Why Bo Should Put The Players Names On Their Uniforms

Simply because it’s smart marketing. And it’s dumb not to.

Suppose you heard about a locally-owned grocery store with good selection and prices, and you walked into the store and found nothing was labeled. You could quickly determine which was the produce section and the dairy section and the bakery, but nothing was labeled. Suppose you stopped a clerk and said “what’s with the no labels?” and the clerk said “we find that most of our loyal customers are already familiar with our products and labels are not necessary”.

That’s essentially the argument I got when I posted a Facebook status last night saying I hated that Bo refuses to put the players’ names on the back of their jerseys.  My own kids ridiculed me. The female (I’m not putting her name on her jersey here) said “watch more games to become a real fan” followed by an emoticon smiley face; and the male (not putting his name on his jersey here either) “liked” the female’s comment.  Another commenter (a journalist for one of the local newspapers – not putting his name on the jersey here either) said “It’s about the name on the front of the shirt”.

Oh, puh-leeze.  As if that crap worked 30 years ago when it was somewhat popular.

Collegiate sports at the level the UW has decided to participate is about a hell of a lot more than the tiny percentage of “student athletes” who actually suit up and compete. It’s about putting fannies in the seats and justifying the ever-escalating ticket prices and fat TV contracts, more than about whether some coach decides he has to leave that “student athlete’s” name off the jersey so he or she remembers that there’s no “I” in team.

Collegiate and professional sports are marketed as personality battles.  It’s not the Packers versus (or, as the young folks say, “verse”) the Bears.  The promos the airwaves are saturated with say stuff like “Aaron Rodgers and the Packers take on Jay Cutler and the Bears”. Or “can the Rodgers-less Packers get past the Cullen Jenkins-led Giants defense” or whatever.  And please don’t give me that shopworn crap about how big-time collegiate sports are not comparable to pro sports, and amateurs, and all that BS. Every week, collegiate football (and basketball) broadcasts are promoted with the use of specific player names.  It’s not Texas A&M. It’s Johnny Manziel and the Aggies.

If the UW is going to continue to compete at the BCS level in Football and at the nationally-ranked level in basketball, you’d better believe Barry Alvarez knows damn well it takes BIG bucks to sustain such programs. And those programs support “the lesser sports” which can’t charge 50 bucks a seat. Those big bucks come from fat TV contracts and marketing deals all the way from which company makes the uniforms (name or no-name) the players wear, to which business’s name is most prominent on the scoreboard advertising, to sales of team merchandise (name or no-name). 

Implicit is the argument that you’ve got to keep a huge fan base happy – a fan base exponentially larger than the number of people who buy tickets.  So you’ve got to market.  And if you want people to quickly learn to enjoy (“use”) your product, you damn well better put a name on it.  You want to make it as easy as possible for people to learn your brand (UW Baskeball) and the names of your products (players).  That’s the engine that drives this big collegiate sports money machine.

After all, it’s not the University of Wisconsin Basketball Arena.

It’s the Kohl Center.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Number

In the picture above, taken last night by Associated Press photographer Gerry Broome, you see a North Carolina player (white and blue uniform) shooting over a UW-Madison player (red uniform).  It was a hard-fought battle; the Badgers had a flat first half, and perhaps a half-court shot at the halftime buzzer launched by Ben Brust of the Badgers woke them up; but, the clock ran out on Bo’s boys and they lost by three on the home court of the always-tough Tarheels.

The player in the photo above, putting up the shot, is a fellow named Harrison Barnes.  I know this because after he made the shot, on the live TV broadcast the camera showed him at a different angle, and above his uniform number (40) I saw the name “Barnes”.  The name of the Badgers player in the picture is…..ah….5.

To write this post, I first looked online for some pictures of the game last night, and then I went to the UW Badgers basketball website and downloaded a roster of the current players.  The point of this post is that I want Bo to relent and put the names of the players on the back of their uniforms.

I believe there are certain times (games, tournaments) when coaches are given no choice in the matter: they MUST put the player’s last name above the number on the back of their uniform jersey.  At least, that’s what I gather, from years of observation.  Because most of the time, the Badgers have nothing but a number on their jerseys.

Yes, I understand that many coaches deliberately leave the player's name off the jersey to show that it’s a TEAM effort and that it’s not about individuals.  Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a bunch of crap.

I don’t KNOW the names of all the players, but I really WANT to.  Oh, I know that red-haired fellow is Mike Bruesewitz (31), but that’s the only one I know “by heart” right now.  Hopefully, later in the season, I’ll know the names of most of Bo’s players, because I’ll have seen them often enough to associate a name with a uniform number.  But it would be SO much easier if Bo would just put their names on their uniforms.  It would make me a BETTER fan.  It would increase my enjoyment of the game.

So, if you have any influence with Bo, mention that I suggested this.  And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And, by the way, the follow in the picture above…wearing the red uniform number 5….is Ryan Evans.

I had to look it up.