A team deemed “Big Blue” by its supporters won the Super Bowl.  But shades of Butler blue colored events leading up to and surrounding the big game.

Butler University officials are claiming victory in a coordinated effort to earn publicity and involve the Butler community in a variety of ways as Indianapolis hosted the National Football League’s championship game for the first time on Feb. 5.

They say the value of Butler’s public relations success is priceless.

“It was March Madness in February,” said Marcia Dowell, executive director of university relations.

The campus hosted a stand-up event starring NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon, the NFL’s celebration of gospel music, a celebrity basketball game for charity, a comedy show with big personalities, a dinner for public safety planners, free tours of Hinkle Fieldhouse and two Butler men’s basketball home games.

People affiliated with the university participated in Fallon’s live post-Super Bowl special, Madonna’s performance in the halftime show and official NFL social media promotion, among other events.

As usual, mascot Butler Blue II was in the middle of it all.

The English bulldog visited the Super Bowl Village and Radio Row, judged a cooking contest, appeared on a CBS television special, filmed a spot for Fallon’s live show, posed for pictures, added about 400 followers on Twitter and was named one of the Social 46 by the city’s Super Bowl host committee.

“At the end of it, you say, ‘This is all the stuff we did,’” Michael Kaltenmark, director of web marketing and communications, said. “I don’t know how you could look at that as not being successful and not having a good week.”

Courtney Tuell, director of public relations, said she reached out to Super Bowl officials months before the game to find out how Butler could become involved, and she’s happy with how it all turned out.

“It keeps Butler’s name in the national spotlight,” she said.  “The impact will be positive. [Many events] were once-in-a-lifetime experiences for our students that have likely resulted in a lot of great experiences and memories.”

The Bridgestone Super Bowl XLVI Halftime Show was among those.

Eric Stark, a professor of music, directed a 200-person choir that sung “Like a Prayer” on stage with Madonna.  Included were 22 members of the Butler chorale.

“That’s incredible,” Kaltenmark said.  “The value comes back in recruitment and enrollment. We can tout that that happened, [that] you’re going to get opportunities just by who we are and where we are.”

Super Bowl week also affected campus visitation.

About six families toured Butler —and about 20 more requested visits—because of the Super Bowl, Beth Petrie, associate director of admission, said.

Petrie said many of those prospective students and their families were from the East Coast, which is home to both the victorious New York Giants and the vanquished New England Patriots.

Teenagers weren’t the only ones setting foot on Butler ground.

Ben Hunter, chief of staff and executive director of public safety, co-chaired the Visiting Public Safety Committee.  The committee hosted several security planners at a dinner Feb. 2 in the Reilly Room.

“They fell in love with our campus,” Hunter said.

Butler also partnered with the Horizon League to make 50 free tickets available to Super Bowl media for both the Feb. 2 game against Wright State and the Feb. 4 matchup with Detroit.

Nearly all were used by members of the press, including Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan, who said he saw something at Hinkle he’d never seen before — a timeout promotion in which fans raced remote control cars.

Butler’s athletics department promoted free tours of the fieldhouse, and 129 people went through in five days.

Matt Harris, manager of fan development for Butler athletics, said the tours were one of the few special events held away from downtown.

“Everybody in Indianapolis was doing something,” said Harris, who led most tours. “That we were a part of that shows where we stand in our community.”

Butler was perhaps showcased most by the opening segment of the live “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” in which Fallon sat on a couch with Blue II, in a room with students in Butler T-shirts, and then ran out of Atherton Union, past the bulldog statue, and tiptoed atop the “Butler University” sign parallel with Hampton Drive. Hink was seen on camera inside the Hilbert Theatre.

“The icing on the cake,” Kaltenmark said of the show that involved more than 100 Butler students and was viewed by 6.166 million people. “To see that exposure, Butler couldn’t buy that. We couldn’t afford it. It’s just priceless any way you cut it.”

Tuell said she agreed that a monetary value on Butler’s PR couldn’t be figured, and Dowell said the positive press about the city in general helps the school, too.

