Auburn University

Real Professors of Auburn University

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First published by The War Eagle Reader. You can link to that here.

The origins of those national headlines about A.J. McCarron and Katherine Webb’s wedding being a reality show?  My 2 p.m. Reporting class, I suspect.

First, some background.

This semester, Laurie Webb, Katherine’s sister, has been in the above class.  To avoid sounding like Brent Musberger, I will limit my comments to saying she is competent, talented, and diligent.  The equal of most of our PR and journalism students.  (I mean, she and they all got past our Journalism 1100 class, right?)

The first time she talked with me after class was about a student friend of hers, a fellow yoga instructor, who had apparently committed suicide.  We talked about knowing when a friend was struggling, what can be done to help — I had more than one such conversation that week.  The student’s death was a jolt.

Side note: It was either during that, or a conversation soon after, that we were talking football, and Laurie said, “It’s crazy. My sister dates a guy from the University of Alabama, and … ”  I basically replied, We know, Laurie; we know.

Right after spring break, I got an e-mail from Laurie in which she told me that she would be missing class that Friday, because A.J. had invited the family down to Gulf Shores.  He would be asking Katherine to marry him, and he wanted both families.

I suppose I could have broken the story and tweeted the news, but I held off for a couple of reasons.  One is that Laurie asked me to keep it a secret, because it was going to be a surprise.  Second is that I use my Twitter for sports media discussion and updates on journalism (and other topics) at Auburn.  A breathless note of rumored nuptials between A.J. and K-Webb — not me.

The Monday after the engagement news broke, I will confess a moment of weakness.  I asked Laurie to talk a little about the engagement.  After all, it was Reporting class, and she had witnessed a news event.  While talking about it, she mentioned that the engagement had been filmed as part of a planned reality show.

That bit of info elicited a collective groan from the class, to be honest.  But it also got the attention of the Auburn Plainsman staff members in the class.

After class, I thanked Laurie for being a good sport about it.  She accepted my appreciation with typically casual grace, adding that it had definitely been a crazy year for the family. Understatement No. 2.

The next Tuesday, I had walked over to the Plainsman office to eat lunch, as I do from time to time.  The staff members there told me they had interviewed Laurie and her family about the reality show.

They posted the story on their Web site the next day, and, of course, the fan was hit and 100 percent of a certain nether region broke loose.

The situation left me with a sinking feeling.  Had I let a student down?  Did my prodding cause her to let slip information that she would later regret?  Even if she did so willingly, the reflection of a gracious attitude, I would not blame her before I blamed myself.

It’s one of the complicating factors of being a journalism professor — when the conversations with students trickle over into the pond of interesting news.  Yes, I know news when I hear it.  But as a professor, often I have to keep that news to myself.

Not just student news.  I served as a faculty member on Auburn’s Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics (yes, CIA) for three years.  During that time, I heard things that were interesting — though never earth-shattering and certainly never scandalous.

We got Auburn’s APR numbers and drug testing statistics a few weeks ahead of the general public.  And we were briefed on ESPN the Magazine’s story highlighting Dakota Mosley’s allegations that Auburn did not respond adequately to his drug problem.

In all cases, I kept quiet about what I heard, as requested (though I did talk a lot about how impressed I was with Cassie Arner, who served as Auburn’s contact with Shaun Assael of ESPN).

In this situation, Laurie caught grief for her part in the story, as did The Plainsman, because the producers were not ready to release the news. So as I walked into Reporting the next day, I wondered if it would be awkward.

But it wasn’t. Laurie attended, and in talking about it afterward, she seemed quite relaxed, despite the drama.  I agreed with her.  To me, this wasn’t Survivor; we know the ending. No reason to keep everything a secret.

At the same time, I felt compelled to apologize to Laurie for putting her in the middle of the story.  She shrugged it off, and seemed sincere.  But the situation still bothers me.

Is my line drawn in the right place? Does it still give too much ground to the journalism side of me?  Is it better to keep the line there and deal with the occasional doubts, instead of instinctively hiding what should be reported?

