Post by aggiejazz on Jan 26, 2007 14:55:06 GMT -5
There are a lot of posts on the CIAA Basketball Tournament and MEAC Basketball Tournament. A lot of people say that the CIAA is much more successful because it is older. That is partly correct. The CIAA rise to their current height was due to an outstanding leader and a very good design. Please read the following articles.
Leon G. Kerry: the man behind the CIAA surge: commissioner charts new course for oldest black conference - Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association
Ebony, Feb, 2003
LEON Kerry wanted to be the CEO. He wanted the chair at the head of the table. He wanted to run the show. He just didn't expect it so soon, and not as commissioner of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the oldest African-American college athletic conference. Now, after 13 years at the helm, Kerry is the longest-tenured commissioner of a historically Black college or university athletic conference. He has become the CIAA's loudest backer, its hardest-working fundraiser and its biggest fan.
A graduate of Norfolk State, the 54-year-old from Chesapeake, Va., says he is "C-I-Double-A-For-Life," a phrase he frequently uses to describe the thousands of devoted alumni that attend the CIAA basketball tournament every year. And he says he will always be a part of the conference in some capacity.
Kerry will be the first to admit that his tenure has been as much about survival as success. He never expected to be in the head position when he started out in 1988 working with the conference part-time, volunteering in the league's business office while working as a vice president at Sovran Bank, now Bank of America. At first, it was just to help the conference office get its finances in order, but it quickly became obvious that the conference needed someone to work on the books, full-time. Within six months, Kerry ran the business office.
When the conference's then-commissioner Bob Moorman left the conference in 1989, the board, impressed with Kerry's job as business manager, offered him the position of interim commissioner in May of that year. "The board made me an offer that I couldn't refuse," he says.
Excited by the opportunity of leading the conference, Kerry agreed. He became full-time commissioner in February 1990.
When Kerry first took over, the tournament had two corporate sponsors and a crowd of about 10,000 attending the festivities. Over the past decade, he has become a one-man CIAA show, traveling throughout the year, either to charter schools or to companies to vie for corporate sponsorship.
Kerry's accomplishments as commissioner include increasing the corporate sponsorship for the basketball tournament, establishing business partnerships with top-notch companies, reinstating a conference football championship tournament and greatly expanding the tournament turnout within the last three years to more than 80,000.
The commissioner has been attending the basketball tournament since 1967, when he was a student at Norfolk State, where he received a degree in business administration. He continued to attend the tournaments while serving in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve as a captain, and afterward, while climbing the corporate ranks as a banker.
Kerry even celebrates his wedding anniversary with his wife of 30 years, Angela, at the tournament with their two daughters, Lisa and LeAnne, both Hampton graduates. Despite the mayhem of tournament week, Angela Kerry says that she and her husband can find some time for a peaceful, intimate anniversary dinner. "It's usually a quiet celebration with me and the kids," she says. "He's doing an excellent job," says Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy, president of the conference's board of directors and president of Johnson C. Smith University. "Under his leadership, the tournament has grown in size, visibility and the number of sponsors. He found a consulting firm that did marketing analysis and [their work] has taken the conference to another level."
In the future, Kerry says he'd like to see a CIAA Hall of Fame constructed and an increase in corporate sponsorship to at least 10 companies, with each donating $1 million, before handing the reins of the conference to someone else. He already has five sponsors and the conference is talking with the Raleigh city officials about a possible Hall of Fame site in the city.
More importantly, Kerry says he'd like to bring more money and students into the CIAA and help keep Black colleges and universities alive in a world that some believe doesn't have a place for Black schools anymore. Then, he can step down as commissioner.
Marketing firm for CIAA tournament shoots for niche market
03:58 PM EST on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
By LEIGH DYER / The Charlotte Observer
It may seem incongruous that for 14 years, the CIAA basketball tournament and its related events have been overseen by a management company founded by a former NASCAR marketer in the posh suburb of Cornelius. But Tom Grabowski, president and CEO of Urban Sports & Entertainment Group, said the pairing of his background in NASCAR television production with events involving historically black colleges and universities isn't as odd as it might seem.
For one thing, both types of fans are extremely ardent and brand-loyal. For another, both are increasingly lucrative areas for sports-management firms to specialize in. "We're staying niche-oriented. We know the niche," Grabowski said in a recent interview in his office, where boxes filled with 3,000 foam fingers and 2,000 colorful plastic megaphones were stacked in preparation for this week's festivities. "Multicultural (events) is clearly the growing market."
Specializing the way Grabowski's company has is part of a broader trend in the sports marketing business, said Jim Andrews, editorial director of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a trade publication. "Definitely we're seeing a rise in companies that are specialists rather than generalists," he said. "The sponsors, the companies out there like Bank of America and others, definitely seem to want to work with what we call boutique agencies -- the smaller, more focused agencies."
