by Jonah Segree and Bilal Qazi
Bellarmine’s victory over Jacksonville to win the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament championship has been covered in national news outlets such as ESPN and The New York Times, and university officials value the publicity as of March 15 at approximately $34.7 million.
Bellarmine Assistant President of Strategic and Integrated Communication Jason Cissell said the number of impressions – the number of people who have seen the stories – are far greater than anything the university has seen before.
Cissell said there were 556 print, digital and broadcast stories about the championship in the 48-hour period following the game. As of March 15, these stories have generated 3.7 billion impressions.
To put that number into perspective, in November 2021 when Bellarmine played against multiple top 25 opponents, the publicity generated 2.32 billion impressions over the entire month. Stories about the March 8 victory have nearly matched that number with 2.2 billion impressions.
Bellarmine has been blowing up on social media as well. Social Media Manager Walter Parker said, “We tracked an increase in social media impressions of about 2,100% over our normal numbers, and that doesn’t include everyone else talking about us on their own accounts.”
All this excitement and publicity could also mean monetary gains for Bellarmine in the future, but Assistant Vice President for Development Peter Kremer said it's still too early to tell.
Kremer said: “I think this really raises that level of pride amongst our graduates and our donors and that will make an impact on fundraising 100%. We won’t see it in the days right after or even the weeks right after, but over the months and years moving forward, this will 100% make an impact.”
Cissell said it’s not just about the numbers but the fact that people are rallying around Bellarmine that makes the publicity so valuable.
“It’s quantity, but it’s also quality,” Cissell said. “You know, in 2019 when we went D1, people were saying, ‘Huh, this is interesting.’ This is people saying, ‘Let them play’ and embracing Bellarmine.”
Cissel’s reference to “Let them play” refers to the controversy that spawned this wave of publicity. Bellarmine winning the ASUN Conference tournament championship should automatically qualify the team to compete in the NCAA tournament, but because this happened during the period of the transition to Division I, Bellarmine will not be allowed to compete in national tournaments sponsored and owned by the NCAA. NCAA rules require schools moving from Division II to Division I to wait four years to be eligible for post-season tournaments. The fact that Bellarmine will not play in the NCAA tournament is a disappointment to many, but Bellarmine Vice President Dr. Sean Ryan said there is a silver lining.
“Do I wish our men could play? Sure, I do,” said Ryan. “I’d love to see us open up against Duke in an NCAA tournament, and I think that day will come. But I do think we are going to get a lot more publicity because of what happened. I mean, we’d have to win at least two games in the NCAA tournament to come close to the impressions we’ve gotten.”
Most of the national and international coverage surrounding the championship focus on the perceived unfairness of the rule that prevented Bellarmine from playing in the NCAA tournament. Reporter Dave Hall from KVVU, the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas said during a March 9 broadcast, “They don’t get to go to the big one, the NCAA, the team they beat does? Come on, NCAA. Change that rule.”
International media were also particularly amusing. Pehal News, a media website based in India, posted a translated story about Bellarmine’s ASUN victory that reached an estimated 83,131 people.
An interesting sample can be found in the story's first paragraph: “Ah, NCAA, you’ve performed it once more. You’ve stopped these evil youngsters from ruining everybody’s enjoyable and destroying the integrity of the sport! Let me test again on what these dangerous, dangerous Bellarmine had been doing once more…”
Ryan said he hopes that the outcry of support from across the country will motivate the NCAA to change its rules.
“My hope is that they do pass the legislation in April that everybody’s talking about to shorten the transition period and that Bellarmine would be able to play next year,” Ryan said. “I even think the rule would live in infamy, you know, they’d say, ‘Hey, they shortened the transition from four years to two. That’s the Bellarmine rule.’"
The short-term effects from impressions have been some of the greatest the university has ever seen, but maybe the biggest question is how this will have an impact on enrollment now and in the long term. Cissell said traffic on the Bellarmine enrollment site following the game was 11 times higher than an average day.
Ryan said: “[Incoming students] have made their lists, and will this help sway decisions for the fall? I think so, but will it also pay off in an even bigger way in the future? I would think so, too.”
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