Kaltenmark said his only regret is not succeeding in his effort to book Blue II to appear on “Today” or “Fox and Friends.”

But he said the university’s overall success was stunning.

“It’s the Super Bowl coming to your backyard,” Kaltenmark said. “You’ve got to try to get in on that. Here’s an event that for all intents and purposes has nothing to do with you — it’s professional football — and we came away as one of the city’s major players. I bet people thought, ‘That Butler, they did it again.’”

Jimmy Fallon’s visit to Butler University required more than dance moves and Twitter pleas to become a reality.

The total cost to the university was $56,350.

Contributions from the Student Government Association and ticket revenues paid for most of the Jan. 29 show.  The Office of Student Affairs and Clowes Memorial Hall also contributed.

Payout to the NBC late-night host was $50,000, with the remainder of the cost accrued in procedural expenses.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be free,” said Dan Schramm, SGA vice president of finance.

Fallon charged Butler significantly less than his typical college appearance fee and did not take much profit, Joshua Lingenfelter, marketing director for Clowes, said.

“Because Jimmy came out with an entire team of writers and gave up an entire schedule for the evening, nobody was really making any money,” Lingenfelter said.  “That was a lot of people who came in and donated their time because they really wanted to do it.”

Prior to performing in the sold-out “Jimmy Fallon and Friends” show, Fallon told The Collegian that he was swayed by the YouTube video featuring Butler students doing the “Come Back Jimmy Dance.”

The breakdown within SGA saw $20,000 come from the Podium Expressions committee and $5,000 from the Late Nite committee.

Program Board, Finance Board, Public Relations Board, Operations Board and the Council on Presidential Affairs combined to cover another $8,000.

Student Affairs put $5,000 toward the stand-up comedy event.  Clowes, the host venue, handled the contracts, equipment, labor and scheduling.

Ticket revenues covered the roughly $18,000 remaining in the cost, Lingenfelter said.

Mary Ann Huser, office manager of the PuLSE Office, said payment has already been processed.

Students campaigned eagerly for Fallon to return to Butler for the first time since 2001, often attaching the hashtag #JimmyBackToButler to their tweets.

“That brought him here,” freshman marketing major Kashton Foley said.  “He likes to have a lot of fans.”

But freshman finance major Nick McInally said Fallon might not be completely forthcoming.

“The money’s nice,” McInally said.  “He realizes he’s going to get a lot of good publicity.”

The office of Peter Levine, Fallon’s agent at the Creative Artists Agency, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Realizing the host of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” would be in Indianapolis the week leading up to Super Bowl XLVI, Fallon’s representatives contacted Butler administrators in December to express interest in scheduling an event.

Vice President for Student Affairs Levester Johnson met with Irene Stevens, dean of student life, and members of the PuLSE Office to discuss logistics.

“Everyone agreed it was a relevant and very good student program,” Jen Agnew, assistant director of the PuLSE Office, said.
Clowes officials then negotiated compensation and other details.

On Jan. 6, SGA executives received notification of the price and agreed to meet the cost necessary for Fallon to appear.

“If it was exorbitant, we wouldn’t have done it,” Schramm said, “and $50,000 didn’t seem unreasonable.”

The show ran for about an hour and 45 minutes, as opposed to the 45-minute length Fallon initially proposed.

In addition to promoting the Butler brand, Lingenfelter said the event helped establish relationships between the university and people in network television.

“You can’t put a price tag on those things,” he said.

Agnew said social media is what ultimately enticed Fallon.

“I’m really proud of the students’ role,” she said.  “We wanted him to come back to our school.  He wanted to come back to our school.

The Super Bowl gave us that opportunity to come together.”

Students should still be active in community, even without national spotlight on Indianapolis.

The recent Super Bowl madness is giving the rest of the nation a chance to learn what the Butler University community has known since 1855: Indianapolis is a super city, and that fact has nothing to do with a visit from Jimmy Fallon or a celebrity basketball game at
Hinkle Fieldhouse.

