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SBJ College: Hollywood Shuffle For Pac-12


I’ll be getting my football fix in Chapel Hill on Saturday when North Carolina plays Appalachian State. I’ve already told all my buddies to behave themselves at Kenan Stadium, but prospects are not promising.

Here’s what's cooking on campus:

       

USC, UCLA NOW BOTH SEEKING NEW ADs

Guerrero (l) brought on Mick Cronin in the offseason to take over the men's basketball team
  • This is a pivotal time for the Pac-12. The conference's two biggest brands -- USC and UCLA -- are looking for an AD. Those are high-profile jobs in the Pac-12's most-important market. But neither program has excelled in the revenue sports in recent years and, like I said when USC’s job came open, the Pac-12 needs UCLA to be good.

  • Dan Guerrero today announced his retirement, effective next summer. It’s been so long since UCLA hired an AD, I had to look up Guerrero’s predecessor. For what it’s worth, it was the late Peter Dalis, who himself was in the job for 19 years. Guerrero was hired to replace Dalis in 2002, and his run of 17-plus years made him the second-longest tenured AD in the power five, just behind Oklahoma’s Joe Castiglione.

  • While Guerrero failed to hit a home run with his most-recent football and basketball coaching hires, he got a lot of things right. He negotiated an apparel deal with Under Armour and a multimedia rights deal with IMG College that were way over-valued. The multimedia deal guarantees the Bruins almost $15 million annually over 10 years, making it one of the richest in the country. Under Armour’s deal is worth $280 million over 15 years, making it the largest shoe and apparel deal when it was signed.

  • I know this doesn’t play with fans, but it needs to be said: Guerrero is universally considered one of the nicest guys in college athletics. The race to replace him is thought to be wide open. It probably doesn’t work in the Bruins’ favor to be hiring against the Trojans, who will pay more and have more upside. The challenge that UCLA doesn’t have an answer for is the Rose Bowl. Playing home games an hour away from campus means that the football program better be the talk of the town and that hasn’t been the case in many years.

  • Meanwhile, earlier in the day, before Guerrero announced his retirement, Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd cited a source as saying that football coach Chip Kelly’s biggest issue going forward isn’t necessarily his 3-12 record. “He’s not doing the booster stuff. He’s disengaged from recruiting, he’s too aloof. Chip Kelly is running out of allies at UCLA. Fast.”

 

FIGHTING IRISH'S VISIT TO ATHENS READY FOR PRIMETIME

  • I’m highly skeptical that Notre Dame-Georgia will be anywhere near as good as the build-up -- but it will be epic if it is. Think about this: Alabama-LSU has been the only SEC matchup since 2011 deemed big enough to make a primetime window on CBS. That will change Saturday night when the Bulldogs and Irish kick off at 8:00pm ET. CBS reserves primetime for only the biggest SEC matchups, going back to the 1990s when it was always Florida-Tennessee. The last time CBS aired an SEC team in primetime that didn’t involve the Crimson Tide and Tigers was eight years ago when Alabama-Florida was given the window.

  • Here is what Notre Dame-Georgia is competing against Saturday night:

    • Oklahoma State-Texas, 7:30pm ET, ABC
    • Oregon-Stanford, 7:00pm ET, ESPN
    • In an unusual programming twist, Fox will broadcast just one college football game on Saturday -- Michigan-Wisconsin at noon.

 

KENTUCKY'S "CAT WALK" ADDS INSPIRATIONAL ELEMENT

A Toyota plant not far from UK's campus built a one-seater vehicle just for this occasion
  • College football has provided some of the most inspirational stories in sports recently, from Purdue student Tyler Trent’s brave battle with cancer to the “Iowa wave” from fans in Kinnick Stadium to the patients in the Stead Family Children’s Hospital. This season, another feel-good story is unfolding at Kentucky, where a child from the Kentucky Children’s Hospital participates in the team’s Cat Walk each home game.

  • The idea grew from a simple concept -- provide a sick child and family the unique opportunity to travel with the football team on its Cat Walk through a sea of blue-clad fans to the stadium. Because some of the children are too sick to walk the full distance, the Toyota plant in nearby Georgetown, Ky., built a one-seater vehicle just for this occasion. Parents of the child walk along with the team, while UK coach Mark Stoops usually walks next to the child.

  • The "Kid of the Game," as it’s being called, started as an initiative between Toyota’s manufacturing plant and UK’s College of Engineering. The collaboration grew to include UK Healthcare, UK football, local police and several other agencies. “It wasn’t simple,” said Kim Shelton, president of UK Sports & Campus Marketing for JMI Sports. “At times, we had 20 people around the table. ... You just hope that you get the chance to be part of something this meaningful.”

  • The handprints on the side of the vehicle tell another story. They’re from Marco Shemwell, a 4-year-old boy who was hit by a car outside the stadium and died in September 2018 during a UK football game. Shemwell’s older brother was one of the first children to ride in the vehicle.

 

SPEED READS

  • Fox Run Group, a New Jersey-based agency that’s putting down roots in the college space, has signed Sacred Heart to a multimedia sales agreement. The school based in Fairfield, Conn., fields 32 D-I teams that mostly play in the Northeast Conference. Fox Run also owns the sales rights at Monmouth and Iona.

  • This from Bryce Miller of the San Diego Union-Tribune: a deeper look at the Mountain West's uphill battle for national recognition in football. While no conference owns more Power 5 victories this season, postseason power is "sorted in board rooms rather than locker rooms." The "high tide raising all boats stuff makes for good chatter around the Mountain West water cooler, but hardly moves the needle in a world dominated by legacy conferences and their grotesquely gargantuan checkbooks."

  • Fox has made it clear it wants to own noon on college football Saturdays, and it did so during Weeks 1 and 2. But ABC led the way in Week 3 with a close Pitt-Penn State matchup (3.2 million viewers), edging out Ohio State's blowout of Indiana on Fox. The ESPN PR department was quick to let the world know about the win in its weekly ratings release, giving its noon window top billing ahead of "Saturday Night Football" featuring Clemson-Syracuse, which delivered a primetime win -- and also more viewers (3.6 million) than Pitt-Penn State.

  • HBO's college "Hard Knocks" venture is official, with four episodes coming this fall on Florida, Penn State, Arizona State and Washington State. But with the just-concluded Raiders season receiving criticism for a lack of access (plus a whiff on the Antonio Brown drama), it is fair to wonder how much viewers will learn from just a one-hour episode on each school.

  • Gloria Nevarez, an SBJ Game Changer this year, has been busy as West Coast Conference commissioner. She cut a deal to keep her hoops tournament in Las Vegas and also came up with a payout formula that kept Gonzaga happy and in the conference after the school looked at leaving for the Mountain West. This afternoon, Nevarez locked up a media-rights extension with ESPN through 2026-27, as well as a new deal to get games on CBS Sports Network.


 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

  

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ Media with John Ourand on Mondays and Wednesdays for insights into all the latest news around the world of sports media. Also check out SBJ Football from Ben Fischer on Friday afternoons.

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).