A New Chapter Begins
Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of launching the Center for Sports Analytics
@SamfordU
and witnessing the explosive growth of the undergraduate sports marketing & analytics program. With the launch of the sports business MBA program two
Leeds United F.C.
@LUFC
has developed one of the top 10 largest EPL fanbases in the United States after being in the top division for only 2 campaigns. π ππππ
Interesting to see how much these numbers climb with the addition of
@tyler_adams14
,
@AaronsonBrenden
,
@jessemarsch
For only the second time ever, the city of Birmingham has two teams playing in the NCAA Menβs Basketball π D1 National Championship Tournament.
Itβs been 25 years since the last time both Samford and UAB qualified for the Big Dance.
#MarchMadness
One of the most amazing championships you will ever see!
@SamfordBaseball
started the first game of the day at 7 am CST in the
@SoConSports
Tourney. They went on to win 3 NCAA DIVISION 1 games IN THE SAME DAY, playing for over 9 hours, to win the championship and punch their
With Brentford winning again it's looking increasingly likely that
@LUFC
is going to need to secure 7 points out of the remaining 12 in order to secure promotion.
Over the last 2 seasons under Bielsa, Leeds has taken an average of 7.34 points across all 4 game sets in the EFL.
The work of
@DigitalWilson
&
@LUFC
digital team has been a massive reason for this growth. Our data shows that most of the growth in the USA for Leeds has been w/ digital savvy Gen Z. Leeds is
#1
in growth % in EPL w/ Gen Z since 2020; 3 times the average
Highlight of summer for my 14-year old son was visiting Ross County Football Club in the Scottish Highlands. We so appreciated the genuine hospitality & ground tour. My son is wearing his
@RCFCStaggies
around Birmingham, Alabama with great pride!
#staggies
For the first time ever, a U.S. Professional soccer team finishes the season ranked in the Top 20 global soccer attendance.
@ATLUTD
average attendance of 53,002 ranks them ahead of global powerhouse teams like Liverpool and Newcasatle
@LFC
@NUFC
of the EPL
@premierleague
#MLSCup
Last night's game and the season as a whole exemplify why I feel so blessed to be part of the Samford community.
In an era where the transfer portal and NIL dominate the conversation, it's heartwarming to witness a coaching staff and team that prioritize the things that truly
An inspiring story of how a family struck by the tragedy of suicide is using their pain to help others.
"Itβs impossible to separate their joy from their fear.... They donβt expect to heal. They canβt move forward. They must live w/ both."
@HilinskisHope
With 14 minutes to go in the game,
@espn
had
@SamfordMBB
win probability @ 1.5%.
ESPN was missing two important data points - the passion of the
@SamfordU
student section & the HUGE β€οΈ of the Bulldog team!
The
@SamfordSACenter
had the win probability at 100% from the start! :)
The
@ESPN
π broadcast truck is on campus!
If you live in Birmingham and are looking for a fun filled evening come to the Samford Menβs Basketball
@SamfordMBB
game tonight at 5 pm.
We are
#1
in the conference & the crowd will be electric!
Yesterday my son John won his 3rd
@Alabama_Soccer
state championship in the last 6 years after a 7-hour life saving reconstructive heart surgery at University of Michigan in 2013 opened the door for him to be able to play goalkeeper, but only GK, for the sport he loves.
#ProudDad
Stat of the Day
@Braves
fans are 169 times more likely to follow
@Marlins
than the general population, making the Marlins the top
@MLB
team that Braves fans are tracking on social media.
Source:
@Affinio
study of 1.3 million Braves followers
Exciting News
Samford is a member of a select group of Birmingham community sites who will serve as host facilities for the new United States Football League (USFL). The New Orleans Breakers and the Houston Gamblers will run their practices at Samford.
@USFL
Thx to the Atlanta
@Braves
for helping our
@SamfordU
sports marketing students conduct 3 focus groups w/ Braves season tix holders
@TruistPark
. The data collected is helping our students develop a strategic plan to be used by
@MLB
teams to raise $ for local nonprofit groups.
UPDATE
Corey is out of surgery & dr says it was a huge success. They were able to get stint securely sewn into his heart & then put in valve.
We are blessed to live in a city w/ cutting-edge medical professionals. Corey is among the 1st in the U.S. to have this done.
#Godisgood
My son Corey headed into Children's Hospital for his heart surgery. He is officially the oldest patient in the hospital.
