Coach Yow's Legacy and Light

When I checked gopack.com Saturday morning alongside the story about Coach Kay Yow's death was an advertisement for her Hoops for Hope game on February 15th. At first it seemed inappropriate…wish someone would pull the ad…but no…Coach’s courageous battle with cancer and that basketball game stand together.

That was reinforced a couple of hours later when the mail arrived. There was a flyer for the game in our Time Warner bill. Hoops for Hope was everywhere I turned, and I’m confident Coach Yow wants it that way.

Brian Asbill, General Manager of Wolfpack Sports Marketing, remembers the inaugural Hoops for Hope:

When we first proposed the idea for the game, we didn't know if Coach Yow would want to put herself out there as the face of this disease when she had so many battles to fight on her own. Most people want to quietly fight these battles far from the limelight but Coach Yow never hesitated. I'll always remember Coach Yow telling me that she had been searching for some way to "give back" and she felt this game would be a way she could give hope to others who were fighting their own battles. She felt the name of the event said it all..."Hoops for Hope." Its purpose was to share hope for a better tomorrow, for more research, more education and hope for a cure.

So many things eventually developed from those early days of "Hoops for Hope". Kay's former players embraced it and took it to another level by suggesting to the WBCA that this should be a nationwide cause supported by schools all across the USA. That led to ESPN's involvement and more than 900 schools conducting events at games to raise funds for breast cancer programs. From that nationwide initiative came the Kay Yow WBCA Cancer Fund, which will ultimately be Coach Yow's lasting legacy.

Some times we can easily forget that just one simple action can make such a difference. Fortunately for us and many others, Kay Yow knew that all along....  

Indeed, Coach Yow is a legendary basketball coach, but her charisma was a captivating combination of her gifts and values. She was a competitor and motivator. A caring, loyal person. A truly gracious human being. A woman of great faith. A hoops luminary whose legacy even eclipses the game she so loved. And everyone loves Coach Yow!

More on Coach Yow at www.wralsportsfan.com

and www.gopack.com

Go for the Gold!

Olympic contenders have much to teach us about navigating the recession. 

It’s an ATTITUDE + INTELLECT = SUCCESS sort of equation.

Our company recently held its annual sales awards luncheon that featured a panel of local Olympians. We were inspired by:

Jim Murray
Luge - '68 @ Grenoble, '72 @ Sapporo, '76 @ Innsbruck
Chairs NC Society of Olympians
Pinehurst realtor

Nadine Faustin-Parker
Hurdles (competing for Haiti) '00 @ Sydney, '04 @ Athens, '08 @ Beijing
UNC's director of track and field operations/admin

Karen Shelton
Field Hockey - '84 @ LA
UNC's head women’s field hockey coach

                                               (from left: Murray, Faustin-Parker, Shelton)

PASSION
Karen says successful people have a passion for what they do.

Quoting Confucius: “Choose a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.”

“Train your attitude…view challenges as opportunities...push yourself…Bring it on!”


PERSEVERANCE
Nadine suffered a stress fracture training for the Beijing games.

“I had to sit out and not train…watch my competitors get better…but I kept pushing and fighting…whatever I could do to stay in shape.”

“Be in the moment…don’t let other people discourage you…never give up.”


Still, it takes more than emotion and force of will. You must be resourceful:

STRATEGY
Jim says you have to find a way around your challenges. Look for a new approach.

Regarding the economy: “There’s a big barrier out there, but everybody else has that problem, too. Find a different way to do things. Don’t think this is the way we’ve always done it."

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Thanks to my co-worker Andrea Osborne for sharing the photo and her notes.

Durham Renaissance

Downtown Durham’s revival is a thing to behold.

When I began working at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park nine years ago it was a lonely place in the off-season. Our neighbors were the abandoned, seedy Lucky Strike factory and the City’s bus depot, an urban eyesore. Thousands of pigeons resided in the abandoned mill, and they routinely "bombed" the ballpark (if you get my drift.) Homeless folks would knock on my Blackwell St. window soliciting support, and I usually drove a couple of miles to Subway for lunch.

What a transformation in under a decade! The old tobacco factory is now the American Tobacco Historic District, a campus of about fifty companies with three thousand employees, five restaurants and loft apartments. The bus lot is the brand spankin’ new Durham Performing Arts Center.

The City of Durham placed a controversial bet in the early 1990’s when it decided to build our $16 million ballpark. (The DBAP opened in 1995.) Over time, however, the Bulls’ success emboldened City leaders to make an even greater public investment in downtown that helped to engender this remarkable revival.

Downtown Durham Inc. keeps a running total on the public investment that’s currently pegged at $315 million, and those taxpayer dollars have been leveraged to produce $820 million in private investment - over a billion dollars!