Leon Kerry, commissioner of the CIAA since 1990, said Grabowski's background and race were irrelevant when they first met in 1991. Grabowski's former firm was bidding to handle part of the CIAA's television production, and soon parlayed that into management of the entire event.
"It wasn't about color for me. It was about the guy with the best deal," said Kerry. "He had a can-do spirit and he wasn't scared of me."
After picking up management of the CIAA, Grabowski spun off the NASCAR part of his business to focus on historically black college and university events and adopted the Urban Sports name. The company now manages 600 events a year, including the Honda Battle of the Bands, which draws more than 65,000 people to the Georgia Dome for an annual marching-band competition.
The company operates from the top floor of a building on Cornelius' main commercial strip, Catawba Avenue. It has 12 employees plus several interns and, as of this week, dozens of temporary employees recruited from all over the country.
Cornelius has remained the company's home because it's a three-minute commute for Grabowski. And until this year, almost none of the firm's events was local.
Organizing the first CIAA to be held in its own backyard has added another layer of pressure, said Grabowski and several of the firm's other key employees. "It definitely feels good that it's in my city," said Derek Webber, director of promotions and a former West Charlotte High basketball player.
Added Micah Fuller, vice president for business development and a UNC Charlotte grad: "I've got a whole lot of pride about this. This is awesome." The firm works with sponsors including Food Lion, Bank of America and Ford to assemble events to keep interest in the CIAA high and fans busy, from free-throw contests to concerts. It also helps raise scholarship money, which may reach a record $2 million this year.
"Everything outside the whistles, we pretty much handle," said Fuller. The centerpiece of this year's efforts is the Ford CIAA Fan Experience, which will fill the Charlotte Convention Center with cooking and fitness demonstrations, band performances, vendor displays and more for three days beginning Thursday.
Cornelius Willingham, a Ford dealer from Lincolnton and member of the dealership group representing the Carolinas, said familiarity with Urban Sports from its past two years of putting on the CIAA helped persuade his parent company to become title sponsor of the event.
"I've seen what they've done on other things. They're working on three 50-point games in a row," he said.
The CIAA makes up roughly 50 percent of the annual business for Urban Sports, which would not disclose annual revenues. But Grabowski did say revenues have risen 200 percent in the past two years, largely due to growth in the CIAA sponsorships.
Urban Sports plans to continue managing the CIAA tournament indefinitely, which suits CIAA commissioner Kerry just fine.
"At the end of the day, the money is always right," Kerry said. "If it's not broke, I'm not gonna fix it."
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Leon G. Kerry: the man behind the CIAA surge: commissioner charts new course for oldest black conference - Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association
Ebony, Feb, 2003
LEON Kerry wanted to be the CEO. He wanted the chair at the head of the table. He wanted to run the show. He just didn't expect it so soon, and not as commissioner of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the oldest African-American college athletic conference. Now, after 13 years at the helm, Kerry is the longest-tenured commissioner of a historically Black college or university athletic conference. He has become the CIAA's loudest backer, its hardest-working fundraiser and its biggest fan.
A graduate of Norfolk State, the 54-year-old from Chesapeake, Va., says he is "C-I-Double-A-For-Life," a phrase he frequently uses to describe the thousands of devoted alumni that attend the CIAA basketball tournament every year. And he says he will always be a part of the conference in some capacity.
Kerry will be the first to admit that his tenure has been as much about survival as success. He never expected to be in the head position when he started out in 1988 working with the conference part-time, volunteering in the league's business office while working as a vice president at Sovran Bank, now Bank of America. At first, it was just to help the conference office get its finances in order, but it quickly became obvious that the conference needed someone to work on the books, full-time. Within six months, Kerry ran the business office.
When the conference's then-commissioner Bob Moorman left the conference in 1989, the board, impressed with Kerry's job as business manager, offered him the position of interim commissioner in May of that year. "The board made me an offer that I couldn't refuse," he says.
Excited by the opportunity of leading the conference, Kerry agreed. He became full-time commissioner in February 1990.
When Kerry first took over, the tournament had two corporate sponsors and a crowd of about 10,000 attending the festivities. Over the past decade, he has become a one-man CIAA show, traveling throughout the year, either to charter schools or to companies to vie for corporate sponsorship.
Kerry's accomplishments as commissioner include increasing the corporate sponsorship for the basketball tournament, establishing business partnerships with top-notch companies, reinstating a conference football championship tournament and greatly expanding the tournament turnout within the last three years to more than 80,000.
The commissioner has been attending the basketball tournament since 1967, when he was a student at Norfolk State, where he received a degree in business administration. He continued to attend the tournaments while serving in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve as a captain, and afterward, while climbing the corporate ranks as a banker.
