 Welcome to the sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Scott Carter, the Director of Facilities, Operations and Events at the University of Maryland Athletics Department. Today we're going to discuss Preparing for Kickoff, Safety and Security Concerns. Welcome, Scott. Thank you for joining us today. Angela, great to see you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you as our guest. I know you worked at several universities and athletic facilities and events. This includes the University of Texas at Austin, James Madison, Auburn, and now the University of Maryland. So in your role, have you noticed any major differences between how these different athletic programs operate? Yeah, I think everywhere is different, which is probably common sense, but depending on the size of your school, your athletic department, everything can kind of vary a little bit from place to place. Given the last few years and the last 10 years or so and the impact on safety and security at events, a lot of different things have progressed from years ago when I started. It was simply, lock up with your ticket and come on in. And now as we know, there's a lot more different steps to that. There's a lot of ways to do it between metal detectors and all sorts of new technology. So things have grown over the years for sure. So now you're seeing even at smaller places, smaller schools are having some of the same systems and procedures as the larger schools. So when you think of your large Power Five schools or your group of five schools or even Division Two schools, Division Three schools, a lot of these things are going into place to really secure your facilities on game days when having large groups of people together. So years ago, different steps and styles for different people, but now you're kind of seeing the emphasis really come more to the forefront with current events. So you mentioned something interesting about the ticketing piece and how that's changed. They used to stub the tickets, the physical tickets, and now people have digital tickets or at least tickets that are going to be scanned using machines or devices. So how long ago has that transition been implemented and what really has had the impact on those who are trying to facilitate the entrance of spectators into a venue? Yeah, digital ticketing and technology in that space has really come a long way, even in the past 10 years. Just think of when you might have gotten your first iPhone for some myself, it was probably 10, 12 years ago, but really as that's progressed with smartphones and people able to bring that technology with them, you've seen that shift in digital ticketing. So depending on who you ask, there are pros and cons to it. They're from the ticket office side. It's easier to email everyone tickets or send out a link from the operational perspective. You bring tickets, it's in your pocket. Well, you show up to a stadium of 50, 80, 100,000 people. A lot of times you get the, well, I can't connect to the Wi-Fi or my phone died or all those kinds of lines. So there's different pros and cons. I think the biggest pro is you're able to access those tickets. It's in a safe location. You can drop the ticket stub. You can hand it off. You're probably not going to hand someone a phone. Now, do you get into the spectrum of, well, I'm going to screenshot it and send it to you? Of course you do. But a lot of times, as we say, well, it'll scan the first time. It won't scan the second, third, or fourth time if you're trying to get your friends in or you sold it, different things like that. So I think there's a lot of pros and cons to it. I think it helps not only with tracking and you can, you know, you get a time stamp on that scan. So especially from a security standpoint, especially during, even during COVID times, if you're using your ticket correctly, you knew when Angela Hazel had used that ticket to come into that game, if she was in fact still using that ticket. But, you know, when that came in, so it gives you that kind of data set as well. But now and then you still run into little instances of, you know, screenshots and things like that. So a lot of, a lot of programs are moving that way, digital ticketing. Some still do have hard, hard stock printing, mailing tickets out. So once again, that's a decision for each athletic department to make. But there's a security standpoint. It's definitely, doesn't eliminate all of the security and the counterfeitness of tickets. But at least it's, it's made it harder. And sometimes that's a victory in itself. And you say you've noticed that evolution in the last 10 to 12 years, roughly, as far as people moving away from the paper ticketing procedure? Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, just, it's, things change over time. And as tickets and not, you're not just selling tickets to your home games, you're selling tickets to away games, to pole trips, to post season, just the frequency. And now you're ticketing, not just football and basketball, is you're ticketing 15 to 20 sports sometimes. So it's much easier to be able to send things out in advance, get things, people where they are versus them having to come to you on campus or the more local box office, if you're a professional organization, maybe they can swing by throughout the week. But I think it's a ease of accessibility now that enables people to purchase tickets online, get them pretty much almost immediately or be able to, once you do ticket renewals, send that all out and you've got your stuff in the season. And it makes things a bit easier for a lot of different folks. Some people do miss the hard tickets. You made a really interesting comment about being able to know when people's tickets are scanned. Do you use that kind of, that data to help you with staffing to, to move people, like find out the trends and patterns of when people are entering a game? And does that, does that help you with the staffing? Yeah, absolutely. I think to be able to get statistics on when and how people are entering your facility. So especially, especially coming out of COVID as a lot of people across the country in different areas hit staffing issues, switch for game days when you need several hundred people as event staff or several hundred people to be concessionaires, things like that. And to be able to pull data, at least on a very elementary level of how many people are coming through this quadrant of your stadium definitely lets you staff up at that area. At my time at Auburn, we kind of got into a fairly good ritual of we knew kind of our 90 minutes, we were open pregame for football game of where we needed to staff first from that first 20 minutes. And then we could kind of pivot around as necessary. We knew that really most games, but especially depending on a big game against a higher level opponent, that the students are going to be there early, they're going to line up, they're going to be outside. So our main focus as we opened was getting them in inside. And once we got that cleared, we could pull people from those walkthrough metal detectors, those bag check tables, and spread them out a little bit elsewhere. Because we knew another quadrant of our stadium was then going to be hit by the general public from the tailgating lots from the walking from the downtown area, things like that. So once we knew we got the mass of the students in the big cluster at the gates, that definitely helped us pull those people elsewhere to kind of fill out the rest of our staffing model. So that helps us kind of get that higher level data usage. It's definitely helpful to have. And it's interesting that the students actually come in early. I want to talk just briefly, I know at LSU they've had actually increased security, their in stadium security procedures, because of one of their gymnasts, Olivia Dunn, who has received a lot of attention, and they've had to kind of change some procedures. So what are your procedures when you have celebrities or famous people or people that are getting kind of a lot of attention, either athletes or spectators? How do you manage that? Yeah, I think what always helps is to know if they're coming and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. I think for having special guests and attendants is helpful. Special guests when it's a student athlete, like Olivia or like Auburn having an Olympic gymnast, Sunni Lee as well. Sorry, I didn't escape you for a second. Sunni Lee on campus as well. Yeah, you got to keep an eye out for that. You know, Auburn basketball and Charles Barclose comes around. He's a big supporter of the program there. So knowing when these people are coming in games and keeping an eye out is always helpful. And you try to work with them. And if they need additional event staff around them to make sure people aren't there, they're allowed to enjoy the game too. So we want to make sure they're able to do that. But positioning folks with them so they're not having biographs or pictures, they're all lovely people and they're willing to do that. But sometimes they kind of need to be able to leave and go home. So we try to help them out where they can for special VIPs. Other requests that may come up, you know, pro athletes jump in all the time, things like that. You might just want to attend the game. But sometimes it's good to know when those people show up. You might need to step in or say, how can we help? You need someone from the event staff or campus university police, things like that around as well. Being in this area as well, up here next close to Washington, D.C., we, it's time to time, can have some special guests from Washington, D.C., from a political realm as well. So when those are involved, we tend to have previous contact with some of their staff, some of their security, whether that's a federal agency provided or just their own people to reach out and dance, working with campus police and kind of their details of how they're getting in, where they're sitting, where they're going. Once again, great things to have, information to have. So we know where they're sitting, if something happens, if we need to get them out, it's all just, it's a lot of it's just prior communication, whether they're, you know, like you said, a celebrity and they're a guest of our development department or they're maybe a more famous student at the university or a friend from Washington, D.C., down the street. It's just working in advance with those departments and knowing, meaning doing walkthroughs, you know, show them your facility, show them how they're coming through, how they're going to get to their seats, where they're parking, where can we get them out? If something happens, it all just leads to prior communication. Is it fair to say that the political figures that come to an athletic event may have different protocols or different requirements as far as safety and security? Yeah, they'll usually have a couple more people dedicated to them, which is assumed and makes sense. But it's still us working with them and then they have