SBJ College: One Cool Cat

If I could pick just one NCAA championship to attend as a fan, it would be the College World Series.

Here’s what is cooking on campus:

STULTZ ALWAYS A BIG FAN OF BARNHART

JMI Sports' Tom Stultz feels Barnhart (r) "doesn’t get the credit he deserves for being an innovator"

• Given their history, it’s easy to understand Tom Stultz’s enthusiasm when Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart was named our 2019 AD of the Year. I profiled Barnhart in this week’s SBJ and one common thread through every conversation was how good a person he is. Stultz took it to another level: “If something were to happen to my whole family, I'd be 100% comfortable with Mitch raising my grandkids.” Also give a listen to this week's SBJ First Look podcast for a discussion on Barnhart's recent honor.
  
  
• Stultz’s relationship with Barnhart goes back to 2004 when they did their first deal together. Stultz, then at Host Communications, struck a 10-year, $80 million multimedia rights agreement with UK that was the largest of its kind at the time. Stultz returned a decade later working at JMI Sports and again won the Wildcats’ rights in a 15-year deal worth $210 million. Both deals triggered growth of Stultz’s businesses.
  
  
• Looking back to 2004, in the years after Jim Host sold control of his namesake company, the business was struggling. If Lexington-based Host had lost UK in its backyard, “it would have been tough to recover,” Stultz said. “Mitch took a chance on us.”
  
  
• When Stultz did the JMI deal, he presented a campuswide marketing model that was unique at the time. Barnhart trusted Stultz’s pitch, and fledgling JMI won its first significant college business against mighty IMG College. “Mitch doesn’t get the credit he deserves for being an innovator and being open-minded to new ideas,” Stultz said.
  
  

AFLAC GETS DUCKS IN A ROW WITH SEC SCHOOLS

• Aflac could end up being Learfield IMG College's first big national sponsorship deal in the wake of the agencies' merger. The supplemental insurance brand is working on an arrangement that will put images of the Aflac duck on pop-up medical tents on every SEC sideline. You’ve likely seen the tents at a game or on TV -- it’s a private place for trainers to examine injured players. Now it’s a marketing platform.
  
  
• Aflac has already done an SEC conference-level deal, but in order to get the sideline rights at each venue, the insurer must do deals with each school and its rights holder. Those will cost somewhere in the low six figures per school, which is quite a bit more than any local health care provider was spending to be on the tent.
  
  
• Despite the massive consolidation created by the Learfield-IMG College merger, sponsorship deals with multiple schools can still be complex to execute for brands and their agencies. In this case, Aflac is working with Melt’s Vince Thompson. To get Auburn, for example, the brand has to go through Fox Sports. Kentucky is aligned with JMI, while LSU’s rights run through Outfront Media Sports. Fragmentation in the college space remains a challenge.
  
  
• In the long term, it will be interesting to see if Georgia-based Aflac moves beyond its Southern roots and into other P5 conferences. Nearly every major school has medical tents on its sideline, which presents a huge opportunity for the right brand. This might be one of the last highly visible, untapped spaces on the field.
  
  
        

JERSEY NIGHT FOR A GOOD CAUSE

CLC's Cory Moss and his wife, Kendyl, helped raise $150,000 at a March of Dimes event

• Congratulations to Cory Moss and his wife, Kendyl, for chairing a March of Dimes event in Atlanta on Saturday night that raised close to $150,000. The “Provisions with a Purpose” gala at the College Football Hall of Fame drew close to 250 people. With a theme of jerseys and jeans, a lot of people showed up in red, whether it was representing Georgia, the Falcons or Atlanta United.
  
  
• If any couple is qualified to host a sports-themed event, it’s Cory and Kendyl. They met at the 2001 Final Four in Minneapolis. Kendyl was working at Conference USA, where she had been one of Commissioner Mike Slive’s early hires, and Cory was a fast-rising exec at Collegiate Licensing Co (he now runs the outfit).
  
  
• March of Dimes hits close to home for the Moss family. The couple lost two of three triplets 15 years ago after they were born prematurely, each weighing a little more than a pound. Cory subsequently joined the March of Dimes board in Atlanta and became instrumental in creating the inaugural sports-themed event.
  
  
• The one surviving triplet, Kellen, is now 15 and will begin high school in the fall, Moss is happy to report, while little sister Kolby, 11, will start middle school.
  

SPEED READS

• College football docu-series are all the rage and Louisville is the latest school to provide viewers a glimpse behind the scenes in a new all-access football series coming to ACC Network. The Cards are following in the footsteps of other "Hard Knocks"-style docs in recent years. Michigan earned $2.25 million for participating in Amazon’s 2017 docu-series, while Showtime is still open to more iterations of its “A Season With” show after previous seasons with Notre Dame, Florida State and Navy. ESPN last fall joined the fray with a inside look at Nick Saban and Alabama.
  
  
• Good weekend for Arkansas' Hunter Yurachek and Texas Tech's Kirby Hocutt. The Razorbacks captured the women’s track and field national championship, while the Red Raiders took the men’s title. Meanwhile, both schools stamped their ticket for the College World Series. For Hocutt in particular, it's icing on the cake after a run to the men's NCAA hoops title game.
  
  
• Sha'Carri Richardson, the freshman LSU sprinter who easily broke a 30-year-old record in the women's 100 meters at the NCAA championships, has some choices to make. With the Tokyo Olympics just over a year away, Richardson -- who now has almost 26,000 Twitter followers -- must decide whether she'll leave school to focus on a medal next summer. Highly-touted U.S. hurdler Sydney McLaughlin made that call in the fall, leaving Kentucky after one year and signing a deal with New Balance. Brands surely will look Richardson's way if she makes the same choice.
  
  
  

  Sha'Carri Richardson broke a 30-year-old record in the 100 meters at the NCAA Championships

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Something on the College beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessdaily.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).