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Resources for Athletes – Part 2

In a previous article I wrote about two valuable resources that professional athletes can use to manage and improve their lives. In this Part 2 article, I’ll focus on Fan Inc., a new resource that helps former NCAA injured athletes receive the medical attention they deserve and I’ll also dive further into Sportsdrive to see how their high tech development tool helps athletes reach their highest potential possible.

FAN, Inc. Foundation for Athletes in Need – We see the glory of athletes when they’re “in the zone” and hitting their game like a Trojan. We see the sweet victories and think to ourselves, “what an exciting life.” What we often don’t see is the chronic physical pain many athletes endure for years after they’re finished playing.

Steve Strinko, former NCAA middle linebacker for Michigan State founded FAN, Inc. in response to experiencing his own post-career medical issues and also seeing a serious gap in services for former student athletes who have been injured while participating in a NCAA sanctioned sport.

FAN’s mission statement succinctly states, “To provide financial assistance to qualified former student athletes who are experiencing hardships related to an injury incurred while participating in an NCAA sanctioned activity.” FAN, Inc.’s goal is to assist under- and uninsured individuals in obtaining relevant, professional medical services.

As a grassroots effort, FAN is currently determining the extent of the problem. If you have knowledge of a former NCAA athlete with sports-related injuries who needs medical attention but is unable to secure care due to financial constraints, please visit the website and send Steve an email.

A Twitter Guide to the 2010-11 NFL Season

The 2010 NFL season is quickly approaching. The preseason is already under way, and the regular season begins on Thursday, September 9th, with the Minnesota Vikings visiting the New Orleans Saints in a rematch of last year’s NFC Championship game. I love baseball and I’m a huge basketball fan as well. In fact, I really enjoy watching most sports. But there’s nothing like sitting on your couch on a Sunday afternoon with a couple of buddies, and a table full of junk food and beer, and watching nine straight hours of hard-hitting football.

So, why am I writing this article? Why a Twitter Guide? Twitter has become the best platform for up-to-the minute news and analysis in most arenas. If you want to stay on top of… anything you care about, Twitter is the place to do it (especially with “fast follow”). I’ll list a number of my favorite NFL-related accounts with a brief reason as to why they’re worth following. Enjoy!

Top Brands Dive into Sports Sponsorships

We have teamed up with Ben Sturner and his extraordinary crew at Leverage Agency to bring you the top five movers and shakers each week in the world of sports sponsorships and marketing.

American Eagle’s Sponsorship Program Takes Flight
Joining the growing number of apparel brands sponsoring to build visibility, gain differentiation and drive retail traffic, American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. is expanding its use of the medium. Looking to make a stronger connection with its 15-to-25-year-old target, AEO recently announced a three-year partnership with collegiate athletics’ Big East Conference, around which it will present the men’s and women’s basketball championships.

Munich 2018 bid announces Allianz as new partner
Global financial services provider Allianz was yesterday unveiled as the latest partner to support Munich’s bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in 2018.

Beckham, Thanks For The Memories

I’ll warn you now this isn’t one of my typical articles, if you’d like to read about how sports can utilise social media, I’m sorry to disappoint you (this time), but I feel sometimes we need to take a step back from social media and remember exactly why it is we love sport so much. This is simply an article to say thank you to a sporting icon and a true England legend.

Growing up in England, football was my first love and David Beckham was my first sporting idol. Last night it seems Fabio Capello called time on Beckham’s extraordinary England career when he said “I thank [David] very much for helping me at the World Cup but probably he is a little bit old.”

Even though Beckham has always come back stronger whenever he’s faced adversity or been dropped in the past, even as his biggest fan, I would admit that it’s hard to see him coming back this time.

Beckham though, will never quit on England and give up a chance to play for his country.During an interview with BBC Sport in July he said; “I’m not ready to step aside. If I don’t get picked for England again then I’m very proud of my record, 100 starts and 115 games. I’m very proud of that but I still believe I have a part to play. I take each day, week, month and year as it comes. Like I say, I never want to step down from playing for my country.”

Interview with Emily Edison On How To Get A Job In Sports

Voice of the Box recently interviewed University of Washington athletic department nutritionist Emily Edison about her role and how she got her start in the industry. Emily also shared her insight on what it takes to break into a career within the sports industry.

