MAILBAG: Conference Realignment, Brain Drain and Video Games

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

We have only a few short days left before the start of the school year, so I decided to drive my family to Mississippi Palisades State Park for some hiking and outdoor fun. By the time you’re reading this, I’m probably still vacuuming all the granola bar crumbs out of the car and catching up on all the emails I missed from a few days of the boonies…which makes this a great day for a mailbag newsletter.

I do these every few weeks. Feel free to email/DM me questions at [email protected] or @MattBrownEP on Twitter.

Let’s get to it:

Nick, this is exactly the language used in the initial project proposal sent to schools, and multiple sources in the licensing industry have told me that they believe EA intends to use similar language in whatever licensing proposal they sent to athletes. Based on the documents I’ve read, it appears that EA is asking schools and athletes to grant the company an exclusive license for ‘simulation style’ football games.

That doesn’t automatically mean that another company couldn’t create a college football game that included some player and school licenses. Hall of GOATS is working on a college football game that’s more centered on arcade/card collecting modes, and back when I talked to some of the developers last winter, they told me they believed their athletes would be able to participate in their game and the EA game. If an athletic department decided they wanted to license their name and IP to participate in Athletic Director Simulator 3000, (which, by the way, I’d love to pay for), that would not come into conflict with the EA license either.

This is related, but I think it’s worth reiterating here, as long as we’re talking about college sports video game projects. Modern, AAA-caliber video games are crazy expensive to make. According to one LA Times story, EA spends around $10 million to make Madden, which doesn’t count the millions and millions that the company spends on licensing costs or the huge marketing and distribution infrastructure the company has built over years of producing annual video game titles.

It stinks, but there just aren’t very many video game companies now that could profitably, and quickly, produce a high-caliber simulation college sports game. I have not heard anything from the industry to suggest that 2K is excited about launching a standalone college basketball title shortly (honestly, the opposite), and that other college sports are too niche to attract developer interest from the industry behemoths.

If there are going to be other college sports games…or games centered around college baseball, soccer, etc…I think the economics of the video game industry pretty much require those to be indie games, something closer to a Backyard Baseball or OOP Baseball, probably for phones and PC-only, rather than a $60 title you download for your PlayStation.

When I asked around about the future of the NCAA TV deal earlier this year, multiple commissioners told me not to expect major developments until late this fall, around November.

The NCAA splitting the women’s basketball tournament into a separate package seems like a no-brainer move, but the athletic administrators I talked to about it over the Spring, and even a few industry consultants, were much more conservative. It may still be the best decision for the NCAA, I was told, but sources in both groups expressed concern not just for visibility and exposure of other championships, but about whether this is even a great time to take multiple niche events to market. The struggles of the Pac-12 in finding TV demand make me think this concern has some real validity to it.

By the end of the Fall, the NCAA’s TV consultants should be finished with their marketplace assessments and can provide some more detailed recommendations. If I had to hazard a guess, I think that it is more likely that most of the remaining championship packages, like FCS football, the College World Series, Frozen Four, etc…remain in a unified package, rather than split into two or three other subpackages. I also would not be surprised if, for some of the smallest events, the NCAA eventually looks into producing everything themselves, rather than selling to ESPN or another party.

It’s a fair question. The incentives around getting to 16 teams at the FCS level are very different from those of say, the Big Ten or SEC.

Speaking broadly here, expanding to 16 teams is attractive for some institutions for a sense of stability. It’s not hard to imagine how potential realignment moves in FBS, or even elsewhere in FCS, could impact the CAA. If a 16 team FCS league loses two (or even more) schools to Conference USA or the Patriot League or something else, you don’t necessarily have to expand or do anything drastic. There is some level of safety in numbers.

A big ol’ even number can also allow schools to potentially save money with divisions and regional scheduling. TV partners are less likely to be upset if Bryant doesn’t make too many road trips to Elon or Campbell…and since this is just for football, one or two extra road trips isn’t the end of the world.

I’ve heard a few ADs and coaches express some concern about how the CAA’s recent members may not be ready to fund their football programs (or athletic departments, generally) at the level of other CAA schools, and that just rapid expansion may dilute their core product. That’s a risk you take by expanding to a big number…building to reach the historical standard of a Richmond, Delaware, New Hampshire, etc can take time.

For what it’s worth, I honestly don’t have a strong opinion about Bryant football, and their fit in the CAA. If you’re already going to be a huge league, and you can add another competitive program in your footprint, well heck, what’s the big difference between 15 and 16?

