Exposure impacts admissions, reputation
There’s a lot at stake for South Carolina on Saturday — and not just for the football team.
The No. 6 Gamecocks will take on No. 5 Georgia at 7 p.m. in a sold-out contest that will determine the frontrunner in the Southeastern Conference’s East division.
It’s a big game — big enough to draw three ESPN crews, for College GameDay, ESPN Road Trip and the game itself.
They’ll show off bits of Columbia and USC’s campus, too, and that, school officials said, is hugely valuable.
“That’s the kind of publicity you couldn’t buy — mostly because we couldn’t afford it,” USC President Harris Pastides said.
And the university will try to leverage it, said Luanne Lawrence, vice president for communications.
The national attention dovetails with the kickoff last month of USC’s “No Limits” marketing campaign, which it hopes will elevate the university’s image and work to improve its reputation.
Specks of that effort, like the banners that line the Horseshoe and adorn the McKissick Museum, could sneak into ESPN’s coverage, Lawrence said — an unintentional guerilla marketing campaign, of sorts.
In the short term, USC will measure the impact in terms of licensing requests, merchandise sales and Nielsen ratings, Lawrence said, but in the long term, it’s looking to attract new students and reconnect with alumni.
Big athletic performances often boost applications from prospective students the next year, Provost Michael Amiridis said.
It happened at Northwestern University, Amiridis said, when the school’s middling team surged to national prominence and secured a spot in the Rose Bowl with 10 wins in 1995.
The next year, its applications jumped 21 percent, the USA Today reported in 1997.
Scott Verzyl, executive director of admissions, said it’s hard to measure just how many students end up applying based on an athletic contest or a championship, and he said it’s not the sports that ultimately draw applicants in. When admissions studies what factors brought new students to campus, he said, having a national championship program hasn’t shown up near the top of the list.
Amiridis agrees, but he said the coverage gets USC’s foot in the door.
The spirit and scenes of the Horseshoe when College GameDay goes live Saturday morning, Amiridis said, could be enough to pique a high school student’s interest and spur a closer look at the university.
“You’re not done,” Amiridis said, “but it’s a good start.”
That national interest also bears more measurable effects, and the university’s licensing revenue, which the university brings in from letting manufacturers use its logo and name on merchandise, has swelled as USC’s teams have performed better.
Licensing revenue grew to about $3.3 million in the 2011-12 year on the heels of a baseball national championship and a record-setting 11-win football season, according to data provided by Ken Corbett, the trademarking and licensing director.
In the 1999-2000 year, after a winless season for the football team, it was less than $500,000.
But while administrators expect that placing USC on a national stage will help improve its reputation, they said it could backfire, too.
Pastides and Amiridis said that if GameDay’s crowd makes a bad impression with inappropriate signs or chants, the impacts could reflect poorly on the university at large — though they both said they didn’t expect that to happen.
Good or bad, Saturday’s images will play out across the country, something Verzyl’s seen firsthand.
Speaking from Denver Thursday afternoon, he recalled walking off his plane there the night before.
ESPN was playing on a monitor in the terminal, and he caught a glimpse of a promotion for Saturday’s game.
“If you watch ESPN, you’re going to see it,” Verzyl said of the university.