SBJ College: Staying Closer To Home

Very sad to hear the news that Chris Dufresne died. He led the L.A. Times’ college football coverage for 20 years. Several people in sports media lost a friend, and the business lost an authority on college sports.

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

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LOOKING FOR COST SAVINGS IN REGIONAL SCHEDULING

• Several conferences looking to save money have turned to scheduling games closer to home, especially in sports other than football and basketball. The American Athletic Conference is discussing a plan with its members to schedule the regular season as independents, giving them the freedom to arrange more games closer to home and cutting down on travel costs. Then AAC schools would come together at the end of the season for conference championships in sports like volleyball, soccer, baseball and lacrosse.
  
  
• Cost-cutting ideas like this have been around for years, but with schools looking to cut back on 2021 budgets, they’re becoming more realistic. Louisiana AD Bryan Maggard over the weekend brought back the call for his conference, the Sun Belt, to merge or realign geographically with Conference USA. Both conferences span the Mid-Atlantic through Texas, making travel an expensive proposition at a time when they’re desperate to cut costs. Maggard: “It doesn’t make good economic sense to put teams on airplanes and fly over schools that you can drive to. That’s the ultimate change that needs to happen.”
  
  
• When I first proposed a cost-savings conference realignment between the two conferences in 2016, Middle Tennessee State AD Chris Massaro was among those open-minded to it. Massaro predicted in 2016: “It’s going to take a fiscally dramatic event to get something to happen. When you hit a crisis, people will put their egos aside.” With schools reducing salaries and cutting athletic budgets because of the pandemic and its impact on football, the “fiscally dramatic event” is upon C-USA and the Sun Belt. We’ll see if that leads to a new round of realignment. Maggard: “If this pandemic hasn’t opened our eyes to the necessity of that, I’m not sure anything will.”

SIGN OF THE TIMES: MORE SPORTS CUT

• UConn is preparing to cut sports -- possibly several of them -- to address its financial difficulties amid the pandemic. Huskies AD David Benedict told the Hartford Courant that cutting some of the school’s 24 sports is one of the options on the table. Courant columnist Mike Anthony wrote that cutting down to the minimum of 16 is what he’d do. SI.com’s Pat Forde wrote of UConn football sucking the money out of the department: “When you’re paying more than $1 million for each league victory in the AAC over a span of nine seasons, you have blown it.”
  
  
• Cutting sports is fast becoming a sign of the times. Appalachian State eliminated men’s soccer today. East Carolina cut four sports last week. South Florida might soon be in the same boat as AD Michael Kelly looks for ways to take 15% out of the Bulls’ next budget. There are no easy answers and it seems like schools in the Group of 5 are being hit the hardest.

Download the FBS Schools That Have Cut Sports

MICHIGAN PRESIDENT: NO STUDENTS, NO SPORTS

• Just as all of the momentum is pointing toward in-person classes in the fall and an on-schedule start to the football season, Michigan President Mark Schlissel throws a sobering bucket of cold water on the debate. Schlissel told the Wall Street Journal that he’s clinging to doubt that there will be any fall sports nationally. As for UM, the Wolverines won’t be playing football or anything else if students aren’t physically going to class.
  
  
• Schlissel’s comments generated strong reaction. What if every other school in the Big Ten opts to play and Michigan doesn’t? ESPN Radio’s Mike Golic Jr.: “Would they be willing to fall behind their competitors?” ESPN’s Laura Rutledge: “It is the opposite of what we’re hearing, but there’s more that’s starting to bubble up about concerns now that this really is real, that these players are coming back on campus.” Author and Michigan insider John Bacon: “It’s pretty hard to back down from that once you’ve said it. That goes counter to what Jim Harbaugh said a few days earlier that he’ll take football in almost any form. ... I see a conflict there and I’m pretty sure I know who is going to win it.”
  
  
• What’s clear is that the opinions are changing by the week -- sometimes by the day. It was just a few weeks ago that Auburn President Jay Gogue emphatically told incoming freshmen: “We’re gonna have football this fall.”

SPEED READS

• With so much still up in the air with the return of college sports in the fall, CBS, ESPN and Fox this afternoon issued a joint statement that the networks, in conjunction with conferences, have agreed to an extension for determining football’s early-season game times beyond the standard June 1 deadline.
  
  
• Georgia’s most recent non-conference basketball contracts specifically include references to epidemic, pandemic or public health safety as part of the force majeure clause. Copies of the contracts for UGA to play Bowling Green and Cincinnati this November and December were obtained by the Athens Banner-Herald and outlined the new wording in the clause. The reference to pandemic is not isolated to game contracts. A new media-rights deal between UConn and CBS Sports Network for football likewise includes protection for both parties in the case of a pandemic. This is expected to be standard operating procedure from now on.
  
  
• A coalition of college baseball coaches has started a movement to push the season toward a later start (it's currently mid-February). The initiative, led by Erik Bakich at Michigan, would start the season roughly a month later, providing schools in the north more opportunities to play their games in better weather, leading to fewer travel costs and less missed class time, while also generating bigger home crowds. Louisville's Dan McDonnell today became the latest coach to put his support behind a later start date.
  
  
• The Big Ten looks like it has a new top exec for men's hockey. Sources tell the Wisconsin State Journal that Deputy Commissioner Brad Traviolia "departed at the end of April." The conference told the paper that former Michigan coach Red Berenson was "recently named special adviser to the commissioner for hockey operations."
  
  
• Mark and Kym Hilinski back in December delivered a strong message on mental health to attendees at our Learfield IMG College Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. The family, seeking to honor the legacy of their son Tyler, today launched a call-to-action for schools to participate in the inaugural College Football Mental Health Awareness Week, Oct. 3-10, in conjunction with Mental Illness Awareness Week. Among the founding partners are Texas A&M, Arkansas, Ole Miss, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
  
  
• Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo seems to be making the most of the quarantine. He told the Lansing State Journal: "We’ve had more family dinners than I’ve probably had in my 25-year career in the last two months. That part’s been good. I think it’s been good to press the reset button and kind of look back and say, 'What did I do well, what did I do badly, what can I do better?'"
  
  
• Things are cookin' among the group of ADs out in Hawaii. UH-Hilo's Pat Guillen started the Hawaii Grindz Challenge, a friendly competition that challenged other local ADs to make their best dishes. Guillen started things off with his "Mom's World Famous Fried Chicken" before challenging UH-Mānoa’s David Matlin, who delivered his “Chicken As Good As It Gets” recipe. Hawaii Pacific's Sam Moku went with a family recipe -- "Mauna Kea Loco Moko" before Chaminade’s Bill Villa finished things off on Memorial Day with his "Swords Ohana Pork & Squash."

Hawaii-Hilo's Pat Guillen (l) and UH-Manoa's David Matlin were first to cook in a contest among local ADs

NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR SBJ GAME CHANGERS!

• Online nominations for Game Changers have opened. We’ll be accepting nominations through midnight June 21. The Game Changers event will be Oct. 27-28, and a special section will run in SBJ in the Oct. 19 issue.

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).