Mackey Madness

I survived my first madness event! Purdue has not had a madness event in several years, so it took a lot of work to even get our coaches to agree to hosting a big event to kick off the season. Actually, two out of the three were very excited it was just one coach that took a lot of work..... Because of the NCAA rules about when the first day and time an entire team can practice have changed, there is no longer a need to have this event at midnight. We didn't have a home football game to partner with so we combined volleyball and the madness event into one big event in Mackey. We have been busy making plans for a while but it seemed like nothing came together until the very end. I'm not exactly sure why things took so long to come together but with no budget and minimal help from our sponsors and media, we did the best job that we could. I am pretty pleased with how things turned out considering all of the negative publicity the event was getting. There is a definite excitement on campus and in the community for the basketball seasons to get started and with the football team a complete mess we were hoping a lot of people would stay here rather than make the trip to Northwestern to see us lose again. All in all, we had close to 10,000 fans see an awesome volleyball match followed by some fun basketball stuff. I had been working with the teams on a dance routine and we filmed some really good videos to go along with our Mission: Possible them. I was less than happy with the Big Ten Network since they didn't decide until two days before what they were covering so when we found out our time slot was late, we had to drag things out a bit to cover the time. The teams were very cooperative and I think our fans had a good time. I learned a lot and think it went well for my first try. You know me... I'm my toughest critic and I like everything to be perfect every time. Its been a long two weeks with lots and lots of late nights at the office but it was worth it. I am ready for basketball season to start and hope the teams can live up to the high expectations we all have for them! I have been ignoring phone calls, emails, and other work for the last few weeks so now its time to reorganize and get back on track. If you would like to see some of the happenings from madness, visit the Big Ten Network website and view the footage they aired during their Madness special on Friday night. Thanks to everyone that came to support our event!