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GoPack.com Ranked #2 Total Sports Web Site |
GoPack.com, the official site for North Carolina State University (NCSU) athletics, has been ranked as the #2 Total Sports Web Site for the month of August. A subsidiary of Capitol Broadcasting Company’s Wolfpack Sports Marketing (WSM), GoPack.com has doubled its traffic in one year.
GoPack.com ranked only behind Texas University in the array of over 70 athletic sites run by Total Sports, operator of various atheletic web sites for colleges and universities and organizations. The #2 ranking was for the College Network Sites and the Colleges & Universities sites. Duke University ranked #3, with Georgia Tech at #4. GoPack.com had 619,000 page views for August 2000 as opposed to 379,075 for its inaugural first entire month, September ’99, last year. In Sept ’99, GoPack.com was ranked 7th out of 43 sites; now it is ranked 2nd out of 72.
Tony Haynes
WSM |
WSM is responsible for the content of GoPack.com. Former North Carolina News Network (NCNN) sports director Tony Haynes serves as Managing Editor for the site. He and Gary Hahn, also a former NCNN employee, write commentaries and articles for the site. They work as a team with the Sports Information department at NCSU. The department shares the responsibilities for the information, updates stats, and provides information on all non-revenue sports.
An official site and mouthpiece of the University, GoPack.com follows the rules of the NCAA in the information it is allowed to post. Wolfpack fans log on to GoPack.com for updated information on all of NCSU’s sports teams. All NCSU sports are on the site, including links to the band and cheerleading.
GoPack.com is the only NCSU site where you can hear real audio broadcasts of the games and watch the coaches shows. The TV Coaches’ show with Head Football Coach Chuck Amato is taped
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Gary Hahn
WSM
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at Amedeo’s on Western Blvd, and his radio show is taped at Crowley’s on Wednesday nights. Don Shea hosts both programs. Men’s basketball coach Herb Sendek is also featured in his own TV and radio shows. The TV Coaches’ shows air on WRAL-TV at 11:30am on Sundays during their respective seasons. Sendek’s radio show is slated for Mondays at 7:00pm during his season.
GoPack.com began its affiliation with Total Sports in 1999, launching the newly designed web site in late August. For the past several months, GoPack.com has hovered near the #1 ranking. Duke University had the first college website on Total Sports and set the early standard in the realm. Haynes and his staff prepare the information for the site while Total Sports handles posting the information to the World Wide Web, adminstering the technical side.
As part of their duties for WSM, Tony Haynes and Gary Hahn play a variety of roles. Haynes does the postgame show and sideline reporting for football and the postgame show and color analysis for men’s basketball. Hahn, known as the voice of the Wolfpack, does the play-by-play for both football and men’s basketball, as well as the pregame shows for both.
When asked about the hype around NCSU’s burgeoning football program, Haynes said about the winning season, “It makes the job more enjoyable when you’re working with a team that’s doing well.” However, Haynes says he has “been on both sides,” and that ultimately the “job shouldn’t change.”
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Headquartered in Raleigh, Total Sports operates over 70 sports Web Sites including www.FinalFour.net, www.TotalBaseball.com, and www.golf.com. In addition to NCSU, some |
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of its college affiliates include Arkansas State University, University of Arizona, Duke University, Georgia Tech, University of Kentucky, Marshall University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Total Sports is technology partner with NCAA, the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition, NBC Sports, etc. Total Sports, in its present form, was founded in 1997, although its roots began with Nando.net, Raleigh’s News & Observer website.
WSM provides a variety of other functions besides the GoPack.com site. WSM produces the radio play-by-play programs for football and men’s basketball games. WSM also produces the radio coaches shows, TV coaches shows (Microspace Communications provides the uplinks), and the gameday programs for those two sports. WSM sells all signage and promotion for all NCSU sports. In total, WSM works for all NCSU’s 21 sports and its 550 student athletes.
