SBJ College: Content Could Be King With NIL Change

I'm out with my wife for her birthday dinner. She doesn't care the first thing about name, image or likeness.

Here is what's cooking on campus:

WHERE DOES CONTENT FIT INTO THE NIL CONVERSATION?

• The name, image and likeness debate has generated several ways in which college athletes could profit. There’s one other scenario that came up in conversation today with a marketing expert whose clients would be interested, and it revolves around content.
  
  
• For weeks, we’ve heard about the low-hanging fruit that could bear revenue for college athletes under California’s new law -- endorsements for a car dealership, paid appearances, autograph signings and royalties from jersey sales. The missing piece of the conversation, my marketing expert said, is content the athlete could monetize through his name and experiences.
  
  
• If there comes a time when college athletes are afforded the same opportunities to make money off their own rights as their coaches, we might see cameras following the star QB to class or post-practice interviews exclusively for “The Tua Tagovailoa Show.” Think about all of the places where non-live college content appears now.
  
  
• The 10-part “Inside the Madness” docu-series on coach John Calipari and Kentucky basketball in early 2018 on Facebook Watch drew as many as 1.1 million views in one episode. HBO is in the midst of a four-part “Hard Knocks”-style series featuring Arizona State, Florida, Penn State and Washington State, while Alabama coach Nick Saban is the subject of a new documentary every season.
  
  
• The coaches are the stars in college athletics -- that’s not lost on me -- but with so many outlets seeking content, there’s reason to believe there would be a place for digital and social content featuring high-profile college athletes.

RISING TIDE FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREGAME SHOWS

"College GameDay" is seeing its best viewership through seven shows since the 2015 season

• We're headed into Week 8 for the college football season, so where does viewership sit for some of the bigger pregame shows? That’s the question I asked SBJ’s ratings expert Austin Karp. ESPN's "College GameDay" is off to its best start since 2015 with an average of just over 1.9 million viewers for the 9:00am-12:00pm ET window. It's also the second-best average since the show expanded to three hours. "GameDay" is up 4% from the first seven shows last season and up 10% for the same period two years ago. Viewership among males 25-54 is up 3%, and even viewership among females is up 2%. ESPN has also seen success with "Countdown to GameDay," which streams on the ESPN app, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from 8:30-9:00am.
  
  
• Fox made big changes to its college football pregame show for 2019, adding new analysts and expanding from 30 minutes to an hour. Heading into Week 8, Fox's "Big Noon Kickoff" is averaging 979,000 viewers, up 40% from last year at this point. This past week, the show also had its best 11:00am-12:00pm window yet (1.68 million viewers) leading into the Red River Rivalry. Meanwhile, "College Football Today" is averaging 1.02 million viewers on CBS from 3:00-3:30pm ahead of the SEC package, up 1% from 1.01 million viewers at the same point last year. 

SPEED READS 

• Mountain West hoops will have to play a significant portion of league games in early December this year due to a convention at Thomas & Mack Center during its typical conference tournament week. The issue is that early December is a key time to schedule non-conference opponents. Boise State coach Leon Rice isn’t a fan. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Mark Anderson: “We’re getting squeezed out. The Power Fives are increasing their league games, and you get less and less opportunities.” 
  
  
• What sold Nebraska AD Bill Moos on the 2021 date with Illinois at Aviva Stadium in Dublin? National exposure, a unique experience for players that could boost recruiting, and -- of course -- not giving up a home game. Check out this piece from 247Sports' Brian Christopherson on how Anthony Travel CEO John Anthony helped bring the game together.
  
  
• The Univ. of Houston dropped to 2-4 in the first year under Dana Holgorsen, and current senior and former player Justin Murphy has accused the program of trying to "actively tank." It does appear something's up in Houston with two of the program's top players opting to redshirt, but is tanking really making its way onto college campuses? The Ringer's Rodger Sherman: "The idea of downgrading Houston’s current team to upgrade its future one could be considered the first tanking experiment in college football history. Only tanking in college sports brings almost none of the rewards that it does for professional teams -- while exacerbating nearly all of the ethical concerns."
  
  
• Advent worked with Texas to design and build the school’s first athletic Hall of Fame on the north end zone of Darrell K. Royal Stadium. Until it opened, the Longhorns didn’t truly have a front door or place to display its trophies and artifacts in one place. Advent’s Drew Bryant is featured in this video talking about the project, along with AD Chris Del Conte and administrators who worked on it: Chris Plonsky and Drew Martin.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

• It was this week in 2009 that an upstart apparel and uniform company called Crons struck a deal to become the Big South Conference’s official provider. Crons (“Come ready or never start”) was founded by former Pitt football and basketball player Pat Cavanaugh and its point of differentiation was the inspirational saying inside the collar of the jersey. Crons gained some measure of interest in subsequent years when two of its teams, Robert Morris and UNC-Asheville, wore Crons uniforms in the NCAA basketball tournament. The Crons brand is still alive today, an official at Cavanaugh Promotions said, but it is now associated with a sports nutrition business.

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@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).