Big Red Business: New man in charge of Tunnel Walk, HuskerVision

Relax, Nebraska fans. The new man in charge of the Tunnel Walk has no plans to blow it up and start over.

But, said Brandon Meier, expect some experimenting in the months ahead to see if there can be improvements to the Memorial Stadium game-day tradition, which generated negative vibes from fans after changes in the Tunnel Walk music at the start of this season.

Meier may not be a household name in Nebraska, but his work on Tunnel Walk arguably will be as critiqued by fans as Scott Frost’s playcalling.

That’s the pressure that comes with oversight responsibility for not only the Tunnel Walk but HuskerVision big screen video boards and other multimedia productions at Nebraska athletic events.

A North Platte native who had ESPN aspirations while in high school, a prodigy in the early days of HuskerVision, production manager for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, and recognized as one of the best in the business for his multimedia work while at the University of Oklahoma for the past 11 years.

Those are among the resume bullet points for Meier, who left the Sooners’ early this fall to return to Nebraska as the senior associate athletic director for marketing and multimedia.

In addition to the Tunnel Walk and HuskerVision, his duties range from building the Nebraska brand through the likes of Adidas and IMG to overseeing all things social media and digital through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Meier is the latest senior official to join the athletic department since Bill Moos was appointed athletic director in fall 2017. And like some of the other hires, Meier is returning to his roots. He earned his undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism and his master’s in marketing both from Nebraska.

“There is always some appeal to return to your alma mater,” said Meier, 40. “This is a great opportunity...a chance to oversee a few different areas.”

In a more than one hour, wide-ranging interview with HuskerOnline in mid-November, Meier laid out some of his short- and long-term goals, tempering his comments by noting he’s only been on the job for about one month.

Nevertheless, Meier talked about his philosophy and work ethic, and discussed the challenges of keeping Nebraska athletics -- not just football, men’s and women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball -- relevent and exciting. His audience includes long-time tradition-minded supporters, and students and other younger fans who live in the world of social media and have multiple options for getting their Cornhusker fix beyond being in the stands on game days.

With Nebraska’s football season over, the next few months will provide opportunities for Meier to get reacquainted with all multimedia productions, including the pre-game walk.

The Tunnel Walk, the video and pulsating musical extravaganza set to Alan Parson’s “Sirius,” has introduced the team as it pours out of the locker room since 1994. This fall, it underwent some significant tweaking with the music with the addition of the “Jungle,” which drew the ire of many fans. The “Jungle” was later dropped from the introduction.

Meier is aware of the fan feedback, but said it is also “hard to please everyone, especially in the area of music.”

He calls the Tunnel Walk production one of the “best and most unique traditions in college football...It is special.” Having not been on campus since 2002, Meier said he is “really, really impressed with what’s been done with the red carpet, the lights,” Meier said.

That said, Meier noted that one of his core values is to “experiment excessively” to make sure the product -- not just the Tunnel Walk but across the board -- is just right. Does that mean change is coming? No. Does it mean the presentation will be reviewed? Quite likely.

He explained his mindset further. “I look at everything from a recruiting lens,” he said. “That’s ultimately the end goal. Do the recruits like it? I’m trying to appeal to 17-and-18-year-olds, yet bridge that with the tradition.”

If anyone knows Meier’s capabilities, it’s Kenny Mossman, the man who hired him at Oklahoma in 2007 and was his supervisor in the school’s athletic department.

He described his former associate as being engaging, energetic, a great manager, and a student of his craft who is highly educated.

“He’s very much a forward thinker,” said Mossman, Oklahoma’s senior associate athletic director for external operations. “He stays in tune with the industry and is a good manager of people. He was a tremendous asset to us.”

When Mossman had an opening on his staff in 2007 and started searching for candidates, Meier got a huge endorsement from Jeff Schmahl. The late Nebraska athletic department official is credited with introducing HuskerVision in 1995, the first big screen board at an intercollegiate athletics facility.

Schmahl had hired Meier, then a freshman, as a student assistant and producer for HuskerVision. He learned and learned and became one of Schmahl’s prized pupils.

According to Mossman, Meier “was the guy I wanted all along” for the OU opening.

At the time he was hired, Mossman said, Oklahoma wanted to “tear down and rebuild” the SoonerVision video boards at the school’s athletic facilities and revamp its production and content strategy.

