Men's Basketball Promotions

With basketball season fast approaching, I thought you might want to know a few our new ticket prices and game day enhancements...

> We will have $5 Tickets for every men’s home game...yes they are in the end zone...but they are still good seats...and how can you beat $5!!!

> Mini-Packs- We have two great mini-packs available...Premium seats for only $50 for three games [VCU mini-pack has VCU, St. Joe's & Xavier; the Wake Forest mini-pack features Wake, St; Joe's and Xavier]

> Dollar Night – Tickets, hot dogs, and 16 oz. sodas for the opening home game on November 15 vs. Randolph Macon are only $1 each. Season tickets holders get in free!!

> Ukrop’s 2 for 1 Nights: At the Rice and George Washington games, get two for one tickets in the premium and priority sections by showing your Ukrop’s UVC or First Market Bank Marketshare card

> Times Dispatch Family Four Pack: At the St. Bonaventure and Duquesne games receive four tickets, four sodas and four hotdogs for only $40!

> Quality Half-time entertainment – through-out the year, we will be featuring scheduled acts including Canines in Flight, Bucket Boys, Sem-cycle and Red Panda. Also back this year by popular demand will be the Zooperstars!

> Family Zone – this year on the concourse families can enjoy a kids zone. This area will feature a basketball goal to practice your shot and several interactive signs to see how you measure up to your favorite Spider player.

> Quality On-Court Promotions – new promotional games for Spider fans to participate in during the time-outs and half-time, including sumo suits, human hamster balls and much more! Also new this year is our on-court emcee to liven up our on-court promotions!

> We will have a new "on-the-floor" section for students

> The new "microphone-man" from football will become the "megaphone man" for our men's basketball games

> Professional Mascot – Enjoy great new material by Spidey this year as we have a professional mascot joining our students to perform as Spidey!

We will also continue many of the new items seen in the Robins Center last year including our award winning pep band, player entrance tunnel, inflatable mascots, tee-shirt guns and the Preyground Zone for the UR students.

If you want to learn more about these promotions and get regular updates– check out this link: https://urmail.richmond.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://richmondspiders.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/102408aac.html

New Basketball Video

2 big basketball events this week...

FIRST>> Mark Kwolek, Assistant Director of Athletic Public Relations, has produced a great men's basketball video that you can watch on your computer. Check it out on our athletic website....Great work, Mark.

SECOND>> Saturday night at 9, you can participate in Spider Mayhem at the Weinstein gym. See the team workout, enjoy a few contests, and maybe win some prizes.

Football Scheduling Questions

During the last week or so, I have received a few questions regarding football scheduling. Let me take a few minutes to review how football scheduling works for us and address a couple of the issues that have been raised.

1. Conference Games- The conference office schedules all of our conference football games. All 12 of the schools provide the conference office with their (a) Homecoming date [everybody wants a home game]; (b) Family Weekend date [everybody wants a home game]; (c) Fall Break date [nobody wants a home game]; and (d) previously scheduled non-conference games [can't play a conference game on those dates]. The conference office has the difficult task of trying to make 12 schools happy...and to make matters worse, the 36 Homecoming, Family Weekend, and Fall Break dates [12 schools with 3 issues each] are usually bunched into about a one-month period of time.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that sometimes there are problems that can't we worked out. But yes, the conference's goal is for each of the 12 schools to have home games on Homecoming and Family Weekend days and no game of Fall Break.

There is an additional issue that sometimes comes into play. In some situations, the conference schedule is being projected out further than an institution has set its dates for HC, FW and/or FB.

2. Non-Conference Games- We schedule our non-conference games. David Walsh, our Deputy AD, works with the head football coach to develop that schedule. We are currently playing a FBS [1-A] game each year on the road. We have been fortunate to be able to play quality institutions like Virginia, Duke and Vanderbilt. With the two or three remaining FCS [1-AA] games we schedule, our objective is to achieve a balance between competitive games and games that we should win. The A10 is too tough a conference to load up our non-conference schedule with too many ranked FCS opponents.

We also try to achieve a balance between home and away games [i.e., 5 or 6 home games and 5 or 6 away games in years we play 11; and 6-6 on years we play 12]. This year, circumstances caused us to have to play 2 FCS [1-AA] games on the road...the good news is that we won both of them [at Elon and at VMI]. With the availability of our on-campus stadium beginning with the 2010 season, we will be able to consider purchasing "home only" games because with increased ticket sales, we will be able justify the expense of paying certain teams to come to Richmond, without a return game.

I hope this adequately addresses a few of the issues regarding football scheduling.

UMASS

The way the fb team played at UMass is the perfect example of the strong character and resiliency of these student-athletes and coaches. Coming off such a heart-breaking game against JMU and then putting in a performance like we saw yesterday...you have to be proud of them.

Today i will be heading over to campus to watch our field hockey [noon], women's soccer [noon] and men's soccer [2:30]. Hope many of you will join me...

And this Saturday morning at 10 we will have a little "construction kickoff" event to keep our stadium momentum going...drop by if you can.

NOTE>> I have been asked by a few people about a some football scheduling issues [i.e., number of home games, fall break]. I will make a blog entry this week about this issue...

JMU Game #2

Another question I heard was about stadium size...What are we going to do about big games like this [i.e., 16,000+ in attendance] when we move to a 9,000 seat stadium?

However, I think the critical question [and the one that was asked several years ago] is this...Does the University of Richmond want to play its home games on campus? The answer then...and the answer now, is a resounding YES.

Once it was decided that we want to play our football games on campus, we had to decide what type of stadium would fit...not only what would fit in the space we have on campus, but what would fit when you look at all the issues...parking, traffic, etc.

We worked with consultants to design a stadium that addressed our critical issues. And, even with the decision to build an 8,700 seat stadium, it took several years to get the necessary approvals.

Here is the bottom line...we need to focus on the positives. We have a great football team, who in 2010 will be playing in probably the best quality FCS stadium in the country...located on our beautiful campus.

JMU Game

WOW...what a tough loss...great atmosphere, great effort, but didn't close the deal...

Thought I would answer a quick question I heard several times yesterday and today.

JMU would not have been forced to take the ball on their 40-yard line if we had kicked the ball out-of-bounds on the kickoff after our final TD. As you may re-call, the same thing happened to App St during our semi-final game. They had an unsportsmanlike penalty following a TD and kicked off from the 15. They kicked it out-0f-bounds twice. We kept accepting the 5-yard penalty rather than taking the ball on the 40 and Appy ended up kicking off from their 5-yard line.

More to come about the game...

BIG GAME!!!

I hope you are as pumped about this Saturday as I am. It looks like we may be in the 15,000 range. Shame on you if you don't get out to UR Stadium to experience a great afternoon of Spider football.

As you probably know, we are opening the gates an hour early to help spread out the traffic. Come early to get a parking spot.