Little bit of press for uichoops.com

[Big D]

Fantastic article in the Chicago Flame today by Andrew Smothers. I'm pretty sure he's a member here and has posted in the past. Not sure how much he frequents nowadays, but this is exactly the type of spirit we need among students at UIC. There's a brief mention of the board in the article but it appears he's pushing a monthly Q & A for the readers...not exactly sure. Either way, nice work Andrew...

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Let's start something big
Sport Forum
Andrew Smothers
Issue date: 1/14/08 Section: Sports

Hopefully this is the start of something great.

I've dreamed about this column since coming to UIC, longing for room to speak out on Flames athletics instead of just reporting straight facts.

Yes, there are message boards out there that give our athletic programs character, most notably UIChoops.com, but none get the attention they deserve. With our community-wide circulation and unique place as the only student-run newspaper on campus, maybe this new forum can change that apathy and get more people to care about our teams.

UIC is too big a school and too successful an athletic program to garnish such little excitement and attention among students and community members.

It's time for that to change.

Let this new space we have been granted serve as the student voice for UIC sports.

Let this weekly piece be devoted to building that excitement and trumpeting our student-athletes' successes.

Let this be the place where fans can express disappointment to the fact that Cesar Zambrano was not named an All-American and outrage that goalkeeper Jovan Bubonja lost out on the Horizon League goalkeeper of the year award.

Let this also be the place where we can celebrate Pavle Dundjer's All-American award, Josh Mayo's heroic performances against Loyola and Bradley, Sarah Clynes' no-hitter in the league championship game as a freshman, and Coach Mike Dee's unending improvement of baseball's facilities and place on the collegiate baseball map.

Let this space allow students to call out the Loyola athletics department for trying to rain on our Horizon League Soccer Championship celebration last November.

Loyola's AD John Planek and other staff members accompanied by LU security guards and a double set of barricades stood between UIC students and the Ramblers' home pitch for the final five minutes of our victory. That came just one year after LU students stormed Flames Field following their 2006 HL tourney championship.

Let this space help that cross-town rivalry continue to grow and other rivalries with Milwaukee and Green Bay flourish.

Let this space also be a forum for you, the reader. The last Monday of every month we will open the Flame Forum to readers, answering any questions you have about UIC athletics by going directly to the coaches or players you ask about. Also, if you have any stories to share or ideas on how to improve the UIC athletics environment, this will be the place to do it.

With a rotating set of columnists appearing each week and your thoughts concluding every month, this column should allow even the casual fan to get excited, which is another goal of our staff.

Hopefully reading what passionate fans are most excited about will get more students and faculty talking about UIC Athletics.

I could not tell you the number of students that told me how excited they were to hear professors start lecture by talking about the soccer team's run to the Elite Eight last semester. They all said it was shocking to hear anyone other than resident students talking about a UIC team.

Let's make sure that's not the case anymore.

With your help, let's make this column the space we've always dreamed of.

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www.chicagoflame.com/home/news/2008/01/14/Sports/Lets-Start.Something.Big-3151527.shtml

[FuryJP]

Good article indeed. I'm also not 100% sure what that column will be like, but I'm emailing Andrew to find out. I wrote for the paper two semesters ago, and I think it's time to get back into it.

[circle70]

If the point of all this is to generate publicity and fan interest in UIC Hoops, why not start at the top--Tribune, Sun-Times, local TV stations. The major media coverage over the years has been very spotty, regardless of the quality of the teams. Even when we beat Northwestern and DePaul, we don't get the pub. Because I live in Atlanta, the only Chicago TV station I receive is WGN. Frequently, they don't even mention the score of the UIC game, much less show highlights, but they'll do a 5 minute segment on a local high school team. DePaul and Northwestern, on the other hand, are always covered, even when they have poor teams.
I know it's not the media's job to create interest but they should provide better coverage of the local state university.
As a comparison basis, in Atlanta we have our version of UIC, a a large metro, primarily commuter school playing Division 1 basketball--Georgia State. Even with a bad team (4-13) and attendance averaging less than 1,000 per game, they get more publicity in the local paper than UIC gets in the Chicago papers.