SBJ College: The Future Of Conference Championship Games

I keep expecting Larry Culpepper to show up in Dr Pepper’s “Fansville” to take credit for the State-Tech rivalry.

FUTURE OF CONFERENCE CHAMP GAMES SECURE, EXPERTS SAY

• College football’s championship weekend has grown from one conference playing a title game -- the SEC in 1992 -- to all 10 FBS leagues determining a champion on the field. These games also represent a significant revenue driver, with media rights annually fetching $20 million to $30 million in the Power 5. But do they still serve a competitive purpose or do they hurt a conference’s ability to get a regular-season champ in the playoff? I reached out to three industry experts today -- one from media, one from marketing and a former AD -- to see what they think about the future of champ games.
  
  
• Wasserman's Dean Jordan, who serves as a media consultant for the ACC and CFP:
  
  
  • "It’s hard to imagine champ games going away. ... If future CFP leadership changes course and decides to expand the playoff, additional revenue will be split in some format among the members, but 100% of champ game revenue stays with the individual leagues. The value of conference championship games may even increase in an expanded playoff. Additionally, champ games are the largest sponsorship marketing assets and merchandising opportunities for most conferences, and they create one of the few real fan engagement opportunities at the conference level."
    
    

• MELT Chair & CEO Vince Thompson, whose marketing clients include Coca-Cola and Aflac:
  
  
  • "Conference championships were considered groundbreaking in 1992. But with the four-team playoff, conference championships have outlived their usefulness. In fact, it’s almost punitive to some teams in the selection process. ... If they survive long-term, it will be based on expanding the playoffs to eight teams, with the winners of all five conference championships gaining automatic berths."
    
    
• Barnes & Thornburg LLP Sports Advisor Steve Pederson, a former AD at Nebraska and Pitt:
  
  
  • "Large conferences (where every team doesn’t play every other team) make a championship game an essential competitive component. Long before the CFP, the positives and negatives of conference championship games have been debated. However, that debate is what makes them so intriguing and relevant. In the current format, they remain an important access point to the playoff. Millions will be watching this weekend, which is a sign of their continuing importance."

TAILGATE GUYS' BANDWIDTH ON DISPLAY AT IRON BOWL 

• The Tailgate Guys business was founded a decade ago at Auburn and it’s no coincidence that the gameday company’s biggest revenue-generating days are on the Plains. Parker Duffey, one of the co-founders, shared some numbers with me from their Iron Bowl sales on Saturday. Tailgate Guys:
  
  
  • Hosted 485 tailgate groups
  • Set up 76,000 square feet of tents
  • Ran nearly 8 miles of cable for tailgate packages that included TVs
  • Distributed 22,000 pounds of ice
  • Picked up 47,000 gallons of trash
    
    
• The customizable tailgate company is still tallying its sales revenue from the day, but Duffey said it will be comparable to the Georgia-Auburn game last month. Duffey said that game “broke every record we had.” Odd-numbered years, when Auburn has its two biggest rivals, Georgia and Alabama, at home, look promising for years to come.
  
  
  

NIL TO BE TOP OF ISSUE IN THE COMING YEAR

• The year 2020 promises to be full of legal fireworks on the name, image and likeness front, which is why SBJ dedicated nine pages to covering the most recent developments and what’s next. In all, 19 states have jumped into the NIL swimming pool with both feet. One, California, already has established that it’s illegal to make college athletes ineligible for monetizing their own rights. Six states have introduced similar bills that likely will be voted on in 2020 -- Michigan and Florida bills could go into effect this summer. Ten states have proposed NIL legislation that will become bills next year.
  
  
• Remember when Ohio State AD Gene Smith and others said they wouldn’t schedule teams in California earlier this year if the new law stayed on the books? What will administrators say if several more states adopt similar laws? The NCAA will sue, but this issue seems to be moving faster than anyone expected. Lots more to come in the new year.

SPEED READS

• Chris Petersen's decision to step down at Washington sent waves through the college football community yesterday. SI's Pat Forde wrote Petersen, 55, was "very slow to leave the improbable empire he built at Boise State, putting family and mid-major comfort ahead of naked ambition." The San Jose Mercury News' Jon Wilner: "Petersen’s legacy cannot be limited to his six seasons in Seattle. ... It’s the totality -- not only what he did for the Broncos and the Huskies but for the Mountain West and the Pac-12."
  
  
• Washington defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake, who will take over for Petersen after the Huskies' bowl game, becomes the fifth black head coach in the Pac-12. There are only 13 black FBS coaches currently, meaning the conference now accounts for over 38%, according to data from The Athletic's Florida State beat reporter Tashan Reed.
  
  
• USC may have a new school president and new AD, but the Trojans' dysfunction was again on display over the weekend as the university stayed silent in the face of conflicting Sports Illustrated reports concerning the future of its football coach. ESPN Radio L.A.'s Travis Rodgers: “I just can’t come up with a scenario where you would let this happen to Clay Helton and actually plan on keeping him. You’re doing him a terrible disservice -- you’re doing the program a terrible disservice -- by saying nothing." The L.A. Times' Arash Markazi wrote the Trojans “need to hire a new football coach." Markazi: "The question is whether it’s as clear to them as it is to a disgruntled fan base they’re still getting to know."
  
  
• Pat Hobbs recently hit his five-year anniversary as Rutgers AD, but the situation in New Jersey is far from stable. The tempest that was the program’s search for a new football coach finally landed back on the name that most fans and influential alumni wanted. But, as the Newark Star-Ledger's Steve Politi reported, it is "widely believed around Rutgers” that Greg Schiano didn’t want to work for Hobbs -- and "that was before the AD couldn’t lock down the deal after original negotiations were abruptly halted."

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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).