On the first day of class we learned the name of the brand we would be eating, sleeping, and breathing over the next 5 months. USA Today Sports Media Group. This is the digital version of USA Today’s Sports Section. A week later, Merrill Squires, the Senior Vice President of USA Today Sports Media Group, flew in from Virginia to present to our class. He gave us a pretty massive goal. He wanted to be the leader in sports online among 13-29 year olds. Doesn’t everyone? That was our first reaction. But we accepted he challenge and got to work. We were given a 5 million dollar budget to work with. I want to be clear about this assignment. USA Today will pay for this campaign. I won’t recieve a paycheck, but the school will. Therefore, we are required to treat this not as a school project, but as a job. We are required to send a memo to our teacher/boss every week and keep a log of billable hours. The class is made up of 25 students. She broke us into groups of five. Within our groups we were required to come up with an agency name, logo, mission statement, and marketing materials for our team.