Majoring in March Madness

I'll be honest, it has been extremely difficult for me to focus on my academics lately. No, this isn't necessarily because I'm a senior or spring break is over; it's because it's March Madness, ladies and gents. I'm the world's biggest football fan, but when March comes around every year, I start wishing I wasn't only 5'6" and that I had gotten the basketball gene that all of my siblings got but I didn't.

This year, I have an additional wish: to be a part of Sports Link. Sports Link is the group that handles all of the social media behind March Madness, which is actually called "Coke Zero Social Arena." The group is also comprised of undergraduate students along with their graduate assistant and professor from Ball State University. If you've only been paying attention to Twitter lately for #MarchMadness updates like me, you're probably just as surprised.

As a soon-to-be graduate from a school with a top five athletic association and top two journalism school (which I am both a part of), I am beyond jealous of these Ball State kids. I'll be honest, I've never even heard of the school until I started researching March Madness social media this past month. After reading an article about them, I learned that they are fully equipped with a social media monitoring center on campus identical to Turner Broadcasting's digital Event Operations Center. (By the way, my school is also a little over than an hour away from Turner Broadcasting's headquarters in Atlanta.)

I truly believe this setup I've discovered recently proves that social media and sports may be constantly changing and advancing, but both are here to stay; and, when done correctly, both of them combined have a huge effect on current events and our overall culture, which is why both should be carefully studied. Because social media is something that our generation has grown up with (I myself have had at least one social media account since I was 15, and I got it way after all of my other friends), I am not surprised at all that Coke Zero and the NCAA put their trust in a group of college students to conduct their social media activity for this month-long event that draws in so many fans from around the world. What I am surprised about is the fact that so many colleges do not have media, marketing, etc. programs or departments that specialize in sports, which is why I am beyond excited for my journalism school and their new sports media program that will officially open next year (that I will not be able to be a part of since I'm graduating). I may be green in the face with jealousy from all of these programs that I won't be able to participate in as a student, but I am very excited that all of these advancements in sports studies will one day make the world of sports business as competitive as the sports on the court/field/etc. themselves.