SBJ College: Clemson Reaps Benefits From CFP Success

My college football friends are upset that the CFP Championship wasn’t played last night when it should have been. Three NFL Sundays will have passed from the CFP semifinals on Dec. 28 to the finals on Monday night. But I keep thinking about what CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock says whenever I complain: “People are still watching.”

Here is what's cooking on campus:

CFP IMPACT SPREADS ACROSS CLEMSON’S CAMPUS

• Clemson knows its way around the CFP Championship Game. This Monday will mark the fourth time in six years that the Tigers have played for the title. Clemson Deputy AD Graham Neff has been with the school for all of them, so I talked to him today about the benefits of such high-profile exposure -- not just for athletics -- but for all of campus and how it has been the impetus to drive athletic donations from $14 million to $40 million over the past six years.
  
  
  • On the impact across the university: “Our leadership team, our deans, they’re really engaged and active over the CFP weekend. A lot of our colleges purchase suites and manage suites, like the College of Engineering. All of our deans, all of our president's cabinet, leadership team, is invited.”
    
    
  • On using the CFP to reward longtime donors vs. cultivating new ones: "What's changed is how the championship game has become a real big activation point for a lot of our alumni or donors that had been absent or just had not been engaged. So, in the first couple of years, there was a lot of, ‘Hey, this is my first time seeing the Tigers play since the '90s.’ That’s been really cool. We certainly continue to do that now, but there's probably less of those folks as compared to maybe the first couple of years.”
    
    
  • On success stories: “At our first national championship game in Phoenix in 2015, there was a donor we just had not connected with. He had lived in other regions of the country. We had him in a suite and began building that relationship. Four years later, he's one of our biggest donors to athletics and to campus. There are absolutely success stories that we're able to share based on some of those initial football successes. … Now our athletic academic building is named after the family. Football was the flash point for that re-engagement.”
    
    
  • On the longer-than-usual wait between this season's semifinals and championship: “It’s funny. We were wrapping up a meeting (Monday) and we were like, ‘In years past, we would have been playing today.’ Having this extra week has been really nice as far as logistics, but something will still pop up. There'll be some moving parts -- donor travel, changes in staffing, somebody in a suite can’t make it.”
    
    
  • On football influencing fundraising: “A phrase we use a lot is that football gives great buoyancy to those fundraising efforts throughout campus, certainly within athletics. That word -- buoyancy -- is something that we think about with football.”
    
    
  • On Clemson’s social-media team of 10+ that will work the game: “That’s one of the areas where the CFP has really grown. The first few years, we had a hard time getting credentials for video because they really didn’t distinguish between the coaches’ video as opposed to our creative services video. Now, there’s a lot more access for both of those functions.”

MULTIPLE BRANDS GET EXPOSURE AROUND TUA PRESS CONFERENCE

• Tua Tagovailoa’s heavily publicized press conference yesterday was an exposure bonanza for some of Alabama’s most-prolific sponsors. At the dais, a bottle of Coca-Cola and a bottle of Dasani water (a Coke brand) dominated the screen. Mercedes-Benz had some more subtle branding, with its logo on the microphone flag. Behind the dais was a digital backdrop with Alabama’s logo and rotating sponsors AT&T, Renasant Bank and Alfa Insurance. That’s six commercial brands in one screen as a student-athlete announced that he was turning pro.
  
  
• While the positioning in front of and behind Tagovailoa appeared opportunistic -- given that he was the national sports news of the day -- those brands have been there all season for Nick Saban’s weekly press conferences. The sponsors bought those positions at the press conference before the season as part of larger sponsorship and advertising buys with Learfield IMG College, the multimedia rights holder for the Crimson Tide. Another Learfield IMG College connection: The digital board that provides the rotating backdrop is provided by ANC, whose parent company is Learfield IMG College. Alabama basketball will have the same press conference setup.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Tagovailoa becomes the latest major football QB client in agent Leigh Steinberg's comeback, following his representation of recent first rounders Patrick Mahomes (2017) and Paxton Lynch (2016). MELT CEO Vince Thompson, appearing on the Paul Finebaum show, said, "If you look at how Mahomes is being marketed in the NFL, that’s the game plan that they’re going to follow with Tua. ... He’s from Hawaii, he’s playing the ukulele in bed right after his surgery, he throws this walk-off homerun against Georgia. He’s in the style of how the NFL wants to market to different demographics than maybe they did in the past." SBJ's Liz Mullen last year went inside Steinberg's recruitment of Mahomes, which included detailed plans to establish scholarships at both the QB's high school and university.
  
  

MORE PREDICTIONS FOR 2020

• SBJ College rang in the new year with predictions for 2020. I asked readers for their prognostications and here are two of the most interesting that came back.

• MELT CEO Vince Thompson:
  • Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence, who is not eligible for the NFL Draft until 2021, will decide to sit out the 2020 season in order to protect his draft status as a top pick.
    
    
• Oak View Group Coordinator for Global Partnerships Justin Bergman:
  • More colleges will dive into marketing partnerships with casinos and sports gambling entities (beyond just daily fantasy), especially in states where it is already legal. Another emerging category to watch: CBD, which will lose the negative connotation and become a "sponsorship category."

SPEED READS

• I didn’t think we’d ever see the day that Learfield IMG College would be locked out of the national championship game, given the merger that gave the company multimedia rights to more than 200 schools. Clemson’s rights are represented by JMI Sports, while LSU is with Outfront Media. Learfield IMG College isn’t without business this weekend, however. The company’s licensing arm, CLC, owns the trademark rights to the CFP, as well as both schools.

• Nothing like an NFL lead-in to boost viewership. Fox Sports on Sunday drew 2.3 million viewers for Xavier's 75-67 win over St. John's, making it the net's most-watched college hoops game on record. The 4:30pm ET tip followed the Vikings' upset of the Saints as part of NFL Wild Card weekend.
  
  
• The Washington Post's Robert Klemko cites a coaching agent who believes there will be a "small exodus of black assistants" from the NFL to college after Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy missed out on a couple of openings. Last week, a study conducted by Arizona State and UCF concluded African-Americans and other minority coaches "don't have the same opportunities" as Caucasians to "become head coaches in the NFL or get rehired after leaving a head coaching position." NFL Net’s Jim Trotter, appearing on Sportsnet radio, said, “Collegiate coaches are looking at what’s happening in the NFL. … [Clemson co-offensive coordinator] Tony Elliott was asked to interview for the Carolina job. He declined. … He knew he wasn’t going to get that job.” 
  
  
• The Intercollegiate obtained formal interpretation requests from 91 different D-I programs seeking clarity from the NCAA about possibly violating rules. Among the highlights: Hawaii asked if a luau is "considered a meal or entertainment" and Utah State requested to have a sponsored “bean night” promotion as an homage to sophomore forward Justin Bean. All of the requests can be found here.
  
  
• Oregon women's basketball coach Kelly Graves and his squad will travel across the country on Feb. 3 for a matchup with UConn -- right in the middle of Pac-12 play. Why then? Graves told the Oregonian's John Canzano: "ESPN wanted us to do it. But it’s important. We’re two of the best programs in the country, have been for a while. … I don’t like where they placed it, quite frankly. That’s not ideal. But it’s going to be a showcase event nationally."

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