Nice while it lasted, fellas.
Daily Archives: February 16, 2022
With a “B”
Gosh, however will schools be able to get by?
The Big Ten will become the first college conference to eclipse $1 billion per year when it negotiates its next media-rights deal later this year. That’s the opinion held by several well-placed sports business sources, who expect the conference to more than double the $440 million in annual rights fees that Fox and ESPN currently pay.
The Big Ten’s media contracts run through 2022-23. It has entered into an exclusive negotiating window with ESPN, but my colleague John Ourand doesn’t expect a deal to get done within this window because there is competing interest from other networks. The conference almost certainly will take its rights to the marketplace to have multiple bidders drive up the price. CBS and NBC are believed to have strong interest.
It’ll be amusing to see what the SEC wrenches out of broadcasters once Oklahoma and Texas are in the fold.
Speaking of the SEC, this seems a little weird:
Once the Big Ten completes its next deal, it joins the ACC and the SEC in having long-term media deals locked up. The major conference rights left in this cycle will be the Pac-12, which has struggled on the competitive stage, and the Big 12, which is losing Texas and Oklahoma. If a network like CBS has major cash to spend for its coveted 3:30pm ET college football window, it’s going to do it now with the Big Ten.
If CBS has major cash to spend with the Big Ten, why didn’t it just stay with the SEC in the first place?
Filed under Big Ten Football, It's Just Bidness
Stingtalk has a question.
Filed under Georgia Tech Football
NIL compensation, like life, comes at you fast.
I’ve posted about this before, but the hot new thing in the college athletes’ compensation world is collectives — pooling money from a variety of sources to be distributed to players according to their market value in return for the players’ NLI in support.
How hot are they? This hot ($$):
The total NIL cost for a given recruiting class, like most monetary figures in the college athletics arms race, figures to only rise. In Spyre’s case, it’s preparing and planning for that number to balloon to $25 million to $30 million in the coming years.
It’s why it enlisted the help of a Washington, D.C., political fundraiser it connected with via Heath Shuler, a former Tennessee quarterback who played in the NFL before spending six years in Congress.
They’re already hiring lobbyists! It took the NCAA decades to realize it needed to grease the political skids; these guys are at it within a matter of months. That’s how you know you’ve made it.
Speaking of which, I’ll be curious to see how accurate this quote is in a year’s time:
“There will be an NIL collective for every Power 5 school by the end of 2022,” said Blake Lawrence, CEO of Opendorse, which helps businesses, collectives and athletes team up for endorsement deals. “And the top collectives will spend $10 million per year on NIL.”
Filed under It's Just Bidness, Political Wankery
The SECCG? It just means more.
A sixteen-team Southeastern Conference is coming, even if we don’t know exactly when yet. Although nothing would surprise me, two eight-team divisions playing eight-game conference schedules seems like a bridge too far in terms of some SEC not facing each other for seven years. So, what’s it to be instead?
Greg Sankey is enigmatic on the subject.
“Options include the single-division structure. It doesn’t mean we would go to that, but perhaps there are no divisions,” Sankey said. “If we do that, that needs to be carefully considered.”
Yeah, well, consider this: “Under NCAA rules, a 16-team conference without divisions would not be permitted to conduct a conference championship game.”
Needless to say, that ain’t happening. Either the SEC successfully lobbies the NCAA to change the rule, or the SEC is sticking with a divisional format.
As the article goes on to explain, there are going to be tradeoffs, no matter what format Sankey eventually embraces. A twelve-team CFP lessens the impact of any tradeoffs, because the chances of getting more SEC teams into the playoffs increases over the current situation. The irony is that a twelve-team CFP also lessens the impact of the SECCG on the CFP. But as long as the money keeps rolling in, I suspect that’s a tradeoff Sankey will be happy to take.
Filed under SEC Football
Always think before you hit the SEND key.
Of all the suggestions in the world, this is certainly one of them.
“Bryan Harsin’s next move? Go get JT Daniels”
I mean, what could go wrong?
As for Daniels, there are plenty of positives with Auburn, even as it’s in the midst of this bizarre situation wherein it lacks an offensive coordinator.
Okay, besides that.
Filed under Auburn's Cast of Thousands, Media Punditry/Foibles
Today, in the end of college football as we know it
My, how the turntables have turned at Butts-Mehre.
Every Georgia fan’s first purchase ought to be an AJ Green jersey. Not that that makes up for anything, NCAA.
Filed under Georgia Football, It's Just Bidness, The NCAA
Get The Picture 