South Beach Hoosier: Dolphins' media/PR folks cluelessness with Parcells presser is s.o.p.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Dolphins' media/PR folks cluelessness with Parcells presser is s.o.p.

Just sent an excerpt of this email to some veteran sports journalists up in New York whom I read devoutly -and respect immensely- whom I also occasionally drop an email to, because they're straight-shooters when it comes to the facts and behind-the-scenes' forces of current American sports TV and personalities.
This has some additional material -and tangents- to buttress my points, which should be fairly obvious.

It's instructive that when I emailed this to them at 2:35 p.m. this afternoon, that the Dolphins PR folks were still so behind-the-curve that they had yet to inform WIOD radio and the Dolphins' radio broadcast rights holder, WQAM, that the Bill Parcells presser would be (televised) at 6 p.m., which ESPN News was reporting.

What, South Florida news media being scooped again on a Miami-based story?
Just more of what we've gotten used to over the years he said glumly.
______________________________
Thursday December 27th, 2007

Dear X and Y:

Just wanted to shoot you both a line and share some thoughts you might find of interest, as a media friend just called me from out at Dolphins HQ in Davie, quite exasperated, where she's been waiting and waiting... for the grand unveiling of Bill Parcells as the Dolphins' VP.
(I'm against the Parcells move, think he won't make it four years, but...)

She called an hour ago on the very day that's been anticipated ever since last week's big announcement, and yet, typically, the Dolphins are SO dis-organized, that their PR folks are refusing to tell the assembled media -whom in this town, are uniformly puppets of the worst sort to begin with, with absolutely no bark or backbone- what time the press conference will
start. Yeah, that's very professional.

While it's the kind of thing that most people who care about the Dolphins will never ever find out about, it really speaks volumes for why I've wanted Huizenga to sell the team -for years.

Not least of all because if he sells the team, the stadium and the adjacent land he owns, the Marlins stadium could, theoretically, be near the current stadium and the FL Turnpike, I-95 and starting in about 2012, near a Miami-Dade Metrorail station that connects it to points south, instead of at the Orange Bowl site in Little Havana, far from all of that, as well as the
large Broward fan base for a team with a piddling fan base to begin with.

(And, stuck with perhaps the worst ownership in MLB in Jeffrey Loria.
His intelligence and marketing prowess are perhaps best reflected by the team having had their team store being located in Little Havana -see the "Marlins en Miami" cite below- instead of being near modern suburban shopping malls.

You know, where people actually live and work and have disposable income, like they did in the days before and since the Christmas holidays, at Dadeland Mall, Aventura Mall, Pembroke Lakes Mall or Sawgrass Mall...
Free SouthBeachHoosier marketing advice to Marlins: How about a small storefront Marlins store along Brickell Avenue to capture the professional crowd at lunch time, in-between bites or after work?

Yeah, that's the Marlins marketing genius for you, continuing to propagate the failed myth of a vast army of Hispanic baseball fans in Little Havana just itching for the chance to come up to Chez Huizenga for a Marlin ballgame. Or ten.
This gets lip service despite all relevant marketing research showing those Marlin fans rarely attend games, even if they really do know the team inside-and-out well-enough to argue over who should be the Marlins lead-off man.
Here's some breaking news on who really counts: fans who actually show up.

Some time soon in this space, I'll tell you about how it was done -right and wrong- up in the Washington, D.C. area with the Baltimore Orioles team store, in the perfect downtown location
of 17th Street, N.W. and K Street, just blocks from the The White House.
One of my friends was the store manager there before I left, and that's where I first saw the video of the Twin Towers coming down for the first time on 9/11, while walking home to Arlington after being told to evacuate from my office along Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the FBI and Department of Justice, after the Pentagon was hit by American Airlines Flight 11.)

How can the Dolphins screw-up something as simple to set-up as a press conference?
Well, sadly for Dolphin fans like me, who grew-up as a season ticket holder in the successful early '70's, and know from professionalism, the forensic evidence for the decline is both overwhelming and self-evident.