It’s yet another teaching moment — the kind that the news media provide on a daily basis — and I have talked to my students about it.  Sometimes, however, the most important, and sometimes uncomfortable lessons, are for me.

May You Always BIRG and Never CORF

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The day before the Georgia game, ironically, I delivered the GameDay lecture for the Auburn Office of Communications and Marketing.  My topic was “This Is Loyalty,” and I presented some research on fan behavior, particularly in rivalries.

After the game, I related some of the content — particularly the concepts of BIRGing and CORFing — on Twitter.  The retweets and replies showed interest, perhaps because they sound like gross things that would happen at post-game keg parties.

So after getting a grad student through a tight and chaotic thesis deadline (mission accomplished), I could turn my attention to some of the more fun aspects of academic research on fan loyalty.

We’ll blitz through the basics of social identity theory (finding groups that share our interests give our life balance, blah blah blah) and in-group/out-group conflicts (Robbers Cave experiment, yadda yadda yadda), to get to the more current stuff — disposition theory.

Giving credit where credit is due — and defying the cheap-click rivalry attitude of “professional” journalists — I would point out that two researchers from Alabama, Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, have done some of the best work on this.  Type them into a Google Scholar search and party hearty.

But before they did the bulk of their research (including a 20-year trend study of the Iron Bowl rivalry), Robert Cialdini of Arizona State came up with the concepts of BIRGing and CORFing.  BIRGing means “Basking In Reflected Glory” and CORFing means “Cutting Off Reflected Failure.”

First, the B word.  This obviously refers to the way in which fans share a certain joy in their team’s victory, even though they might not have directly participated in it.  I know, I know, the coach always says that the crowd helps, but we’re talking about throwing something down besides nachos.

It goes beyond wearing team apparel to the office on Monday (as Toronto Mayor Rob Ford demonstrates in the photo above) or talking about the game around the water cooler.  The winning team’s fans also report an enhanced self-image and more confidence in making decisions.  This is serious stuff! And when your rival team loses, it increases the BIRG.

CORFing is not the opposite, because fans deal with losses in a different but not opposite way.  Rather than hide from it, they blame it on external factors: “The refs were not going to reverse their call even though Murray did not cross the goal line,” or “Robinson was holding on that last pass.” (Yes, the end of the Georgia game produced quite the CORF-fest on both sides at some point.)

That is because losses often do not diminish a fan’s loyalty to the team, but often strengthens their resolve.  Yes, research does show that fans often show less immediate outward support.  But we don’t abandon our in-groups quite that easily — even when the rival team wins and our team loses.  They provide us too much social identity to be dumped that easily.

So after the trash talking and the blog commenting and the flag waving, I hope you BIRG to your heart’s content this weekend. Wear the sweatshirt on Monday. Talk about the game. Feel better about yourself and your decisions.

Unless you cheer for my rival.

Then, as one of the attendees at the aforementioned lecture said, “They can go CORF themselves.”

Nothing like statistically significant smack talk.

 

Auburn is Writing its Own Stories

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First published by The War Eagle Reader. Link to it here.

The Auburn Athletic Department’s hiring of former Birmingham News sportswriter Charles Goldberg and former Huntsville Times/AuburnUndercover writer Phillip Marshall was a surprise.

The trend, however, is nothing new.  Many major college athletic departments are doing the same thing.  Having relied on newspapers and Web sites in the past, they are taking their messages straight to their publics.

That adds a lot of new wrinkles at every point of the relationship between fans, athletic programs and media.  The term “media” might be derived from the Latin for “between,” but the World Wide Web and social media are empowering organizations to shoulder the traditional media out of the way and speak directly to audiences effectively.

For the Auburn Athletic Department, that means using Facebook and Twitter to direct fans to its website, AuburnTigers.com.  Jack Smith, senior associate athletic director for communications, oversees the project.

Smith said about 20 FBS-level schools have hired popular, experienced beat writers for that purpose, following the lead of NFL teams.  He points to the University of Florida, which hired Chris Harry, who covered the Gators for 13 years with the Orlando Sentinel, to be senior staff writer for GatorZone.com.

