It’s like a season long tutorial on how to keep a promotion you do every night interesting: blog.letteddywin.com.

Last season the winner of the Best On-Field Conest or Promotion was the Washington National Presidents Race, featuring the Mount Rushmore Four. Each game during the middle of the 4th break the four costumed Presidents race to the finish. One of the many charms of this contest is that they have never let Teddy Roosevelt win.

One fan (now a small group of fans) built a website tribute to the race and their demand to “Let Teddy Win!”. The site includes game-by-game coverage, photos, video, and a tracking of all the ways the team comes up with to foil Teddy’s attempt at victory.

I can’t think of any other game night promotion with a fan web-site devoted to covering it. I have a mild addiction to checking it, it’s not unhealthy yet, but it is an addition. You can see it here.

This promotion has been nominated again for the 2008 Best of Awards. You can nominate any promotion here on the blog, or email us anytime on the site. We accept nominations all year long.

–Cudo

Most Fierce NFL Mascot Competition: Staley Da Bear vs. Packers

There aren’t too many rivalries with a richer history than the one between the NFL’s Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers.

We present second-seeded Staley Da Bear, who gives the outwardly appearance of a furry, loveable mammal. Don’t let that friendly disposition fool you though. Brown bears are tough and mean, and would surely pounce all over the Packers’ mascot if given the opportunity.

Green Bay doesn’t have a mascot? Are you kidding me? Indeed it is true, and so the best thing we could come up with, which best symbolizes the Green Bay Packers in our mind, is the very popular cheesehead. Better yet, we offer a block of foam cheese being placed into a package.

CBS Sports has an on-going poll trying to sort out the fiercest mascot in the NFL.

While I like content building, fan-loyalty testing polls as much as the next web dork….but this is really dumb.

Most fierce mascot contest? While I understand this is just supposed to be fun content on the site, how about judging them on something every mascot is aiming to be….like entertaining, value-adding, or brand-building….but fierce?

And while I am ranting about this poll, who did the seedings? Roary the meek Detroit Lion is a #1 seed, while “Raider Fans” are a #7 seed? And the Saint Louis Rams with “no mascot” are a #4 seed. It’s hard for me to log in and vote every day when the folks at CBS Sports were a little thoughtless in their seedings. I trust they weren’t expecting anyone to take this quite so seriously….but then why run a 32 team bracket?
I don’t want to effect your vote, but Stanley is clearly more fierce than a quarter wheel of sliced cheese, so I voted for Stanley Da Bear. You can vote here.

–Cudo

Thanks (or blame) to fierce blog-reader Joel L for this link.

ALTOONA- The Altoona Curve, Minor League Baseball’s champions of fun, light-hearted ballpark theme nights announced this spring that it was planning a “Salute to Procrastination Night” at Blair County Ballpark, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Double-A club.

Today, the team is announcing that the promotion is still planned for sometime before September 1st, but that meetings to discuss the details of the event have been repeatedly put off until a later date.

“We’ve admittedly hit the snooze button several times when it comes to planning the details of our Salute to Procrastination Night, but we’ll get to it soon enough.” said Curve General Manager Todd “Parney” Parnell. “When we finally sit down to sketch out this promotion you can bet it will be worth the wait.”

The Curve’s summer college interns, the club’s resident experts in putting off projects until a later date, will be very involved in the planning process for the promotion, but the group has asked for more time to work on the details, thus illustrating a popular form of procrastination known as “Student Syndrome”.

The club will continue to provide updates on the status of “Salute to Procrastination Night”, assuming continued attempts to meet about the promotion’s details take place.

Perfect.

–Cudo

Thanks Glen Gower, MiLB.com and Benjamin Hill.

I have been adding videos on the YouTube Video Section (yes I consider it “work”) and I found a couple that really stood out.

Here is a video piece from the Phoenix Suns on their January 2008 Retro Night. Its a great example of touching all the game elements with a promotion to really make it powerful.

You can read more about the promotion on the Suns web site.

This promotion will also be nominated for the 2008 Best Game Night Promotion, as a great example of a well-thought out promotion.

–Cudo

This is my 300th blog entry, and as is the tradition I take this opportunity to rib my friend Ed who initially suggested the blog idea.

While I love the blog, it has emerged as a large chunk of my efforts….so I like to make sure I thank him on the milestone posts for adding to my workload. (see post 200)

If you like numbers we are approaching another milestone at Gameops.com. Sometime around June 10th we will post the millionth banner ad view. To offset some of the costs of maintaining the website we have an ad banner on the top of each page (going back many years). I religiously track the number of views and was excited to have done a million of anything (but not excited enough to give that it’s own blog post).

So, thanks a million Ed. I look forward to giving you more grief in post number 400.

–Cudo