our contact information. We may have some of our own university security police people around the area just to keep an eyes watch out for anything that may happen. But, you know, we want them to come, we want them to visit, we want them to enjoy the game, but they're here by themselves or with some coworkers or with their families oftentimes. We want them to be able to enjoy their game too and then visit the campus. So we try to make things streamlined and easy for them. And we're here to help their people as much as we can. And that's how you, it's been pretty smooth so far. And you've had the experience of being part of ESPN's College Game Day and having that experience and hosting a special media event. You don't always have a lot of advanced notice of where ESPN is going to go. And even just broadcasting games in general, sometimes they're setting the schedule of what games they're going to show or air. Talk to me about dealing with the media and the last minute request and changes that, how does that impact what you do? Yeah, the nature of especially college football these days is with game time windows. Sometimes you'll, you'll know games right now. Right now we know our first three games this season. TV has already announced those as some of your non-conference games. But as you, as you know, you get into the thick of it, you get into conference play. They kind of wait in 10 ounce times to kind of pick those premier matchups for TV. So that might be a two week window out. That might be a six day window. So you're, excuse me, you're going to find out Saturday night the week before of your next Saturday's game. So on that regard, you just try to communicate and everyone knows you have a game. So you're not surprising anybody. So once we know that, you know, I sent an email out to way too many people that should be on an email about, Hey, our games at 330 next Saturday, and everyone plans accordingly. So it doesn't stop people from staffing or getting ready. It's just finalizing that time so they can kind of shift what they're doing. Same thing with your ESPN college game days, your, your pregame shows, your Fox noon kickoffs, things like that. So you've just tend to find those out on a similar timeline. Sometimes you may, you know, hear of, Hey, you made a shortlist or things like that. But really, once that comes in, they're exciting to have, you know, they, they roll all those TV trucks in town. I know for Jamie back in 2014 or 2015, I think it was the first time that we hosted there. That was exciting, but hadn't been done there before, which is pretty cool. So we had to go stake out some space real quick. We ended up there in the quad on campus. And then lo and behold, I think late Tuesday or early Wednesday, all the trucks came rolling down and they started building the stage. So that's exciting to have them on campus. But then that's funny. You start working with their security people and they have their own detail. And they're sure they're working with our provider there of event staff people to staff and watch stage all week, things like that. But that becomes another event in itself. And besides your football game, besides wherever you may help else have going on in game day. So it's exciting to have those, but it adds another piece to it. We did that jam, you know, obviously, we did a the in arena basketball and twice at Auburn, which was new there as well. And that's that's putting it's a little bit smaller, you know, but one time we had it earlier in the day where you have a little more setup. One time it was immediately pregame because we had the early game. So they literally went off air and then we threw the ball in the air. So we had to work with them. Okay, you're going to be off the side, you got to move some donor seats around. They were great and wonderful. They're excited to be right there by the TV action as well. So those things and those people, yes, it's pretty turnkey for them at this point. They know what they're doing. And it's the same people and over and over. So you build those relationships, you know, to expect from those guys. So they're always great to work with. And then for more for your standard media, depending on the game, depending who you're playing, depending who might be in attendance, depending what's going on, working closely with your eSports information, your media relations departments to help handle your more standard photo video print media people covering the game is super important as well. A lot of your credentialing systems for your athletic part will come through departments like mine. Your event management departments do put together that that system and process for everyone attending a game, but really relying on them to help determine who's approved, who's not approved from a media print perspective. That's super helpful. We work together on TV crews coming in and to broadcast the game, but to know who's who's legit and who's not to come cover this game and who needs to go where relying on our folks who knows people in sports info much better than I is super helpful. They've been great, but yet another moving piece of a good amount of people, whether you're at a Texas, November and Jamie, Maryland, it could be a smaller group, it could be a much larger group and it's really important, especially if they have field access or press conference access, knowing who's where, knowing that they know where to go, things like that. So once again, common theme going back to communication and sharing that information with people is vital, but really important. You've worked at some large stadiums. I mean, University of Maryland hosts about 54,000 people, Auburn 87,000 people. I imagine there's lots of special considerations when you're hosting that many, or the potential for that many spectators. So talk to me about safety and security strategies. Are they different for larger venues like that? And is there this tension between costs and benefits? