There’s been a lot of talk recently on the marketing of flyball. Let’s put aside the U-FLI vs. NAFA for a moment and talk about (as Lisa at Prop-a-Ganda put it)” Big F” Flyball.
All of us have had that moment when someone asks us about flyball. Most people I’ve spoken with have seen agility, disc or dock diving, but flyball? not so much.
The general tone of the various blogs, logs, boards and lists is that we need to get flyball more in the public eye. There are a couple of main ways to increase expose of flyball to the general public: TV and other media appearances and event sponsorship.
Why aren’t we on TV? After all, flyball is fun, fast paced and easy to watch. We regularly compete about 20 minutes from my hometown and my mom has, over the years, brought almost my entire extended family to watch flyball. They always have a good time.
And what about sponsorships? In California, there are a few kibble companies that regularly donate to raffles and provide samples. Hyper Flight has many of its tournaments sponsored by Dinovite. And after the success of the CanAm, NAFA management is actively courting corporate sponsors for next year’s event. The sheer number of people and dogs who play flyball and the amount of stuff we all use could be a great sponsorship opportunity for any number of companies. Vet Wrap? Tuff Spun? Wilson or Penn tennis balls?
But there’s a downside to being in the public eye. Increased publicity comes with costs and the flyball community may not be willing to let strangers into our “living room”.
Performance Mixes. Someone on an online forum once called borderjacks “engineering the world’s worst housepet”. People have said to me that all borderstaffies must be “high-energy nuts”. Yet they are darn cute! Will increased television coverage and print sponsorship lead to more John Q. Publics getting dogs they may not be able to handle? Is that something that the flyball world needs or wants?
Flyball families tend to be large. Everyone has heard the response, “you have HOW many dogs?” Many folks may hide or forget to mention the number of dogs we own because of county rules, icky neighbors or just plain shame in a world where most people think three is a lot of dogs. Will increased public events also increase the scrutiny of flyball families?
Bad training methods and backyard flyball. Every year, flyball gets faster. Touch N Go broke the 15-second barrier in 2009 and more and more teams are crowding into the sub-16 division. When my Google alerts pulls up a bad training video or a forum post about learning flyball from someone who doesn’t play, I’ll admit it makes me nervous. There’s so much that goes into a great race with a super fast team. I hope that flyball on TV would increase the number of people contacting clubs for lessons and classes but how many people will be making a box or buying the ones available on the internet and teaching themselves flyball? I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it could go either way.
So should we push for more “Big F” flyball publicity? Or should we leave individual teams or regions to decide whether they seek out sponsorships and public appearances? Can we increase interest (and revenue) without opening the sport to public scrutiny?
Tracy
Lisa from the Flyball Prop-A-Ganda blog wrote an article that everyone should read titled, How NAFA Works. I think everyone should read it because it’s very insightful. Moreover, it brings to light something that I need to explain about the Flyball Blog.
My Job
I look at my job on the Flyball Blog as kind of like the news media. If someone tells me something, I do my best to investigate, try to find other sources to verify, and then report it. I have talked with board members privately about different issues and some have been very candid while others have not. Other than this private contact to verify or get additional information, I rarely contact the board about anything. However, I will and do contact them if it deals with my club or me personally but this contact is different from something that I’m dealing with on the blog.
Suggestions to the Board
I don’t submit rule changes or suggestions and pretty much stay out if it, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t feel strongly about some issues. I look at this blog as a way to put forth ideas and spark debate on wide variety of issues and topics. However, it is important for everyone to know that I don’t put forth suggestions to the board. If you feel strongly on a topic or issue that you see here or on other blogs, I encourage you to take them to the board.
If you have a topic or issue that you are thinking of taking to the board, I would be happy to post them on this forum for discussion. Like Lisa explained in her article about board members not posting comments to the Flyball blogs, it doesn’t mean that they don’t read them. I know that board members do read articles on this blog and most likely others.
Conclusion
I have explained how I look at my job on this forum. Just like the news media, they report the news but they try to not to be the news. I look at this blog in that same way. I look to you, the Flyball enthusiast, to put forth your ideas and suggestions to the NAFA Board or the owners of U-FLI. Together we can make Flyball better for everyone.
Larry
What would happen if NAFA was forced to declare its most recent election “invalid”?
Would the earth quake? Would the sky fall? Would it be the end of Flyball? I don’t believe any of those things would happen but, here is what I do believe. NAFA is sitting on a Time Bomb and its name is the 2009 Board Elections.
Two incumbent members of the NAFA Board who were campaigning for re-election were listed on the NAFA website on the Election/Awards committee. The By-Laws do not require an Awards committee but, they do require an Election Committee and Board members who are up for re-election are barred from serving on the Election Committee. This is specific in the By-Laws and has legal consequences for NAFA if it is not followed.
