BYU athletic marketing has been busy preparing for a full day of sporting events on Nov. 17 when three BYU teams will host home games within a matter of hours.
The day will begin with the women’s basketball team when they play Eastern Washington at the Marriott Center at 1 p.m. The men’s basketball team will take the court three hours later, at 4 p.m., facing off against Alabama A&M. The evening will conclude with the football team hosting New Mexico State at LaVell Edwards Stadium. Kickoff will be at 8:15 p.m.
“We’ve got our crew divided into different places and different responsibilities,” said Anna Killpack, BYU athletics marketing coordinator. “It’ll be just making sure that we’re all organized and everyone knows their specific roles for each game and where they need to be (and) when.”
Killpack said some of her team helping with women’s basketball will stay the entire game, and the others will start prepping for men’s basketball. The same process will occur for men’s basketball, but some will leave to go set up for football. Those who stayed for the entire basketball game will then immediately meet up at football, joining everyone else once the games are finished.
Stuart Call, director of new media, said the social media team will be doing a similar process but that they actually have five events to cover on Saturday. They will have someone attending the men’s and women’s cross country NCAA championships and the women’s volleyball game at Pacific in addition to the three home games.
Their team will also be divided up for the home events. Call said those who will be at the men’s basketball game will leave throughout the game to meet up at football, and everyone, like the rest of marketing, will also eventually end up at football.
“It’s not particularly difficult,” Call said. “It just takes some planning ahead of time and just being very organized and scheduled out. It makes for a really long day, but it’s not too bad to get everything done the way we would normally do it.”
Another large entity that will be more than busy Saturday is Cosmo and his team. BYU Athletics Marketing Coordinator and Team Cosmo Coach David Eberhard said Cosmo will be in survival mode, taking more breaks and doing the bare minimum of his game-day responsibilities.
“It’s hard,” Eberhard said. “It’s physically taxing on not just Cosmo, but we have the team around that supports him, helping him get to places and coordinating events, tricks and stunts, and all the corporate sponsorship events. It’s just a long day in general.”
Eberhard said all the games and events leading up to Saturday, unfortunately, take a toll on Cosmo. Cosmo attended two basketball games on Nov. 13 and Nov. 15 this week and will have attended 10 appearances between Nov. 12 and by end of day Nov. 16.
Eberhard said despite the physical toll this week and Saturday will have on Cosmo, the team has a plan to maintain his health through it all.
“We’re prepared,” Eberhard said. “We’re ready. We have things in place (for Saturday) that will allow him to get rehydrated especially. Being Cosmo, you lose a lot of water. So, we have lots of things from our dietitian that help him get through the day.”
Call said the marketing and social media teams are lucky the games are scheduled at different times and that it would be a bigger problem if they overlapped. He and Killpack also said it’s lucky the games aren’t in-state rivalries.
“Logistically, it’s a little easier than having two in-state teams,” Call said. “Alabama A&M and New Mexico State aren’t going to draw a parking logistical mess or an excess of fans in the area.”
Killpack brought up an example from Nov. 26, 2016, when men’s basketball played Utah Valley University on the same day football played Utah State University. She said there were large crowds, creating inconvenience with the in-state games at the same time.
“There’s just bigger crowds (during in-state rivalry games), and it makes it more chaotic. It’s harder to get from the Marriott Center to LaVell (Edwards Stadium), even though it’s just right there. Just with traffic and fans, it takes so much longer,” Killpack said.
Call said the marketing team is focused on its plan to be at specific locations at certain times on Saturday. He also said the team’s goal is making sure everything runs as smoothly as it would if each game were the only event that day.
“I think most of it is just our internal logistics of getting from place to place and who’s at what,” Call said. “It shouldn’t be noticeable to fans or be any different. It’s just more making sure we’re on time everywhere we need to be.”
Call also said the marketing team wants to make sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle of the games. Killpack gave an example of how her teams could potentially face this problem. She said they use the same equipment and promotional pieces at both basketball and football.
“Everything we do, for the most part, is contracted through sponsorships,” Killpack said. “So, the goal is just to make sure we’re fulfilling those so that it goes well and keeps the clients happy. It’s having all the (promotional pieces and contracts of things) we need at the right places.”
