Sports Biz

Last year, the Oregon Urology Institute got plenty of press by encouraging people to get their vasectomies while watching the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

Since a vasectomy requires a few days of rest, the people at ORI reasoned what better time to get vasectomy than March Madness, when you have a good excuse to sit on the couch?

The folks at the Oregon Urology Institute did so well last year that they are following up with "Snip City 2009."

The office has 24 prime slots to get the surgery during the first couple days of the tournament. Anyone who gets the surgery, which costs around $1,000 if you're paying out of pocket, gets to take home a kit that consists of an ice chest and frozen peas.

Terry FitzPatrick said business was up 10 percent during tournament days last year and the publicity over the promotion helped push the vasectomy business in the office up 10 percent for the year.

Click here to listen to their radio ad.

This year, the folks at the ORI have company, as the folks at The Urology Team in Austin, Texas, are doing "Vas Madness." In order to drum up some business, the Urology Team has been passing out these flyers around town to potential referring doctors.

Appointments are going fast, said Vikki Smith, community liason for The Urology Team. And while the TV is going to be on the games in the waiting room — we'll have to tell them that CBS, not ESPN, has the rights — she said there are no TV's in the operating room for that guy that gets the 12:30 slot next Thursday.

"We don't want to distract the doctors," Smith said.

A couple interesting things to point out about this flyer. Who do you think they modeled the player after? We're thinking Larry Johnson. That's an interesting pick since, in the 1998 Sports Illustrated "Where's Daddy?" feature, Johnson at the time had five kids from four different women.

We also should note that the doctors names are not a joke. There really are doctors named Stephen Hardeman and Bryan Kansas. There's also a doctor on staff at the Urology Team named Richard Chopp. Just to show you I'm not making this up, here's his bio.

Said FitzPatrick of the doctor names on his staff in Oregon: "We can't compete with the name roster they have in Texas."

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