Soon after the ballots were mailed out to the delegates, NAFA officials received complaints from Club Owners that the ballots were not in compliance with the NAFA Corporate Policies and Procedures. The complaints were specific enough in nature and great enough in number to warrant this post to the Flyball list by Dale Smith, Election Committee Chair:
I’ve gotten a couple questions on the new consolidated format I used for the ballots this year, so I’d like to take a few minutes and provide some further information.
Years ago, NAFA used to send a letter to Club owners with the start of each new racing year, requiring them to assign their earned delegate votes to individual delegates within their Club. Owners who failed to assign their delegates within 30 days, lost the delegate votes they earned. When election time rolled around, individual ballots were mailed to each assigned delegate – completely independent of the Club owner. Around 2003, the NAFA Board of Directors enacted a change to assign all delegate votes to the Club owner. This prevented Club owners from losing delegates for failing to assign them and reduced the number of mailing addresses and the amount of mail that NAFA had to deal with.
With this change, the Club owner became the sole representative of their Club in all NAFA elections. Some Club owners still consult with other members of their Club in delegate voting matters, while others act as the sole representative of their Club. NAFA does not get involved in internal Club politics and supports the choice of the Club owner in how they deal with delegate voting matters. Even with these changes, however, NAFA continued to mail separate ballots to the Club owner – one for each vote to which they were entitled.
This practice changed in the mid-2000′s as more and more items outside of annual elections were sent to delegate vote. For these delegate votes, the ballots were consolidated to a single piece of paper containing multiple votes. Club owners still retained the choice of consulting with their Club if they desired before they cast the votes assigned to them.
This year, faced with mailing almost 2000 pieces of paper, I chose to consolidate the annual ballot into a single piece of paper for each Club owner. This multi-vote ballot represents all the delegate votes earned by that Club, and much like the other delegate votes, allows the Club owner to consult with others if they choose, before casting the votes assigned to them.
The unique part of the annual ballot is the number of choices provided on the ballot. Each ballot contains not only the Board of Directors candidates, but also the Clyde Moore Memorial Hall of Fame and Regional MVP choices as well. It was not possible to design a ballot that provided an individual choice for each vote for each candidate, as has been done with past consolidated ballots. In doing some research into the past three annual elections, I found that only one or two instances existed in each election where a group of ballots that represented multiple votes for the same Club were not voted identically. The trade-off I chose was to keep the ballot readable and simple for the vast majority that appear to vote all their ballots identically, while providing an option for a Club owner to “split” their multi-vote ballot into individual votes if they wish to vote them independently.
I should also emphasize, that in doing the ballot research, I was unable to ascertain which Clubs or individuals choose to vote as a block and which do not. The relationship between a ballot and who it was mailed to is broken as soon as the ballot is cast. This a fundamental tenet of the NAFA Electronic Balloting system, to protect the privacy of the voter and the integrity of the election.
This morning, I added a function to the NAFA balloting page to allow a holder of a multi-vote ballot to split the ballot on the website without contacting NAFA. If you experience any issues with this function, please drop me a note. Once you vote one or more of the ballots I cannot help you as the information needed to fix an issue goes away when the ballot is actually voted.
As before, you can still contact NAFA at flyball@flyball.org and we will split a ballot for you if you wish. If you have questions about this year’s ballot, feel free to drop a note to flyball@flyball.org or to me personally. I hope you will find this year’s ballot easier to use than in year’s past and I encourage everyone who has earned a delegate vote, to use it. These votes are one of your primary voices in this organization and we certainly value the participation of everyone in NAFA flyball to shape this organization for the future.
Dale G. Smith
That would seem to answer all questions and ease any doubts but, I have it on good authority that it did not.
Because, while an invitation is extended through this very public post to “feel free” to ask any questions whatsoever, the truth is that specific questions and requests that were posed to the NAFA Board by participating candidates remain unanswered (non-responsive) to this day.
Since we are nearly two months post-election, it must be assumed that there will be no answer from the NAFA Board that will impact the results in any manner. Unfortunately, the NAFA Board itself knows that there are valid concerns that remain unaddressed. I guess they are hoping that those who have a valid case alleging that this most recent election is invalid will just go away.
While that would simplify life for the NAFA Board, is this scenario in the best interests of NAFA?
I don’t think so because public trust in our elected NAFA Leadership is the heart of this issue. These issues need to be addressed in a manner that is fair to all parties concerned, i.e. NAFA Delegates, NAFA Candidates, and NAFA Officials.
NAFA should contact all the Candidates who participated in the 2009 election and hold a teleconference meeting identifying each of these issues and propose a settlement agreeable to all the parties concerned. This will remove uncertainty, protect NAFA, and it’s the right thing to do.
Larry
