Brent Yarina, BTN.com Senior Editor, April 11, 2012
It was only a matter of time before this happened. On Wednesday, Michigan announced it will paint "#GOBLUE" on its field for Saturday's spring game, which BTN will air live at noon ET and also stream live on BTN2Go. The Twitter hashtag will straddle the the 25-yard line on the northeast and southwest sides of the field. According to the MGoBlue.com release, this is believed to be the second time a hashtag will be on a college field. The other occurrence: Mississippi State painted #HAILSTATE in an end zone last fall against Mississippi. See a picture of the hashtags in this post.
Like it or not, this is something we must get used to. We saw it a lot during this past basketball season, whether it it was painted on the court or included in the ad rotation on the scorer's table, and it's something that we should expect to see a lot more of this upcoming football season. We may see it on the field, as in this example, or as a graphic on the screen.
For the non-Twitter users, a hashtag is way to drive conversations on the popular social media site. By using the hashtag, fans can both join the conversation and keep up with everything people are saying about the issue they're interested in, and if enough people use it, it will "trend" and appear on everyone's Twitter page.
"Our goal is to challenge the status quo and to create innovative ideas that speak to our fans," Jordan Maleh, U-M's director of digital marketing, said in the release. "This initiative will help our athletic department use technology as a competitive advantage to engage and connect to fans, build brand loyalty, grow the digital audience and monitor and listen to what is being said through the digital engagement cycle."
Brent Yarina is a web editor and blogger for BTN.com. Find all of his work here and follow him on twitter at @BTNBrentYarina.
