Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com

I know this isn't a Hockey topic , but the BGSU rugby team needs the help of all Falcon sports fans. Despite our #1 national ranking the entire fall season, despite our #3 finish in the 2010 National championship - the "BGSU" brand isn't strong enough for NBC TV (yes - a TV company is calling the shots on who gets in - imagine that) to automatically include us in the 2011 national championship. Last year we beat Army, Indiana, Arizona State & Penn State in the tournament before losing to Utah in the final seconds on national TV. There are four slots left in the 2011 event. NBC TV by way of the Tournament organizer, Rugby Magazine, has created a voting poll. As of 10:45pm on Thursday, 2/17, BGSU is second in the voting. The voting is Chicago style, i.e. - vote early & often. We need your help. If everyone reading this will take five minutes and just vote as many times as they can it will be an immense help. Find work boring on Friday - vote some more. Got a Facebook page - tell your friends.
Go to: http://www.micropoll.com/a/mpview/1066285-397639

and click away.
Thank you in advance
Roger Mazzarella
Director of Rugby
BGSU

DONE!! Good luck!!!

My vote has also been cast. Sorry to see so much in sports boil down to a popularity and TV ratings contest, but one does what one has to do. Good luck and spread the word.

Done
sounds like 1983 hockey

This is Roger Mazzarella - director of rugby at BGSU - I wrote the original post requesting help from the Falcon Athletic community. First - let me thank all that weighed in on the site & clicked away. Alas - it appears that the site has in fact been hacked. It was fun watching all the support that poured in both with the votes and the many people that emailed me voicing that support.
Unfortunately this does not solve our problem with NBC TV and their refusal to recognize BGSU as a marketable brand. Mid-day Friday, Rugby Magazine (the actual owner of the rights to put on this national championship - though NBC as the broadcaster and sponsor is calling the shots) posted a story on the runaway success of the poll ( http://www.rugbymag.com/news/sevens/col ... -poll.aspx ), however, half the article went on to tout the legitimacy of U. Texas as worthy of inclusion in the event. After all, it said - they have 50,000 students on their campus. BGSU was given a brief, blow-off mention at the end. As if even one of those 50K students will show up for the event in Philadelphia in June.
There are four slots left in the event.
Despite the fact that:
1. BGSU fans were easily 50% of the crowd in Columbus at the 2010 event
2. BGSU beat Penn State, Army, Indiana and Arizona State and lost to tournament champion Utah in the last 10 seconds
3. BGSU came in third
4. BGSU's Rocco Mauer had twice as many scores (12) as the next highest scorer on any team
5. Mauer was named the tournament MVP
............BGSU still has not been named to fill one of those final four open slots
Already in is Army, who didn't bring a single paying customer outside a few parents while not winning a single game.
Also already in is Penn State, who didn't bring a single paying customer outside a few parents while also not winning a single game.
Utah (who finished first), Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, San Diego State, Dartmouth, Florida, Harvard - not one had anything more than a dozen fans. And yet there was Bowling Green 500+ strong with their painted bodies, banners & voices giving the event a "college" feel.
Apparently NBC thinks that the "brand" names will be more likely to attract viewers. The problem is the viewers will turn the broadcast off once they see the inferior brand of rugby they'll be watching.
Please excuse the rant. This 60 year old Sicilian son of a Cleveland policeman was taught that rewards came from hard work and what you accomplished - not because of your name or an aristocratic title.
For me, the greatest highlight of my sports life was catching the smidgins of radio broadcast of the 1984 BGSU hockey National Championship. The team was riding up and down and through the passes of Appalachian Mountains coming back to school from a game. We stopped in a bar in Kentucky and bought everyone in there a beer. And you know what made it so sweet? We - BGSU - had stuck it to the "man". We had beaten all those pompous so-called "bigtime" hockey schools.
Here is my email - rather than filling up everyone else's mailboxes - just reply directly to me if you wish
[email protected]

Roger, It just makes me sick that our Rugby program is not getting the respect it deserves!! Your analogy to the '84 team is a really good one! The fact that they were left out of the national tournament the year before is a great example of a team that DESERVED to be in the NCAA Tournament, but wasn't! From the Media Guide: "The 1982-83 Falcons posted an even better record at 28-8-4 only to see the season end in frustration after they were mysteriously overlooked by the NCAA Selection Committee. Ranked second in the country in the final national coaches’ poll and overtime losers to Michigan State, 4-3, in the CCHA Tournament championship, the Falcons watched in utter disbelief as Minnesota-Duluth, a fourthplace finisher in the WCHA and ranked 10th nationally, received the selection committee’s invitation to play in the NCAA quarterfinals."

