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Whether you know him personally or not, nearly everyone in the sports information realm has heard of Chris Yandle. This 2014 CoSIDA Rising Star Award recipient for the university division is an innovator in the industry with his “paperless” game notes as well as his social media and streamlining ideas.
“Our job is to make the media’s life and job easier,” said Yandle. “The only way to do it is to be more efficient and I thought the first way to do it was game notes. Integrating social media is obviously the next step.”
Yandle is currently the assistant athletic director for communications at the University of Miami. He headed to Coral Gables after four years at Baylor, where he
was the assistant director of communications.
The Houma, La., native, like many in the industry, got his start as a student assistant. From a simple start as a student, Yandle has risen to the ranks of an industry leader.
“I was a nerd in high school,” Yandle reminisced. “I kept stats for high school teams… football, boys and girls basketball and baseball. I applied to Southern Miss because they had sports management. It was really the only sports management program that was close to Houma.
“I decided to transfer to Louisiana-Lafayette for some family health issues. I walked into the SID office there and without any experience, I was hired as one of the student assistant SIDs. I was given a lot of things to do. It spiraled; it is all a blur looking back at it. I had no experience (but) I was majoring in public relations. I learned how to write press releases very quickly.”
Upon graduating from Louisiana-Lafayette with a degree in public relations, Yandle, who was the communications department’s outstanding graduate, traveled half
way across the country to attend Marshall University of graduate school.
“It was an opportunity to get a degree and get two more years of experience because I wasn’t ready for the real world and from there it kind of took off,” Yandle
explained.
Take off, it did.
Yandle obtained a full-time position with his alma mater, Louisiana-Lafayette in May 2007. The rookie was in charge of the design and publication of every media relations publication. In addition, Yandle was charged with the oversight of the office’s student assistants – students, not much younger than him.
“I tell this to our group (of student interns) every day, don’t be above the job,” Yandle said. “I still have to do grunt work. It is part of the job. It is in the job description – ‘other duties as assigned.’ You have to learn everything. You can’t start in the penthouse. You have to start in the outhouse and work your way up. You have to pay your dues. Anyone you talk to industry will tell you, ‘I had to start as an intern.’”
After just one year, Yandle parlayed his success at Louisiana-Lafayette into an assistant job at Baylor. He served as the primary men’s basketball contact and the tertiary football contact as well as the publications coordinator for the Bears.
Yandle was promoted to associate director in 2010 and in 2011 he assisted in the highly-successful Heisman Trophy campaign for winner Robert Griffin III.
“Those four years in Waco (Texas) helped make me who I am today,” said Yandle. “Being a part of the Baylor basketball program with two Elite Eight appearances and a NIT finals runner-up,
and being a part of the RG3 Heisman campaign are the two instances I always reference when people ask me my favorite moment. I think just being a part of that basketball program and its upward trend from what happened in 2002 to what they have accomplished now and obviously the RG3’s campaign are probably my favorite or most memorable parts of my career so far.”
During the RG3 campaign, the Baylor staff stepped outside of the box and adopted a different strategy for promoting its Heism
an candidate.
“We were sitting in my boss’ office, Heath Nielsen,” recalled Yandle. “There were four of us who did football. We just tried to come up with a brainstorm of what we could do. At this point, no one had utilized social media for a Heisman campaign. Everyone was doing all the trinkets, bobble heads, cards, etc. That was catching people’s attention, but it wasn’t keeping them in the look of what was going on.
“Heath challenged us to come up with something that was completely different, but at the same time cost effective. You are spending all this money on campaign
materials but you are getting nothing in return. There is no ROI at all. People talk about it for a week, but that is really it. Heath came up with a trading card idea. I think Brad Sheffield came up with the Twitter and Facebook. From there, it kind of happened organically.”
What happened was one of the most successful Heisman campaigns in recent years. The athletic communications office at Baylor peppered the media and Heisman voters with video highlights, snapshots of Griffin’s personality, quotables, news and notes.
“We utilized the Twitter account,” said Yandle of
@RG3forHeisman. “We would monitor what people were saying about the Heisman. When Robert’s name wasn’t mentioned, we would tweet from that account, ‘Hey, what about me? Don’t forget Rob.’ That caught people’s attention.”
Griffin went on to lead the Bears with a tremendous season. Most of Griffin’s greatest games were captured on national television, giving the Heisman hopeful more exposure. In addition, RG3 led Baylor to a bowl game.
“Obviously, Rob won the award on his merit, but the Heisman campaign gave him a little bit more visibility, at least from a digital realm,” commented Yandle. “We didn’t have a great big budget and we wanted to do something that no one else had done. Now, everyone is using social media. It was cool to be on the leading edge of that.”
During the summer
o
f 2012, Yandle took his talents to South Beach, accepting the position at Miami. In his brief time at The U, Yandle has helped streamline game
notes and enhance the university’s athletic branding. He developed a
communications standards guide that is being utilized at schools around the NCAA.
A presenter on several CoSIDA continuing ed webinars discussing social media and best practices for the SID, Yandle was asked to head up a panel at the 2012 CoSIDA convention entitled "
Paperless Game Notes." In the panel, he gave tips and examples of how to streamline game notes for ease of content and use. Last year, he spoke at CoSIDA on a panel for "
Social Media Education and Streamlining."
He is thought of as one of the leaders in social media, spending countless hours utilizing the medium. He has an active and informative Twitter account (
@ChrisYandle) and authors a blog, "
Yandlepedia."
“Much to the behest of my wife, I spend a lot of time on (social media),” Yandle admitted. “My group and I each have two computer screens. One I use solely for TweetDeck so we can see what is going on. I always have an eye on social media so I can see what is going on and one eye on Miami so we can see what we are doing here.
“Social media is still such a young discipline that you have to keep evolving as well. You have to see what is working. What we do today might not work in three days. Thankfully, we can share ideas quickly via social media. We have been able to connect to people via social media and share ideas. We can email or pick up the phone and chat about certain things. I think social media has changed this industry for the better.”
Social media is not the only thing making this industry better. Rising Star Chris Yandle and his innovations have a played a big part in continuing to make this business much more efficient.
Despite his prowess in the industry, Yandle remains humble about his accomplishments.
“I am still beyond shocked that this award has happened. It was not something I ever expected. I do this job out of sheer enjoyment and the ability to help others and share ideas with others and to help myself get better and learn.”