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think now what you're seeing more with larger football stadiums and basketball or multi-use arenas, I think those things are starting to be more consistent across the board, not only schools recognizing the need themselves for more safety and security procedures, but also the conferences. I know years ago at Auburn it was working at the SEC at the time of some schools that already initiated to walk through metal detectors and things like that. We had started a year early. There was a requirement to have it in place by, so everyone had it in place by, I want to say it was 27 or 18, or probably 2018, getting that in place. And then it was slowly segwaying to the arenas. Some people did that, some people didn't. So here at Maryland, we have metal detectors at football and at here at arena for a basketball game. So I think the concentration now is larger groups of people where you see it's, okay well some schools have metal detectors at baseball games, some have them at softball games, some have them at outdoor events, other outdoor events, soccer games, things like that. I think from there it's kind of based on really doing a good security assessment, working with your campus safety, working with your university, saying is there a great need? Is there a great risk for some of these things there? The answer can always be yes, put it out there, but you said if you're going to put 20 metal detectors at 40 baseball games, that adds up. And sometimes, yeah. And it may be like, you know, the LSU that like we talked about earlier, Olivia Dunn, they may want to use a procedure like that because of certain risks to certain athletes. So lots of things to be concerned with. And what about the usage of drones? I know that has increased in recent years. And are you guys in a restricted airspace there in College Park, Maryland, being so close to the nation's capital? Like talk to me about drones and how that has really changed some strategies for you. Yeah, once again, things you didn't really need to worry about too much. Ten years ago is now a fairly common theme throughout, you know, live events, not just sports, but any mass gathering is drones. And it's not just now just a hobby. I mean, we even, you know, communications departments across the country for athletics have drones themselves to capture film and content and great things for putting online. I know at Auburn, our folks there had them, they had one with a little Auburn helmet on top of it that would fly over. And it was very well branded. But we need to know when that's going up because then you'd see people in the parking lots with them. And we test used to test cool things like there's drone detecting software that through antennas, they can kind of sense where people are going. And then they can track down where the controller is and you dispatch a police officer. They ask them nicely to please take down the drone. But sometimes, you know, you work with your people. If someone says, oh, yeah, we're going to film the team walking the stadium with the drone. That's information my department needs to know. So I can really that to campus police because if they see a drone flying down the street, probably not the greatest thing in the world. Here at Maryland, like you mentioned, we are eight miles from smack dab the national mall in the middle of DC. So three major airports right around us. So it is very critical that if people are using drones, that there's a there's a there's a process through campus or police department. There's an FAA component as well. So even if it's just we're trying to film stuff for, you know, stadium over shots for for just general B role or whatever it may be, we still need to go, you still do it the right way. Still need to have an approval, need to have you be licensed, whatever it may be, still need to go through the process. So questions get asked. We can answer them. We did the right way. Other places across the country may be more relaxed. There's probably some policies in place for approval for general use and approval for game day use. So definitely check with your local university police department or your athletic department. But it might be a more common place. But here it's just all the things we're surrounded by and right next to it's a little more sensitive of things flying around the air. So it's always good to know when those things are happening and that we help people accomplish their goals in the right way. Digital ticketing, metal detectors, drones, what else has changed in the last 10, 12 years for you? I mean, yeah, it's it's come a long way. I think it's just continuing to look at okay, what's next? And you know, even metal detectors, which was a big thing now, five years ago, we all know we're using this metal detector that we all know and love, not just from the airport, but other places. That technology is always changing. You're getting smaller ones, you're getting lighter ones, you're getting just the matte you walk over that just kind of scanned you. So as the technology increases, I think that'll be