The new

Durham Performing

Arts Center...or DPAC

DDI has gathered some data on the center city from 1992-93 (when the ballpark was being hotly debated) and compared it to 2008:

• Tax base: $124 million to $500 million
• Employment: 3,800 to 14,500
• Commercial space: 1 million sq feet to 2.8 million
• Visitors: 1 million to 1.7 million
• Residential units: 100 to 900
• City dwellers: 160 to 1400

And there are accolades to go with the DDI stats:

Durham’s Downtown named one of the Top 15 Up and Coming Neighborhoods by Business Week

#1 Foodiest Small Town in America by Bon Appetit

#1 Best Place to Retire by Black Enterprise

#3 Best Green City by Lifestyle

...and finally, another Business Week recognition that I’m really counting on:

#3 Best City to Ride Out a Recession

You are cordially invited to visit us at the American Tobacco Historic District and Downtown Durham!

The courtyard

at the American Tobacco Campus

& the Old Bull River...or ATC

Repairing the World

I’m a Meals on Wheels volunteer in Durham. I take an early lunch on Fridays and take dinner (the southerner’s idiom) to ten homes. It’s a sixty to ninety minute commitment each week. My route is comprised of elderly or convalescing folks. They get a hot meal and have someone to check on them each day. It’s a wonderful service for over 200 people in the Bull City. And as the saying goes, “you get more than you give.” There’s more on that topic below, but my main point is about Christmas...or maybe it’s Chanukah.

Meals on Wheels is closed on major holidays; that includes Christmas. In Durham, while the staff and volunteer core get a break, a Jewish congregation has stepped up to cover the holiday meal. Judea Reform Congregation on West Cornwallis Road has volunteered to prepare and deliver meals on Christmas Day.

That seems profoundly ecumenical to me.

And their motivation is instructive and inspiring. From JRC’s web site:

At the heart of our social action work is a commitment to bring into practice the core social justice values of Judaism and to pursue tikkun olam - repairing the world - through individual and group action.

Indeed, the world needs considerable repair. Our shared Holy Scripture speaks to that in Psalm 82:

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;
maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.
Rescue the weak and needy…

Let’s commit to some repair work in 2009. You don't have to take on an entire continent. Start small. Take a meal to someone each week in your own community.

Meals on Wheels is just a click away.

Best wishes for Christmas,
Chanukah and 2009.
(December 21st - 29th)

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Click here to view WRAL TV5's Christmas Day story on Judea Reform Congregation.

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I wrote this about Meals on Wheels for Triangle United Way a few years ago:

I do an MOW route every week in Durham. It takes a little over an hour. I typically deliver to ten homes. It has helped me learn about every corner of Durham, and it takes me out of my “corporate comfort zone.” I think that’s a good thing.

It’s so much more than just delivering a meal. I see the problems “old folks” face who are determined to remain in their homes. I get to practice “patience” waiting at the door for people using walkers or trying to converse with someone who has pretty much lost their hearing. I’ve watched families deal with Alzheimer’s. I get a snapshot of urban poverty. And I’ve been inspired by the faith of several seniors in their struggles with terminal cancer.

I may not have painted a pretty picture, but I assure you I get much more than I give from that simple act of delivering a meal. I’ve thought about making it mandatory for my managers. Everyone could spare a lunch hour for this experience. More business folks could squeeze this into their weekly routine!

Dissertation: The Psychography of FANatics

In my last post I wrote about our sports-talk radio station (99.9 fm - The Fan) and sports website (wralsportsfan.com). In this dispatch I want to explain why sports is so important to Capitol Broadcasting Co., and it goes beyond my personal fandom. The Triangle is sports crazy! A professor of marketing might say this represents a significant psychographic of our community.

This fall Sporting News magazine ranked Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill as the 24th best sports market in America. That’s pretty remarkable considering we have only one major league team, the NHL Carolina Hurricanes. (And I’m obliged to plug our own Durham Bulls - the most famous and among the best attended minor league teams in the nation.) But the truly remarkable feature of our community is the three universities affiliated with the Atlantic Coast Conference. Three major institutions. Three major NCAA Division I sports programs - in one market.

The University of NC, Duke and NC State University enroll thousands of students, maintain strong alumni associations and are among North Carolina’s largest employers.

72,000 students are enrolled in the three universities that employ more than 80,000 people. Fold in the local membership of booster clubs and alumni associations and more than a quarter of a million people maintain strong associations with one of the three schools.


More than 1.7 million people will attend a college sporting event in the Triangle this year. That’s like relocating a mid-tier NFL, NBA and MLS franchise to the Raleigh-Durham market.

