May 16, 2008

Jennifer Rodrigues, the Director of Athletic Media Relations for the University of Memphis, was presented the Scoop Hudgins Outstanding Sports Information Director Award by the All-American Football Foundation Thursday night.

Rodrigues has been with the Tiger athletic department for 10 years and was promoted to Director of Athletic Media Relations at the start of the 2004 football season. She is responsible for the publicity and promotion of the U of M football team, as well as overseeing the day-to-day operation of the media relations office. In 2005, she spearheaded a highly-publicized Heisman campaign for DeAngelo Williams.

A member of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) since 1991, Rodrigues' 2007 football media guide ranked fourth in the country and No. 1 in the district by the organization. She recently was involved in the redesign of the U of M's official athletic website, which has seen record traffic over the last several months with the success of the Tiger program.

For the last four years, Rodrigues has served as the media coordinator of the C-USA Basketball Tournament hosted at FedExForum. She will serve in that same capacity for the NCAA Men's Basketball South Regional at FedExForum next March.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now UL-Lafayette), Rodrigues joined the Tiger staff after serving two years as an assistant media relations director at Mississippi State where she was the contact for women's basketball and softball. She also assisted in the game-day operations for football, volleyball and men's basketball.

A native of Slidell, La., she received her bachelor's degree in journalism at ULL, where she was a student assistant in the sports information office under Dan McDonald from 1991-95.