Ever hear of the saying, “There is no such thing as bad publicity?”
While this may be true, there can also be publicity that really doesn’t matter that much.
In the Oct. 24 issue of The Scout, our staff wrote an editorial piece that looked at the Bradley Athletic Department’s involvement in the College Court Report Mascot Mayhem challenge, which stated the competition didn’t have much real significance.
The editorial asked the question, “Was the athletic department searching so hard for good publicity that it used a minor mascot tournament to help boost it’s name?”
While that may or may not matter to some, the fact is now, the mascot challenge pales in comparison to the recent news Bradley athletics received.
Like the editorial stated, we have nothing against the said website creating the challenge, nor do we want to make it look bad in any way. But there are so many more things to point at as positives now.
This past weekend, three Bradley athletes were named players of the week in different sports: Caitlin Busch, Danielle Lemek and Logan Ketterer.
Along with those accolades, Busch, of the women’s cross country team, also won the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) individual title and was named to all-conference for the MVC, while leading Bradley to the women’s MVC conference title in cross country.
Lest we forget that in his first year at Bradley, cross country coach Willy Wood was named MVC coach of the year.
But, as they say, the buck doesn’t stop there.
The men’s soccer team clinched a berth and chance to defend its MVC conference title in the upcoming MVC tournament, after a 1-0 victory at Big Ten newcomer Rutgers.
Finally, the women’s volleyball team, which had been winless all year, let out a collective sigh of relief as they earned their first win with a sweep of Evansville (finally).
This success also bodes extremely well for Bradley itself, as Athletic Director Michael Cross announced last week that Bradley is in the running to stream it’s games on ESPN 3 thanks to a potential deal with ESPN through the MVC.
The deal was specifically chosen to start with Bradley because of how good the creative production department Braves Vision is compared to other MVC schools.
My mother always told me that bad news comes in threes, but I’ve never heard of good news coming in anything greater than fours.
In a year where positives in Bradley athletics seemed to run few, this past week gave Bradley a reason to be “All About the B.”
And with all of this news happening in less than two weeks, it’s good to note that there is still a month of the fall 2014 semester left remaining.
Not that I’m counting or anything.
