Service, buff style.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS BIZ

At the intersection where modern-day sports meets modern-day business, the merging of the two isn't always favorable.

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Those glory days of cheap hot dogs and cheap beer long ago gave way to absurdly priced concessions and dainty, yuppified treats your grandfather would have sneered at.

Fans who once gave their all for their team have been displaced by corporate invitees who leave in the fourth quarter no matter who's winning.

And let's not even get into that whole business of transforming once-proud stadiums into gleaming vessels of advertising that shout out "buy this" from every corner of the place.

But while we wax nostalgic about lost tradition of yore and the new supremacy of revenue-maximization that permeates sports, let's at the same time give due credit to some welcome features of slickly run businesses that have actually improved the way spectator sports work these days.

We're talking mainly about customer service and a sort of attention to detail that's designed to produce what MBA'd marketing savants would call a holistic "customer experience."

Fans of Colorado professional teams have had the pleasure of experiencing this sort of upgrade in treatment for years, thanks to some genuinely adroit customer-care work proffered by the Colorado Rockies, a finely regimented operations approach to presenting Broncos games, and the nearly obsessive treat-the-fan-well ethic that permeates Pepsi Center, which twice running has been named in a USA Today poll as the most fan-friendly arena in the National Basketball Association.

Happily, a similar credo is finally taking shape where it has long been lacking--at the University of Colorado Athletic Department. After operating in what seemed to be a stuck-in-time approach for years under former Athletic Director Dick Tharp, CU has finally gotten a clue about how to better treat loyal fans and season-ticket holders in particular.

Newly arrived AD Mike Bohn has gotten most of his headlines for controversial decisions such as axing the men's tennis team and grappling with budget woes, but behind the scenes he's instituted a long overdue modernization of the CU sales, marketing and customer-service infrastructure.

Gone is a nearly dismissive approach toward dealing with loyal fans. CU once seemed bent on hacking off some of its most enthusiastic supporters with disdainful customer service and promotional gimmicks that seemed to reward newcomers with favorable ticket deals while...