NEW GOAL

That's right, we've got a new goal. The Sports Marketing Department at Embry-Riddle has our 50 Tasks book printing right now so that the incoming freshman will have a hard copy of at least 16 of the tasks. The others can all be found at http://embryriddlesports.com/flock.

The goal? Our Assistant Director of Sports Marketing - Mike Farrell - is planning on accomplishing all 50 Tasks in the next two semesters. The kicker? He'll be posting video of himself doing most of the events on this blog. So stay tuned. And get excited. It's going to be a crazy year.

Be sure to show up on August 29th in order to knock off the Orientation Soccer Game (Task 29). We'll have a DJ from the Spandex Superheroes spinning great tunes and a BBQ starting at 5 pm.

50 TASKS

We're getting closer to mailing this out to our incoming freshmen. It's a Flash file, so all you have to do is click on the bottom right corner of the page in order to turn it.

NEW MARKETING PACKET

Embry-Riddle is known for producing quality student-athletes for the past 20 odd years. The Sports Marketing Department is hoping that our quality product on the field, will bring in quality businesses to team with. After an outstanding year - finishing 6th nationally for the coveted Learfield Sports Director's Cup for the best program in the country, and an 11th straight Sun Conference Commissioner's Cup for best program in the conference - we are hoping to connect with the many new businesses that are popping up in Daytona Beach.

If you'd like to see a larger version send an email to michael.farrell@erau.edu, but, for now, here's the new Embry-Riddle Marketing Packet:

MARKETING ANTHEM

Summer time is all about making those dollar dollar bills, ya'll. ERAU Sports Marketing has been at it, trying to get some new sponsors added to our stables, and coming up with some ideas on how to connect our athletes to the community.

Coming in October we're hoping to get Embry-Riddle's Inaugural Women's Basketball Clinic hosted by coach Steve Ridder. We'd like for it to be a nice morning of learning and fun, where our female fans can leave with a great understanding of the nuances to the game (and then head out to an after party with the Embry-Riddle coaching staff), all while raising money and awareness during the American Cancer Society's Breast Cancer month.

More details to come, but for now enjoy the Sports Marketing anthem for the summer from Aloe Blacc and the TV show "How To Make It In America."

EMBRY-RIDDLE 50 TASKS

The Sports Marketing Department will be sending out a Book to all the incoming freshman in the contiguous United States (sorry internationals, our budget just can't handle the shipping fees). For those of you who are not included in that number, fret not, we'll have additional copies on campus when you get to Daytona. All you've got to do is sign up for the Flock and you'll get a FREE copy. If you want a sneak peek, check out our facebook fan page aptly titled EMBRY-RIDDLE 50 TASKS. Some of the challenges are easy (start the wave), but some are for crazies only (skydive into a game), but all have been done at Embry-Riddle at some point in the Athletic Department's 23 year history.

You can use the video below as inspiration for task 47. But you'll have to join the group or get the book to know before anyone else what the task is. The person who can accomplish 10 tasks the quickest will get a prize, as will those who do 20, 30,40 and, obviously, 50. Good luck.

BACK IN THE GAME, AGAIN.

Summertime in Florida is just heating up, but we're heading towards the end of the academic summer here at Embry-Riddle. We just got finished meeting the new Resident Life Directors on campus, Meagan and Monica (great people, by the way). Can't wait to get some new Flockers on campus and excited about the 2010-2011 version of the Embry-Riddle Athletic Department.

We're going to start this blog off right, and give it a little Pete Carrol juice - throw some songs of the day into the mix. Enjoy today's.

ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER

Ask Kansas. Ask Texas. As Kentucky. Ask Michigan State, the team that used to sit alone a top the Big Ten (and considering the injuring to star guard Kalin Lucas, the relationship is even more direct).
You can now ask Embry-Riddle, the #6 basketball team in NAIA Division II. Coming off of a whirwind weekend - 500 wins for 21 year Head Coach Steve Ridder on Friday Night, and a twenty point win over #14 ranked Northwood on Saturday - they were by far the strongest team in the Sun Conference. Then the best 6th man in the country got hurt. David Butler and his four blocks a game (not to mention the 16 points and 10 rebounds) got injured. Hopefully just a twinge of the ankle, but it's a small problem with big consequences.
Edward Waters, just 3-9 in The Sun Conference play, took it to the undersized Eagles. Embry-Riddle came into the game with the 2nd best Field Goal Percentage defense in the COUNTRY, but gave up 79 points. They limited the 14th ranked Northwood Seahawks to 49.
Butler, at age 27 an elder statesmen (even for the NAIA), doesn't just block shots. Like all great shot blockers, he alters dozens of others, and prevents opposing bigs from getting into the fray down low. No doubt he was missed last night.
Let's hope he's rehabbing today. There's still four games left in conference play. Next week brings games at Florida Memorial and St. Thomas(the only othe conference team to beat Embry-Riddle), and one home game against nationally ranked Warner and another home game versus Webber International.

NORTHWOOD BEATDOWN

2 for 2 against our new rivals this year. First we put the hit out on Flagler, and tore them down by 20. Then we went down to Northwood and beat them at their place by 11. Then this past Saturday they came into the ICI Center and got handcuffed. They managed 49 points. It was incredible. We hope it had a little to do with the above video. Coach Ridder now stands at 501 career wins. And counting...

500 WINS

Coach Ridder became the 17th Head Coach in NAIA basketball history to reach the 500 win milestone this past weekend. That's one heck of an accomplishment, first off to win them all at Embry-Riddle, and second to get to that mark in only 21 seasons. Watch his speech after beating Johnson & Wales in OT.

Embry-Riddle vs. Northwood

EMBRY-RIDDLE VS. NORTHWOOD from Mike Farrell on Vimeo.

So here it is: Embry-Riddle vs. Northwood promotional video. Its what you have been waiting so get ready for a high intensity game this Saturday at 7:00pm in the ICI Center.

Spread the word. Let's pack the ICI Center for our new rivals.

NICE.

Our iPhone app definitely looks nice. And it will only get better. Today we got to see what our developers Adrien and Alex have been up to for the last couple of weeks, and it's all good. The Ridderism section is hilarious. The design is clean and incredible easy to use/follow.

I've never been more jacked up in my entire life. All we are waiting on is the pep band to record the Eagles Fight Song, and a couple of other pictures (and some RSS feeds, but that should be ready by now).

We'll let you know when we send it off to Apple.

NACMA AWARDS SEASON

The National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) Convention begins in late June in Anaheim, CA this year, but submissions for the coveted NACMA awards are being accepted now. The sports marketing staff at Embry-Riddle is busy attempting to be equal to or greater than our efforts last year. In June 2009 we were fortunate enough to receive a gold (the Human Cannonball, featuring Adam Hinton for the Student Promotion) and two bronze (Flock > TV for Electronic Promo and Camo Night for Single-Day Attendance Promo).

We already submitted our first entry this year, Epic Wiffle, and plan on submitting into the following categories: Promotional T-Shirt Design, TV Commercial, Radio Commercial, Electronic Promotion, Single-Day Attendance Promotion and Student Promotion.

We're going to be busy, yo. Lots more to do. Next up is filming for a promtional piece for the Northwood game. That goes down manana in the ICI Center here on campus. The script has been written, we just hope we can get enough B-roll in the meantime. Current musical inspiration comes from Requiem For A Dream (2000), Darren Arnofsky's second feature film. Check the music above.

iPHONE APP

There is currently an Embry-Riddle Athletics iPhone App in development. The great thing about being at school where the students are smarter than you is the wealth of free knowledge at your disposal.

The application (tentatively referred to as the iFlock) will have five different tabs providing inside access to the latest news in athletics, links to the sports teams, a calendar of events, a multimedia tab (that will include videos, photos, Twitter accounts and a digital cheer sheet), and several motivational moments that we're calling Ridderisms.

