The Work in Sports Podcast - Insider Advice for Sports Careers · Brian Clapp - Work in Sports

Building a Primetime Brand in College Athletics

·38 min·2 clips

Deion Sanders walking out of the tunnel made Colorado State feel louder than a 20-point win.

Ricky starts with a story about having a six page plan for announcing a new coach, then watching it get shelved when the timing changed. It is a sharp example of how fast sports groups have to adjust when one major hire rewrites the whole script. From there, he talks about the way people turn inward when change lands. He does not treat that as selfish. He treats it as normal. When jobs, politics, budgets, or structure shift, people want to know what it means for their day to day life. That idea carries through the rest of the conversation. The talk moves to Boulder and the feel of the city around the university. He compares it with Ann Arbor and how completely Michigan took over that town. Colorado feels different to him, more contained, and a little closer to what he knew at Loyola, where the university had its own tight world inside a bigger city. He says he has loved Boulder so far, cost of living and all. The weather comes up too. The move from Seattle to Colorado still feels like a relief, less rain and more sun. The conversation then comes back to Eastern Michigan. Ricky talks about a staff that earned two NACMA awards, one for fan giveaway work and one for men's and women's basketball season tickets. Those campaigns mattered because the department had come through 2020 and 2021 with no fans and no ticket sales, so the work was about more than promotion. It was about rebuilding energy. He keeps pointing back to the team effort behind it. He also makes clear how much pride he takes in helping a staff get through a rough stretch and make the work land again. The close keeps that same note, circling back to Colorado athletics and the question of how a department uses fresh momentum to lift everything around it. Ricky's view stays practical. He is talking about the real work of making sports marketing work.

As heard by us

A practical look at how college athletics departments respond when the script changes.

This episode tracks a college athletics conversation from a coaching change into the quieter work of explaining it, earning trust, and keeping an athletic department steady when the plan has to change.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a behind-the-scenes look at how a coaching change can scramble a six-page fan-education plan.

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