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Commodore Notebook: April 17 4/17/2006 By Rod Williamson Tune in and Call In This is a call to action! It should be pretty obvious to Commodore fans that the University has made a major commitment to build a great baseball program — not a competitive one, not a good one?a great one. Our goal is Omaha. We have some of the most exciting and talented players in the nation wearing our Black and Gold. That said, we need some fan power to raise the level of awareness for college baseball in general and Vanderbilt baseball in particular, particularly in the Nashville area. We need you! Since opening Hawkins Field five short years ago, our home attendance has boomed from a few hundred to overflow throngs. Last Friday’s game with the Georgia Bulldogs attracted 2,500, more than capacity of “The Hawk”, even though we have already expanded the seating capacity since opening the beautiful complex. Here’s the rub: many members of the local news media are behind the curve of public interest. A significant number of sports directors and editors do not think Nashville is interested in college baseball. I disagree. We are working hard to get our terrific head coach, Tim Corbin, on local and regional radio and television talk shows and he is not only eager to promote his team and sport, he does an excellent job when given the opportunity. The hosts of these talk shows judge public interest by the number of calls they receive while a given subject is on the air. If they bring on “Subject A” and the phone lines go bonkers, they are impressed and want that guest back on soon. If “Subject A” comes on and there are few calls and awkward conversation for 10 minutes, they deem little interest and not only do they not think that person is worthy of future air-time, they think that person’s sport is also a dead duck. We are very fortunate that the media loves Tim Corbin but we need to support him. We send advance notices of any coach’s planned appearance on a talk show, hopefully 24 hours in advance when they are booked that far ahead. When you get these notices, or even if you just happen to stumble onto a Vandy coach on the air, don’t simply listen — CALL! I have an opinion that there are many Vanderbilt fans that are simply content to listen but the stations cannot accurately judge the number of listeners to a given segment. You may think you don’t know enough about our baseball team — or whatever ‘Dore team is being discussed. Your question need not be that specific; ask about a more general topic — in the case of baseball ask about our tremendous new team clubhouse and workout facilities, ask about how our coaches go about recruiting such exceptional talent, there are plenty of things to ask that don’t require insider’s knowledge. While I’m on the subject, the Tennessean is paying very close attention to the activity on its web site, Tennessean.com, these days. Specifically, the sports editors monitor the number of readers a posted story receives on a daily basis. If it posts a story on auto racing and that article records a high number of hits, they also assume a lot of interest. Conversely, if they post a story on Commodore sports and it is lightly read, they also draw conclusions. If you are a web surfer, add tennessean.com sports to your list and be sure to click on the Vanderbilt articles. Your click could help push Vanderbilt onto the front pages of the paper. |
