SBJ College: Cardinale Talks Athlete NIL

AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco is on his annual "no respect" soapbox, claiming bias against his conference by the Power 5. He swears that Appalachian State is getting too much credit. When did the the Mountaineers become part of the P5?

Here is what's cooking on campus:

ONETEAM POSITIONED TO AGGREGATE COLLEGE ATHLETE NIL RIGHTS

• Getting the name, image and likeness rights to college athletes isn’t why Gerry Cardinale invested $125 million into OneTeam, a new business formed in conjunction with the NFL and MLB players' associations. But he told me earlier today that OneTeam is best positioned to aggregate the marketing rights for college players if someday they’re able to monetize their NIL. “It’s easier said than done,” said Cardinale, founder of RedBird Capital. “When I talk to people in the industry, everybody says this is going to take a while to sort out. I don't disagree with that.”
  
  
• College player rights have lots of potential, even in their most basic form, Cardinale said. “The question is how much can you really do with it? You can have appearances and some sponsorships -- stuff that we take for granted today in the professional setting. But I'm kind of curious. That's the low-hanging fruit, but that in and of itself will be new for that ecosystem.”
  
  
• Cardinale’s background includes funding ventures like YES Network, Legends and On Location Experiences, so he knows how to spot a startup opportunity when the marketplace shows demand. If college athletes, by virtue of the courts, legislation or the NCAA, are permitted to monetize their own NIL rights, OneTeam will be uniquely positioned to help athletes with group licensing. Based on current legislation, neither the schools, conferences nor NCAA would be able to work with athletes on marketing their rights, creating an opportunity for third parties -- whether that’s OneTeam or some other entity.
  
  
• OneTeam’s plan is to work with the National College Players Association to sign players to a comprehensive group licensing program. The NCPA, founded by former UCLA linebacker and athlete advocate Ramogi Huma, will be the boots on the ground, so to speak. Cardinale: “We can also be extremely helpful here in trailblazing. We're going to do a lot here with all of these organized professional player groups (at OneTeam). What we learn should be very instructive for the college guys, and I'm looking forward to getting into those discussions as we move this along.”

PAC-12 NUMBERS OK FOR ESPN IN LATE NIGHT

• The Pac-12 takes a lot of grief on the West Coast for the high number of kickoffs at 10:30pm ET on Saturday nights. But a closer by SBJ ratings expert Austin Karp look shows that the late Pac-12 games in Pacific Time Zone primetime draw decent numbers for ESPN. The package of “late” Eastern Time Zone games this season -- nine telecasts to date; eight of which involved the Pac-12 -- has averaged 1.64 million viewers on ESPN. That’s 32% higher than the average for ESPN’s 3:30pm ET window (1.24 million viewers). That 3:30 window has been a mix of ACC, Big 12 and SEC matchups (and one Pac-12 game, Stanford-UCF, which drew only 967,000 viewers). It’s reasonable to think that networks don’t want to put their best games up against the "SEC on CBS" at 3:30pm ET.
  
  
• ESPN’s late night window also isn’t far behind the 12:00pm ET window this season. Those games at noon on ESPN are averaging 1.97 million viewers, buoyed by a heavy slate of SEC games. ESPN in primetime (2.81 million viewers) also is heavy on SEC matchups. It’s worth noting that ABC’s “Saturday Night Football” contractually cannot air SEC games. Only one ESPN primetime window has been non-SEC to date, and that was Oregon-Stanford in Week 4, which drew 1.37 million viewers. That is ESPN’s primetime low for the season to date.
  
  
• The top Pac-12 game to date in the late night window has been Washington State-Oregon in Week 9, which drew just under 1.9 million viewers. No late-night window has drawn fewer than 1.1 million viewers. Compare that to ESPN’s 3:30pm ET window, which has had five games not top 1 million viewers.
  
  
• The San Jose Mercury News’ Jon Wilner gave context to the Pac-12’s issues with late night kickoffs on John Canzano’s radio program yesterday. “It all gets back to the conference’s $3 billion deal they cut in 2011. Part of the reason they got so much money is they gave ESPN and Fox the flexibility and the inventory to put all these games on at night. … It didn’t dawn on a lot of folks at the Pac-12 what a grind it was going to be.”

SPEED READS

• Rui Hachimura was a big name in college hoops last season with Gonzaga and the Japan-born forward has gone to bigger things as a rookie with the Wizards -- including global sponsorship deals with Jordan Brand, NEC, NBA 2K, Nissin Foods, SoftBank, SMBC and Casio. His popularity last season was eye-opening for West Coast Conference Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, particularly around the issue of name, image and likeness. She told ESPN’s Paul Finebaum: “There’s no doubt he could have commanded great national and international commercial value … But our league also represents quite a few athletes that don’t develop their renown, or their individual brand names, until they get on the stage that we provide. … I feel that there is a way through here that probably lives in the world of licensing or group licensing.”

• The Hartford Courant today profiled Dave Brown, who left ESPN four years ago following a 28-year run to start a college football scheduling software outfit dubbed Gridiron. UConn AD David Benedict: “There’s nobody who has a better handle, that I’m aware of, than Dave Brown, when it comes to all the potential opportunities there are from a scheduling perspective.” Brown now has every FBS and FCS program as a client, and Benedict will need that rolodex as UConn goes independent in football starting next season. “The biggest challenge we have is making all the games fit, having the right home-road balance and getting games in November,” Brown said of UConn.
  
  
• We’re down to the final weeks of the college football regular season, which means a slew of rivalry games and the interesting trophies that come with many of them. I asked SBJ's Bret McCormick, our new expert on the subject, what his favorite was for Week 13. With Wyoming hosting Colorado State tomorrow night, the schools will play for the Bronze Boot Trophy. The hardware is a nod to the schools’ respective ROTC programs.

Wyoming and Colorado State play tomorrow night for the Bronze Boot TrophyWYOMING

THROWBACK THURSDAY

• It was a tough week in college sports media, this time four years ago. John Ourand and I wrote a tribute in SBJ to Chuck Gerber, the longtime ESPN exec who became one of the most influential media consultants in the space. Gerber had died days earlier. He was best-known for his work with SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, but Gerber also worked with the CFP and the NCAA.
  
  

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).