We had Steve Ridder do a photo shoot at DME Studios late last week so that we could provide you with quality images of our beloved Athletic Director and Basketball Coach. Think of each of them as portraits of greatness on par with the painting of the Godfather (Luke Wilson) that Will Ferrell had the new recruits hang at the end of "Old School." We'll pair the photographs with an mp3 of Coach Ridder's greatest sayings (We’re not rebuilding; we’re reloading").

The app should be ready to send off to Apple for final approval by the middle of January. We'll keep you posted on when it will be available.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS (COME EARLY)

Sad to say, but it's true. We haven't been productive at all on the old Flock TV blog during the Fall 2009 semester. Our apologies are long overdue. As our New Year Resolution, we promise to keep you up to date with everything that we are doing and finding in the sports marketing world.

Here's a small overview of what we did this fall (while not writing in this blog).

1. The Jonas Brother Beatdown started it all back on August 23rd. Purchasing some cardboard cutouts of the JoBros and one of Hanna Montana (for the ladies), we got the new froshies into the Flock festivities by letting them beat up the still life. It was insanely fun. To see some pictures hit up ERAU student and photographer extraordinaire Jordan Clancy on facebook.

2. Top Gun Night. The airplane men and women of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University came out in full support of the women's soccer team as they took on, and beat, Warner University 4-3. Grab a look at some pics here.

3. Mustache Mania was back in action this year. The Flock placed in the race, taking home 3rd overall in the men's division (out of 7 teams). We've got the trophy to prove it. Volleyball was dominant yet again during the mustachioed weekend. Pics are here.

4. THE FLOCK SET A WORLD RECORD. That's right, world record. The Guinness Book of World Record's won't recongnize it though, which is a shame, but more on that further down the article. Since everyone loves Wiffle Ball, we decided that we'd toughen up and play the game longer than anyone has ever played it - which prior to October 18th had been for 30 hours straight. We sandwiched our Epic Wiffle match between two women's soccer games and played for 43 straight hours, and still haven't made up for the loss of sleep. We tried to Live Stream the entire event, but the camera cut in and out a few times. You can watch us swing and miss right here if you missed out the first time around. We raised a ton of money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure by asking every player to donate a minimum of $1 to play in the game. Black Crow Radio helped us out tremendously by airing free promo spots to encourage the local Daytona Beachians to come out and play, WESH, an NBC affiliate got a nice interview with a very tired Flocker, and over 150 people came out to make history. Unfortunately we had more than 5 people per side playing during the game, so the record won't count officially, but thanks to the precise timing device of Embry-Riddle Track & Field we were able to have a countdown timer for our 43 hour game. Who needs a Guinness plaque anyway? We made a difference by raising money for breast cancer research. Duquesne can think they set the record, but we know who really did. And we know how to spell wiffle. Promo videos we did prior to the game are below.



5. Costume Night was back again, but this year saw more tried and true costumes rather than the made up one's that were so dominant last year (like TP Man and his arch nemesis Skidmark). Pac-Man made a run out onto the field after a goal scored by our women's team. Pirates were bountiful. We gave away 4 premium seats to the Miami Heat opener against the Chicago Bulls. Tons of lil' Flockers made it out to fish is the Flock Aquarium (where they found more candy than they - or their parents - knew what do do with). In one of the largest debacles in sports marketing history we tried to get the crowd of over 350 to all wear Burger King masks for the first five minutes of the game and pick out one opposing player to point at. Well, we couldn't get BK to sponsor us, so we made the masks ourselves, and the eye holes were a tad too small to really see out of. Most people didn't get it any way, but our arts and crafts Boy Scout badges came in last week, so at least that made us happy. The Riddle Players, ERAU's theatrical group, put on a short film festival for Halloween so we made a little piece to enter. Video is below. Pics are here.