Naturally, in the era of an interactive web, the Dolphins have absolutely nothing on their team website about the press conference, either, even though everyone is talking about it in advance.
http://www.miamidolphins.com/newsite/flash_content.asp
Typical!

Adios!

Dave

P.S. One of my former housemates at IU, a cute brunette Alpha Chi from Indy, dated Cam Cameron for a while when he was the back-up QB at IU behind Babe Laufenberg.
________________________________________________
http://florida.marlins.mlb.com/fla/ballpark/guide.jsp#M

Marlins En Miami Store: The Marlins en Miami Store is a full service ticket office and merchandise store. It is located in the heart of the Hispanic community at 3701 S.W. 8th Street. The main focus of the office is to serve as a lasting presence for the Club within this area and service the community by offering general information in Spanish, selling tickets, merchandise and hosting special events.

In Season Hours:
Mon-Fri 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.
Sat. 10am to 4pm.

No comments:

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.) After that first ballgame against Tulane, as l often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio. A few times, I was just about the only person onboard besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside. I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do. Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!) For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?) I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale? To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game. I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

Of cheerleaders past and present

Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm. Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic. Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket? Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!! And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for. You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service! (After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.) In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country. I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit. There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.

It's All About "The U"

South Beach Hoosier's first U-M football game at the Orange Bowl was in 1972, age 11, against Tulane in the infamous "Fifth Down" game. In order to drum up support and attendance for the U-M at the Orange Bowl, that game had a promotion whereby South Florida kids who were school safety patrols could get in for free IF they wore their sash. I did. Clearly they knew that it was better to let kids in for free, knowing their parents would give them money to buy food and souvenirs, perhaps become a fan and want to return for future games. The ballgame made an interesting impression on The New York Times, resulting in this gem from the "View of Sport" column of Oct, 14, 1990, labeled 'Fifth Down or Not, It's Over When It's Over.' -"In 1972, aided by a fifth-down officiating gift in the last moments of the game, Miami of Florida defeated Tulane, 24-21. The country and the world was a much different place that fall because The New York Times took time and space to editorialize on the subject. ''Is it right for sportsmen, particularly young athletes, to be penalized or deprived of the goals for which they earnestly competed because responsible officials make mistakes? The ideal of true sportsmanship would be better served if Miami forfeited last week's game.' South Beach Hoosier hardly needs to tell you that this was YET another New York Times editoral that was completely ignored!

The Original Notre Dame Legend

Knute Rockne, November 7, 1927; Sixteen months after his cover appearance, Rockne perished in an airline crash over Kansas on a business trip to California. "Knute Rockne, All-American," the wonderful 1940 film about Rockne's life, starring Pat O'Brien, with Ronald Reagan as ill-fated Irish football legend George Gipp, is a film I've seen at least two-dozen times. Like the best of films, every new viewing of it makes me appreciate some aspect I'd never noticed before, even though I know it by heart. Just like 1942's "The Pride of the Yankees" starring Gary Cooper as Yankee legend Lou Gehrig.

Indiana Hoosiers in the Film Industry, Past and Present

A good source for checking Hoosiers in the film industry -No, not Cary Grant pretending to be Cole Porter in 1946's Night & Day- is this one from a website run by former Ball State prof. and chair of the IPAHF board, and author of Hoosiers in Hollywood (Indiana Historical Press, 2006, $60) David L. Smith. It's currently accessible by subject headings of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Composers, Directors, Screenwriters, Novelists, Made in Indiana, Oscar Winners, The Silent Era, and Non-Native Hoosiers.

