One of my ongoing projects in Athletic Aesthetic has been the efforts of our “other” professional sports teams – meaning, teams with nicknames besides “Packers” – to establish a statewide presence.

The Milwaukee Brewers took care of much of their irrelevancy outside the southeast portion of the state by using that time-honored trick of winning games. Residents of western … and southwestern, and northern, and northeastern Wisconsin now were interested in Brewers games in a way not seen since the early 1980s.

 The Milwaukee Bucks thus became the sole focus of my attention, leading to the launching of Operation Buck ‘Em Up. I realized that if the Bucks kept having trouble winning games, they should at least adopt suggestions from potential fans on what would make a compelling product to watch and follow. I solicited responses from Athletic Aesthetic readers, received ... none, and declared the Bucks to have dug a sufficiently deep hole that only their on-court efforts and future franchise-building could build back the team’s following throughout Wisconsin.

 I may have underestimated the size of Volume One’s readership. Apparently someone who works in the greater Milwaukee area, a new employee who arrived in recent months, logged on to VolumeOne.org sometime over the summer and decided to turn Operation Buck ‘Em Up into a reality:

 Brandon Jennings.

 No player or team-related figure since at least 2001 has brought more attention to the Bucks than Jennings. Sure, the Jennings Era started quietly – ignominiously, really. Your first exposure to Jennings likely came in 2008, when you probably read a blurb about how he was going to skip college and play professional basketball in Europe, primarily since he could not academically qualify for college ball at Arizona.

You then heard the criticism on draft night 2009 from ESPN’s analysts. You also heard how his agent kept him from Madison Square Garden that night out of fear he would drop too low in the draft.

 You heard that he could not lead a team; that his shot was poor, that he played too few minutes in Europe. What reason did you have to believe he could play more than average basketball for the Bucks? As of my July column, I believed the drafting of Brandon Jennings was symptomatic of the problems that kept the Bucks mired at the bottom of the NBA in both win-loss record and home-state interest.

The Bucks were picked this autumn by Sports Illustrated to finish last in the Eastern Conference. Surely, Jennings would be a bust; we knew that. If we cared to know.

 Then Brandon Jennings took the court on November 14th and scored 55 points. He broke the Bucks’ single-game scoring record – which used to be held by Lew Alcindor (you know, the guy who became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). In fact, Jennings was already standing out as a rookie prior to the 55-point night, and he held steady as a force on the Bucks in the following weeks.

 Sure, the decision to return FSN Wisconsin to the local cable line-up for this NBA season has helped increase Chippewa Valley Bucks awareness. Being able to see Bucks games in Eau Claire for the first time since about 2001 can only help create Bucks fans – provided the Bucks do not deliver a thoroughly un-watchable product that makes people change the channel.

However, Brandon Jennings’ breakout rookie season has caused even yours truly to sit and watch some Bucks action. TV availability and quality on-court performance – one wonders if the Bucks were reading my mind this whole time.

 Operation Buck ‘Em Up is not guaranteed a permanent track for success; injuries, losing streaks, even the future location of the franchise could throw the campaign off-course. Yet every successful campaign has to have some early victories. Tangible victories in the “W” column, more than most predicted in the first two months of this season; and moral victories – the discovery of perhaps the state’s first true pro basketball star in decades, and the presence of Bucks games on local TV – are such early victories.

 No need to submit more suggestions to this column. Just watch the Bucks. A few nights in front of the TV will give you plenty of reason to Buck ‘Em Up.