com/2020/01/14/sports-rush-a-courageous-tackle/

It takes a certain degree of courage to play the sport of American football. On every play, you know an opponent will likely attempt to ram into you traveling at a high rate of speed. If you’re a receiver going over the middle, or a quarterback looking downfield, or a linebacker unaware of a pulling guard, you might never see it coming. But since the 19th century, enough men have braved the violence that football has become this country’s most popular sport. The game has a rich history, full of dramatic hail marys and clutch third-down tackles.

For Brenda Tracy, it takes courage just to think about football.

Tracy came to Fort Worth last week to speak to a group of football players at the College Gridiron Showcase. Her audience consisted of some 200 former college standouts looking to impress NFL and CFL scouts with their physical and mental skills. In addition to providing on-field opportunities, CGS tries to address off-the-field situations the prospective pros may face. The attendees receive instruction in financial planning, the draft process, and, from Tracy, lessons about a side of their sport’s history they need to know about. A vile, putrid, unacceptable side.

In the late 1990s, a group of men that included major college football players gang-raped Brenda Tracy. She tried to address the horror through legal channels, but the authorities, both at the local district attorney’s office and the large state school whose players perpetrated the crime, prioritized the football team’s success over proper legal processes and the young woman’s unimaginable suffering. She remained anonymous and dealt with the psychological ramifications for her and her two sons as best she could over the ensuing decade and a half.

in 2014, however, she went public with her story, and decided to try to change the landscape for other women who might find themselves in situations similar to the one she had experienced. Her activism helped alter the legal environment regarding such cases. And meanwhile, she also turned her attention to football.

A sport played mostly by men that necessarily glories strength and toughness has historically generated more than its share of cases where its participants carried the “strongest men take what they want” mentality outside the stadium. From the recent Baylor scandal to the multiple NFL controversies, the game has basically been a #MeToo franchisee. Tracy’s nonprofit, Set The Expectation, aims to change the sport’s mentality, and, indeed, use it as a vehicle for a broader update of attitudes men have toward women.

She speaks to football teams (and athletes from other sports) about her experience. She invariably cries when she describes her rape. It’s still hard for her to talk about it. But she fights through it because she knows the platform football possesses, and if she can get more of its participants to embrace a mindset that respects women, it would go a long way to influencing the substantial portion of the public who devote their Saturdays and Sundays to the game.

One of the players with whom I chatted at the CGS talked about needing to “flip the switch,” referring to leaving football’s violence on the field and not bringing it into his off-the-field conduct. Another player (a big-time NFL prospect) talked about using his platform to influence others, and not just publicly. He also referenced being the guy who, when he sees a developing situation at a party, steps up to say something, because, as an influential football player, “you have enough power to stop it.” If Brenda Tracy can get more players and coaches to buy in like they did, she’ll make progress toward reversing the sport’s sorry history of objectifying women.

Another player and I talked about some of the aspects of football that could make it part of the solution. The game does reward good decision-making, concern for teammates, and, yes, courage. It takes courage for a player to step in when a buddy might be about to do something improper. Brenda Tracy puts aside her own fears every day to try to empower them to do so and write a new chapter in the game’s history.

Rush Olson has spent more than two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com

MintFarmFilms.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports 

Sometimes Football Is Life

For most people, even those of us who make a living in the industry, sport matters to a certain degree. But it’s not a matter of life or death.

So when an interviewee told me last year, “If it wasn’t for this football, I would be dead or in jail,” it got my attention, and hard.

Right away, you want to know why. Why did this college-educated young man feel so strongly that his life would have turned gravely for the worse without blocking and tackling?

The thing is, his wasn’t the only interview that day that had that effect on me and my business partner, Tom Fireoved. Tom and I interacted with young men who bucked the odds coming from tough neighborhoods. We also heard from the Ivy League quarterback who felt overlooked because of his lack of gridiron street cred. Those just scratched the surface. In addition to real-life drama, we found plenty of football turmoil, from rows with coaches to multiple school transfers to offensive schemes unsuited for a talented player’s skillset.

