The Kansas City Chiefs football team called me and asked if I would be interested receiving press access to an NFL game. To which I eloquently said, “Uhhhh- yes, I’m interested.” (duh!) I was stoked at the opportunity- and the Chiefs gave me full press access with free reign to capture whatever I deemed worthy during my experience to broadcast to the Internets. I got to sit in the press box, interview members of the press, attend the post game conference and even go into the locker rooms! Put simply, the experience was awesome.

Full Disclosure: The Chiefs provided me free access /tickets. I was not paid for my time or for the content I produced and published.

With my press access, I decided the angle I wanted to share was the “inside” experience of an NFL football game from the “press” perspective. It’s certainly something not everyone gets to see or experience.

Here’s the video blog I put together of my experience:

(It’s interesting to think about the idea of asking bloggers to come capture, document and broadcast content. It’s a great tactic for embracing influencers or your super-fans who already are creating content and have a community. Furthermore, the outside perspective gives a fresh new angle.)

If you follow me on Twitter- you might have noticed, I live Tweet’ed during the game to provide anyone who was interested the ability to ask direct questions to me or the Chiefs. For this blog post- I’ve weaved a few of my live Tweets and will elaborate on them.

The first thing I noticed was the amount of conversation and chatter that goes on in the press box. ESPN, USA-Today, local morning TV shows- they’re all packed into this one room. When key plays happen like fumbles, touchdowns or sacks- the room echos loudly with confirmations of the players names (who made the play) or the yardage # gained. What I find interesting is the larger implication of all this yelling- these people of the press are the ones who disseminate out the information to websites, TV channels and other outlets as the mothership “source” of data. They punch in the numbers on their laptops. And it’s interesting to think about the effects that ripple down and start in just this one room. Imagine if you could map the pyramid of all the communication connections the press box touches. Something else that’s interesting- when you are in the press, you’re instructed to refrain from cheering on either team outloud.

Arrowhead certainly is in the mix of being renovated. That said, the facilities are certainly not high-end or very nice for that matter. The press box has a GREAT view of the field, but it was shocking to see how outdated things were for an organization like the Kansas City Chiefs. Throughout the game everyone in the press box experienced connectivity and internet speed issues. You would assume the press would need reliable and fast internet bandwidth since time and connectivity is of the essence for the press. However, this certainly wasn’t the case. It was sorta frustrating even for me who was just updating on Twitter and Facebook.

The Chiefs had two members from the web team dedicated to updating www.kcchiefs.com. Lance Brown and Josh Looney- who were both simultaneously watching the game and monitoring Twitter and the website conversations as they happened. I asked them what their objectives were, they shared their current goals in using social media:

1. Create and/or engage a community and stoke them. Prior to the recent update to kcchiefs.com, conversations happened in several forums. The goal is to both embrace the fans and unite the fan community in one place, the KC Chiefs website.
2. Provide accurate exclusive information. There’s unique access to data and information that is credible that the Chiefs web team can provide. Furthermore, the ability for the fans to interact and ask specific questions is something that can’t be done when watching it on TV or sitting in the stands.

While it’s great the Chiefs do have objectives and are engaged with social media- they are certainly in the infancy or adolescence stage of understanding how to leverage it to their full advantage. They are trying to congregate the Chiefs community to their website- this means just getting traffic to their site. However, what they have working against them is the painful obvious; when you have a struggling team with a losing record- it is difficult to keep fans excited or positive about the Chiefs. Which means- traffic their website suffers. Sure responding to chat comments during the game, providing correct credible/verified information to fans and engaging on Twitter with fans seems to be the right strategy …but one could argue that’s just fundamentals when it comes to engagement and presence online the Chiefs should have. It’s the first of many steps the Chiefs website team has left to go in regards to their presence online.

I was also excited that I was able to finally meet and talk to someone here in Kansas City and on the national scale is recognized as a great columnist writer, Jason Whitlock. Here’s a couple Tweets RE: Jason

I was initially really excited to meet Jason Whitlock. Let me stress the word “initially”. First, let me acknowledge that I admire his successes and his ability to get attention with his columns he writes for the Kansas City Star and Fox Sports. But I certainly don’t always agree with everything he writes- BUT I do think he’s good at what he does. My expectations when I pictured Jason Whitlock is that he would be like ESPN’s Stuart Scott- someone with a vibrant upbeat personality who is quick on his feet and provides insightful intellectual commentary. I was wrong. From my observations, Jason Whitlock walks around the press box with arrogance. People had to approach him and he’s hailed as the “cool kid” among his press peers (or at least it appeared that way). When I introduced myself to Jason, I simply asked if he’d be willing to do a video interview during half-time, which he was actually quite receptive and open to. When I asked about his thoughts before halftime- he commented something along the lines of, “the Chiefs will screw this up somehow.” (which given their record, it’d be hard to argue they wouldn’t, and they certainly did by games end). All in all- for me it was a lot of high expectations with a disappointing ending in regards to meeting Jason. The takeaway for me is just because you can write well- it might not necessarily mean you’re an interesting or engaging person in real life.

While I was shooting video blog clips at the game, Lance (from kcchiefs.com) noted that some of the aspects I was capturing he’s never thought twice being something of interest to fans. He realized that since he’s been doing this job for a while- it’s easy to miss valuable “behind the scenes” content that might be of interest with fans.

When I was there, it angered me observing the waste of paper that was used to print “stats” at the end of each quarter. These are handed out to every member of the press- it’s a sheet that details player and team information. This is 2009 and it would make much more sense for the environment to have a website exclusive to the press or plasma screens to project that information. Furthermore, I observed that most of members of the press threw the paper away without even looking at it.

All in all, the entire experience was great. I remember thinking to myself when I was exploring the locker room- a blogger getting this type of access is pretty darn cool! The acceptance of the Chiefs letting me attend the game with press access is noteworthy and telling of their willingness to let a blogger provide a candid view of what it’s actually like behind the scenes. I’ve blogged about it before- bloggers and press can both exist- but it should be a partnership, not fighting against each other. Thanks again to the Chiefs- I’m always stoked to see any organization who understand the right way to tap and engage with bloggers.
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