Kerry even celebrates his wedding anniversary with his wife of 30 years, Angela, at the tournament with their two daughters, Lisa and LeAnne, both Hampton graduates. Despite the mayhem of tournament week, Angela Kerry says that she and her husband can find some time for a peaceful, intimate anniversary dinner. "It's usually a quiet celebration with me and the kids," she says. "He's doing an excellent job," says Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy, president of the conference's board of directors and president of Johnson C. Smith University. "Under his leadership, the tournament has grown in size, visibility and the number of sponsors. He found a consulting firm that did marketing analysis and [their work] has taken the conference to another level."
In the future, Kerry says he'd like to see a CIAA Hall of Fame constructed and an increase in corporate sponsorship to at least 10 companies, with each donating $1 million, before handing the reins of the conference to someone else. He already has five sponsors and the conference is talking with the Raleigh city officials about a possible Hall of Fame site in the city.
More importantly, Kerry says he'd like to bring more money and students into the CIAA and help keep Black colleges and universities alive in a world that some believe doesn't have a place for Black schools anymore. Then, he can step down as commissioner.
Marketing firm for CIAA tournament shoots for niche market
03:58 PM EST on Wednesday, March 1, 2006
By LEIGH DYER / The Charlotte Observer
It may seem incongruous that for 14 years, the CIAA basketball tournament and its related events have been overseen by a management company founded by a former NASCAR marketer in the posh suburb of Cornelius. But Tom Grabowski, president and CEO of Urban Sports & Entertainment Group, said the pairing of his background in NASCAR television production with events involving historically black colleges and universities isn't as odd as it might seem.
For one thing, both types of fans are extremely ardent and brand-loyal. For another, both are increasingly lucrative areas for sports-management firms to specialize in. "We're staying niche-oriented. We know the niche," Grabowski said in a recent interview in his office, where boxes filled with 3,000 foam fingers and 2,000 colorful plastic megaphones were stacked in preparation for this week's festivities. "Multicultural (events) is clearly the growing market."
Specializing the way Grabowski's company has is part of a broader trend in the sports marketing business, said Jim Andrews, editorial director of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a trade publication. "Definitely we're seeing a rise in companies that are specialists rather than generalists," he said. "The sponsors, the companies out there like Bank of America and others, definitely seem to want to work with what we call boutique agencies -- the smaller, more focused agencies."
Leon Kerry, commissioner of the CIAA since 1990, said Grabowski's background and race were irrelevant when they first met in 1991. Grabowski's former firm was bidding to handle part of the CIAA's television production, and soon parlayed that into management of the entire event.
"It wasn't about color for me. It was about the guy with the best deal," said Kerry. "He had a can-do spirit and he wasn't scared of me."
After picking up management of the CIAA, Grabowski spun off the NASCAR part of his business to focus on historically black college and university events and adopted the Urban Sports name. The company now manages 600 events a year, including the Honda Battle of the Bands, which draws more than 65,000 people to the Georgia Dome for an annual marching-band competition.
The company operates from the top floor of a building on Cornelius' main commercial strip, Catawba Avenue. It has 12 employees plus several interns and, as of this week, dozens of temporary employees recruited from all over the country.
Cornelius has remained the company's home because it's a three-minute commute for Grabowski. And until this year, almost none of the firm's events was local.
Organizing the first CIAA to be held in its own backyard has added another layer of pressure, said Grabowski and several of the firm's other key employees. "It definitely feels good that it's in my city," said Derek Webber, director of promotions and a former West Charlotte High basketball player.
Added Micah Fuller, vice president for business development and a UNC Charlotte grad: "I've got a whole lot of pride about this. This is awesome." The firm works with sponsors including Food Lion, Bank of America and Ford to assemble events to keep interest in the CIAA high and fans busy, from free-throw contests to concerts. It also helps raise scholarship money, which may reach a record $2 million this year.
"Everything outside the whistles, we pretty much handle," said Fuller. The centerpiece of this year's efforts is the Ford CIAA Fan Experience, which will fill the Charlotte Convention Center with cooking and fitness demonstrations, band performances, vendor displays and more for three days beginning Thursday.
Cornelius Willingham, a Ford dealer from Lincolnton and member of the dealership group representing the Carolinas, said familiarity with Urban Sports from its past two years of putting on the CIAA helped persuade his parent company to become title sponsor of the event.
"I've seen what they've done on other things. They're working on three 50-point games in a row," he said.
The CIAA makes up roughly 50 percent of the annual business for Urban Sports, which would not disclose annual revenues. But Grabowski did say revenues have risen 200 percent in the past two years, largely due to growth in the CIAA sponsorships.
Urban Sports plans to continue managing the CIAA tournament indefinitely, which suits CIAA commissioner Kerry just fine.
"At the end of the day, the money is always right," Kerry said. "If it's not broke, I'm not gonna fix it."
Subscribe to the Charlotte Observer
