SBJ College: Lewis Hardy's Next Act

Iowa defeated Iowa State on Saturday for the Cy-Hawk Trophy. I don’t think the schools tried very hard on the trophy name. Sounds like they went with the first idea thrown out.

Here’s what's cooking on campus:

WHAT'S OLD IS NEW AGAIN IN COLLEGIATE LICENSING 

• Lewis Hardy is the guy you never saw coming. While CLC was growing into the industry leader in collegiate licensing three decades ago, Hardy turned upstart Licensing Resource Group into a strong business in CLC’s shadow, winning the rights at schools like Arizona State, Baylor, Mississippi State, N.C. State and others. Now after a short stint in retirement, Hardy is at it again, forming a collegiate licensing agency that’s winning business at the mid-major level.
  
  
• Affinity Licensing has been around for a year now and has won the licensing rights to 11 schools. Among the new clients: Appalachian State, Georgia State, Hawaii, North Texas, Troy and Winthrop, Affinity’s first client. Hardy’s friends say he relishes the underdog role. “He’s always liked being the Avis to Hertz,” one said. Affinity certainly isn’t going to put CLC out of business, but like Van Wagner in multimedia rights, Affinity is finding enough business to be a worthy alternative agency for low- and mid-majors.
  
  
• Affinity appeared on the scene last year with no fanfare, no marketing and no PR. They relied on word-of-mouth and sheer hustle to meet with ADs and win business. In fact, Hardy was reluctant to even talk about Affinity’s early success. “All I want to be judged on is results,” he said earlier today. As the licensing agency grows its client list -- Hardy expects three new clients in October -- it will be harder to ignore.
  
  
• Hardy's former business, LRG, sold to Learfield in 2014, prompting him to try retirement. It didn’t agree with him. He teamed up with another former LRG exec, Wil Spires, to create Affinity and they’ve been winning almost a school a month ever since.

WOLVERINES BANK ON NEW FINANCIAL ED PROGRAM

• Michigan has invested in a new financial literacy program designed to provide its student athletes with workshops on business and lifestyle decisions. The financial education program was implemented by Edyoucore Sports & Entertainment, a firm started by Drew Hawkins to provide college athletes with early education and ongoing support. It’s another way for athletic departments to add value to the scholarship and prepare athletes for their future after college.
  
  
• Hawkins came from Morgan Stanley, where he was managing director of the global sports & entertainment division for 20 years. He has already conducted two workshops for the Wolverines, one for the football team and one for the rest of the athletes. Former NFL player Bart Scott, who serves as an adviser to Hawkins, also joined him in leading the sessions. Edyoucore classes continue through the fall.
  
  
• Outside of the sessions, Michigan athletes will have access to specific financial education components, such as credit, taxes, retirement and savings. Among Edyoucore’s advisors: Former Maryland AD Kevin Anderson and longtime sports agent Donald Dell, who now teaches at Virginia’s law school.
  
  
• Hawkins envisions the program mostly applying to colleges, but he’s also looking at sports camps and sports academies.

SPEED READS

• Big Ten Associate Commissioner Wendy Fallen, a member of SBJ's annual Game Changers class, shed light on what it was like to work with Commissioner Jim Delany for the past 24 years. "I really celebrate his commitment to women. There’s a great example: Every conference has to name a senior woman administrator. It spoke volumes when he said, ‘Well, I’ve got three women who are senior leaders. Why do I have to pick one?’" Check out the rest of Fallen's interview with SBJ to hear what she expects from new Commissioner Kevin Warren.
  
  
• Other members of this year's Game Changers class from the college side include West Coast Conference Commissioner Gloria Nevarez and Univ. of Oregon Warsaw Sports Marketing Center Dir Whitney Wagoner.
  
  
• Iowa AD Gary Barta kept it simple when asked about extending the school's football series with Iowa State through 2025. "It’s too important of a game for the people in our state." Fans in Texas, however, haven't seen a Longhorns-Aggies showdown since 2011. Iowa and Iowa State get it, as do Clemson and South Carolina. Even North Carolina and Wake Forest scheduled each other to keep their rivalry going despite being on separate sides of the ACC.
  
  
• I don’t do many TV programming notes, but No. 1 Nebraska plays No. 2 Stanford in volleyball tomorrow night on BTN. The net’s coverage of volleyball has taken a noticeable upswing this season with more live games, a new studio show and expanded content through the week. Ask most any AD and they’ll tell you that volleyball is a growth sport that draws well and moves at a fast pace on TV. Last Friday, the Penn State-Stanford match drew 75,000 viewers on BTN.
  
  
• The ACC was targeted the last two days by national college football reporters, who criticized the slow starts at Florida State, Miami and Syracuse. "It’s a good thing for the ACC Network that ESPN’s already managed to get them on most cable and satellite providers,” Stewart Mandel said on "The Audible" podcast. ESPN's Mark Schlabach, appearing on Paul Finebaum's radio program: "You could make the argument the AAC or even the Mountain West is as good as the ACC this year.” Where those arguments fall flat is they ignore the strong starts by Wake Forest, Virginia and North Carolina, presumably because they’re not traditional football brands.
  
  
• Jon Wilner's latest for the San Jose Mercury News goes with the header, "The Pac-12's Cash Grab, Night Game Pain and the Exposure Issue Gnawing at the Conference." The problem "isn’t the night games or the Pac-12 Networks’ low subscriber total." Instead, it’s the "compounding effect of both on a conference that starts every Saturday, every fall, two and three hours behind the country’s major population centers."
  
  

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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).