NCAA Football Inks Deal for Buzz Manager Online Monitoring Service
(Sports Media Challenge’s interactive service will listen to online fan conversations in chat rooms, social networking sites and blogs to measure their passion for NCAA Football)

Charlotte, NC - August 17, 2006 - NCAA Football has enlisted the services of Sports Media Challenge and it’s leading-edge Internet monitoring service Buzz Manager™ to mine, monitor and analyze online Fan-Generated Media™. Throughout the season and through the help of Buzz Manager, NCAA Football will listen to what fans are saying about the college game to broaden and strengthen its base with people of all ages.

After nearly a year of beta testing, SMC has launched its eMonitor service to help sports organizations, high profile individuals and sponsors that spend billions of dollars annually on sports marketing, to better read and appeal to its notably passionate fans. In fact, they’re so passionate that Hessert has coined the term, Fan-Generated Media™ (FGM). “FGM” encompasses all sports-related online word-of-mouth content on message boards, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites and other unaided online conversations.

Fans can be found everywhere and while the “displaced fan” is often the norm, no matter where fans are geographically, they can participate as vibrant members of tight knit Internet communities regularly chugging a virtual beer and arguing about they’re favorite team. When they do, the eMonitor proprietary search engine picks up those virtual conversations then turns the content over to a team of sports PR and marketing analysts to decipher the relevant information from millions of sports blogs and other Internet sites. The results are subsequently collated in a proprietary Executive Dashboard Report, to provide clients cogent, timely insights and valuable business intelligence.

Buzz Manager, designed specifically for the sports, entertainment and lifestyle marketplaces, is an online business intelligence tool to protect and enhance sports brands. In conjunction with Sports Media Challenge’s proprietary search engine, expert analysts who understand the nuance of sports will track and analyze the NCAA Football brand and relevant issues across the Internet for PR, marketing and sponsorship purposes.

“Our focus is to increase interest in the game through targeted grassroots, promotional and interactive programs,” said NCAA Football Executive David Bertram. “Sports Media Challenge is well-known and respected in the college sports arena. Through Buzz Manager and their other leading-edge online initiatives we’ll get a unique and valuable window to our fans.”

Buzz Manager provides quantitative and qualitative results enabling clients to measure brand resonance in the marketplace. The Buzz Manager service collects, archives and analyzes relevant data drawn from millions of online word of mouth comments from thousands of fan forums, blogs, discussions and social networking sites then analyze them for the Executive Dashboard Report. The Report available online or delivered to PDA’s or via e-mail detail the real-time Buzz Rating, Exposure Rating and Trends. “We’re taking the pulse of NCAA Football,” said Sports Media Challenge President, Kathleen Hessert. “We know sports. And through our Buzz Manager service we’ll be able to determine who’s talking about the game, where they’re talking, what issues they care about most, and how passionate those fans are.”

Buzz Manager tracks mentions in Fan Generated Media™ as well as mainstream media and differentiates between the two for clear comparison. The service provides actionable information for sports organizations and advertisers to make better informed decisions about their brands.

In addition to monitoring the overall NCAA Football brand, the service will also track sub-brands like the launch of the exciting new NCAA Football Mobile service. The free service will provide up to the minute scores, highlights and news throughout the season.

“College Football fans are the most loyal in all of sports and our services will enable NCAA Football to measure what fans are saying about college football, its programs, events and products,” said Hessert. “The NCAA Football alliance is aggressively developing promotional and marketing initiatives to tap into fan passions and we’re thrilled to be associated with this exciting brand.”

On August 31st, Sports Media Challenge will also launch the first-ever NCAA Football blog to provide a platform for fans to celebrate the game, learn about upcoming events, programs and to engage them in online discussions about the NCAA Football brand. Guest celebrity bloggers will include among others, University of Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis, Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee as well as the coach of the reigning national champions, Texas’ Mack Brown.

“A blog is a great resource to engage fans and identify evangelists who will help further promote the game.” said Hessert. Online word of mouth is built around community and passion which is precisely what drives NCAA football.” The official NCAA Football blog will be accessible from the homepage of www.ncaafootball.com as of August 31st.

About Sports Media Challenge www.sportsmediachallenge.com

Since 1988, Sports Media Challenge and President Kathleen Hessert have helped more than 100 leading university athletic departments, professional leagues, teams and world-class sports personalities protect and enhance their brands through strategic communications, consulting and training. A sampling of SMC’s clients over the years include: The Universities of Texas, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Stanford, NACDA, ESPN, NFL, PGA TOUR, MLB, NASCAR and NBA teams as well as NFL MVP Peyton Manning, Yankees Captain Derek Jeter, NBA great Shaquille O’Neal, and NASCAR’s Kasey Kahne. SMC President Kathleen Hessert has also worked extensively with the AFCA. SMC will be hosting a series of NACDA sponsored Webinars on Internet Buzz and the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing in the fall of 2006. Sports Media Challenge is an active member of WOMMA (The Word of Mouth Marketing Association).

For further media inquiries, please contact:
Harold Kaufman at (504) 952-2036 or hkaufman@sportsmediachallenge.com
Kathleen Hessert (704) 906-3600 or
Alison Reese, NCAA Football (859) 226-4349