There was no shortage of topics at last week’s conference in New York, with name, image and likeness proposals for student athletes dominating much of the discussion.Marc Bryan-Brown
College athletics will enter a new decade on the precipice of fundamental changes.
Name, image and likeness rights could redefine the revenue model and the tenets of amateurism. Mental health care for the athletes will become the single-most important noncompetition-oriented issue for athletic departments. And the SEC will have a new media deal in place that could give the conference a sixfold increase over what it currently makes from its CBS package, which would close the conference’s financial gap with the Big Ten.
Those are the prevailing themes for college sports as 2019 comes to a close, themes that caused NCAA President Mark Emmert to harp on the need for the governing body to evolve more quickly to keep up with the surprisingly swift pace of change confronting college sports.
“There’s no question in my mind that the vast majority of universities understand that we need to move into a period where we’re modernizing our rules,” Emmert said last week at the Learfield/IMG College Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in New York. “The member schools are appropriately anxious about [NIL] because it’s complicated. They want to keep the model intact. But we’re ready, willing and able to modernize the rules. We need to do it in a way though that is thoughtful and done carefully, because there is an enormous amount of unintended consequences.”
NCAA President Mark Emmert said the organization is “ready, willing and able to modernize the rules” over name, image and likeness.Marc Bryan-Brown
Big moves in media
While commissioners and athletic directors talked at length about changes to the collegiate model, one thing that apparently hasn’t changed is the value of live sports media rights.
Just below the surface of discussions about NIL rights and player health last week, there was buzz about two conferences making big moves on the media front.
The Mountain West is on the verge of a new agreement with Fox Sports, sources said, after spending the past seven years with ESPN in a deal that runs out next year. The total package is expected to include some live games on CBS Sports Network, similar to the previous deal. ESPN will continue to have a bowl relationship with the Mountain West and work with the league on playing in the early-season basketball tournaments.
The new Fox deal, primarily for football and basketball, has not yet been signed, sources said. But the two sides have agreed on terms and suggested that it could be ready by the end of the year. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.
Going with Fox means that most of the Mountain West’s games will appear on FS1. The Mountain West represents the fifth conference deal for Fox along with the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Big East.
Overheard at IAF
“Do we need to modernize our rules? Yes. Is it going to be a difficult thing to achieve? Yes. But I think it will be achieved.”
— Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, on changes coming for name, image and likeness rights for student athletes
“How do we maintain opportunity equality, things that we’ve established across our athletics programs and then pivot to perhaps an updated model?”
— SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, on proposed NIL changes
“I don’t care about you hitting the putt, or you not hitting that free throw. I care about you living every single day. And that’s the most important issue.”
— Temple AD Patrick Kraft on the need to address the mental rigors faced by college athletes
“We have to look at what we’ve developed in light of modern circumstances. We’re about halfway through. It’s worked successfully.”
— Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, saying he doesn’t see a need to expand the College Football Playoff to six or eight teams at this time
“We’ve all talked about how it’s sort of hard to deal with the millennials. Well, that’s nothing compared to what’s coming up with Gen Z. A millennial has a 12-second attention span. Gen Z … has an eight-second attention span. Which means that just in the time it takes to set up another play, they’re lost. They’re going to the phone. They’re going to do something else.”
— ANC CEO George Linardos on the challenges of attracting young people to sports events
Rumblings continue about the SEC getting out of its deal with CBS for 15 first-choice football games, including the conference championship. Sources said several networks have been in contact with the conference’s representatives, CAA’s Nick Khan and Evolution Media’s Alan Gold.
The CBS deal runs through the 2023 football season and pays the conference $55 million a year, a significantly low number based off a contract signed in 2008.
A newly negotiated agreement could generate as much as $300 million a year to have the first pick of SEC games each week, sources said.
CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox have expressed interest in picking up the broadcast package.
Focus on mental health
Temple AD Pat Kraft sent a jarring message to the industry when he said that addressing mental health “is the biggest issue facing college sports right now. I think it’s the biggest issue on our campuses for the general student body.”
Kraft’s viewpoint was met with broad agreement last week, as universities detailed the amount of time they’ve devoted to the issue.
Temple raised money for two full-time mental health specialists. Cal and Marquette are in the process of hiring departmental behavioral health specialists. Michigan has five full-time mental health professionals on staff.
Cal AD Jim Knowlton played football at West Point in 1978 when the team didn’t have a strength coach.
“And now, there’s not a team in the country that doesn’t have a strength coach and doesn’t have a trainer,” he said. “Every one of us is adding staff for the mental health space. It’s the biggest issue.”
The good news is that it’s been relatively easy to fundraise around this issue to help pay for these new positions.
“It has been very easy to raise money around this to help support these positions,” said Bill Scholl, Marquette’s vice president and athletic director. “Our donors have really embraced this as being a concern. They want to fix it right now and not wait.”
First Look podcast, with an interview with outgoing Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany at the 11:12 mark:
Editor’s note: This story is updated from the print edition.
