It would be a real shame for the local sports scene if John Bower, the hard-working public affairs coordinator for sports at the University of Ottawa, does move on effective July 31.
Regardless of what tweaks the U of O makes with its P.R. wing or what job titles they come up with, John would not be easily replaced. His position is being replaced with one "which will be a junior position to the one that I currently have," as he explained in a press release sent out this afternoon.
The loss of Bower comes at a critical time for the profile of Gee-Gees varsity athletics. It's a constant battle in this city for the Ravens and Gee-Gees to get media attention in Senators-mad Ottawa. Carleton will have a leg up over the next three years as it hosts the CIS men's basketball championship and debuts men's hockey, so the Gee-Gees need someone doing the legwork to draw attention to their athletes and teams.
When we got our act together and decided to seek out press credentials for Out of Left Field for various Ottawa-area teams, John was the first person we approached. He has been unfailingly accommodating, even though it was just a random guy with a largely unread blog. His openness to new media — blogs and webcasts — will hopefully be a lasting legacy to the Gee-Gees and CIS sports in its endless quest to get the media coverage it deserves.
That sort of consideration and kindness John has shown us sticks with a person. It's regrettable to hear that John might be departing, but any sports organization would be grateful to have him.
(Apologies for an editing error that occurred in the original version of this post. Silly cut-and-paste.)
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I have not seen the press release you speak of, but if Mr. Bower is indeed leaving uOttawa, I wish him the best of luck. I hope he can find an interesting position here in Ottawa (the CIS head office is here!!).
I am going to make an educated guess about this restructuring that seems to be happening. Early this winter it was quietly announced that senior administration( the president's office?) wanted to develope a plan to make more use of the Gee Gee teams in the overall marketing of the university. There has been a long ongoing "branding" campaign to raise the university's profile. They are just now seemingly getting around to making the sports teams part of that branding. I think you may see PR and marketing of the Gee Gees moving away from Sport Services to the overall university marketing team that reports to VP Mitchell's office. The idea: to coordinate the GEEs into the overall marketing plan. Hence, the downgrading of the PR job in SS to a "junior" position (no doubt under the control of the central marketing team from the VP's office??) I have no idea if this will produce good results, but it will be interesting to see if I am right.
Now it would help the cause if they could find someone like Ian Telfer: who just gave 25 million to the School of Management, to come along and give the school another large sum to expand the sports complex to include a stadium.---OttawaFan
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