For those of you that have questioned our national branding strategy how's this for you, JMU is going to be on the 83 car at the upcoming Richmond NASCAR race.

https://twitter.com/dcsportsbog/status/6...6707895296

Looks pretty freaking sweet and most definitely a positive thing considering those races are televised nationally.

This is the 2nd time around. Hermie Sadler raced a JMU car about 8 years ago. I think he had 4 different state universities for 4 different races

It's just a shame that if we want to see this car, we can't go to the home football game that same day...

I'm sure there is little to no money involved. Having spent a dozen years in management of several NASCAR teams and a good understanding of these type deals, the team will be fortunate if JMU pays for the decals on the race car. The owner is a former JMU grad and has served on the BOV. Nevertheless, good to see Ron Devine doing this for us. Let's hope a good showing is made by the team for this event. I give the value to be $100K - $200K.

Interesting read:

http://www.catchfence.com/2015/sprintcup...-richmond/

Huge publicity for JMU. I didn't realize this happened before in the past.

So this is what JB meant by nationally branding JMU. Smh. It's huge for JMU but I hope there's more to it than advertising one time for a race. We had a board member save JB by doing this. Let's just go FBS and be done w small time thinking

Would be nice if they bring the car to Godwin Field some time. I'm pretty sure I remember Hermie's car being there and being a big hit.

(08-19-2015 10:18 AM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  I'm sure there is little to no money involved. Having spent a dozen years in management of several NASCAR teams and a good understanding of these type deals, the team will be fortunate if JMU pays for the decals on the race car. The owner is a former JMU grad and has served on the BOV. Nevertheless, good to see Ron Devine doing this for us. Let's hope a good showing is made by the team for this event. I give the value to be $100K - $200K.

Interesting read:

http://www.catchfence.com/2015/sprintcup...-richmond/

BP - I know you can add some clarification here, but is it possible that this is a situation where the car does not even finish the race, but just starts in order to qualify as a start. I recall reading about this a bunch of years ago. I thinks it's called start and park. Does that still go on? Or, is it a safe bet that, assuming no accidents, this guy will actually complete the race? If so, that's some decent pub.

(08-19-2015 10:37 AM)JMUETC Wrote:  

(08-19-2015 10:18 AM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  I'm sure there is little to no money involved. Having spent a dozen years in management of several NASCAR teams and a good understanding of these type deals, the team will be fortunate if JMU pays for the decals on the race car. The owner is a former JMU grad and has served on the BOV. Nevertheless, good to see Ron Devine doing this for us. Let's hope a good showing is made by the team for this event. I give the value to be $100K - $200K.

Interesting read:

http://www.catchfence.com/2015/sprintcup...-richmond/

BP - I know you can add some clarification here, but is it possible that this is a situation where the car does not even finish the race, but just starts in order to qualify as a start. I recall reading about this a bunch of years ago. I thinks it's called start and park. Does that still go on? Or, is it a safe bet that, assuming no accidents, this guy will actually complete the race? If so, that's some decent pub.

Looks like it'll actually race as long as the driver qualifies. He's currently 36th in the standings with an average finish of 31st in races.

(08-19-2015 10:37 AM)JMUETC Wrote:  

(08-19-2015 10:18 AM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  I'm sure there is little to no money involved. Having spent a dozen years in management of several NASCAR teams and a good understanding of these type deals, the team will be fortunate if JMU pays for the decals on the race car. The owner is a former JMU grad and has served on the BOV. Nevertheless, good to see Ron Devine doing this for us. Let's hope a good showing is made by the team for this event. I give the value to be $100K - $200K.

Interesting read:

http://www.catchfence.com/2015/sprintcup...-richmond/

BP - I know you can add some clarification here, but is it possible that this is a situation where the car does not even finish the race, but just starts in order to qualify as a start. I recall reading about this a bunch of years ago. I thinks it's called start and park. Does that still go on? Or, is it a safe bet that, assuming no accidents, this guy will actually complete the race? If so, that's some decent pub.

This absolutely goes on and the teams who do this actually make a profit. They put so little into the effort to compete that they will use an engine over and over many times. They'll only purchase two or three sets of tires. When they get back home they pretty much wash the car and load it back into their hauler.

NASCAR has taken some measures to help prevent such start-and-park teams by impounding one of the last place finishers each week. NASCAR will carry the car back to Concord, NC to their R&D facility and inspect it, keeping it for one week, resulting in the team needing additional cars.

