IDEA FOR THE FURY!

[Chuck A]

With the season fastly approaching, I would like to give an idea or two. In addition to the banners being hung up at the "EL" station entrances, how about adding a few more (between the SEL east and west buildings underpass would be a good place) around the entire campus.

Also if it's at all possible, how about the Fury in conjunction with the Athletic Department run some highlights or even a UIC game that they won on that TV in SCE a day or two before an upcoming game. I haven't been to the west side, but I'm assuming they have one there as well.

You can also have banners in the Inner Circle with a big screen TV showing a UIC win against maybe a Loyola, Butler, or Milwaukee. This possibly reminds the casual fan, interests the non-fan and lets the freshmen, transfer and new students know that we have a team.

I think the more we flood the campus with reminders of the team and the dates of the games, the better. I think all the games should be announced and banners hung and e-mails sent out instead of just for the Red Out games. The more consistency we have the more it forms a habit.

It's really only 14 times that it'll have to be done (the number of home games), so why not push it to the max for ALL games.

Just my .02 worth.

[uicness]

Thanks Chuck

We are actually meeting up tomorrow to discuss the upcoming basketball season and what we are goin to do. I'm really looking forward to the season & think the rest of the committee is too. I really think that flooding the campus with reminders of basketball will be huge. I'll talk to our people in athletics about getting more banners and signage out on campus. Airing past games seems like an excellent idea as well. Thanks for the feedback. Another thing that you can hopefully be looking forward to (if our sponsors get their acts together) is the first ever Homecoming week at UIC. I'm really excited about it & am hoping that it takes off so keep your fingers crossed for that!! Thanks again & feel free to contact us anytime at [e-mail]

Vanessa

[Big D]

Good ideas guys...

Can the new Horizon League Network (HLN) be taken advantage of in any way? The HL webcasts tons of UIC games now, even away games during conference. Is there any way to get the sport bars to stream these games in their establishments so that people can watch them as a group if interested? Or maybe even set up a screen in Inner Circle or something and have the away games stream on that?

This is obviously something a lot more complicated, but I think it's a good idea. Instead of individually sitting at their PC watching UIC road games, they can get together as groups either at UIC or in a bar to watch the games. And it's good for the bars right? They show a game for free, and make money on beer, food, etc. It's a no-brainer if it's something that can work.

[Chuck A]

bigd said:

Good ideas guys...

Can the new Horizon League Network (HLN) be taken advantage of in any way? The HL webcasts tons of UIC games now, even away games during conference. Is there any way to get the sport bars to stream these games in their establishments so that people can watch them as a group if interested? Or maybe even set up a screen in Inner Circle or something and have the away games stream on that?

This is obviously something a lot more complicated, but I think it's a good idea. Instead of individually sitting at their PC watching UIC road games, they can get together as groups either at UIC or in a bar to watch the games. And it's good for the bars right? They show a game for free, and make money on beer, food, etc. It's a no-brainer if it's something that can work.

I like that Big D. If that's a go, maybe they can try to get the sports bars to show "all" UIC games, whether home or away. None of that "Bill Wirtz" stuff- 'showing home games on TV will diminish the home crowd and is not fair to the season ticket holders'. As much UIC awareness as possible makes for fans or would-be fans going to the next game in person!

If any community or area should be UIC aware and UIC intensive, it's got to be University Village!

[Big D]

The only way this could happen though Chuck, is if the quality of these webcasts improves. To play these things on a large enough screen where people in a bar would actually watch it, they need to be streamed at a higher resolution. I mean, last year, if you blew up the webcast to the size of a computer screen, it looked horrible. Now imagine blowing it up to something much larger...not gonna happen. If the HL's going to do it, they should do it right...

[dettitan]

I think the biggest part of spreading HL teams names out there is over-saturating the respective areas with their names.

The Fury is such a great idea. We are trying to implement something like the Fury at UDM currently. Problem is $$$. But we are working on that. It should be rolling in some fashion this season and pick up over the next few years. Which I understand is what happened with the Fury. started off small and just blew up. Wright State has a nice fan reward program as well.

As far as the quality of the webcasts getting better, I doubt it...unless they switch technology. I mean, the current version which streams through Windows Media Player is about as good as it can get with WMP to my knowledge. The biggest thing is having enough broadband. I am not too familiar with how streams work, especially live streams, but stuff like ESPN motion seems to be far higher quality than the HLN games. Maybe once the HLN gains more steam, seeing as this will only be its second year, it will improve quality.

It has been asked before whether the Titans games could be played in the "Titan Club" in Calihan. I think that is a great idea. Playing the games in local bars. Posting posters, pocket schedules, discount vouchers etc...around the respective metro areas would do good things for the programs. You may not see immediate boosts in attendance, but it would help raise awareness. Which, IMO, is the first step.

[dettitan]

FYI

The Horizon League Network and Live webcasts appear to be in a different format this year. It is in a flash type player like ESPN motion although I think it still uses Windows Media Player inside of it. However I can't get it work. I tried watching the Women's Soccer Championship game, and it had some stupid error that wasn't listed in the HELP section.

ALSO, let it be noted that it will only work on a Windows Machine (HUGE negative for me since I am a Mac OS X user) AND that it will only work on IE6 as of now. They are working on IE7 compatibility. That means if you use Mozilla Firefox, you will have to use IE for the HLN.

[Guest]

FYI- last year a bar in Green Bay showed most all of the Phoenix games by utilizing the webstream. All it takes is a PC to TV converter. From what I hear, the quality was good, much better than if you try to watch it full screen on your computer.

[Chuck A]

Does anybody know if the PC to TV converter or anything has been done to show the games in the bars or restaurants in University Village or along Taylor Street?

[Black Panther]

And now, for a message not bashing UIC:

Here at UWM, our lecture halls all have PC to TV Converters. I'm not sure what they are called, or how they work, as I'm not a technology-driven guy, but in my JMC 101 class, we watched a video off YouTube on it with very good clarity. The screen had to be about 20 feet diagonally, but the video played well. I went back to watch it on my laptop later, and it was much less clear...and that was without full screen.

Almost all of my classes since I've been here have used this. It's a great teaching tool. I'm told by a friend that in Lubar Hall (The newly renamed school of business building) they watched the Alabama-UWM game in the NCAA tournament 2 years ago during class, with as much clarity and resolution as if it were on a 13 inch television!

[UICJason]

I am a technology guy, and while I don't know a ton about video and video conversion, I have no idea how this is possible. Every time I've ever tried to do something like that, it looks like hell.