How Small College Athletics Programs Can Capitalize on their Moment in the Spotlight

It's hard to appreciate just how valuable athletics can be for a university. Brands and organizations spend millions to generate the scale of publicity, awareness, and interest generated from the college sports zeitgeist from which universities can benefit organically. For the schools outside the 'Power 5,' the value from even a fleeting moment in the national spotlight can drive value for generations.

Yet while athletics wields such potent potential for all schools, that doesn't mean smaller programs have the budget and resources that their Power 5 peers have. Schools like the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) appreciate the power of content how the clout of social media can create engagement and publicity that ads can't buy. Just about all schools do nowadays. Zach Seidel, the Director of Sports Marketing Communications and Digital Media for UMBC Athletics, said eyes really opened at all levels in recent years, as athletic department videos consistently commanded national attention.

“I think where (the importance of video) really hit everyone the most was when LSU's football started putting out those amazing videos during their championship year (in 2019)...," he said. "I think that's when we saw a lot of administrators were like ‘Oh this is a good thing’....I think that was the eye-opening experience for a lot of people who didn't quite understand video... “

Resources, facilities, and equipment may be vastly unequal from one school to another, but content is a level playing field, however. To some degree. There may only be a finite number of four and five-star recruits to go around each year, but there are a whole lot more incredible content creators across the country. Seidel and his peers recognize the value of impressive content, the worth of a sick video. And they have the talent and ability in-house to produce such content. It's a matter of economy, though — of doing the best they can for every UMBC sport with the more scarce resources they have available.

“It’s something we want to do, obviously...It’s mainly just a bodies thing," explained Seidel. "Some schools have departments dedicated to that and they have the ability to get those really nice cameras and everything. And we have those [cameras] on campus through our new media studio, but the new media studio is used by everyone on campus...Between running the streaming and doing sports information things...it’s really just a bodies problem..."

Seidel continued: “We’ve had cool videos made...We’ve had students that have volunteered to do them and we’ve done them ourselves. But, in a perfect world like LSU, they were chugging out two or three of those a day. That’s just not something many schools outside of the upper Power 5 can really accommodate."

And while LSU and its Power 5 brethren can count on national media coverage and multi-million dollar payouts to spend on more publicity and content every year, schools of UMBC's size may get a golden opportunity but once in a generation. For UMBC, they may never equal the size of the spotlight that the school commanded in 2018 when the maddest of March Madness moments happened — the first-ever 16 seed defeating a 1-seed in the men's basketball national tournament. And UMBC was ready; with gas to turn those flames into a conflagration.

While there may be a temptation to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the men's basketball mania, it's not that easy. The job for UMBC Athletics is to serve all its teams as equally as possible, placing no one sport above another. That was on the mind of Seidel and his teammates as all this publicity came for UMBC's men's basketball team.

“You want to be fair to everybody...That was one of the issues coming out of it — as great as the upset over Virginia was, you didn't want it to create a perception within the school that we only cared about men's basketball," said Seidel, who started working with UMBC Athletics even before enrolling as an undergrad. "And you didn't want that perception to really seep throughout the athletic department...So we really wanted to make sure, and it's my philosophy too, that we really show the same respect to every team…We’re here to show all 17 of our sports. We’re trying to provide these student-athletes with the best experience possible, and it’s up to us to promote them all equally.”

And in that spirit, on that fateful night of the Virginia upset, Seidel made the intentional decision to mostly live-tweet from the UMBC Athletics account (as opposed to the men's basketball team account). And as Seidel's unique blend of personality, self-awareness, and downright fun commanded the national conscious on Twitter during and after the game, the school's Athletics account reached several millions, and racked up tens of thousands of followers. Those followers were attracted by the men's basketball team, but as many of them stuck around in the days and weeks to come, they heard about UMBC's other sports, too. Overnight and continuing through to today, UMBC Athletics was reaching more fans, while engaging existing fans more than ever. And Seidel and his colleagues know that through that mass of followers, even just reaching a few more individuals a time can mean everything.

"We do see more engagement than we ever did before, even if it’s just from alums," said Seidel. "I know alums who have told me ‘I’m active on social now because I follow you guys.’ Like I said during that game at halftime — ‘Even if we get just one person who had never heard of us before [to see] something and it catches their eye and makes them want to learn about us, we’ve done our job.’