After all, one sporting event can’t create a city’s entire legacy, and the 2012 Super Bowl isn’t the first time that Butler students got involved when the city hosted a large sporting event.

Does anyone else remember a NCAA men’s basketball Final Four and national championship that we hosted and participated in less than two years ago?

We have much more to be proud of—namely, Butler students, faculty and staff who make a difference each and every day in the Indianapolis community by volunteering, student teaching, starting businesses and creating programs that continue to make a lasting impact on our city.

Even after the larger-than-life XLVI letters are taken down and we all go back to drinking literally anything besides Bud Light, the Butler community should still continue to display its Indianapolis pride by forging and maintaining lasting partnerships with meaningful groups and organizations.

The Collegian reported today in “Despite administrative changes, partnership stands” that Butler’s relationship with Shortridge Magnet High School, an Indianapolis Public School, is growing despite the school’s recent administrative layoffs and dismissals.

This is an admirable connection for Butler and one the university should keep for years to come.

This connection does every day what the media makes a big deal of highlighting during the hype over a football game—how great it is that Butler students get involved in the city.

To be sure, there is a lesson in the Super Bowl hype. Indianapolis thrives when people get excited about its possibilities.

It is not that we shouldn’t be excited for all of the Butler students who volunteered at the NFL Player’s Party or who posted Facebook pictures of  their downtown celebrity sightings. However, I’m betting these people got more pats on the back and press in the last week than the staff or students at the Butler Volunteer Center have gotten in the last year.

Once the Super Bowl fuss is over, the fact that Butler students danced or participated in a Twitter campaign for Fallon to come back to Butler will not matter.

However to kids involved in the Shortridge partnership, Butler students’ involvement will matter.

There’s no glam or mass media appeal to regular old volunteering, but that doesn’t mean that we should care about it less.

Once Jimmy Fallon saw Butler University’s flash mob YouTube video, he said he couldn’t wait to visit during his week-long visit to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl. Before delivering a hilarious two-hour show on Sunday, Fallon sat down with The Collegian to discuss bulldogs, Steak ‘n Shake and traveling with his show for the very first time. Unfortunately, he didn’t mention his surprise campus visit to Schwitzer Hall and Atherton Union that he made on Monday night.

Collegian: Did you see the flash mob or any of the Butler tweets? Did that influence you to come?
Jimmy Fallon: I absolutely saw the flash mob. It was amazing. The “Jimmy Back to Butler” campaign was getting some steam. I saw it on Twitter and remember thinking like, that’s awesome, because we’re going out there.

Then I saw the link to the YouTube video, and that was the one that really floored me. I couldn’t believe it. It was one of the coolest things. Everyone doing the Jimmy Fallon dip, and you had the mascot out there. It was so positive and so cool. So much hard work went into that. So it made me call up the school and go, “Hey, how do we set this up?” Literally, this is our only night off while we’re out here in Indianapolis, so I was like, “We’re ready to play, if you guys are ready to play.” We talked to the school, and they were great with setting it up, and now, here we are.

We were running around today; I probably still have makeup on because I was dressed as a woman. The “Real Housewives of Late Night” come to Indy for the Super Bowl: that’s one of the sketches we’re doing. I don’t want to give that many spoilers away, but five or six Colts are doing it as well. They play their wives. It’s really awkward. They’re not good actors, but they’re really funny. It’s very, very good. Some of them are good actors, actually. You’ll see it on Thursday night. It’s definitely something I don’t think Colts fans have ever seen.

This is our first time on the road and first time doing a live show. We’re psyched to come to Indianapolis. We wanted to come with our guns blazing, you know.

On Super Bowl Sunday, we’re doing a live show, our first ever. And so, we’re going to do a spoof of what could have been the the half time show. We’re going to imitate LMFAO, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Eminem, Bruno Mars. I don’t know who else. There’s so many. I’m blanking out. It’s pretty silly. It’ll be fun. That’s Sunday night.

We’re going to do a musical opening of the show with Butler students too. And we’re getting Blue Two. He’s got a lot of followers on Twitter. He’s a very popular dog. He couldn’t make it tonight. He’s too busy. He’s got a previous engagement.

Collegian: How long have you been here? What have you done so far?

Jimmy Fallon: I’ve been here two days. It’s gorgeous. We’ve been all over the place, shot last night on the streets. We’re redoing the opening of the show. Normally, it’s me running through the streets of New York City. Now, it’s me running through the streets of Indianapolis. We got a lot of great shots of the streets and we saw some kids—gotta have love for IUPUI. They’re people too, so some of them are in the opening. We also got to go to Lucas Oil Stadium last night. We got to go out on the field. It was pretty insane. It’s a gorgeous stadium. It’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. Did a lot of running though there—I think I ran 700 yards. I was hurting last night.

We were also at the Circle and saw the monuments. We tried to squeeze in all we possibly could. We’re going to the race track tomorrow and doing a head swap, which involves switching people’s heads on their bodies. This one’s pretty crazy. It involves kidnapping Bob Costas. Marco Andretti is going to help us out with that, get a real Indy driver.

Collegian: What’s going to be different about the show?

Jimmy Fallon: Well, the opening is a love letter to Indy. The Super Bowl Village is just packed with people. There really is no option but to stay there. That’s where everything is. It’s great, but it was hard getting footage and running around with cameras. But really, it turned out great. Everyone is in great spirits. It feels like you guys have done this before, even though you haven’t.

It’s fun because everyone has really come together [on the show]. It’s like camp, because we’re like strangers here, and we know New York like the back of our hand. Usually, we’ll just meet up, but now we’re like “Hey, where are you going for dinner? Oh, where are you going for breakfast? Are you awake yet? Are you asleep yet?’”

Everyone has been so hospitable and so nice, giving us recommendations for restaurants, bars, for anything we want to see. Mug-n-Bun has come up a couple times. We’ve been to Steak ‘n Shake and St. Elmo’s. We had the shrimp cocktail.

One of my producers was like, “It wasn’t that hot.” I sat there just waiting for him to take a second bite, because clearly he didn’t do it right. Then he started coughing. It was addictive pain. It hurts, but I want one more!

Collegian: Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?

Jimmy Fallon: I’m from New York, so the Giants. I’m actually a Jets fan, so you go with the Jets as far as they can, then root for the Giants.

Really, this is being nerdy, but I just want a good, close game, because then, people won’t tune out of the Super Bowl. They’ll keep their eyes glued to the TV, and then, we get good ratings.

Collegian: Final question: Who would win in a fight—you, Conan, Stewart or Colbert?

Jimmy Fallon: I’m a lover, not a fighter. But if they asked, I wouldn’t be opposed to a four-way.

Be sure to catch “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” all this week at 12:35 a.m. on NBC for his special Indianapolis episodes.

The show will be taped at the Hilbert Circle Theatre, located downtown.

Over the past few weeks, Butler University  students’ Twitter and Facebook feeds have been covered with Jimmy Fallon tweets and messages.

Now, the “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” host is making a special visit to campus during his stint here at Hilbert Circle Theatre, but the social media campaign may not have been  the sole
reason.

“I hope it helped,” Vice President for Student Affairs Levester Johnson said. “But in the end, we reached out to [Fallon’s people] and made an offer, and we were very lucky to be selected.”

The Office of Student Affairs, the Student Government Association and Clowes Memorial Hall worked together to bring Fallon and friends to campus.

Along with Fallon’s personal show for the Butler community, Kodi Colip, a senior marketing major, was selected to work as a production assistant for the “Late Night” show while it is at the Hilbert.

All the schools that received discounted tickets were notified about the opportunity. Colip, who helped coordinate the #bringjimmyback campaign, including the flash mob, was what Johnson called an “obvious choice” for the role.

Colip said her resume was sent in by Butler, and she found out the good news three weeks later.

It looks like Fallon might have a soft spot for bulldogs.

Fallon performs at 7 p.m. on Sunday at Clowes.

For tickets, contact the box office at 940-6444.