Is the athletic department doing ANYTHING to lobby for our team and what it clearly deserves??????

There is an interesting history here re: the lobbying. When the announcement was made in mid-November about the site change from Columbus to Philadelphia, seven schools were immediately given berths in the sixteen team event - Cal-Berkley, Utah, Notre Dame, Navy, Army, Penn State & Temple (?????????- why? - because they are in Philly - no - they are not a rugby power). The organizers said the remaining nine teams would be named in two weeks. BGSU immediately fired off a six page single spaced letter detailing why the Falcons should be included. It detailed what BGSU brought to the Columbus event both on as well as off the field.
That letter apparently raised a stink within their organization. No further announcement at all was forthcoming until mid-January. At that point Rugby Magazine announced that :
a. North Carolina, Arizona, Boston College and LSU had been added (shades of college football bowl practices - the Arizona coach said they had agreed to purchase 300 tickets at a cost of $10.5 K. I can only assume the others made that same deal)
b. the winner of the Las Vegas Invitational scheduled for just three weeks later on Feb. 10-11 would get an automatic berth in the Philly event.
c. The remaining four berths would be named following the Las Vegas tournament.
BGSU immediately entered the tournament (a budget buster for us) and cranked up our training. Despite not being able to practice a single minute outside (we were able to rent the BGSU Fieldhouse and play a series of scrimmages with a senior men's team from Chicago) we went 4 - 1, beating Cal Poly, Texas Tech, Santa Barbara and Yale before losing to tournament champion Central Washington (climate differences meant CWU came to LV having already played three games). The tournament bracketing was curious to say the least. Despite not being big on the NCAA football radar, Santa Barbara & Cal Poly are both big-time in rugby. Yet those two and BG were all in the same four team group with Texas Tech. Kutztown & Delaware, a couple of D II schools that happen to be down the street from Philly, were spread apart in different brackets. Texas - so highly touted in the Rugby Magazine article I sited ( http://www.rugbymag.com/news/sevens/col ... -poll.aspx ) beat a travel-lagged Creighton twice, Santa Barbara Community College and St. Joes of PA (a D II team) - none of them on the BCS, NCAA or rugby radar.
Immediately on returning and concerned about the way things had gone in LV- we contacted NBC and told them that I and a player's parent were willing to put up the 10.5K needed to buy into the Philly event via the ticket guarantee. To date we have not heard back.
This is when the voting poll came up by Rugby Magazine. It is interesting to note that before the site got hacked - BGSU had a plurality with 26%. Even more interesting was the number of states in which BGSU was the leading vote getter - 25 states - the entire center of the country. Had this been the Electoral College - it would have been a landslide win for BGSU. The passion and following for the BGSU rugby program across the country should have been obvious. (see the map at: http://www.micropoll.com/a/mpresult/1066285-397639 )
I have been asked by several people - who do they contact to try help BGSU out. Below is both USA Sevens mailing address as well as their email "contact us" website address. While we certainly would appreciate any passionate defense of our program - please remember to be respectful in any comments. The entire BGSU athletic program has to or will have to deal with NBC TV at some point, not just the rugby team. USA Sevens is the company that owns the rights to the Philadelphia championship event - though as I said before - NBC is apparently calling the "who gets in" shots. All we can do is prevail on USA Sevens to make our case to NBC.

USA Sevens, LLC
c/o Dan Lyle
33 Kings Highway # 1
Orangeburg, NY 10962-1802

http://www.usasevens.com/contact-us.aspx

Looks like we did get the attention of USA 7s and Rugbymag.com with the large amount of votes that BG received last week. Alex Goff, editor of Rugbymag.com posted an opinion column last night commenting on the amazing response to their online poll for the CRC Tournament in Philly next June. He mentioned Bowling Green and other schools who really showed how strong and widespread their alumni really are. BG Rugby alumni and fans should be extremely proud of eachother and their club for continuing to show how we are just as organized and professional as those Cal guys. Go RugBG!!!

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.rugbymag.com/features/goffon ... se-me.aspx