“It could be a random person in Arizona or something who had never heard of us. And they see us post something about our lacrosse team and (they learn that we) have a lacrosse team. If you can just get one person for any of the programs — that’s kind of the job of the social accounts, to get it out there. And we have such a wide audience, that even if most people ignore us, the chances are we’re going to get one or two people who (didn’t have us on their minds) look into it. That’s how I view it.”

There are Cinderella schools every year. It's called March Madness for a reason. There haven't been any other 16-over-1 seeds, to be fair, but even still, not many schools since perhaps George Mason reverberated as the belle of the ball to such a degree, and still years later, as UMBC. Looking back, Seidel notes that UMBC was ready for their moment. It's not easy, because schools of UMBC's size often have barely enough bodies to get by; to serve all their sports and to keep the proverbial lights on fulfilling all the duties of marketing, communications, digital, and social for all 17 sports. But when there's a structure and people in place to be ready when lightning could strike, that's when generational opportunities get realized. When UMBC made history, not just Athletics but the University knew how they wanted to map out and put plans into action. And that made all the difference.

“I think it's hard to prepare for something so unexpected," Seidel stated. "I don't want to say we weren’t prepared, but I don't want to say we were...I don't think we had anything ready, like, ‘Okay well, if we win we're going to do this, this, and this.’ But it wasn't like we were all expecting to lose...We had all the key players there, we had a couple of the vice presidents of the school, the president of the school was there. We had the school’s PR arm there, we had our athletics communications. So we were all there in case something did happen. 

“So when you see these things happen, it helps to have a communications person from the school and from Athletics there to kind of take the burden off of the sport contact. Because a lot of time they just send the sport contact when these things happen. So I think that schools should just say ‘Hey we're going to send an extra person just in case anything happens.’ That's my recommendation, at least. Even if nothing happens at least you were prepared.”

It's easy, but it's not easy. Every college athletics (and university) professional will get goosebumps just thinking about the mushroom cloud of opportunity for schools when they burst onto the national scene like UMBC did, even if for a fleeting moment. But it's important to not get caught in the dream; a dream without action is just a wish, as the saying goes.

Businesses, teams, schools — they need to think about and map out plans for given scenarios. Seidel even noted that UMBC had a pandemic flu plan in place before the COVID pandemic hit last year. So while no one could truly be ready to have their school pull the (arguably) most famous, unlikely upset in the history of March Madness, UMBC Athletics did have a plan to capitalize on a moment for athletics. And that meant a lot of moving parts, a lot of levers to pull in a short timeframe — to maximize the moment and the accomplishment in the short-term and long-term for the athletics program and the school as a whole.

Seidel went into detail: “You know, you gotta have merchandise ready — our bookstore did more sales than it had done in a couple of years combined..." he said. "You gotta make sure your school admissions department is ready to go. It was weird timing (for us) because the game against Virginia happened when people were already accepting (offers to matriculate). If something like this happens earlier in the year, you gotta talk to admissions people (to get it on recruiting letters)...

"You gotta talk to your school creative services and graphics department. Get signs ready, get graphics ready. The legal department — I’m pretty sure we trademarked ‘16 over 1,’ so there are just so many entities involved in the situation that have to (execute) in a very quick span.”

It has been over three years since that fateful night for Seidel and UMBC. But, largely thanks to how the school executed in the moment on and off the court, the win continues to reverberate and will for many years to come. Before that game, thousands, if not millions, of people all around the country had likely never heard of UMBC. But now not only is their men's basketball team on the map, so is their university as a whole. Seidel and his colleagues appreciate just how far-reaching the win over Virginia was — for awareness, interest, applications, alumni engagement, recruiting, and brand.

"It really put us on the map not just athletically but academically," said Seidel. "And all of our coaches will tell you it helps recruit. Now when they go recruiting, instead of saying who you are, it’s ‘Yeah, we’re the school whose basketball team beat Virginia.’...

"I think the school will tell you that they’ve always supported athletics. But it does help them, too. It was part of our advertising for the school. You drive around the neighborhood that the school is in and you still see the 16 over 1 stuff. It’s been helpful to both athletics and the academic side of the school.”

Cinderella was indeed ready for the ball.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ZACH SEIDEL