Friday, May 14, 2010

5th Annual Pac 10 Equipment Managers Meeting

Well, today I am wrapping up all last minute things for our Pac 10 Equipment Managers Meeting which will be held at Thomas and Mack on the UNLV campus next Monday through Wednesday. This will be our Fifth Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

All the school will be present, with the exception of Cal. Something came up just this week, and now they will not be able to make it.

We have a GREAT line-up of workshops while we are there. The Pac 10 office will send 3 people to address our group about logo placement and the entire branding program of our conference with the new leadership of our new commissioner, Larry Scott. His new leadership is exciting, and we are fortunate that they will come and share with us about his and their vision for the conference, and how we can help promote it.

The operations manager for the LA Coliseum is coming to address situations that come up from time to time for visiting teams to their stadium. Their set up is unique, much like UCLA's at the Rose Bowl. We are very lucky to have them send Rod Joyner to help each of us with questions and problems we have when we visit the Coliseum.

Once again we will have Riddell there to go over helmet and shoulder pad protection. There is much going on in the helmet industry, and in addition to Riddell presenting their leadership, we will have a round table discussion of all the new helmets coming to the market place. I am really looking forward to good discussion on this topic.

We have other workshops planned as well. We will finish off the meetings with golf on Tuesday afternoon. That is always a fun event, with some very high numbers.

The best part of the meeting is getting together with all of the other schools equipment managers. Each of us work hard to help one another during the season when we visit each others schools. Having a great relationship with one another is key in getting things done. We all get along very well and are all willing to help each other.

I hope to have some pictures and notes from the meeting when I return from the meetings.

Have a GREAT weekend.

Friday, May 7, 2010

ROGER, ROGER!!!

There are only a handful of companies that manufacture outdoor field equipment for football, but Rogers Athletics is number one! Not only is Rogers the equipment that all the programs go for, we all want to work with John Green.

John is one of those rare people (like JT Galloway, University of Colorado Equipment Manager) that has no enemies! To know John is to love him. He has that unique quality in a salesman that he makes each of his MANY satisfied customers feel like they are the biggest and best customer he has.

John is always on the road doing exhibits for Rogers during the year, but he is still easy to get hold of. You see, he also works hard! Because he is on the road doing shows so much, he doesn't get around to schools as much as he would like; but recently he made a trip to see us here at UofA.

Any equipment manager you talk to will tell you that John is the BEST! We felt very honored to have him as our guest. I recently called John, just to get his expert opinion on something we were wanting to do out on our renovated practice field, and because he was doing work in Phoenix, and even though he didn't have the bid for the job, he still drove down to take a look at our project in progress to see if he could help any further. See what I mean? He is a GREAT guy!

Thanks John, for all that you do! Not just for us at UofA, but for everyone in our business!