Finally googled "Urban Meyer" and "social media." This should end the debate and help everyone understand what we're up against.
Ohio State football: A deep dive into the expensive expansion of the Buckeyes recruiting department explains dominance
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/06/ohio_state_buckeyes_football_i_1.html
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OSU coach Urban Meyer has said recruiting is the "lifeblood of this program" a million times. He'll say it again the next time there's a microphone in his face. But now Ohio State is putting money where Meyer's mouth is by investing what will be millions of dollars the next few years. ...
Meyer has the reputation as one of most demanding coaches in college football, but even Meyer understands there are limits to what one person can do. So Ohio State invested in its recruiting department.
What was once a two-man recruiting staff of Pantoni and Greg Gillum in 2012
is now a 10-person staff. This has turned into an NFL-like operation.
Great recruiting leads to winning -- this, somehow, used to be a debate -- and Pantoni is pulling the strings. This GM can't draft players or sign free agents, but Pantoni can recruit. Now he has help.
The most recent addition came Sunday when Andre Robinson was hired as an assistant director of new and creative media.
The nine others, including Pantoni, earn salaries that add up to a combined $617,213.98, according to employment information obtained by cleveland.com. ...
"We're having tremendous recruiting success," Meyer said, "but we aren't doing it without that staff."
Seven years ago when Jim Tressel was the coach and Meyer was at Florida, the recruiting coordinator position was just assigned to one of the nine assistants. For Tressel, it used to be tight ends coach John Peterson.
Now you have GM Pantoni -- who has his fingers in everything from prospect communication to coaches' travel to visit itineraries to film breakdown -- and an entire team dedicated to film breakdown, videos, graphics, marketing and social media.
The recruiting department quadrupled in people and payouts.
Athletic director Gene Smith didn't even hesitate to pay up.
"You can have the greatest head coach and the greatest coordinator, but you know the old saying: 'Great players make great coaches,'" Smith said. "Understanding what was happening nationally, understanding just the way it's changing and the way young people pay attention, it was critical for us to have those people. ... I think it's important for us to look at where we are, see the future and put in place the infrastructure to support it."
Yes, Clemson has a top-notch creative team (from which Ohio State has learned); Michigan's Jim Harbaugh is pushing the limits with satellite camps, sleepovers and trips to Rome; and Alabama has more analysts than NASA. But this financial investment isn't the norm. Ohio State is pushing limits.
With its new staff, Ohio State's recruiting department has four points of emphasis. You can jump to later sections of the story by clicking the links below or you can just scroll through.
1. The staff breaks down film of every play of a prospect's career
2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
3. The staff still emphasizes traditional on-campus visits and the personal touch
4. The staff drives home that OSU's program is about life after football
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2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
If Pantoni wanted a recruiting graphic three years ago, he would have had to send an email to one of the three sports designers employed by the university. Their offices were not in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, but on the other side of Olentangy River Road in the Fawcett Center. He'd get them whenever they had time. There were only three designers for all 36 sports.
Three years ago, there was no
official Ohio State Football Twitter account. There were no videos. There were no graphics tailored to specific recruits. There was no marketing.
This is the area that's undergone the most change.
Now Ohio State football has an entire squad of smart, creative, ambitious and talented videographers and designers. The three names you have to know are Zach Swartz, Sammy Silverman and Kenton Stufflebeam.
"The area that's just changed so much is the creativity beast," Meyer said.
"I would be disappointed if we aren't the best in the country now. We definitely weren't a couple years ago."
Ohio State has a marketing plan for everything. Take Friday's career fair in Ohio Stadium for example: Swartz was walking around with a video camera recording players talking to employers and interviewing people to discuss how helpful the program is for life after football.
What do you think that turned into? A SnapChat story and a marketing video posted on Twitter.
Everything this graphics team does has a plan -- a constant, relentless and thorough sales pitch for Ohio State.
Silverman and Stufflebeam have had an endless supply of mind-bending concepts that nobody on Ohio State's staff -- not even Meyer or Pantoni -- could draft. Swartz, Stufflebeam and Silverman also interact with the coaching staff to get a better idea of how to personalize graphics for players.
There's an entire database dedicated to organizing information ranging from what career a player wants, to his favorite music or color. No detail gets left behind.
"When it comes to our personalized graphics, we don't always just want to send a kid a picture of him wearing an Ohio State jersey and holding a Heisman," Swartz said. "We want to really individualize these graphics and cater to exactly what they like. It's personal. We want to get to know them. If a kid wants to be a cop one day, we want to know that and build a graphic around it."
For example, taking the album cover
from the latest hip-hop album and turning it into a recruiting graphic. You may not get it, but prospects do.
Or how about selling Ohio State's NFL Draft success? Check out what they made for cornerback commit Sevyn Banks:
That's just one of the thousands of graphics these guys are releasing every month.
"It's invaluable," Pantoni said. "Kids are visual. ... The video, the graphics is what really gets their attention.
"What do they do all day? The same thing we do: Stare at their phones and social media. A lot of this stuff is really powerful. Some of those videos capture what words can't, what we can't describe."