Reader Chris DMs me to ask:

I assume Chris is referring to a popular what-if, where the Big Ten, SEC, and perhaps a handful of other schools decide to break away from the NCAA, current College Football Playoff and existing conference structure to create their own football championship division. Back in 2018, I would have told you that such a scenario felt like a message board or talk radio fever dream. Now…I think it’s probably inevitable.

Could there be lawsuits? Of course. Depending on how (or when) such a breakaway occurred, perhaps broadcasters may try to recoup damages for broken contracts and agreements. I’ve seen at least a few legal commentators openly wonder if additional conference consolidation could trigger antitrust concerns. And of course, since we’re dealing with public schools, there’s always a chance that state and federal lawmakers could get involved. Even if the Department of Justice doesn’t formally block such an agreement, federal lawmakers could call for embarrassing hearings and investigations, threaten financial colonoscopies for participating institutions, and more.

It’s hard to handicap what sort of legal risks might exist for a hypothetical. But I’d say that just about every major corporate consolidation carries a meaningful risk of some litigation…and people have a slightly different relationship with State U than they do with Widget Corp Consolidated Holdings.

Honestly, I think it’s probably going to get worse.

When I talk about ‘brain drain’, I’m talking about how a combination of burnout, low pay, high pressure and superior opportunities outside of the industry are encouraging many athletic department employees to quit. I hear of this phenomenon the most when talking about officials, trainers, sports information personnel, and ‘creatives’ (i.e., social media, video, digital media, etc).

For this to change…the industry either needs to ask these folks to ‘do less’, in order to claw back some semblance of quality of life, or pay them more. I don’t see any reason to think that, en masse, either of those things are likely in the near future.

Schools outside the P5 are mostly already facing difficult revenue crunches and often don’t have the money to hire more staff/pay them a comparable wage to what the private sector might offer…and everybody is too competitive to realistically claw back what they ask athletic departments to do. If their conference rival is providing X, Y, or Z, by God, somebody is going to demand that they do it as well. ‘

I think we’ll be sharing more actual research on this phenomenon later this fall. It is among the many, many trends happening in college sports that I’m concerned about.

Course, I work in digital media, so what the hell do I know about work-life balance?

Okay, last one:

I could easily do an entire newsletter on this (and maybe I should), but here’s a quick TL;DR

• What are the Title IX implications of moving up to Varsity competition? Does the department need to increase scholarship offerings across other sports to be in compliance? Start a second sport? Does their current student body enrollment allow them to just add one sport and be okay?

• How does moving to the Varsity level align with the institution’s enrollment, marketing, and financial goals? Is the goal of this new program to sell tickets? Recruit new students? Win championships?

• Does this hypothetical new team have a conference home? Would they be able to easily find an affiliate-membership home in a league that makes sense?

• Can the school afford to fund this new sport at a level that will allow it to be competitive?

• What do donors think about it?

It does happen, but these days, it’s unusual for a big-time program to add a sport for reasons beyond Title IX unless a few mega-donors really pushing for it. You’re more likely to see sport growth at institutions that see a new Varsity sport as an enrollment play, rather than a championship or ticketing play.

Extra Points Premium Subscribers, as well as our D1.classroom partners, not only get newsletters just like this one, and two additional paywalled newsletters, but they also get access to our new FOIA Directory, and access to Athletic Director Simulator 3000.

There’s still time to upgrade to a full subscription before football season, support independent sports media, and enjoy everything that we’re putting together:

This newsletter is brought to you in part by CookUnity

Award-Winning Chefs. Hundreds of Meals delivered to you.

We’re CookUnity, a chef collective. We envision a world in which chefs are no longer bound by the economic and geographic limitations of the current restaurant model. One where culinary artists can reach beyond the neighborhood, and share their craft with millions of people. We are building the first-ever marketplace through which millions of busy, everyday folks will discover, experience, and celebrate the absolute best food the world has to offer whenever they like. There are food delivery services, there are meal kit subscriptions, there are heat-and-serve fridge-fillers. But until now, no one has (responsibly) packaged the ingenuity and hard-earned technique of the industry’s leading culinary talent, and delivered the incredible results to kitchen tables far and wide.

Subscribe now and change your life for the better

If you’d like to buy ads on Extra Points OR in ADS3000, good news! They’re affordable, and we have openings this season. Drop me a line at [email protected]. If you have news tips, I’m at [email protected]. Otherwise, I’m at [email protected], @MattBrownEP on Twitter, @ExtraPointsMB on Instagram, and @MattBrown on Bluesky.