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SBJ College: Andy Rawlings Leaving Learfield


Here’s to a safe and fun Memorial Day weekend. May it be the last one we have without college baseball.

Now, let’s see what’s cooking on campus.

 

RAWLINGS INSTRUMENTAL AT LEARFIELD IMG COLLEGE OVER TWO DECADES

  • Andy Rawlings feels it’s time for him to "breathe." Rawlings, the 19-year veteran who touched nearly every aspect of Learfield IMG College’s business, stepped down today to take some well-deserved time off and "learn how to become an empty nester." After helping guide Learfield through 9/11, a recession and multiple sales to private-equity owners, Rawlings, 50, decided that he’ll make a clean break on June 30. “The first thing I want to do is just breathe,” Rawlings said from a vacation spot in Vail. “I’ve been running hard for a long time.”

  • The likable 6-foot-6 Missouri grad is known in college circles for his upbeat and optimistic attitude, something new President & CEO Cole Gahagan recognized in a note to staff earlier today. “Andy is perhaps best known … as a strong advocate for our values-driven culture, with particular attention paid to ‘Love Others’ and take a ‘Clients-First’ approach,” Gahagan wrote. Rawlings joined Learfield as CFO on Sept. 10, 2001, and went on to serve as COO and CRO.

  • Rawlings played an instrumental role in Learfield’s sale to Shamrock Capital AdvisorsProvidence Equity and finally Atairos Group before the Dec. 31, 2018 blockbuster merger with IMG College. In the year before the sale to Shamrock in 2011, though, Rawlings thought for sure that Learfield was going to merge with Ben Sutton’s ISP Sports. He was so convinced that he quietly loaded up his family for what he said was a “vacation” in Winston-Salem, where ISP was headquartered, to see where he might be working and living. ISP was acquired by IMG instead.

  • The turnover from the old guard to the new guard is now complete. Rawlings’ resignation brings an end to an era of incredible growth under founder Clyde Lear and the original ownership group: Greg BrownRoger GardnerStan Koenigsfeld and Rawlings. Brown stepped down earlier this year and Gardner left last year.

 

 

BOWLSBY, SWARBRICK TALK STATE OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS

  • Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick and Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby were two of the speakers on a LEAD1 webinar on the state of athletics yesterday. These were three comments that got my attention:

  • Swarbrick, on coaches becoming part of the content team at Notre Dame: “They’ve now got to help us generate the content that keeps us engaged with fans. As an editorial aside, we've got to get the NCAA to relax some of the rules related to this. I mean, we’ve got to be able to mic our coaches during a game.”

  • Swarbrick, on the financial impact COVID-19 is having on university campuses: “This is not a one-year problem. We're looking at it as a three-year window right now with a pretty long tail. All of the decisions we’re making about facilities and personnel are being made in that context.”

  • Bowlsby, on what’s expected of schools when athletes do return: “How do you come back? What does your arrival on campus look like? What is the availability of testing and testing frequency? I envision every two to three days simply because of the virality of the virus. We have to know how to triage and how to treat the positive tests that inevitably will come. It’s an enormous undertaking to think about training rooms and locker rooms and weight rooms, disinfecting properly, preparing an entire stadium. It's a Herculean task.”

 

D-I COUNCIL GIVES HOPE THAT FOOTBALL COULD START ON TIME

  • The NCAA Division I Council voted to lift the moratorium on athlete activities, clearing the way for football and basketball players to begin voluntary workouts on campus as early as June 1. That’s an important hurdle to keep football on course for season kickoffs on Aug. 29 and Sept. 5. “We encourage each school to use its discretion to make the best decisions possible,” said Penn AD Grace Calhoun, who chairs the council. “Reopening our campuses will be an individual decision, but should be based on advice from medical experts.”

  • Notre Dame moved the start of its fall semester up two weeks early to Aug. 10, a move that Swarbrick said has paid immediate dividends. Swarbrick: “One of the things that's been most rewarding about it is it gave us a target that we really needed. We needed the university to say, ‘Here's the goal, here's what we're shooting for, let's all head for it.’ And I've noticed a big change in energy from it.”

 

 

SPEED READS

  • We weren’t surprised in February when Vanderbilt named Candice Lee the interim AD, and we weren’t surprised today when the school removed the interim tag, making her the SEC’s first African-American female AD. SBJ recognized Lee last year as a college “Power Player” when she was a Deputy AD at her alma mater. “It’s just a matter of time before she’s an AD,” we wrote.

  • $4 billion. That's an estimated amount the 65 Power 5 schools would collectively lose in football revenues without a 2020 season, with at least $1.2 billion of that due to lost ticket revenue, per Washington Univ. in St. Louis professor Patrick Rishe in an analysis for ESPN.com. It's a staggering number to think about. That's an average loss of at least $62 million in football revenue per P5 school.

  • Golf Channel has landed two presenting sponsors -- ZipRecruiter and Uber -- for the collegiate East Lake Cup event in October. The field in Atlanta will be the top four women’s and men’s teams as of the last official ranking on March 19. The participants are usually the top teams advancing to semifinals of team match play at the NCAA women’s and men’s championships.

  • Boston College will use Todd Turner and Collegiate Sports Associates in its search to replace AD Martin Jarmond, who left for UCLA. BC used Parker Executive Search when it hired Jarmond in April 2017, while UCLA used WittKiefer in the search that landed Jarmond. Turner and CSA recently have helped AD searches for Cincinnati, Wake Forest, Ole Miss, Army and UNLV, per the firm's website.

  • Oklahoma looks to be going to digital ticketing for all the athletic venues in Norman, plus football parking, and will use the SoonerSports2Go app. As SBJ’s Karn Dhingra wrote this week, such digital changes are likely to spread now at both pro and college buildings out of necessity in the era of COVID-19, as venues “seek ways to eliminate literal touchpoints and create a more healthy environment for fans once they eventually return.”

  • The “Packer & Durham” show is making its return to ACC Network tonight, albeit with a different format. The show, which before the shutdown had been a weekday morning program, for now will return as a weekly, one-hour evening show each Thursday at 8pm ET. The first episode tonight will feature ACC Commissioner John Swofford.

  • East Carolina made the call to drop men's and women's tennis, as well as men's and women's swimming. That's now seven schools from the Group of Five that have cut programs since the sports shutdown started due to COVID-19.

 

FBS-LEVEL SCHOOLS THAT HAVE ELIMINATED PROGRAMS DURING THE PANDEMIC
SCHOOL
SPORT(S)
Akron
men's golf, women's tennis, men's cross country
Bowling Green
baseball
Central Michigan
men's indoor/outdoor track & field
Cincinnati
men's soccer
East Carolina
men's/women's tennis, men's/women's swimming
FIU
men's indoor track & field
Old Dominion
wrestling
Download the
Sport Cuts At FBS Schools

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

  • It was this week in 2011 that DeLoss Dodds was named SBJ’s Athletic Director of the Year. Dodds was just a few months away from the first games on Longhorn Network, making Texas the only school to have its own branded cable channel.

 

NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR SBJ GAME CHANGERS!

 

 

 

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 Unpacks on week nights, as we look at how the sports industry is being impacted by COVID-19.

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).