Everyone here cannot believe he made it 28 years w/out a pulmonary valve! When he was born we were told he would need a valve put in every 2 years as he grew
The
@USFL
championship game drew a national TV audience of 1.2 million which is slightly better than the
@Concacaf
@GoldCup
match between Honduras/Qatar and the
@NASCAR
race in Chicago.
It topped two direct head-to-head national live sports options (UFC Fight Night on ESPN and
Getting ready for Samford graduation and then headed to Alabama vs Gonzaga basketball game at Legacy Arena with my wife and kids. They are trying to convince me to wear my robe to the game to get on the Jumbotron! :)
The state of Alabama has produced four of the last five SEC Tournament champions, back-to-back SoCon champions with Samford, and UAB in the AAC championship game.
Alabama has become one of the top college basketball π states in the nation.
Stat of the Day
Samfordβs 42 first half points against Florida is the most ever given up in a half in the 115 year history of Florida football.
@SamfordSports
My son Corey headed into Children's Hospital for his heart surgery. He is officially the oldest patient in the hospital.
Everyone here cannot believe he made it 28 years w/out a pulmonary valve! When he was born we were told he would need a valve put in every 2 years as he grew
So proud of my daughter Hannah
@MsWhiteTeach
! She graduated today with honors from
@SamfordU
@SamfordEd
with a degree in early education. She joins a long line of educators from our family!
Student assignment this week was to develop a sports marketing plan. They proposed motivating students to go to
@SamfordMBB
game last night and to cheer really loud because if team won they would all get a perfect score on an assignment. It worked!
@SAMDogPound
was packed & loud!
White family
@SamfordU
basketball π watch party. A win tonight in the SoCon championship game puts them in the Big Dance for the first time in 24 years.
#MarchMadness
We have 13 family members that have either graduated or are close to graduating from Samford in the last 10
Super proud of the fantastic
#sportsanalytics
work
@SamfordU
@BrockBusiness
junior Ian Jones did related to momentum runs in college basketball π for our very own Samford menβs basketball team.
Thanks to the great relationship we have with
@SamfordSports
, Ian was able to share
Proud of these guys! They started the year traveling to Dominican Republic for a missions trip, then helped athletic department achieve one of the highest GPAs in school history and then yesterday beat
#7
ranked team in nation (FL State) in NCAA Regional
#CollegeWorldSeries
Day 1 of introduction to sports marketing is in the books. Always love the feeling of excitement and hope that is prevalent on the first day of a new
@SamfordU
fall semester!
Headed to England with 5
@SamfordU
@BrockBusiness
sports marketing & analytics students for their May term stadium naming rights valuation presentation to Head of Commercial for
@EFL
professional soccer team Walsall F.C. (same league Wrexham FC is going to be playing next year).
Best week ever in
@SamfordSports
history?
*Men's basketball upset defending PAC 12 champ Oregon State
#BuckyBall
*Women's Soccer beat
#4
seed Auburn in 1st round of NCAA National Tourney
*Football shocked the nation by scoring 52 points on Florida setting all sorts of records
Samford's Project SAMson, the Center for Sports Analytics, and the 11 SoCon Championships that
@SamfordSports
achieved last year highlighted in the national media.
Sports Business Journal is the "Wall Street Journal" of the sports industry
@SamfordU
@SBJ
Thankful to the Atlanta
@Braves
front office executives for hosting
@SamfordU
sports marketing and sports administration students tonight. Our students are shadowing executives during one of the biggest games of the year!
Magic # is 1 for the division title!
#ChopOn
The White family is touched beyond words.
Our son
@AveryWhite6
@SamfordU
classmates gave our family an incredible gift -- they donated $ to name a room in Samford's Daniel House in London the "Avery White Room".
Avery loved the semester he spent in the Daniel House.
#Grateful
'When you come back from 22 on Kansas in the NCAA Tournament and feel like you should have won the game then I guess thatβs a pretty good sign for what youβre building,' said
@SamfordU
Coach Bucky McMillan.
"It was the end of a season for Samford, but it felt more like the
Takes courage to be a Michigan fan living in an Alabama
#RollTide
family!
Michigan became my sonβs favorite team after the Michigan Basketball team
@umichbball
π visited him in 2013 after his heart surgery at
@MottChildren
Hospital on the campus of the
@UMich
.
#GoBigBlue
Chris Richards
@eastmamba
becomes the 1st player ever from the state of Alabama to captain the
@USMNT
!