And the University of Oregon just announced the hiring of Rob Moseley, who covered Ducks football for the Eugene Register-Guard for the past six years, as editor-in-chief of goducks.com.

The goal, Smith said, is to engage the Auburn community — fans, alumni, students and donors — on all platforms.  That includes the above strategies and a new project, Tiger Roar Digital, an online version of the quarterly magazine sent to Tigers Unlimited donors.  The online magazine will launch in mid-August, featuring articles by Goldberg and Marshall, photos by Todd Van Emst, and embedded videos, Smith said.

It’s a recent project, but it has been in the works for a while.  Marshall, long-time Auburn beat writer for the Huntsville Times(1994-2008) and AuburnUndercover.com (2008-2013), said Smith originally approached him last summer, long before the Selena Roberts article on Mike McNeil and the ESPN report on Dakota Mosley, in case you were wondering.

Marshall, however, declined the opportunity.  Earlier this year, the Athletic Department hired Goldberg.  When they approached Marshall again in June, he was ready for the change.

“The move to 24/7 was really good,” he said, referring to the parent company of the AuburnUndercover site.  The site had grown in his time there, fueled by the 2010 national championship and two coaching transitions.

Two aspects of the job, however, grew difficult.  The first was administration of message boards and answering fan questions.  ”For a long time I didn’t mind it, but it was wearing on me at the time,” he said.

The second was the increased emphasis on recruiting.  Fan sites like AuburnUndercover draw and keep their subscribers with aggressive recruiting news, and while Bryan Matthews does excellent work for AuburnUndercover, Marshall said he won’t mind leaving that behind.

Because it is affiliated with the Athletic Department, AuburnTigers.com is not allowed to report on the recruiting of specific athletes.  So at least from that perspective, the other sports media retain at least one advantage, besides editorial independence.

The audience is there.  Auburn’s official Facebook page has more than 256,000 likes.  Marshall has almost 10,000 Twitter followers (though he admits to mainly linking and retweeting).  Goldberg — also a retweeter and linker — has 18,000 followers and the Auburn football has about 64,000.  Even counting for overlap, that is a lot of potential eyes for Marshall’s and Goldberg’s articles.

Fans familiar with Goldberg and Marshall know what to expect.  They channel Grantland Rice more than Deadspin, and while they are reliable information sources — an Auburn football news tip, good or bad, was not considered solid until one of them confirmed it — they are well-suited to the articles intended for the site.

Marshall said the most attractive part of the job is “telling stories of Auburn athletes and coaches.  I like doing those kind of in-depth profile stories.”

Smith said that Goldberg and Marshall are expected to write objective stories.  At the same time, Smith, avoiding references to current sports, said, “If we had a cricket team, and it were to get destroyed in a game, and the coach says, ‘That’s as bad as my team has played all year,’ they are going to quote the coach.  At the same time, they are not going to write a column that the cricket coach should be fired.”

Marshall concurred with Smith’s example.  ”I’m not going to write a column that’s saying someone ought to be fired,” he said, “but the truth of the matter is, I’ve never done that anyway.”

So where does that leave the traditional media folks and relatively newer fan sites? Piece of cake. The AuburnTigers.com strategy might take some attention and media time from the audience, but as we’re finding, the saturation point is a constant speck on the horizon.  This ain’t the 1970s, when the market was driven by scarcity.

The main advantage — and it’s neither small nor minor — for Goldberg and Marshall is access. The Athletic Department can have them break news on official announcements, embargoing the external news sources.  That would also enhance the AuburnTigers.com site, making it seem more useful as a news source.

That’s a tough head start for their colleagues to overcome.  Still, the Jay Tates and Brandon Marcellos will have plenty of opportunities to provide the kind of information fans won’t find on the AuburnTigers.com site, and they are definitely up to the challenge.

Sports fans are information-hungry and information-savvy — whether the information comes from the media or from the organization itself.  They know what kind of info they like and they know where to get it and how to find new sources.  In that sense, there is still plenty of attention to go around.