http://www.whenmoviesweremovies.com/hoosiersintro.html

1992 Bill Clinton for President buttons

As my friends and family can attest, I was for Bill Clinton YEARS before he ever announced he was running for president -much as I'd been for Gary Hart in 1983- and was even considering running as a Clinton delegate from northern Virginia to the DNC as early as 1990. Still, IF I'd had a vote in the U.S. Senate, I'd have voted to impeach him and remove him from office. You DON"T commit perjury by lying to a federal judge and suborning the perjury of underlings. PERIOD! And you certainly don't countenance your former aides stealing classified materials from The National Archives before their testimony to the 9/11 Commission, a la Sandy Berger. As for the sordid story of one of Hillary's brothers being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for a presidential pardon from his brother-in-law for a felon client, and nobody from his White House intervening to put the kibosh to that, consider the cast of no-talents left running things in those last few years at the White House after the good people had bailed earlier: lots and lots of Hillary loyalists. As the sign on the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to The National Archives reads, "The past is prologue." Don't say you weren't warned.

1993 Elvis Presley Stamp -Watercolor of Elvis by Mark Stutzmamn

It was in Memphis specifically, and the Mid-South in general, on our weekend family drives around Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, where I first developed my deep and enduring love and preference for many things: the Mississippi River; rhythm 'n' blues; Al Green; The Andy Griffith Show; Dusty Springfield; Petula Clark; St. Louis Cardinals baseball in the summertime; smoky sweet Memphis-style barbecue ribs; cornbread, and, of course, The King - Elvis. To a devout Elvis fan like me, who knows just about everything there is to know about him, the good and the bad, the best books ever written on Elvis -by far- are Peter Guralnick's masterful "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and the follow-up, "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley." Each is written with honesty and empathy, free of the judgmental cant and analysis that doomed other books that purport to tell the tale. It was also while living in The Mid-South, that I first became greatly interested in the American Civil War, following a summer day-trip to Shiloh, the site of the bloody April 1862 battle. It was on that summer day trip that I had a chance meeting with a VERY old man on the battlefield itself. A man whose own father had actually fought in the battle. And lived to tell the tale! For more info on Shiloh, see http://www.nps.gov/shil/ Spending a day there is an awesome experience and really puts things into their proper perspective, just as my later trips to Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, Winchester, Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania did as well.

Dr. King Is Slain By Sniper headline in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1968

My family moved from San Antonio to Memphis on Easter weekend 1965, when I was four-years old. We lived in Memphis 'till July of 1968, just weeks after Dr. King was assassinated there. Having lived thru all the chaotic and frightening tumult that took place there in the aftermath of the riots, even remembering the night I watched with my friends and their parents from the sidewalk -during curfew- as fully loaded Army troop transports and tanks rolled past my suburban apt. complex from the nearby Armory on their way downtown, when the opportunity presented itself, my father happily accepted a job offer in Miami. (We flew into MIA the day after Larry Csonka had signed his first contract with the Dolphins, as his face was the one I saw in the Miami Herald vending machines at the airport as we walked -and walked!- to pick up our luggage, me wondering who this guy with the unusual name was.) Because I was a very precocious reader, and was easily bored with kids books, The Memphis Commercial Appeal was the newspaper that helped me learn to read and make sense of the wider world.

U.S.P.S.'s 1995 Texas Statehood Sesquicentennial Stamp

I was born in San Antonio, the Home of the Alamo, at the Lackland Air Force Base Hospital during the first month of the JFK presidency. At the time, my parents worked at next door Kelly AFB, my mother for Kelly's base commander, my father in the Flight Surgeon's office. (They each saw President and Mrs. Kennedy the day before he was killed, when they Air Force One flew into Kelly and went thru the official receiving line. Our family has a photograph of them at the base that day that I've never seen published anywhere else in the myriad books and film footage of that time frame.) My maternal ancestors were Poles from a region of Prussian-controlled Upper Silesia, in what is now southwestern Poland, not far from the present day Poland-Czech Republic border. Overnight, those ancestors became Texas Hill Country pioneers, whose proud descendents have lived in Bandera ever since 1855. Due in large part to its large number of Polish, German and Czech immigrants, Bandera County was one of only a handful of Texas counties that voted AGAINST seceding from the Union at the state convention in Austin in 1861. A book I HIGHLY recommend on Texas' complicated history is "Lone Star Nation: The Epic Story of the Battle for Texas Independence" by H.W. Brands (2004), www.hwbrands.com

Coincidence of birth? Message: Don't Mess with Texas!

