In what's believed to be a first for college football programs, Mississippi State has painted #HAILSTATE -- the school's traditional rallying cry and fight song -- in its north endzone.
College teams typically decorate endzones with the title of their school, mascot nickname or a colorful pattern. But Mississippi State's Twitter-based variation has already created buzz in the sports world.
"It's a phenomenal idea," Dallas Mavericks owner and Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban said in an email to Mashable. "It's a fun way to involve social media at the game, and to TV viewers it's going to stir up some emotions between both teams."
"I can definitely see the the Mavs and other teams doing it," Cuban added.
The hashtagging-the-endzone plan was hatched during a weekly marketing meeting, according to Mississippi State's athletic director, Scott Stricklin.The original plan was to simply paint "Hail State" in the endzone. But when someone suggested hashtagging the slogan, Stricklin said, "there was this moment in the room, like, 'Ohhh, that'd be different, no one's done that before.'"
The school even considered hashtagging the name plates on the back of player's jerseys, which will read "Hail State" for the annual rivalry game in football-mad Mississippi. A Mexican first-division soccer team recently replaced the player names on jerseys with their Twitter handles, also believed to be a first in the sports world.
Stricklin is unusually active on Twitter for a university athletic director, communicating updates to fans and retweeting photos fans send of themselves sporting school colors on designated "Maroon Fridays" before Saturday games.
Chad Thomas, the Mississippi State athletics department's director of marketing, said he hopes the endzone hashtag will reach beyond just football fans.
"We want to wrap our arms around the casual fans and this is just one way we're getting our name out to people who might not have any affiliation with us at all," Thomas said.
It remains to be seen whether the in-game hashtag conversation will match the pre-game buzz. But, like Cuban, Thomas said he can see the practice of adding hashtags to fields, pitches and courts catching on.