I repeat: The Triangle is sports crazy - a great sports market!

More evidence: We engaged the Raleigh-based communications firm French West Vaughan to measure ACC fanaticism. Like a sports anthropologist, FWV combed through myriad cultural relics, ie, the firm reviewed television viewership across ACC markets in the Southeast. The Triangle shows clear dominance in terms of household ratings. According to Nielsen research data, the year-over-year household ratings for ACC sports in the Triangle market outpace the ratings in Charlotte, Atlanta and Washington DC combined.

The affinity for college basketball in the Triangle is well known nationwide, but how does the fanaticism of RDU rivalries compare to local competition in other parts of the country? French West Vaughan examined Nielsen data for four big rivalry games in different regions, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Cincinnati. The Duke vs. UNC game pulled a 23.1 household rating in Raleigh-Durham. The next highest game measured was Cincinnati vs. Xavier with a 10.1 rating in Cincinnati. UCLA vs. USC carried a 2.2 rating in Los Angeles. In Atlanta, the GA Tech vs. UGA rivalry only received a 0.3 household rating.

Did I fail to mention: The Triangle is sports crazy!?! And Capitol has it covered: Radio - TV - Web - Mobile...with marketing opportunities across the entire platform. Shoot me an e-mail. I've got more info for you on our Sportsfan Marketing Group. 

ESPN Radio Teams Up with 99.9 fm/The Fan

We’ve teamed up with the sports juggernaut, ESPN, “the Worldwide Leader in Sports.” On Monday, December 1st at 6am, our sports-talk station, 99.9 FM The Fan, became ESPN Radio’s Triangle affiliate.

ESPN’s top talent, high profile guests, analysis, reporting and play-by-play will compliment our afternoon local shows and Carolina Hurricanes coverage. The affiliation gives The Fan access to ESPN’s college hoops luminaries like Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis and Dickie V - fuel for the hardwood fire that gets us through the winter in these parts.

With ESPN we add MLB and NBA play-by-play to The Fan’s line-up. With our existing Westwood One affiliation we have the NFL and college football and basketball. What a package!

On the web we have redesigned and renamed our sports web site – wralsportsfan.com.

Breaking sports news. Radio interviews from The Fan. Video from the WRAL TV5 Sports Department. This is THE website for your on-demand sports fix. Listen to a compelling radio interview while you check your e-mail, read an insider’s blog or view an endless menu of video clips from coaches and players.

Have you bookmarked wralsportsfan.com?

99.9 fm. Is it one of your presets?

Thanks. We appreciate your patronage.

Jim Mills - Extra Innings

The Durham Bulls have a rich history dating back to 1902, but there are some gaps in the time-line. Play was suspended during World War I, the Depression and during much of the 1970s. WWI and the 30s – that makes sense – but what happened in the 70s?

Rusty Staub, Joe Morgan and Greg Luzinski played for Durham in the 1960s, but the team was on life support by the end of the decade. In 1968 the Durham and Raleigh teams merged. This early attempt at “regionalism” was a bust. The team folded in 1971 running a newspaper ad inviting its paltry fan base to “the final game in a long, disastrous, just plain awful season.” That is truth in advertising!

The baseball landscape was not a pretty picture in our region - no local baseball and the Carolina League had downsized to only four teams.

...and that brings me to Jim Mills, the former Carolina League President who passed away on November 14th at eighty-nine. He had much to do with the Bulls' renaissance.

Jim worked aggressively to expand the CL to eight teams. As part of that plan he aided and abetted the Bulls' return to Durham. Entrepreneur Miles Wolff deserves full credit for reviving the team in 1980 as a Atlanta Braves affiliate, but Jim was a behind-the-scenes force lending expertise and credibility to all aspects of the resurrection. The CL was taking in a new team, the Braves were adding a farm club and the City of Durham had to be persuaded to fix up the old Durham Athletic Park. Jim worked alongside Miles to get all of that done. Jim was his bench coach. And what an outstanding outcome: the Carolina League is considered the premier single-A league and the Bulls are the most renowned club in the minors.

Later in his career Jim worked in the Bulls' front office. He was a fixture at the DAP, and he served as consultant to Capitol Broadcasting Co. when we purchased the team in 1991. In retirement, he visited us each summer in the new ballpark, and we enjoyed his company.

Please read Jim's obituary and this news story. He's in the NC Sports Hall of Fame and NC High School Athletic Association’s HOF.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Jim's wife of sixty-three years, Flossie, and their family. He lived a full and interesting life. I'm thankful the Lord gave him extra innings!

(Jim & Flossie at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, circa 2003)