interesting to monitor, especially as some stadiums, college football stadiums, some are older and very, you know, designed years ago. So how do you put back in more equipment into older, you know, facades on the side of stadiums, things like that. So it's making the decision of what what's really needed of, are you good with what you have, you're getting everyone on time, it's safe, it's good versus, you know, it's like getting a new phone every two years, you can get a new phone every two years, if you want to. But there's probably the cost to redo 100 metal detectors every couple of years. It's probably more than you're going to want to spend. So keeping on that technology, you know, NFL programs, things like that, increases in credentialing, you can, you know, scan things, photo recognition, things, it's a lot more. So I think it's really comes down to the decision of your department, your athletic department, talking about what makes the most sense for you guys based on your security and risk assessments of your facility, of your events, of your area, and kind of tailoring what fits best for you, what fits best financially for you, because like you said, that does factor in sometimes on best how you use things. You can use metal detectors at different facilities, you can move things around, you know, you only need 100 of them for football season, you can move things around to use other places. So maybe there's opportunities to use things on campus, share things, you know, we've put different departments getting maybe government assistance grants, things like that to help security measures. So there's a lot of options out there. So I'd recommend people that they're looking to increase or do something new, definitely take a look at what's out there and see what works best for you. You mentioned about what's next and the University of Maryland's president has expressed a commitment for the university to be a fossil fuel power plant under the next gen energy program by 2035. So has there been discussion within athletics about how this expectation to be more carbon neutral campus is going to impact athletic facilities? Yeah, I think right now the big one that we see on more day-to-day basis is a lot more from the sustainability efforts, especially on game days. And a lot of that's trash recycling those efforts on how much is produced. You can say, I guess we don't have a lot of paper tickets anymore, so that kind of helps. But really across campus, really sustainability efforts has been a big thing in the last couple years of reducing the amount of waste, recyclables, even all the small stuff, straws, couplins, things like that. Things that we can reduce or use again is definitely something they pushed for a lot recently here. So look for that to continue to continue. But then as you look at capital projects and facilities, I'm sure those things are being taken into consideration. Different green spaces, solar is an option. I've seen different places as well. As we continue to build, I'm sure that'll factor in somehow not only at athletic facilities, but different facilities on campus as we progress as well. Have you heard any mandates or questions or discussion on how directly that will impact you? I mean not just going forward in the planning for revamping buildings or building new facilities, but any particular changes to existing facilities that you've heard discussions that kind of help create the sustainable carbon neutral type of facility? Not a tremendous amount. I know the more recent facility upgrade we did at our football stadium is we just changed out all of our older lights to LED lighting. So that's more of an efficiency and electricity kind of helping cost, not only cost there, but impact on the university. So little things like that as we go, but I'm sure there'll be more to come in the near future. Talking about the future, if you could pick one thing that you think is going to be the next change in security and safety procedures in college athletics, what would be the very next thing that you envision happening? Man, I think everything's kind of slowly combining between digital ticketing and digital parking and minimizing the ingress egress. I think at some point, kind of like those Amazon stores where you can just walk and walk out. I think at some point someone's going to come up with just an easy way to get people straight in and get people straight out. I don't know what that is. I'm not an engineer or my scientist, but I'm sure we're headed there in some kind of magical, fast pass kind of way of you've got your ticket and you just walk in with your phone in your pocket and somehow the powers that we make that happen. But I think the impact from security is really trending towards how do you maximize the customer service and the fan experience. I think that's where we're headed. So anything that increases that more while maintaining that high level of safety and security that you need to have, I think that's kind of our next step. Great. Scott, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate your insight into preparing for kickoff and safety and security concerns. So thank you for sharing your expertise. And I look forward to your prediction if coming true of what the future of safety and security in college athletics will look like. So thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Angela. Thanks to your viewers for joining us today on the Sports Playbook. We will see you next time. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.