CLEVELAND — The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and CDW-G, a leading multi-brand technology solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare organizations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, have selected the three finalists for the 2019 Technology Innovation Award for Athletics Departments. The announcement was made at the 54^th Annual NACDA Convention in Orlando, Florida.
 
The Technology Innovation Award will be presented in the fall, at an on-campus event hosted by the winning institution. The award was designed to recognize best practices in technology innovation by NACDA member institutions across all divisions. A five-person committee consisting of athletics directors across the country and representatives from CDW-G and NACDA will help choose this year's award winner.
 
The finalists for the Technology Innovation Award are:

• University of Mississippi
• University of Notre Dame
• Texas A&M University

The winner, to be announced later this summer, will receive a trophy and $25,000 in Microsoft and Cisco technology products and services sold by CDW-G.
 
"As technology continues to fuel and inspire creativity across many facets of our lives, CDW-G is proud to partner with NACDA on the 3rd Annual Technology Innovation Award," said CDW-G Senior Manager – Education Field Sales, West Eric Goff. "This year's contest finalists have implemented unique and exciting technological enhancements to support student-athletes, athletics departments, and fans of collegiate sports alike. We applaud these institutions for their work and wish them all continued success with their programs."  
 
"When it comes to technology innovation in collegiate athletics, the sky is the limit, and this award allows NACDA members to showcase their creativity in ways that continue to impress us year after year," said NACDA Chief Executive Officer, Bob Vecchione. "Institutions are eager to participate in this technology platform to raise awareness, share ideas and learn from their peers about the top trends in this area. We are proud to recognize the three finalists for their trend-setting efforts in 2019."
 
Below are descriptions of the three initiatives that earned these institutions recognition as finalists for the Technology Innovation Award.
 
University of Mississippi
Last year, University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) implemented numerous technologies to make data-driven business decisions, identify new fans and increase fan engagement and empower its student-athletes as brand ambassadors. First, Ole Miss expanded its extensive data warehouse capabilities using SSB's Central Intelligence Platform, powered by Microsoft Azure. More than 15 different data sources are customized using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and then connected to Tableau to create real-time visualizations. Second, Ole Miss partnered with Tradable Bits, a fan engagement platform. From brackets and polling to fan video and photo submissions, Tradable Bits offers embeddable engagement tools for mobile apps or websites. Last year, Ole Miss launched 'Year of the Fan' showcasing the passionate fans of Rebel Nation. A primary use of Tradable bits was to collect fan stories and photos to select the 'Fan of the Week'. Lastly, Ole Miss empowered its student-athletes through a partnership with INFLCR. The INFLCR platform allows the athletics department to share photos and videos seamlessly with its student-athletes, allowing them to post media to their social platforms and become powerful brand ambassadors.
 
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame athletics department released its improved mobile app in August 2018. The new Notre Dame Fighting Irish app replaces the WatchND app and provides comprehensive fan experience for users. Since the new app launched, Notre Dame athletics doubled the amount of downloads of the app. The strategy behind the app was to make it something that was useful to fans and not just the same information they could find on the athletics department's official website, UND.com. Notre Dame also introduced 'Irish Reality' – a slick new augmented reality feature for ND season ticket holders. Fans could open the app and place it over their season ticket for it to play a video specific to that game. Notre Dame fans are now able manage and use their event tickets from the app, with the ultimate goal being to move to all mobile ticketing. In addition, ND is the first and only athletics department to partner with Rover, io. This allows the department to create more engaging content via the app without development or programming. The partnership has directly led to more activity on the app and puts an emphasis on having notifications turned on.
 
Texas A&M University
The goals for the Texas A&M University athletics department entering the 2018 football season were: identify anonymous fans; improve mobile engagement from inside the football stadium; and generate ROI from the substantial investment made in stadium technical infrastructure. The results of these efforts included the collection of 156,000 fan emails inside Kyle Field during the season. Mobile sponsorship was lifted by $50,000 and allowed the athletics department to integrate stadium technology in innovative and effective ways. These feats were accomplished through a "digital flywheel" strategy. The flywheel integrates several in-venue media outputs, including video boards, IPTV screens and PA system, and combines SMS, e-mail and the athletics' mobile website. The mobile site replaced Texas A&M's former downloadable app. The site itself is integrated with Daktronics and incorporates several data feeds that provide content like statistics and college scores. The next goal for Texas A&M athletics is to expand the mobile website (12thmanlive.com) beyond football, and offer a unique live mobile experience for each sport on campus.
 
About NACDA: NACDA, now in its 54^th year, is the professional and educational Association for more than 15,700 college athletics administrators at more than 1,700 institutions throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. More than 6,500 athletics administrators annually attend NACDA & Affiliates Convention Week. Additionally, NACDA manages 17 professional associations and three foundations. For more information on NACDA, visit www.nacda.com.