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Hot Laps with....Hermie Sadler
To find out what GoTeamVa is all about, radio personality and pit reporter Pat Patterson interviewed Hermie and questioned him about the GoTeamVa program. Read on to find out about the GoTeamVa concept, the race team and how you can be involved!
Four universities participaing in a Winston Cup Deal with GoTeamVa. Are you Excited?
How can people be a part of this? Is GoTeamVa a fan club?
How much did it cost the universities to get involved in GoTeamVa?
Is this just a four race deal, or can the GoTeamVa program expand?
Do you have to be affiliated with a particular university to be involved in GoTeamVa?
When will GoTeamVa debut on the race track?
Would you like to ask Hermie a question?
Fan Submitted Questions
Pat Patterson: “The excitement of getting four Virginia Universities to participate in Winston Cup Racing sounds like a great idea. I know you’re excited about it.”
Hermie: “Yeah I’m really looking forward to it and to being not only a race fan myself but also a college sport’s fan in general. It’s going to be an honor and a privilege and a lot of fun to carry the colors of these four schools at these races. All the schools are excited about it, my race team is excited about it, and to be able to ride around and parade some of these colors, that mean so much to so many people is going to be a lot of fun.”
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Pat Patterson: “And people can be a part of this. I mean we’ve known in the past that drivers that have fan clubs and so forth, well this is kinda like a combination of a driver fan club, a race fan club, a Virginia fan club, and a collegiate fan club. It’s kinda a really broad based idea.”
Hermie: “It really is and the Go Team VA.com program is gonna have things available for not only our solid, hard-core race fans but also lots of other things. We’re gonna give away trips to basketball games, going in the locker rooms, standing on the side lines at college football games, giving away wrestling tickets, giving away guitars from Country Music Artists and we’re going to have things on there that get the attention of lots of fans so our first goal is to reach out to the fans in Virginia who are affiliated with these colleges, but above and beyond that, to reach out to people that are sports fans of any kind not only in Virginia but across the country and we’ve got lots of things to offer to a variety of people and it’s a unique opportunity, it’s a unique promotion, and it’s not like anything I’ve ever been involved in and anytime you can kinda be the first person to do something or a new idea like this, it’s a lot of excitement involved there so we’re looking forward to it.”
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Pat Patterson: “Now let’s be real clear that this didn’t cost the Universities anything, they didn’t have to put up any money. In fact, this is really a way that they’ll actually make some money.”
Hermie: “Every college, they didn’t write any checks or spend any money, but all these schools have lots of, if you want to call it money or whatever tied up in their logos and in their school marks so basically we’re trading out the use of the school marks to put on the cars and advertise the cars, do merchandise, die cast, those kind of things that the fans can buy in lieu of a sponsorship situation so not only does it provide great exposure for me and the race team, give us something to sell, but it gives the schools lots of exposure and coverage throughout these races. I mean NASCAR racing, our ratings are second really only to the NFL, so it gives these four schools a chance to reach out and get their name and logo and mark out in front of millions of people that it might not normally have reached. So it’s a great win, win for everybody, the schools, it doesn’t cost them anything and it gives us something in our program to be proud of and to be excited about so it should work good for everyone.”
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Pat Patterson: “Can the program grow beyond this year? I understand it’s a two-year deal that’s with the Universities and so forth. How many races do you know you’re going to race this year and then what would you like to see it blossom into?”
Hermie: “Well, we’re going to run, as far as the school programs are concerned, five races this year with our colleges and we’ll run a hand full of races with some other sponsors in the Winston Cup Series for a grand total of about ten races this year, and the program is a “wait and see” program. I mean, I really feel like the program has a lot of potential. We’d like to see the program maybe add one or two more colleges a year, maybe extend the program out to next year, just kinda wait and see thing. Right now, nobody really knows what to expect. We really have high expectations and I think the schools do too, so it may really take off. You know, it’s not too unreasonable to think that if the program takes off and reaches its potential and everybody does their part to promote it, it’s not unreasonable to think with the fan base that these colleges have, in addition to the fan base of NASCAR fans nationwide joining Go Team VA.com, it’s not unreasonable to think that in time, in a reasonable amount of time, that this thing could blossom into a 15, 20 race deal, maybe even a full schedule deal. So it really depends on how well we market it and promote it and how well the fans respond to it.”
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Pat Patterson: “We want to make sure everybody knows that you don’t have to be a particular university fan either. You can just be a fan of the guys that race in Virginia and you don’t even have to live there to be part of it.”
Hermie: “No, we plan to reach out to all NASCAR fan across the country and you know you can join through an affiliation with one of our colleges or if you just want to join the fan club and get a membership package with caps, tee shirts, all that kind of thing, your entry fee into the Go Team VA.com club gives you access to play the fantasy racing league game, it gives you opportunity to win pit passes for races and all the other promotions that are there, whether you have affiliations with one of these colleges or not. Once you join the club, you’re registered for everything that goes on. On the web site and we have lots of neat interactive things including the fantasy racing league that should be a lot of fun for people across the country. So for this to be a success, we’ve got to hit home first and get our fans here in Virginia from these schools, but bigger than that, we need to market to our race fans nationwide and I think once fans go to the web site, once they go to Go Team VA.com, they’ll see there’s lots of stuff there for lots of different people and hopefully they’ll join and have some fun with us.”
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Pat Patterson: “Your debut event will be at the Bristol Motor Speedway and that’s such a special place to race fans and certainly to you and your family, of course your brother got a big win there, you’ve raced there in the Cup Series and the Busch Series and I understand that, that car with be a Virginia Tech car.”
Hermie: “Yeah, I mean, what a way to lead off this program. Virginia Tech is, really those people have been one of the first colleges to come on board and work out this promotion with us and we’re really excited to carry the Virginia Tech colors. It will be my first race in a Pontiac in Winston Cup and it will be a first race for this Go Team VA.com program so we want to get off to a good start and couldn’t pick a better race track than Bristol and couldn’t pick better colors than Virginia Tech to do that so we’re excited about all the races. We’ll run both Richmond’s, both Martinsville’s, both Bristol’s in this promotion and we’ll do lots of other stuff you know along the way so Bristol’s going to be a fun weekend and should get our program kicked off in a right way.”
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Interested in submitting a question to Hermie?
If you would like to ask Hermie a question about GoTeamVa or about racing in general, CLICK HERE to submit your question. Please keep in mind that Hermie has a very busy schedule and it may take some time to get his answer. All answers will be posted here at GoTeamVa.com instead of being mailed back to you. Give us your name, the town and state in which you live and if you are affiliated with one of the GoTeamVa schools when you submit your question. Also, please understand that not all questions may be answered. GoTeamVa.com reserves the right to filter all questions.
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Fan Submitted Questions:
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© Sadler Motorsports and GoTeamVa.com
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