Are you fed up with the feeling that your vote won’t account for any positive change? Are you over the stodgy NFL or sick of fantasy football after losing because of weather during 1 freak game or an injury that made all those hours for naught? Are you in need of an exciting last minute Christmas gift idea?
If you’re like me and you’ve answered YES to any of those questions than consider this a call to action.
Whether you’re in Utah or not, this is your chance to actually play a role in managing and running a pro sports team. From the city (SLC over OKC) to the team name (after 101st Airborne in a nailbiter over Teamy McTeamface), to the plays ran on the field chosen through a state-of-the-art app, you Joe Fan are in the driver’s seat. It’s Madden meets a Hollywood reality show meets the pigskin meets the future of tech. The voices of fans who have signed up to participate in an industry that is incredibly hard to break in and stay in are being heard loud and clear. In 21 countries and all 50 states, they’ve secured their dream spot as Assistant GM or Analytics Department or as an inaugural Season Ticketholder.
Now it’s your turn to answer the call. If you’re believer in freedom of choice, democracy, technology and football, we need you tuned and ready to make history.
February 16th, 2017. The Maverik Center.
ESPN, GQ, Esquire and other very notable national entities will be there. Can we count on you?
Success in revolutionizing the game requires churning up good companies to sponsor that believe that the fan comes first, groups and true fans and individuals who believe in the “democracy” mission depends on your participation. Unite with me, you believers who nowadays can’t agree on 1 Godforsaken thing. Like which beer the Mav should serve. Together in this and be there with me as it could ultimately in crazy fashion help me fulfill a lifelong dream of running a pro team of which with success, will extend to a a rebranded, democratized league level in due time (2018).
Your Super Bowl hangover will long be over as will the holidays. What next?
Why not join me in staking your claim to be a part of history, giving the power of making decisions in unbeknownst fashion to you. Yes, your voice has now been heard – you make the calls.
Transparency spooks and how it’s moving forward in football, business and life. Apocalypse now?
If you’ve missed me of late, I’ve been blogging about the latest sponsorship news and best practices. We also took a quick “secret shopper” trip to the thriving metropolises of Nephi/Ephraim/Nebo, Utah, stopping at one of the more said-to-be haunted destinations of the area in Leslie’s Family Tree where the Mormon pioneers of yesteryear clashed with the Native Americans. I’ve done the research and I’m a believer in transparency – which goes beyond unexplainable paranormal phenomenon, but is increasingly and readily applicable in the sports business and our collective impending future.
“The Game” & Beyond
I just got off the phone with a friend and client of mine in Glenn “Shemy” Schembechler, son of the legendary Michigan coach Bo. Bo learned everything he knew while coaching under Woody Hayes, who would later become his biggest rival. Both Michigan and that one state school in Ohio largely played the same way for many years. Everyone knew that both teams were most likely to run the ball on 1st and 2nd down and throwing if need be on 3rd down. No frills or surprises, they’re going to rely on brilliant strategy and execution to beat you with tough, talented athletes who believe in their schools’ and coaches’ native credos. Stop it if you can (sorry, the numbers say you likely won’t as both schools are at the top of the alltime recordbooks).
Shemy, who soaked in all that football leadership along the way and utilized it as an NFL scout, has launched GES Advisory Company, designed to utilize the aforementioned institutional knowledge to benefit aspiring high school football players. His goal is to give high school athletes the chance to play the sport they love in college (he can be reached at: gesadvisory@gmail.com). Compared to other recruiting services, he goes much deeper when it comes to taking athletic measurements, gauging mental “make-up” and academic interests, and finding a scholastic fit from the “Power 5” schools on down the collegiate chain. 100% success ratio. To maximize effect from both a hand-to-hand combat success coupled with today’s demands of information transparency, he’s partnered with Sport Testing, a Canadian company with hockey (including NHL) success stories to build on, patent-pending and coming to you soon. Sport Testing, “the leading provider of sport specific player testing and a developer of athletic assessment technologies,”has developed equipment shown to be the most accurate in gauging athletic performance. It also has created a database to share this data, serving both the athletes and properties.
Man, I wish it existed back when I was playing! I was always in-season playing a different ball sport and wasn’t taught the right track technique to run a good 40. My recruiting service was my grandfather with our team highlight VHS tape knocking on the doors of his alma mater to get me a meeting (not that I would’ve made a different school choice). 5 Star football players who get a verbal offer don’t realize that it has no legal binding, nor does that official offer they received. Now, the gap is being bridged.
The Interview
I just mustered the best 30 minute phone interview perhaps I’ve done to date with Project FANchise to be President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles football team by mapping out and checking off what I deemed were the success criteria necessary for the position of my dreams. With the CEO in call 1 before he had seen my resume. I didn’t do it to work with just another minor league team – this is the 1st ever fan run team. Everything has been voted on by the fans from the city (they’ll be playing at the Maverik Center, where I worked and of which I had the endorsement of the President I was under) to G.M., head coach, logo and even play calls.
This group (an entrepreneurial mix of tech entrepreneurs, digital, NFL and sport business vets) has crowdfunded opportunities for fans all over the world to get involved with the Screaming Eagles. Yes, the opposing team might know what’s coming, but can they stop it? The point is, it opens up the dream of getting involved in what you were/are most passionate about to the masses, where the barriers to entry are the most extreme of perhaps any industry. Typical sports jobs field hundreds if not thousands of resumes per open position. This doesn’t even touch on how hard it is to become a professional athlete nor begin to speak to the struggle to excel once you get in on the business side when you’re making peanuts while competing with the hopes of countless others to be G.M., etc. someday let alone keep your current job.
What Project FANchise is doing is to utilize digital transparency that social media has provided us all to develop a competitive advantage – it’s giving live “recruiting tape” to not only to the players, coaches and G.M.’s looking to make a pro impact and move up the ranks, but also to Joe Schmo the fan as well (who can be G.M. for a day for $500). As the Bo’s of the world have stated, “those who stay will be champions.” Brilliant execution can open up big doors of opportunity.
All over the place, transparency has become apparent and the effects are rampant. It’s what went into the food we eat and the companies making it. It’s social media. It’s the manual processes in life that are being replaced by automatic processes that can share valuable data seamlessly. We’re starting to realize that sitting in traffic for an hour to commute to shuffle papers and sit in abusively boring meetings all day isn’t always the most productive or efficient way of doing business.
According to the Martin School at Oxford, 47% of today’s jobs in the U.S. will be replaced by artificial intelligence and robots within the next twenty years. Like the farmers of yesteryear, collaboration will likely create new opportunities.
Or, maybe Terminator was correct and machines are coming to bring about the apocalypse.
Maybe I wasn’t named the 1st President of the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles (someone else got the gig who had been a Minor League Baseball CEO). I know where I align when it comes to complaining vs. solving come the next apocalypse. How about you?
Maybe you’ll become the next lost soul tragically left behind to walk between worlds.
The Terminator fighting the apocalypse with automatic weapons
TRUE NORTH TEAM CONSULTING 