Indiana's Mark Cuban Center Helps Bring the Indiana Football Experience to Life on Social Media
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The digital media team brought Indiana Football to life on Social Media in 2020 Image: Indiana University Athletics
Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)
The ability to adapt has been the key to success in 2020 as a result of the Pandemic that has crippled the globe. People have seen businesses move to Zoom, restaurants set up makeshift dining outside, schools move to a digital platform and many, many more adjustments as people try and survive. In the college football world nothing has been more affected by the COVID restrictions than recruiting.
When sports shutdown due to the coronavirus in March, so did in-person recruiting. That meant no official visits for prospects to campuses, no coaches going to watch games at high schools in the fall, no in-home visits and any other person-to-person interactions. The fear for Indiana football was that this would create a hurdle too high to clear. The Hoosiers thrive off of having prospects come in and experience what Indiana football is like. And boy, what a year it would have been to have prospects on campus and in the locker rooms after the big wins against Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State and Wisconsin. In a year when everyone had to find a way to adapt, Indiana leaned on the Mark Cuban Center and their video staff to bring Indiana football to the prospects.
“I think their value is huge” Indiana head coach Tom Allen said when I asked him how valuable that team is. “I'm so appreciative of the job that they've done, because, like you said when you can't be there in person, like they couldn't be this year. Their job is always important.”
The work that both the Indiana video and social media teams did paid off big time as Tom Allen had 78,000 interactions on Twitter posts in the month of November alone.
It started with the win against Penn State, a monumental moment for the program that would have been recruiting gold for the prospects visiting the Hoosiers. So Indiana brought the party to the public by taking us inside the locker room for postgame speeches and celebrations.
Each week the Hoosiers social media team would take fans, media and the general public behind the scenes of what it is like to be a Hoosier on game day. We got to see Tom Allen’s pregame speeches, we saw warmups, postgame speeches win or lose. They brought game day to the people since the people couldn’t make it to game day. We got to see the in-game reactions from players on the side lines from some of the Hoosiers’ biggest moments. Every week was another chapter in the story of IU’s journey through the 2020 season and the digital media team was there to capture it all. If you have not seen these weekly highlight reels, I urge you to find them on social media.
It was access never before seen at IU football and it was all done in order to adapt to the times. Indiana football has had a long history of losing that has given the program a certain perception from the public. When Tom Allen took over, his mission was to change the perception of the program. One of his first steps was to beef up what IU was doing on social media.
“It's all about perception, you know you got a certain way that people view your program based on what they see on social media.” Allen said. “So that's always been a big emphasis for myself since I've got here, and we got a great, you know, just a great staff of video personnel that we both beefed up since I've been here and guy just doing a great job and, and just man, it's just to capture you know the moment, and to be able to let him recruit and recruit family just to feel what it's like in that locker room and then the sideline and just the emotion, you know, of this great game and how this team is connected, you know, and the relationships that that you know reveal themselves in those moments you know so I just think that, to be able to capture that you know on social media that video and even just all the different ways of presenting it is just huge so I just appreciate him so much and, and they do a great, great job.”
The recruiting dead period extends to at least April 2021, so the need for connecting virtually will still be vital in the recruiting battles.
Allen said that he wants to show the world “what it's like to be in Indiana because obviously we still don't have guys on campus and don't know when that's going to happen, and even this bowl experience and everything we're doing a practice everything we do down there and pre- and postgame is critical so yeah I think those are all things that that matter. And I think that, you know, that's what we're trying to, to be able to do here is just show people who we are. And, you know, be very upfront honest be very genuine about this as if you this, this is who we are in Indiana so this what you're looking for is fits you and this matches what you care about what you value as both a person as the individual player and his family. I think that's what draws people here, and allows them to be able to say I want to be part of that, and that to me is why they're their role is huge and I really appreciate it” Allen said.
The credit goes to Jeremy Gray and Andrew Rosner who oversee the whole operation as well as Director of Creative Content David Vallandingham and Digital Media Designer Francis Scheff and their full-time staff of Lynnea Phillips (Social Media), Missy Minear (Photo), Doug Findlay (Video), Matt Holland (Video), Andrew Brown (Video) and Tom Wilkinson (Graphic Design) along with interns Ali Demas (IU ‘20) (Social Media), Karlee Bland (Social Media), Thomas Vanderbrook (Social Media), Maria Saam (Social Media), Xavier Daniels (Photo), Mike Moskaluk (Video), Jeremy Whitmore (Video), Carol Kuhn (Video) and Brant Wilson (Graphics) from the Mark Cuban Center. These are the people who are working behind the scenes and cameras to bring Indiana football into the palm of your hand.
With name, image and likeness legislation likely to start soon, the Cuban Center will become even more important for every student athlete at Indiana. They have already started their work on the logos for the 2021 football signing class. We can’t wait to see what the digital media team has in store for the future for Indiana football.