Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

It’s not just a guy thing: Women leaders play a huge role in growth of Las Vegas Bowl

The Huddle

L.E. Baskow

Members gather for the Las Vegas Bowl’s newly formed group, The Huddle, which includes 15 local businesswomen.

Click to enlarge photo

John Saccenti, executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl, announces the matchup of Las Vegas Bowl XXVI during a news conference Sunday, December 3, 2017.

Courtney Smith’s earliest memories of being a football fan date back to one of the sport’s most iconic and memorable teams.

“I grew up with my dad watching the Chicago Bears every Sunday,” said Smith, an audiologist who creates custom ear protection for Strip performers and staff. “I was doing the ‘Super Bowl Shuffle’ in 1985.”

With football roots stretching back more than three decades, Smith proved an eager audience for local public relations ace Melissa Warren’s pitch to grow the presence of women in Southern Nevada’s longtime college football bowl game.

Warren brought to Smith the idea of joining The Huddle, a newly formed committee of businesswomen charged with promoting the football game as well as the local community, and the bowl’s selected nonprofit organizations. Melissa Meacham-Grossman oversees marketing, operations and entertainment for the Las Vegas Bowl, and envisioned the group as a way to expand the efforts of the bowl’s main 40-member committee.

“Their focus over past years has been very sponsorship-driven and very ticket sales-driven. That’s what supports our game,” Meacham-Grossman said. “We haven’t really been able to engage the committee as much as we wanted to in our community, or outreach as much as we wanted to.”

With 15 members and plans to double that size next year, The Huddle arranges activities for bowl week that stretch beyond the field and into the Southern Nevada community it seeks to showcase. Recognizing that coaches, players and staff members at Boise State and Oregon will bring wives and girlfriends to Las Vegas for Saturday’s game, Meacham-Grossman and Warren plotted a course to bring the families to places throughout the local community to show them what local life beyond the gridiron looks like.

It’s an opportunity Smith would have enjoyed before she and her husband moved here from Iowa in 2005.

“All we knew was Caesars Palace and the pool and all that stuff,” Smith said. “Isn’t that kind of how everybody lands here?”

Each member of The Huddle must make a $1,000 commitment of financial support to the Las Vegas Bowl, as well as a pledge to help sell and secure sponsorships for the game. Members of the primary bowl committee must commit to selling at least $5,000 of sponsorships, tickets or services for the game, and also sign up for a significant investment of time.

Meacham-Grossman approached Megan Keith late this summer with an offer to join the group. Keith runs marketing for a local franchisee of Burger King and some PizzaRev locations, but her life away from work revolves around the flag football games of her 11- and 12-year-old boys. The boys play fantasy football and carry on the family tradition of their dad, who played college football at Oklahoma State.

Keith said the required financial commitment demonstrates the excitement within The Huddle about the future of the bowl game, which will move to the new Raiders stadium near the Strip in 2020.

“This group really can take the time to highlight what it’s like to live in Las Vegas as women and wives and moms,” Keith said. “We can highlight what it’s like to be a business owner here in Las Vegas.”

She also was attracted by the chance to experience football in a different way.

“Sometimes it gets to be such a guy thing,” Keith said. “It’s really nice to connect with other women who share the love of football, who really enjoy the whole atmosphere of the college football games and the bowl season.”

Women have had prominent roles in the history of the Las Vegas Bowl. Former UNLV Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy served as the bowl’s executive director for 12 years and, in 2010, became the first chairwoman of the Football Bowl Association. Warren and Jennifer Logan, the wife of Las Vegas 51s President Don Logan, serve on the central bowl committee.

“When this committee started 26 years ago, the world was a little different,” said Warren, whose nephew played in the game in 2015. “It was a different time, and football naturally is going to draw and attract primarily men. Women are just as passionate about football, our community and our city.”

John Saccenti, the bowl’s current executive director, said research from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority shows 48 percent of bowl attendees are women.

“Not many people realized that or knew that,” Saccenti said. “Our fan base has had plenty of women involved and engaged as fans. Where we missed out was having more women involved in the game and helping the game grow within the community.”

That focus drew in Smith. She recently traveled back to Iowa City, where she and her husband attended the University of Iowa, for her first football game in 10 years. She experienced the new Hawkeye tradition of the 70,000-person crowd waving to the kids in the adjacent university children’s hospital at the end of the first quarter.

The power of college football beyond the field makes her want to be a part of growing the bowl game in Las Vegas.

“This group being women-centric, we can show them different unique parts of Las Vegas that we see more of that maybe men don’t see as much,” Smith said. “Football is not just for the good ol’ boys. It’s for the ladies too. We love the competitive atmosphere in sports and in business.”