Re: Wisconsin Hockey 2019-2020: Time to Get Offensive
I am not a fan of all this marketing and hype. It could be a major distraction to the players, the youngsters specifically. This isn't the pros, its college. Let's tone things down and just play the game. Let the play do all the hyping itself.
They've been in desperate need of more hype for a long, long time. Remember when they set record low attendances when they had the best team since 2009-10? They need to do this (at a minimum) in order to keep the program from turning into one where its ceiling is below the old baseline, and the new baseline is a fan base about a third of its old size.
The problem is that their play CAN'T do hyping itself. That's just not the nature of college hockey in this country, certainly outside of places like Duluth, St Cloud, Potsdam/Canton, Grand Forks, etc.
To reference 2013-14 again, the Badgers absolutely stormed into the national tournament as one of the top teams in the country. Unless thousands of people somehow knew they'd get upset by UND and decided not to care because of their visions, very,
very few people cared. Even when there were some big crowds down the stretch of that season, attention was contained within a pretty well-defined bubble. Outside of people actively seeking it out - and their friends they talked to (or talked at) about Badgers hockey, it didn't register at all. Year after year, new classes of students would come in and not give hockey a shot, and not because they looked at the team and thought about their chances based on what they read on CHN or USCHO. It just didn't register in the first place, because there was zero exposure beyond the people who went way out of their way to seek it out.
If they want to build a fan base, they need people to engage with Badgers hockey. It used to be so hard to find any content at all, and I'm saying that as someone who will go out of my way for it.
Football and basketball can let their play do the hyping. Pick your favorite sports media outlet in this country, and they've got it covered. Reminders that it's fun to be a fan and worthwhile to follow the team aren't as necessary there. They are in hockey. After all, if a team is good, that only builds hype if people actually care about how good the team is. If they don't care, then however much they win or lose doesn't change that, because they won't notice anyway.
They have to make the program noticeable. Without plenty of exposure (and reminders that hockey season does indeed start before January), the only way to get those people outside the bubble to notice (beyond very small numbers) would be a Frozen Four run.
If you ask me, we could use more UW hockey content out there. Sometimes it feels like they're trying to keep this program a secret. It also helps to strengthen the sense that the program actually
matters, which I see as a good thing. The football team does just fine with insane overexposure, and I'd argue that the little bit of promotion we're seeing for the home schedule starting is more in the "less underexposure and a little closer to baseline for what we all want UW Hockey to be," rather than anything resembling excessive hype.
Positioning UW Hockey as a worthwhile and notable "thing" (rather than a cutesy fringe "olympic sport") for sports fans is especially important for students and other new general Badgers fans
If it ever gets to "major distraction" levels, then mission accomplished. That would mean the fan base grew by a very large factor for that to be possible. But that would involve a lot of media attention, local radio hits, and a ton of stuff beyond a couple of videos and a few blurbs on some niche sports sites.
