SBJ College: Looking Into The Crystal Ball For 2020

Since we last published the newsletter on Dec. 19, CBS pulled out of SEC TV negotiations, Endeavor closed on its acquisition of On Location Experiences and a Congressional committee made plans to examine the NCAA. So much for a relaxing holiday.

Here is what's cooking on campus:

WHAT TO EXPECT FOR THE COMING YEAR

• In the spirit of my colleague John Ourand’s popular media predictions, here are my top five predictions for college athletics in 2020:
  
  
• Lame-duck CBS, whose current deal for SEC football goes through the 2023 season, will carry that package of games one more season before selling off the last three seasons of its deal to ESPN/ABC. The Disney networks will finalize its deal for the SEC’s marquee package of 15 football games this month. Considering that Fox and NBC were willing to pay close to $400 million annually, ESPN/ABC’s price will be breathtaking.
  
  
• Mark Emmert will leave his role atop the NCAA to take a university president job, returning to his roots in campus administration after a decade at the governing body. Emmert will be replaced by Robert Morris Univ. President Chris Howard, a Rhodes Scholar and a member of the CFP selection committee. The change in leadership, however, will not lead to a change in the NCAA’s stance against paying athletes.
  
  
• Two of the biggest brands in college athletics -- Ohio State and Texas -- will roll out rich new multimedia rights contracts with Learfield IMG College, each exercising a different strategy. The Buckeyes will go from a guaranteed revenue deal to an 80/20 revenue share, while the Longhorns will exit their revenue-share model for a healthy guarantee. They’ll both make close to $25 million a year from those media and marketing rights, not including Texas’ deal with ESPN for the Longhorn Network.
  
  
• The Big South Conference, buoyed by its addition of Hampton in 2017, will add another HBCU this year -- football powerhouse North Carolina A&T. The Aggies will give the Big South its ninth football member and 12th basketball member, while further enhancing the mid-major league’s progressive reputation.
  
  
• Multiple companies will sprout up to represent college athletes for their name, image and likeness. A chaotic rush to market will create a fragmented and cumbersome landscape, forcing brands to shop around, like the early days of college sponsorships.
  
  
• BONUS ROUND:
  
  
  • UCLA will hire Utah’s Mark Harlan as its next AD
  • In a year of unparalleled parity, a men's basketball non-blueblood -- like Dayton or Gonzaga or San Diego State -- will win the NCAA Tournament
  • Fox will sell its multimedia rights business to JMI Sports
    
    
• What’s your prediction for 2020? Email me at msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com

SCHOOLS WANT OUT OF BOWL TICKET REQUIREMENTS

• College football teams are getting out of the bowl ticketing business. For years, bowls have required participating teams to buy a certain number of tickets -- typically 8,000 to 10,000 tickets per school -- as part of the arrangement between the events and the conferences. But some leagues, the SEC among them, have begun pushing back against those required purchases.
  
  
• When Kentucky played in the Belk Bowl this week, part of the agreement called for the Wildcats to buy 8,000 tickets for the game in Charlotte. UK sold about 4,000 and the conference paid for the unsold 4,000. The leftovers were returned to the bowl game, school officials said. It’s a convoluted system that has outlived its usefulness because so many fans are now accustomed to finding bargains on the secondary market.
  
  
• What’s going to happen, starting next season, is that SEC schools will pay for an allotment of tickets to cover the main travel party to the bowl -- say, 1,500 to 2,000 tickets. The participating schools and conferences will direct the general fanbase to buy tickets from the bowl’s website. The schools will no longer sell tickets or worry about prioritizing seat location based on donations. It’ll be far simpler.
  
  
• Minimum ticket allotments will not affect bowls in the CFP like the Sugar Bowl, but they will come into play for the next tier of games with SEC tie-ins, such as the Citrus Bowl. The conference has not said yet how the new ticket minimums will be determined, but schools are elated at the prospect of getting out of the bowl ticketing business.
  

ARE WE FEELING A CFP EFFECT ON BIG BOWL ATTENDANCE?

• There’s an ongoing argument that the 6-year-old CFP format is making other bowl games less important and less attractive because all of the nation’s attention is on the four teams in the playoff. It certainly feels like there’s an impact on attendance for some New Year’s Six games, and some alarming numbers back that up.

• The Rose Bowl remained above 90,000 fans (91,136) for Oregon-Wisconsin, but that’s the lowest attendance figure for the game since 2003. In New Orleans, only 55,211 came out to see Georgia-Baylor, which is the Sugar Bowl’s third-lowest figure since 1939. In Dallas, 54,828 fans attended the Cotton Bowl for Penn State and Memphis -- that game’s lowest figure since 1948. On the flip side, a CFP semifinal between LSU and Oklahoma did help the Peach Bowl to a record crowd -- for both the event and Mercedes-Benz Stadium (78,347).

SPEED READS

• A Frosted Flakes bath after beating Florida State in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, an HBO Sports special and a second straight winning season add up to a pretty prosperous fall for Herm Edwards and Arizona State.
  
  
• Caesars Sportsbook's Jeff Davis told ESPN that more money was bet on Ohio State-Clemson than has been bet on any NFL game this season. Davis estimated that the CFP semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl "attracted roughly 15% more than the most heavily bet NFL game."
  
  
• Viewership for regular-season college hoops across Fox and FS1 is down a tick as we start 2020, but don't blame Big East schools. The conference has put the college hoops world on notice this winter with a combined 101-25 record against non-conference opponents. Usual suspects like Villanova and Butler are pulling their weight, but it's schools like DePaul, St. John's, Creighton and Georgetown (predicted bottom-dwellers in preseason polls) who have given the conference a boost. CBS Sports' Gary Parrish said on his latest podcast, "You can make a reasonable argument that top to bottom the Big East is maybe the best in the country this season. I’m not sure they have a bad team."
  
  
• Nevada has struggled with declining season-ticket sales in recent years, and AD Doug Knuth responded to a tweet over the holiday asking him how he can entice fans back to Mackay Stadium. Among his ideas? Scheduling non-televised games to meet the preferred kickoff times that fans request (when possible,) improving post-game traffic flow and enhancing food/beverage options. Knuth: "Our challenge is to make the game-day experience more entertaining."
  

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).