Soccer in Alabama has come a long way since I was a kid playing for the first club team in Birmingham way back in the 1970s.
@CPFC
Excited that we were able to send 4 of our outstanding young ladies in
@BrockBusiness
@SamfordU
sports marketing program to the 1st ever
@espnW
Summit in NYC yesterday. One of our alums that works
@ESPN
,
@gbow_sportsmkt
, opened the door for our students to receive an invitation!
What makes
@SamfordU
such a unique place.... the sort of place that people gladly pour their whole life into?
Chief Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard
@JudgeDillard
of the Court of Appeals of Georgia in an interview published recently in the Georgia Bar Journal sums it up perfectly.
Outstanding Sports Analytics Senior
Congrats to AJ McInnis for being named top
#SportsAnalytics
senior thanks in part for the outstanding work he did for the Birmingham
@GleagueSquadron
. AJ has a bright future in
#BasketballAnalytics
Samford is the
#1
ranked university according to
@WSJ
for faculty/student engagement.
Scenes like this where a faculty member is mentoring students (in this case its Professor
@Mazzei_MJ
working with sports analytics students) are happening every day all over campus.
@SamfordU
When is the last time you got out of π before the π came up to go do sprints πββοΈ before heading to work?
Most fans have no idea what it takes to be a champion.
@SamfordU
student-athletes are a cut above!
These dedicated athletes start their day in the weight room or field
We are excited to welcome Mike Verlander,
President and CRO of Kyle Busch Motorsports, to speak to our sports marketing students today. He has faithfully served on the
@SamfordU
sports marketing advisory board for almost 10 years!
@NASCAR
@KyleBusch
@KBMteam
@speedwaydigest
.
@SamfordU
was honored to host 15 Atlanta
@Braves
executives on campus last week as part of our new mentorship program. We are so grateful to these executives for investing in the next generation of sports industry executives
"Essence of Leadership Is to Reproduce More Leaders"
Let the countdown begin!
97.5 hours until the Pete will be packed w/
@SamfordU
students returning from Christmas break ready to raise the roof for their 4 - 0 SoCon
@SamfordMBB
team.
Iβll be there
@Braves
executives & sports marketing advisory board members. Letβs sell it out!
Thankful to the
@SEC
for giving our
@SamfordU
@BrockBusiness
@SamfordSACenter
sports marketing & analytics undergraduate and MBA students the opportunity to collect data for a fan experience project at the SEC βΎοΈ Tournament this week.
Stat of the Day:
An analysis of 30 years of sports reporting in
@nytimes
finds 86.7% of all articles focus on menβs sports & male athletes, while just 5.2% focus on womenβs sports & female athletes.
Source
@SAGE_News
#EqualPay
#GenerationEquality
The Texas
@Rangers
is an amazing organization with top-notch people.
CASE IN POINT - On Tuesday morning at 6 am PT, Nick Richardson (VP of Ticket Retention & New Business Development with the Rangers), spoke to my sports marketing students via Zoom from his hotel room in
!! NFL Took Notice !!
Just got off a Zoom call with several front office executives of the Denver Broncos. First thing out of their mouthβ¦.
βWow your
@SamfordFootball
team shocked the football world against Florida on Saturdayβ!
#AllForSAMford
#GoBulldogs
@SamfordSports
Proud Dad Moment
My son just started as a chaplain @ UAB Hospital & is working w/ COVID & Cardiology patients.
Amazingly, when he was 24 hours old, UAB performed life-saving heart surgery on him!
#FullCircle
Here is the rest of the story
#Romans828
Back at work on
@SamfordU
campus for the first time since March.
For some reason Iβm having a strong urge to find a horse and chase down a train π
Excited to announce the addition of seven new members of the Samford University Brock School of Business Sports Marketing Advisory Board including:
Grace Bowes - Head of Brand Marketing and Communications at Mercedes-Benz USA;
Chris ClementsΒ β Senior Vice President, Chief
Check out this awesome
@LUFC
afghan blanket that my wife made for me to celebrate Leeds promotion.
#LaborOfLove
I've been a fan since 2005 when we visited
@EllandRoad
on a trip to England. The people we interacted w/
@LUFC
went to great lengths to make us feel welcome & honored.
What a HUGE win for
@LUFC
in their quest for promotion to the
#EPL
.
They almost kicked me out of the coffee shop I am using to stream the game at the beach on vacation in Florida when I started screaming GOAL!!!! They don't come any bigger than that one!
#MOT
#LUFC