Twelve corporate partners, three of whom are making their initial appearance while one is returning after a brief hiatus, will be serving as hosts of the awards luncheons at the 2008 CoSIDA Convention, which will be held June 29—July 2 at the Marriott Waterside Hotel and Marina in Tampa, FL.
The Convention’s initial social function will be the Welcome Breakfast on Sunday, June 29th from 10:00 am to noon. The host will be College Fanz Sports Network, which is marking its first year as a CoSIDA major corporate partner. The College Fanz Sports Network™ is a network that covers every sport contested at every NCAA Division I, II, and III university as well as every NAIA institution. The Network has over 20,000 individual sports pages already in place, and these pages will include schedules and updated scores of every contest competed at the 1,348 colleges and universities throughout the country.
Monday’s Kickoff Luncheon, which is scheduled for 11:55 am until 1:45 pm, will feature the presentation of the Keith Jackson Eternal Flame Award to ESPN’s Dick Vitale. The prime sponsor of the luncheon is ESPN The Magazine, which continues to serve as the naming sponsor of the Academic All-America®, while the National Football League, which once again has indicated its strong support of CoSIDA as a Kickoff Luncheon co-sponsor.
Tuesday’s Awards Brunch from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm will honor the Trailblazer, Rising Star, Jordan, Kenworthy, and Wade Award winners. The major sponsor is DigiPixArt, which is also making its first appearance at a CoSIDA Convention. DigiPixArt is an on-line business-to-business photo store that will allow sports information directors to provide digital images to interested parties. Joining DigiPixArt as host are the long-time supporter NCAA; CBS-Sports, which is returning after a brief hiatus, and first-time sponsors Yahoo!Sports.com/Rivals.com.
Wednesday’s Awards luncheon, which will be held from 11:50 am to 2:00 pm, will be highlighted by the induction of the 2008 CoSIDA Hall of Famers. Also recognized will be the Ward and Berg winners along with the 25-year recipients and Lifetime Achievement recipients. This luncheon will be hosted by long-time CoSIDA supporters Multi-Ad, the official printer of CoSIDA; ICS, CoSIDA’s official web provider; TRZ Sports, which provides all the conference call support CoSIDA uses during the year; the Arena Football League; and Playboy Magazine.
We encourage all CoSIDA members, whether they are attending the Convention or not, to send letters of thanks to our corporate partners. Without their continued support, it would be impossible to sponsor luncheons of the magnitude we have. Their email addresses are College Fanz Sports Network (Bill Rasmussen--
wfr@collegefanz.com), ESPN The Magazine (Keith Clinkscales--
Wendy.Palmisano@espn.com), The National Football League (Greg Aiello at
greg.aiello@nfl.net), DigiPixArt (Danny Chu--
dchu@digipixart.com), NCAA (Bob Williams--
bwilliams@ncaa.org), CBS-Sports (LeslieAnne Wade--
lwade@cbs.com), Yahoo!Sports.com and Rivals.com (Nicol Addison--
nicol@yahoo-inc.com), Multi-Ad Print Solutions (Joe Dalfonso--
jdalfonso@multi-ad.com), ICS (Jeff Rubin--
jhrubin@internetconsult.com), TRZ Teamline (Tom Zawistowski--
tomz@trzcom.com), Arena Football League (Chris Madigan--
CMadigan@arenafootball.com), and Playboy Magazine (Gary Cole--
gcole@playboy.com)