Dave Brown sat in a San Luis Obispo Starbucks last week in California and reviewed his schedule. The TV executive most widely credited with popularizing high-profile early-season college football games was headed to Fresno State on Tuesday afternoon, followed by trips to Stanford and San Jose on Wednesday and the Pac-12 offices the next day.
Brown’s busy itinerary was not all that unusual — he has visited countless college campuses over the past three decades as one of ESPN’s senior college football programming executives.
But last week’s trip was completely different because this time, he was on his own. Brown left ESPN at the end of August after nearly 28 years with the network. The well-liked executive said that he wanted to scratch an entrepreneurial itch and sell college football scheduling software to universities. In the past four weeks, he has had meetings with around 40 schools, he said.
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While at ESPN, Dave Brown helped schedule early-season marquee college football matchups.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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“He’s the P.T. Barnum of scheduling and event creation,” said his former boss,
Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling. “Dave loves college sports more than anyone I’ve ever known.”
The average college football fan has never heard of Brown, though they’ve all benefited from his work. Brown is the executive primarily responsible for the increasing slate of early-season high-profile games, such as this year’s Ohio State-Virginia Tech game.
“Dave didn’t invent these games,” Magnus said. “But he perfected them and led to the proliferation of them.”
Magnus compared Brown’s ability at crafting schedules to playing 3-D chess. Magnus recalls Brown getting as many as 12 games moved to accommodate one coveted matchup.
Brown’s quirky personality endeared him to people in the business. Magnus laughed as he recalled Brown walking the halls in Bristol in his skintight bicycle shorts and shirt with a Cabbage Patch backpack.
“Everyone has a Dave story,” he said.
Brown also earned respect from college officials outside of Bristol. Magnus recalled watching
Alabama coach
Nick Saban surrounded by hundreds of people as he wrapped up a presentation at an SEC Media Day a few years ago and started walking off the dais. “As he was leaving the room, he saw Dave and made his way over to give him a bear hug,” he said. “It was as if the Red Sea parted. The one guy Nick really wanted to talk to was Dave.”
Brown is depending on those types of relationships to help him convince school athletic departments to use his software, called Gridiron, which was developed by Enola Labs in Austin, Texas. The software essentially makes it easier for schools with open dates to find opponents.
“I find them an opening on their schedule, and say, ‘If you’re looking for a home-and-home series starting at home, here are all the teams that can do it. Let’s give them a call and see if we can get them,’” Brown said. “This program allows the schools to key in what they’re looking for and it just matches them up with everybody that’s looking for the same thing for exactly what they need.”
For example, Fresno State is renovating its Bulldog Stadium and was looking to host some high-profile, nonconference teams in 2019 when construction is scheduled to be completed. About five months ago, Brown convinced Minnesota to visit during the 2019 season.
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Brown is counting on his sports connections to build Gridiron.
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“That’s a good one for Fresno to have when you pump some money into the stadium and fix it up — to get a Big Ten team to come in is great for them,” he said.
Despite his media background, Brown said he does not offer much TV advice when pitching scheduling changes, mainly because colleges don’t need it.
“All the games find some form of television these days, so the games really place themselves,” he said. “Back in the day, people may have paid more attention to TV considerations. But they don’t these days because everything gets on. The contracts for all the conferences are so comprehensive that everything finds some form of television.”
Right now, Brown is focused solely on football schedules. He is keeping an eye on the basketball space as a potential area for growth eventually.
“A lot of people have asked me about a basketball program, but I’m taking it one step at a time,” he said. “I’m just going to do this football thing. If basketball ever presents itself as an opportunity, sure, I’ll take a look at it. It’s not necessarily more complex. It’s more schools with more games, but it’s certainly doable. You can code anything.”
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
