Year after year offices, campuses and households are swept up in March Madness and the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, dreaming of the big upsets, buzzer beaters and of course, bracket poll bragging rights. Over the years however, I’ve been about as likely to watch, or care about, the NCAA Tournament as I am at becoming the next starting power forward for the Lakers. This year has been different though, this year my alma matter and small, little known school just outside Pittsburgh, PA, Robert Morris University appeared in the bracket for the first time since 1992 not only causing me to watch my first full tournament game but also, from doing marketing in for higher education, changed the way I look at the NCAA tournament forever.

Since Robert Morris is little known outside the Pittsburgh area and I now live in southern California, it’s VERY rare that I ever get more than an “oh ok” when I respond to someone asking where I went to college and at times I’ve even found myself replying with “I went to a small school in Pennsylvania, you never heard of it”. Now, with the NCAA Tournament underway and the national recognition that RMU has gotten from it, I found myself transformed into an ambassador for my school with a renewed sense of pride for the place that I got my degree.

Every time RMU was mentioned on TV or when people talked about the tournament, I found myself not only pointing out that I’m an alumni, but answering questions about the school and giving a two minute “sales pitch” on all the great things about it. After digging out my RMU alumni t-shirt and wearing it to the local sports bar to watch the game, I almost felt like a celebrity with the constant flow of people coming up to me and asking me about the school. Throughout the game I was in constantly responding to, and texting friends from college, some of which I hadn’t connected with in a long time, to talk about the game and how exciting it all was.

So now that you see how an NCAA Tournament appearance can affect alumni like me, let’s dig into what effect a Tournament appearance has on the university itself. For starters, as I mentioned previously, the NCAA tournament gives alumni a reason to reconnect with one another, have renewed pride and interest in their school and act as ambassadors which in turn will gives the school a new reason to reach out to those alumni for donations and involvement in events. Secondly, a large majority of high school students want to go to a “name brand” school and the local and national attention that the NCAA tournament provides drastically increases brand recognition and interest from perspective students and inquiries and applications should see a huge spike as a result. Schools like Gonzaga and Duke are prime examples of small schools with a small student population but being nationally known due to having a strong basketball program. Another great example was in 2007 when Appalachian State upset Michigan in a football game to go from complete national obscurity to infamy over night.

This all comes back to the importance of college sports programs and how their success can directly affect the success and growth of a university and can help to attract new students and donors. For small, obscure schools, like Robert Morris, proper use of the money the school will receive from appearing in the tournament along with a great marketing, communications and PR campaign to capture the spike in interested and attention and build off the tournament momentum can lead to positive growth for years to come.