Free T-shirts for students at Homecoming

VCU Athletics will hand out 1,700 T-shirts at the student entrance of the Siegel Center before Saturday’s game against William and Mary.

According to an e-mail sent to students before the season, T-shirts were supposed to be distributed at the Jan. 17 game against Old Dominion. That never happened, and students created the idea of making the following Saturday’s game against George Mason a “blackout.” VCU Athletic Director Norwood Teague did not pursue the idea because of the way it might convey the Siegel Center atmosphere on ESPN2.

“I was initially not in favor of doing the whole arena in black,” Teague said. “I did not want to do all black for national TV, but I can be persuaded.”

Students at the George Mason game did persuade Teague, who attended the game. He later watched the highlights and was impressed by the appearance on TV.

“We’re getting the arena to where it should be,” Teague said.

Fans expressed confusion online through the thread “Blackout vs Mason?” at CAAZone.com.

“How many times do we have to say this … Saturday is the black and gold promo game,” fan DeuceK2DUB posted.

That, in retrospect, turned out not to be true.

“I’ve said it before. Very little is done to let students know anything about the basketball games,” nowhereman2 posted.

Teague vows to better inform students of athletic promotions.

“We’re going to communicate with the students vigorously,” Teague said.

The T-shirts for Saturday are sponsored by the Village Café and will be distributed as 850 black and 850 gold. According to Keith Rafter, assistant director for marketing and promotions, the sponsorship will allow the athletic department to give away a greater quantity of shirts.

The Village Café requested the Homecoming game to sponsor, and as a result more students will receive T-shirts. Students will be directed to the corresponding end zone of the arena in which they should sit to create two “walls” of black and gold.

Rafter is promoting the Homecoming T-shirt giveaway using some of the same ways that made the blackout successful.

“The ‘blackout’ was organized by students on Facebook. They did a great job with that,” Rafter said. “We’re sending out mass e-mails, we’ll do flyers on campus. . We’ll do the TelegRAM and Facebook.”