[NU Sports] "Persa Strong" Campaign

[Jonathan Hodges]

While the campaign clearly didn't work out so well with respect to Persa's
health, I am in the crowd that considers it a GOOD investment by the
university.  The real purposes were to promote Northwestern football and to
show recruits that NU is willing to hype its good players.  I believe it
succeeded on both of those fronts: those dumbbells had journalists across
the nation talking about NU football in early August despite the fact that
most of those same people were predicting NU to finish in the bottom half
of the conference standings.  And the campaign showed that NU is willing to
promote its players, something its rarely/never done (the only one I
remember is calling Damien Anderson a "Heisman candidate" on some posters
and pocket schedules back in 2001), and that will help recruiting down the
road.

I also can't fault NU for their timing: Persa experienced a setback in the
June/July timeframe which only came out well into the season, but the
campaign was drawn up back in April/May when he was on track.

Finally, it's not like Persa didn't perform when he did play, in Big Ten
play (regular season conference games only), he led the league in passing
yards/game (223.9), completion percentage (73.7%, which also leads the
nation), passing yards (1,791), completions (168), and is 2nd in passing
efficiency (154.1).  He's one of the most accurate college football
quarterbacks ever, and he deserves a little publicity.

Jonathan

--
Jonathan Hodges
Contributor, HailToPurple
Web: http://www.hailtopurple.com/jhodges/
Twitter: @hailtopurple
Email: j-hodges at alumni.northwestern.edu



On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Jason Morris <litnhop at mac.com> wrote:

> For those of you who thought, myself included, the whole "Persa Strong"
> campaign (no offense to Dan Persa himself) was more than a bit out of
> character for the NU Athletic Department take a look at this excerpt from
> one of Pat Forde's contributions on Yahoo Sports earlier this week (
> http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=pf-forde_yard_dash_awards_112911
> ):
>
> "Unwise Expenditure of the Year: Northwestern (11), which ambitiously
> shelled out for purple dumb bells to be sent to Heisman voters before the
> season to hype quarterback Dan Persa. Problem was, Persa’s recovery from a
> 2010 Achilles tendon tear took longer than expected – he missed the
> Wildcats’ first three games and the team lurched to a 2-5 start. On the
> bright side, Northwestern at least gave flabby sports writers nationwide an
> opportunity to tone up their biceps."
>
>
>
> Jason Morris
> Riverdale, MD 20737
> Northwestern University, BS Speech 1997
> litnhop at mac.com
>
>
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