The Rise of Marucci Sports

In 2002, two former LSU athletes were rehabbing their recent injuries with Jack Marucci back in Baton Rouge the topic of conversation turned towards Marucci’s recent hobby. This hobby eventually led Eduardo Perez of the St. Louis Cardinals to do something no one else had done yet in Major League Baseball history. By taking a different approach to the business and providing a higher quality product to the market, Marucci helped create a whole new ballgame.

Jack Marucci, the Head Athletic Trainer at Louisiana State University first started perfecting the craft of hand-made wooden baseball bats as a hobby, originally making them for his son. As the two former LSU athletes, Kurt Ainsworth and Joe Lawrence, rehabbed, they spoke of what to do after their professional MLB careers. Marucci’s hand crafted bats became that future. By 2003, the focus on detail and quality craftsmanship to ensure every hand crafted bat was a ‘gamer’ brought them into ‘on deck’ circles and into the batter’s box.

Kurt Ainsworth was a former LSU All-American and 1st Round draft pick by the San Francisco Giants. He also played on the Gold Medal winning Olympic team in 2000. Joe Lawrence was a former USA Today high school All-American and played professionally for the Toronto Blue Jays. After 8 years in professional baseball Joe returned to LSU to play football.

4th and Long

A football team in a 4th and long position is poised to make something out of nothing. To attempt a play in a 4th and long position is a long shot…a slim chance. Sometimes a team will go for it when there’s no other choice – time is running out and this is their last chance to score.

Sometimes coaches will go for it on a 4th and long early in the game because they either see a big opportunity right now or they think they’ll have sufficient time to recover if it doesn’t go well. No matter what, it’s usually a very risky proposition to go for it on a fourth down.

Relationships Key to Fund Raising

(This is a guest article by Dan Westervelt)

There are many reasons why golf fund raising events fail, but without this one element being present, the chances of survival are almost nil. It is the reason why sponsors decide to support, golfers decide to play and volunteers decide they want to serve your cause. In a word, it is relationships.

The three main components of the human side of a tournament are golfers, sponsors and volunteers. All three are readily available to you if you have a relationship and it is strong enough to justify their participation. Obviously a close friendship is the best but a consistent trade association between a client and vendor are of about the same weight.

As with any relationship, it must be respected, so approach this solicitation as though you were asking permission to do something beneficial for a family member. While you need to be sure to have all the reasons ‘why’ addressed, spend even more time getting ready for the ‘why not’s?’.

Listen carefully to all the objections you hear. These are really just road maps to where you’d like the conversation to end, that is a “yes, I’ll do it”. These are the hesitations, stalls and questions you must address successfully to get them there. In my view, they are the most important part of the sales conversation as they determine both the tone and content of your reply as well as the overall result.

Alex Rodriguez and the Asterisk

Yesterday, Alex Rodriguez became the youngest player in Major League Baseball history to hit 600 home runs, only the 7th ever to hit that milestone… Finally (A-Rod had gone 46 at-bats after his 599th home run before breaking the 600 mark). At 35 years and 8 days old, Rodriguez beat Babe Ruth to number 600 by just over a year and a half. And to reach a milestone that only seven players have ever reached over the course of more than a century is absolutely amazing. However, the big home run wasn’t nearly the event it could or should have been, because of A-Rod’s 2009 admission that he took performance enhancing drugs.

Interview with Tyler Johnson

Tyler has written a number of articles for SportsNetworker over the last year including the Top 100 Ways to use Social Media in Sports and the influence of LinkedIn Groups. We wanted to take a deeper look at how he personally uses social media and how it pertains to the sports industry on a daily basis.

Sports Clubs, Do You Know Your Audience?

(This is a guest post by Daniel McLaren)

When talking to people about their social media plans, most will talk about Facebook and Twitter. Yes, these are the most popular platforms and we are all aware that Facebook has recently topped the 500 million mark.

But is this the right audience for your team?

Taking a step back from the technology and looking at who your target audience is and where they hanging out is the first step that any organization should take. You may be surprised with the results and it will certainly impact on your plans.

Protecting the Dream by any Means Necessary

In the old days of football, receivers used a substance called Stick-Em, a sappy concoction that would make the ball stick to their hands, allowing them to make one-handed catches easily. These days, possession receivers will sometimes wear gloves that have sticky palms so when a leather ball on a dry day hits them, the ball sticks on the glove, making it easier to catch.