The week I was born in San Antonio, the cover subject of TIME magazine (dated Feb. 10, 1961) was Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas, who held that title for 17 years. As Speaker, Rayburn won a reputation for fairness and integrity -and toughness. He was also a longtime personal friend and advocate for Lyndon Johnson in Washington when LBJ was the Senate Majority Leader. JFK's election as president three months before this issue, with LBJ as Vice President, and Rayburn as Speaker, started the tradition of a Boston-Austin axis within the Democratic Party that has existed ever since, witness Dukakis-Bentsen. See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967986,00.html Nine months after appearing on this cover, Rayburn died of inoperable pancreatic cancer. The largest and most prestigious of all the House buildings on Capitol Hill is named after him. Over the 15 years I lived in the Washington, D.C. area, I spent literally thousands of hours in this amazing building: at congressional hearings of both great and little importance, and in speaking/persuading/cajoling Members and Staff. That also includes lots of hours spent transfixed by the great annual party thrown in the Rayburn courtyard by the late Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez of my hometown of San Antonio, where it was packed cheek-by-jowl with great Mexican food, cold beer flown in from Texas, a kick-ass Mariachi band dressed in costumes with cute dancers, and tons of great looking women from Texas and those who were Texans-for a-Day every year at Henry B.'s party! Whatever his views on issues and policies, in person, he was a warm and gracious gentleman whom we could use a LOT MORE of on Capitol Hill. See the Rayburn cover story at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872094,00.html Cover Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt

1972 Miami Dolphins team photo at The Orange Bowl

The same color photo of the 17-0 Undefeated Team that for six years, rested in a frame on top of my bedroom dresser at my home in North Miami Beach. There it stayed 'till that fateful day in August of 1979, when I began packing for my new life in Bloomington. The photo made the trip to Bloomington intact, where it remained on my desk in Briscoe Quad 427-A for two very eventful years at IU, the latter being the year we beat North Carolina for the NCAA title. I placed it right below my 8' x 11' b&w glossies of the Miami Herald's All-County Gymnastics team. That was a tremendous team that featured many friends from all around Dade County, as well as my own talented friends and classmates at North Miami Beach High.

Twice as Nice in Baja

North Miami High School grads Yvette and Yvonne Sylvander, January 8, 1976. The week this issue came out, only a month after we (NMB) won the Florida state HS soccer championship, many of my friends and I wondered how in the world, considering how many dozens of people we knew at North Miami High, could two such good-looking and well-adjusted sisters have been just two miles away from us all that time -and we'd never heard of them? It was quite a conundrum! The Sylvander sisters were the best-known twins out of North Miami High until the emergence of the talented gymnastic sisters, Debbie and Donna Reiser. Debbie and Donna always represented the Pioneers with class and grace in all their gymnastic meets, against NMB as well as at the GMAC's, the Greater Miami Athletic Conference (Dade County) championships.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Dolphins' media/PR folks cluelessness with Parcells presser is s.o.p.

No comments:

Post a Comment

In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation

#IUBB, #bannersix

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM

Miami Dolphins

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007

Of cheerleaders past and present

It's All About "The U"

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl

The Perfect Storm

Miami's Romp in the Rose

Why the University of Miami should drop football

REVENGE!

How Sweet It Is!

My, Oh My, Miami!

Why Is Miami No. 1?

Miracle In Miami

Special Issue: College Football

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue

FACES OF THE NFL

Coming Back

Dan's Last Stand

The War Zone

Down and Dirty

The Sunshine Boys

HOT & NOT

NFL PREVIEW 1995

Sportsman Of The Year

Dan The Man

Dangerous Dan

Super Duper!

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington

Rookies On The Rise

New Life In The WFL

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready

Miami All The Way

It's Miami and Washington

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo

Sudden Death at Kansas City

New Pro in a New Town

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot