[NU Sports] "Persa Strong" Campaign

[Jason Morris]

Gentlemen,

Thanks for the feedback on my "Persa Strong" post. You've all made excellent arguments as to why such efforts should be seen in a positive light. I shall temper any future comments if, next summer, the NU Athletic Department gifts sportswriters across the country with a "Heisman Kaindidate" or "Heisman HurriKain" campaign.

Jason Morris
Riverdale, MD 20737
Northwestern University, BS Speech 1997
litnhop at mac.com


On Dec 2, 2011, at 11:27 AM, Roy S. Lamberton wrote:

> FWIW - the guy who came up with "Persa Strong" at NU just got promoted.
> 
> [but I can't find the link to the story on NUSports]
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On Behalf Of
> Jonathan Hodges
> Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 10:07 AM
> To: Jason Morris
> Cc: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: Re: [NU Sports] "Persa Strong" Campaign
> 
> 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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