Coaches are always admonishing players to protect the ball by any means necessary. We’ve all seen the horrifying plays when a great pass is intercepted by the opposing team. Or maybe when a running back is not protecting the ball well and it’s stripped away from him in an instant.

It’s the same thing with your dreams. The ball represents your dreams and when you watch a football game, it should remind you to protect your dreams by any means necessary because you see what can happen when you lose the ball.

Let’s face it. It’s exciting to birth a new vision or dream and by nurturing it and feeding it, we watch it grow and develop, just as we would a child. It’s ours and it’s special.

Sports Business Weekly Buzz

Euroleague Basketball signs first-ever title sponsor

Europe’s main club basketball competition is going to be renamed Turkish Airlines Euroleague Basketball after a ground-breaking sponsorship agreement signed by the airline and the league.

Tim Tebow Gets Chance To Take On Michael Jordan

Jockey announced the signing of Tim Tebow to a multi-year endorsement deal to endorse its line of products, including what it calls its new “Staycool” collection, which will hit stores in the spring of next year.
It’s the brand’s biggest sports endorser since the company signed Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer to start posing in briefs exactly 30 years ago.
TaylorMade-Adidas Pits Two to Twitter Way Into a Job

How far would you go for a job? Would you eat a bug or wash an elephant? Both those challenges were presented to two contenders for the title of social-media catalyst at golf juggernaut TaylorMade-Adidas. To test the social-media mettle of its two finalists, the company dispensed with round-robin interviews and luncheons and dispatched them on the ultimate job tryout: a 50-day, nine-country golfing trip chronicled on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Along the way, the contenders must respond to interactive challenges that include everything from creating a viral commercial to participating in user-generated contests — such as eating a bug or washing an elephant on their most recent stop in Thailand.

Want to Score in Sports? Create a Connection

And few people are more qualified to make sense of this turbulent and fascinating year than Michael Levine, co-head of CAA Sports since 2007. Mr. Levine leads a unit that not only represents more than 500 of the world’s most famous athletes, but is also active in the areas of corporate marketing, broadcast rights and sports-property sponsorship sales. Ad Age recently caught up with Mr. Levine for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the sports world.

Baseball Fans Sidetracked

While Major League Baseball diehards were tuned into each of their favorite teams’ games during everything from LeBron-athon to World Cup soccer, and especially their all-star game, it wasn’t easy for it to hold the attention of the masses according to W. Scott Bailey in the San Antonio Business Journal.

It was reported that Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, broadcast by FOX, received a 7.5 Nielsen rating which makes it as the least watched Midsummer Classic in history.

My initial thought as we head toward the start of National Football League training camps: is there any sport or off-season activity that would distract NFL fans from their season?

Is baseball officially not America’s Pastime anymore? We’ve long heard that professional baseball television ratings pale compared to the NFL and even the NBA, much of the latter which is broadcast on cable outlets. But a scripted special about where an NBA free agent is going to play next and – soccer?

How Mental Imagery Helps Athletes Succeed

What is Mental Imagery?

Classically, mental imagery has been defined as:
The ability to form mental images of things or events
By repeatedly calling up images in your mind and rewiring the circuits of your mind toward a realization of those images. The remarkable feature of imagery work is that it can be accompanied by physiological changes.
Experience that resembles perceptual experience, but which occurs in the absence of the appropriate stimuli for the relevant perception.
Involves focusing your mind to visualize yourself in a certain situation and doing well in that situation.
A cognitive psychological skill in which the athlete uses all the senses to create a mental experience of an athletic performance

Pro-Athlete Bloggers

One of the first posts I ever wrote for SportsNetworker was about Gilbert Arenas, the true pioneer of the social media space for professional athletes. Shaq gets the credit for being the one who led the way, because of his use of Twitter, but Gilbert was in the space first. And Gilbert was a blogger! Forget Shaq writing 140-character tweets in 2008, Gilbert was writing blog posts that consisted of hundreds if not thousands of words… two years earlier!

Anyway, this post is not about Shaq or Gilbert Arenas or anyone you’ve likely heard of before. This post is about Swedish professional golfer Alex Noren and minor league baseball player Matt Antonelli. Why? They’re both professional athletes and outstanding bloggers. We focus so much on Facebook & Twitter as the tools athletes should be utilizing, but let’s not forget the power of the blog.

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