What amazed Tom and I was that we heard all these stories in the space of an hour. Upon further consideration, we also realized that the stories weren’t done yet, and that their most crucial chapter to date might be written over the ensuing four days.

The College Gridiron Showcase provides these young football players a chance to write that next chapter. It’s a post-collegiate opportunity for draft-eligible football players to show how they match up with their peers. They go through workouts and off-field activities designed to enable them to prove their readiness to play pro football. Scouts from every NFL team, plus those from the CFL and XFL, traditionally show up for the sixth-year event. 

We want to make a TV show out of it.

It’s got all the elements you need for compelling filmmaking - great backstories, high-profile upside, arresting visuals, and genuine drama that plays out over the course of the event (and the programming). And it makes for efficient filming because all the stories come together in less than a week.

For a broadcaster or streaming service, it offers flexibility. It could be a single show or it could be a series of episodes. We can continue to follow the players or end it after the showcase. We could do as much backstory as budgets permit. 

It’s also a highly saleable property. CGS can roll in event-specific assets to be sold alongside spot inventory. And opportunities for ancillary digital content abound. Plus, it revolves around America’s most popular sport. And there’s even an international angle, as the CGS brings in football hopefuls trying to make the jump from Europe or Asia.

The CGS bears some similarities to the Senior Bowl or the East-West Shrine Bowl in that it intends to allow draft-eligible football players to show their skills. But CGS uses the word “showcase” instead of “game” or “bowl” because they don’t feel that staging an event-ending exhibition contest best serves their players or scouts. And that’s the other part of this story. The guy who run the showcase have their own grassroots entrepreneurial tale. They built their property up from nothing to something in which every NFL team has seen value. They’ve helped multiple players realize pro football dreams. We think - we know - viewers will find these stories engrossing.

Check out the video that accompanies this post to get a taste of what we’re talking about. Networks and companies who want to know more can contact Tom@MintFarmFilms.comor Rush@MintFarmFilms.com. 

Sponsorship In A Changing Sports World

The definitions of what constitutes a “sponsorship” and what we mean by a “TV program” have changed meaningfully in the last decade-plus. In the past, if you sponsored a sports entity, your package included signage at a venue, some tickets for your best customers, and an advertisement in some sort of print product, like a game program. More innovative ones might include a clever promotion.

Today, a package might still include those elements. But brands have also realized they can aim for deeper engagement, too. They’re finding ways to be perceived as adding value to the fan experience and, most relevant to what I do, they’re looking to be storytellers. And the television landscape has shifted to accommodate that desire.

Sports is full of great stories. It used to be a partner could get involved peripherally, say by running commercials in a game broadcast or magazine show on a network, perhaps including a “brought to you by” (or even “proudly brought to you by,” if they wanted to really stress how excited they were about the show). Maybe you’d get some product placement. You can still do those things if they make sense, but you can go so far beyond it.

We’re working with a property right now that encompasses a lot of the possibilities for the expanded world of sports sponsorship. The College Gridiron Showcase & Symposiumgives prospective professional football players a chance to show their skills for NFL, CFL, and (most likely) XFL scouts. It also aims to help prepare them for some of the on- and off-field challenges they’ll face in their desired career. As you’ll see in the video trailer we did for the CGS, these young men have some incredible stories when they arrive at the showcase, and then they have five days to go as hard as they can to position themselves to write their next chapters.

Many brands like to be associated with qualities like perseverance and high achievement. They also know American football is the country’s most popular sport. And there are a ton of ways they can get involved, including carrying video content on their own websites/social media, embedding into a network broadcast, or something creative we haven’t even thought of yet. That’s something new in sponsorship – the sponsor getting in on the ground floor to shape the way their content is presented.

CGS has diversity/inclusion angles, and that’s something companies have started to really prioritize – want to put on a women’s football coaching clinic at the CGS? Plus, they can still get a lot of the traditional sponsorship assets, like signage that generates earned media exposure on the field and TV commercials.

It’s an exciting time in the world of sports content. Brands can take advantage of it in so many ways they never used to be able to.

Rush Olson has spent more than two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.

RushOlson.com

MintFarmFilms.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports