How an NCAA D1 comms team saves 5 hours per person, per week with FanWord Assist
March 6, 2026
Every athletics communicator knows the feeling: too much to do, not enough hours, and a game starting in two hours regardless.
With a half-dozen sports competing at once — double that during crossover season — the only thing that might be predictable is the familiar drumbeat of the game calendar. From what gets done to how it gets done and how quickly, the life of a communicator is always in flux, and the pressure is high.
At the Division I level, that pressure is constant. More sports. More platforms. Higher expectations. And a job description that quietly keeps growing without anyone formally adding to it.
Travis Rae felt it immediately when he took over as Associate AD for Content & Communications at the University of Tulsa. With just two people covering 20-plus sports across every platform, the gap between what needed to happen and what was humanly possible to execute was hard to ignore.
With zero margin for slow, something had to give — or something had to help.
Who: University of Tulsa
Nickname: Golden Hurricane
Division: NCAA Division 1
Conference: American
Varsity Sports: 18 sports
Location: Tulsa, Oklahoma
FanWord Partner Since: August 2025
Fun Fact: One of 14 D1 FBS schools with a non-plural mascot.
Challenge: Building a department while running one
Tulsa first turned to FanWord during a period of staffing transition.
At the time, the athletic communications department was operating with just two staff members — a number that is operationally prohibitive at the Division 1 level. Covering every sport and managing the full scope of communications responsibilities with such a small team made it difficult to keep everything moving at the pace that Rae and his own department wanted.
“There were only two communication members on staff,” Rae said. “Trying to do everything with two people for every sport we had was too time-consuming for what we were trying to get accomplished.”
The underlying need remained the same. Tulsa needed to find a way to work more efficiently, maintain consistency, and keep up with the growing demands of modern athletic communications. Like many departments in college athletics, they were balancing writing stories and game recaps, managing social media, handling game-day responsibilities and keeping player bios and TulsaHurricane.com current.
The challenge was not just getting everything done. It was getting everything done well, on time, and consistently across sports. When Rae got Tulsa fully staffed, FanWord Assist was already part of the operation. And it stayed that way.
Solution: Consistency at scale
One of the less-talked-about challenges in athletics communications is the debt that accumulates when a department is understaffed: outdated bios, rushed recaps, and other missing content that was supposed to go up weeks ago.
“When I got here, the University of Tulsa was behind getting some things updated from the fall,” Rae said. “We spent so much time trying to get caught up that it was just detrimental to what we were trying to accomplish.”
FanWord Assist fit into Tulsa’s existing process without requiring a full overhaul of how the department worked.
The team’s priorities stayed the same, but FanWord helped simplify and speed up several of the most time-consuming content tasks, especially game recaps. By using FanWord for recaps, player bios, and other written content tasks, Tulsa was able to produce content more quickly and reduce the manual lift required to keep up with day-to-day demands.
That efficiency created space for the team to focus on other important priorities, especially social media and larger content initiatives. Instead of stopping everything to write a recap, staff could move through the postgame checklist in parallel: recap in one window, social content in another.
“What changed was how we did recaps with FanWord,” Rae explained. “Getting the recaps done in a timely manner helped us not only grow and get recaps done quicker, but helped us grow our social media following because we could put more out after games.”
Social media had always been a priority — Rae describes it as the “front door” of the athletic department — but without the bandwidth to execute consistently, it was getting squeezed. FanWord changed that equation.
Since partnering in August 2025, Tulsa has generated 196 game recaps and 776 player bios through FanWord Assist. Completing recaps and bios faster has allowed the Golden Hurricane comms team to use more of its time to promote their teams and athletes, support larger storytelling efforts, and maintain momentum across platforms.
Result: 68 hours saved per month
Tulsa is averaging a savings of 68 hours per month by using FanWord Assist. That’s the equivalent of one full-time Tulsa employee shaving 17 hours of tasks off of their calendar per week.
That time savings has led to meaningful improvements across the department.
More time for social media
“We focus on content plans to help promote our teams on social media and trying to become more efficient on social because of the ever-changing world of collegiate athletics,” Rae said. “We know social media is the front door to our athletic department for our teams, and we want to showcase everything we can.”
Better turnaround after games
By speeding up the recap process, FanWord helps Tulsa publish content in a more timely manner for both home and road events.
Improved consistency
Tulsa says its coverage is now more consistent than it was in the past, especially when it comes to keeping stories and bios updated on the website. Additionally, coverage became more consistent across the full roster of sports instead of clustering around the highest-visibility programs.
Less time spent catching up
Before FanWord, the department was spending too much time trying to catch up on overdue updates. Now, the team is able to accomplish more in less time and stay ahead of the workload more effectively.
Looking to save time in your monthly workflow?
Like Florida Southern College — who we profiled last month saving 40 hours each month — any athletic communications department can save major amounts of time for their staff.
Nearly 200 college departments are seeing the same productivity jump through sport-specific game recaps for 19 sports, plus automated player bios, and a suite of tools designed to deliver efficiency to every sports information team. And for other DI communicators still on the fence? Rae has a direct message:
With FanWord Assist, AI-powered content helps your team focus on what matters most. Whether you’re a Division 1 institution like Tulsa or a small college department like Florida Southern, time savings are possible.
See what FanWord can do for your communications team:
➡️ Request a demo using the contact form below
➡️ Reach out to our CEO directly to talk through your team’s workflow
➡️ Read more case studies: Florida Southern — Illinois Tech — Hamline — KCKCC — Stetson — Northwestern College