Meier oversaw the multi-million-dollar rebuild, including the addition of two high-definition control rooms to manage production.

In a news release that announced his hiring at Nebraska, Meier was credited during his stay in Norman with having led a “media transformation in intercollegiate athletics...Throughout his tenure (at OU), Oklahoma has become an industry leader in the areas including TV production, video board production, digital signage and video delivery over a variety of digital platforms.”

Mossman amplified on those words.

One of Meier’s biggest accomplishments was his leadership role in the creation of Oklahoma’s Sooner Sports television partnership with Fox Sports. The arrangement is unlike Texas, which operates its own network.

The Oklahoma-Fox partnership eventually resulted in more than 5,000 hours a year in programming, including 135 live games a year. That’s a lot of exposure for the Sooner brand.

“We were the only school in the country to take on that model (with Fox), and it was a big success,” Meier said.

Mossman said Meier was also instrumental in building a big student staff, which helped make all the production work possible. In addition to about a dozen full-time employees, Meier worked with about 100 part-timers, many of whom who were students in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Meier could certainly relate to the value of building a deep bench of student talent, and noted that by tapping students, he never had to go outside the university for contract production assistance.

“It was all done in house,” he said. “We didn’t spend a nickel” on contractors.

Some of those students wound up being hired full-time by Meier after graduating, and he credits this apprentice program for much of his professional success.

“I never made a bad hire,” Meier said. “I surrounded myself with good people.”

That’s also one reason why he decided the time was right to take the Nebraska job.

“I was in my 12th season at OU, I was captain of the ship and knew (everything there) would go full steam ahead,” Meier said.

Besides, he added, the Nebraska job provides a chance to oversee different areas.

Meier basically assumed a position that Dave Witty held at Nebraska, and then for a short-time, Steve Waterfield, said Keith Mann, an athletic department spokesman. The only change is that those two had oversight of marketing, digital communications, HuskerVision, and media relations. Meier will not oversee the media work.

In all, Meier oversees 25 full-time staffers and 50 part-timers, mostly students, Mann said.

Meier assumed a different job in Lincoln than what he experienced at Oklahoma. For one thing, Nebraska is part of the Big Ten television network, which already provides broad exposure and dollars to conference schools.

Yet Meier sees opportunities to provide more Cornhusker live and studio show content for the network.

“My No. 1 goal is to tell our story of student athletes and their experiences,” Meier said.

When Meier broke into the profession, TV was the primary outlet for attracting audience eyeballs and advertising. Those days are over.

Now Meier’s team must feed content to a variety of social media platforms. How is the Twitter following? What’s trending on Nebraska on Instagram? Are there more content and distribution opportunities on Facebook, and even the Husker athletic department’s official website? What about apps?

As Meier was interviewed for this story in mid-November, he noted that at that moment, Nebraska was No. 9 in terms of Twitter engagement over the most-recent week.

“What encourages me more than anything,” he said, “is that this is a down year in football. Image what it will be” a year or two from now when football is strong again.

Part of Meier’s job is to sign off on all the content his team delivers for various social media audiences and to have a “buttoned-down strategy” on how the work will be accomplished.

“You can’t just rely on a Nielsen number anymore,” he said.

When asked to share his short-and long-term goals, Meier responded with a short list, with no particular order.

*A big screen at the south end of Memorial Stadium to compliment the HuskerVision board on the north side.

“I’d love to see a big screen at the other end,” he said.

*Continued investment in staffing.

*Build on the existing branding relationships with IMG and Adidas, and attract new ones.

*Create a new, first-class digital media control center that combines all the graphic design, TV production, photo, and others on his team into one area. Now, those staffers are spread out in two areas of Memorial Stadium, he said.

“There’s so much collaboration that can go on” when everyone is together, he said. “We’re all content creators.”

For example, a graphics design for a poster could lead to other products with similar designs.

At Oklahoma, Meier’s crew worked in a new 20,000-square-foot facility, which created an advertising agency feel to the workplace. He wants to recreate that creative buzz at Nebraska.

Now, as with other stops in his career, Meier wants to make all these goals happen. “One of the reasons I took this job is because there is room to grow and improve,” Meier said.

Steve Rosen covers the business of sports for HuskerOnline. Questions, comments, story ideas? Reach Steve at sbrosen1030@gmail.com.