The driver of this car is Matt DeBenedetto, though not a household name, he is running for rookie of the year and is doing about as well as Danica Patrick did during her first season of Sprint Cup competition. He's 36 in the points and only had one DNF. Though he failed to qualify for a couple of events this season. This is certainly nothing to write home about, but there are 35 drivers further down in the points. I feel fairly certain they will not start-and-park but a top 20 finish will seem like a victory for the team.

Not a bad race to be involved with. While the 83 car rarely finishes on the lead lap and is no threat to win, there will be some jockeying for position farther back in the field since this is the last race before the Chase. Should get good TV ratings. The network coverage won't be exclusively focused on who's going to win. It will devote decent time to the guys fighting for those last couple of spots. Might get some good TV time if the 83 is battling a Chase contender at the end.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-s...r-vehicle/

“James Madison University is a wonderful university that is nationally known,” Devine said in a release. “We are excited to be able to display the JMU logos on the national stage through NASCAR. As an alumnus, I was glad to provide this sponsorship for JMU and Athletics as a way to support its strategic plan, national branding efforts and overall university pride. I want to thank all of the JMU staff and especially the JMU Foundation for supporting this effort. Hopefully this will be the start of many efforts like this to come.”

From Athletics Strategic Plan
Implement comprehensive plan to strengthen JMU Athletics brand nationally - 06.30.2015 - DONE!!!!

The administration deserves some flake, but I don't understand the snarky cmoments for this. This is a unique way to begin to push us as a national brand. I don't fault them for thinking outside the box.

JMU Sports just commented on Facebook that Die-casts of this car will be produced too. That will be a pretty cool collector piece!

(08-19-2015 12:18 PM)bridgeforthduke Wrote:  The administration deserves some flake, but I don't understand the snarky cmoments for this. This is a unique way to begin to push us as a national brand. I don't fault them for thinking outside the box.

My snarky comment was more of a joke on the strategic plan but was misdirected because I actually like the idea (double points cause I'll be there as I am no longer a JMU season ticket holder).

But lets stop the press with the "thinking outside the box" kudos. The guy was on the BOV for 8 years prior to this and in that time all sorts of colleges have done something similar. I'm mostly just glad that we are only 4 years behind the 600 student Multnomah University. http://www.multnomah.edu/blog/2011/04/01/nascar/ Seriously a quick google search for "university sponsorship nascar" returns results for Northwestern Ohio, Texas Tech and LIBERTY in the first 10 links.

(08-19-2015 12:37 PM)lingerba Wrote:  JMU Sports just commented on Facebook that Die-casts of this car will be produced too. That will be a pretty cool collector piece!

This may be the only piece of NASCAR memorabilia I will ever own or would ever want to own.

Granted, this design (JMU and Duke Dog logo) will be better for branding as far as people seeing it and recognizing it, but with us pushing 'Madison' with the new football uniforms it would have been nice for this to share that similar branding. Yeah, they're all JMU branding, but it would be better if they were unified, even if they were created by two completely separate groups of people. One of my favorite marketing quotes is, "You cannot chop a tree in two by hitting it every time in a different place."

(08-19-2015 12:56 PM)jmufan2008 Wrote:  

(08-19-2015 12:37 PM)lingerba Wrote:  JMU Sports just commented on Facebook that Die-casts of this car will be produced too. That will be a pretty cool collector piece!

This may be the only piece of NASCAR memorabilia I will ever own or would ever want to own.

Many times die-casts such as with this paint scheme, team, and driver combination, someone such as Devine or the team itself has to agree to purchase an evil number of the product before the manufacturer will agree to produce them. When they all don't sell the remaining product gets shipped to the team or whoever signed for the deal. I encourage everyone to make a purchase.

I have requested information from the team as to where they would prefer us to purchase the die-cast and noticed they do sell a few items directly from the team's website but nothing there for us at this time. Hopefully, they will have these available prior to the event in Richmond, otherwise some of the thunder will be gone.

HH&C, you should reach out to Devine and take his temperature on moving to FBS. If its warm and fuzzy, maybe he can have Matt get in a few "plugs" for JMU2FBS.

Sweet car and Devine is a great guy. I love the car design.

oh man id love a shirt like this with the jmu car on it

Does Matt DiBenedetto have a mustache? Tell him to grow up and grow one