6. After all our sports teams won their respective regular season crowns (5 for 5), a feat that has never been accomplished at the NAIA level, we hosted the volleyball, women's soccer and men's soccer championships. In an effort to get more school support to the games, we devised a marketing plan that involved the players form the teams and the school as a whole. Playing athropologists who had just discovered a tribe who are known as accomplished warriors on the athletic battle field, we kept a week long journal of our trip to the village of the Erau's (E'r OWz). We created a website call LAND OF CHAMPIONS, and did a series of videos that were intended to look like fieldnote diaries. It was way more successful than the BK masks. Videos below:






7. To cap off the semester, we had planned a huge event for our basketball team's annual game versus our rival Flagler College. Many of you will remember the article we wrote last year about the once proud rivalry game, and we had been building off of that idea since July. With the help of some alumi from the basketball program we were able to get a nice little website together: SAVE THE RIVALRY. On it is a highlight video from the past 22 years the schools have been playing, a petiton to keep the game going and links to the facebook and twitter sites we established to keep this small college rivalry going. We made 200 t-shirts that said BEAT FLAGLER on them (which the Flagler students took offense to), and our team wound up doing what they were asked, winning by 20 points. Pics prior to the game are here, and from the game are here. Vids below.

SAVE THE RIVALRY from Mike Farrell on Vimeo.

COACH RIDDER ON THE RIVALRY from Mike Farrell on Vimeo.

CHAD KELLER ON THE RIVALRY from Mike Farrell on Vimeo.

Sorry to have been absent for so long. We will be back with a bang in 2010. Happy holidays all.

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Don't be a Fail Whale, follow the Flock on Twitter: @flocktv
Follow Embry-Riddle Athletics on Twitter: @ERAUAthletics
and if you feel both dangerous & bold follow Associate Athletic Director John Phillips on Twitter: @erauRadio

psst: don't forget to follow @SaveTheRivalry too

SAVE THE RIVALRY

Flagler vs. Embry-Riddle
ICI Center
12.2.09

Could be the last time these two teams play for a while. Help us Save The Rivalry.

Twitter: SaveTheRivalry
Webpage: http://savetherivalry.com/rivalry

(even the mascots want in)

LONGEST WIFFLE BALL GAME EVER!!!!!

Embry-Riddle is going to be hosting the longest wiffle ball game. Ever. Between two soccer games October 16th beginning at 10pm and playing through October 18th till 5 pm. That's 43 hours of wiffle ball. Straight.

It will cost just $1 to play in the World's Longest Wiffle Ball Game Ever, and it's all leading up to the Embry-Riddle/Flagler Volleyball match on October 21st at 7 pm. The game will be the annual Dig For A Cure in conjunction with the Susan G. Komen For A Cure, a non-profit for breast cancer research. All donations for the wiffle ball game and the gate receipts from the volleyball match will be donated to breast cancer research.

Be a part of a record setting event.

TRUE LIFE: I Want To Be The Next Memphis Athletics Marketing Grad Assistant

Brandon and Erin,

Hello!

Just wanted to drop you a quick note (or blog post, rather)....

I know that I have the skills and experience to excel in this position; however, you still might be wondering about my enthusiasm and dedication. The video above should give you all the affirmation you need.

I hope you enjoy my mini-movie and I look forward to talking to you both soon!

Sincerely,

Nicole Imbrogno

HUMAN CANNONBALL

In remembrance...

SEASONS WIND DOWN

Embry-Riddle men's tennis and women's golf's seasons ended this weekend. The #2 ranked Eagles tennis team bowed out of the National Tournament in the Final Four. The top 5 ranked golf team finished their season tied for 3rd at the National Tournament playing in veritably strong windy conditions in South Dakota. On a side note, I've never really heard about any great golf courses in South Dakota. Maybe Daytona and the LPGA should put in a bid again...

Great seasons guys and gals. If you still need your ERAU sports fix, make sure to listen in on the radio this next week as our baseball team heads out to Idaho for the start of the NAIA College World Series. Appreciate your time!