How inevitable IS a SuperLeague anyway?

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

Friends, I am still in Provo, Utah, and will be until Sunday morning. I’m in town not just to catch up with old friends and industry sources at BYU, UVU and elsewhere, but also to try and report out something I’ve been curious about for a long time. I swung by the set at BYU Sports Nation on Thursday to talk about it a bit.

So if I haven’t responded to your text or email over the last day or so, I promise i’ll get to it as soon as I can! I’ve probably just been in meetings or on the road. Or watching a volleyball game. Or eating Chocolate Graham Canyon ice cream. Or…okay, you know what? Let’s move on.

One thing we have been hard at work on, even with me being on the road, is updating the Extra Points Library. We’ve just finished our biggest update yet, adding well over 500 new documents to the system, including lots of men’s and women’s basketball game contracts. If you need information about college athletic department budgets, vendor contracts, game contracts or other research documents, we’ve got you covered. Check out the Library here.

Of course, while I’ve had my head down, uploading FRS report PDFs and completely undoing all the progress I’ve made on my weight loss goals, the rest of the college sports world wants to talk about Super Leagues.

Earlier in the week, Yahoo! Sports reported another effort by private equity and institutional investors to reform college athletics, code-named “Project Rudy.” This proposal is different from an earlier plan that circulated in May, with former Florida State QB Drew Weatherford and Redbird Capital. Project Rudy, led by former Disney executives, would spin 70 programs off into a new Super League, ditch games between P5 and G5 programs, expand the postseason, and allegedly add billions of dollars of private equity money into the ecosystem.

We’ll sail past the fact that Project Rudy is named after former Notre Dame football player Rudy Ruettiger…the namesake for the movie Rudy, AND ALSO A DUDE WHO WOULD LATER BE CHARGED WITH SECURITIES FRAUD.

It’s not surprising that private equity decks would find their way into the hands of reporters juuuuust as leaders from the Big Ten and SEC were having a powwow in Nashville. Heck, Greg Sankey himself said as much. Via Nicole Auerbach at NBC Sports:

Nicole argues here that fundamentally, it doesn’t really matter what outside investors or Titans of Industry or whatever want to pitch…nothing really happens without the Big Ten and SEC agreeing, and right now, they don’t seem to believe there’s any rush to bring in PE billions.

I want to do more reporting and thinking about all of this when I’m back in Chicago (do YOU have a copy of these investor decks? [email protected] would sure love to see it!), but at first glance, I think Petitti and Sankey are probably right. They don’t really need outside investors right this second.

Project Rudy seems to think there’s plenty of potential media revenue to be unlocked if major college football powers consolidated their media rights into one contract, rather than every conference securing their own deal. That might be true…but it’s almost certainly illegal without congressional changes to The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. And if the status quo already benefits you, why spend your limited political capital pushing for a law change that will probably benefit the Texas Techs and Syracuses of the world more than Ohio State or Alabama?

The Big Ten and SEC won’t need Redbird or Smash Capital to help secure expanded guaranteed access to postseason tournaments…that’s a political and administrative question, not one tied to lack of capital. The two leagues won’t need outside capital to secure higher quality regular season competition. They don’t need outside capital to reform the NCAA governance structure or hold even more meetings where they won’t invite Portland or NJIT or Utah Tech. They can do all that themselves.

If the Big Ten or SEC needs a bunch of money, right now, most of their member schools, I’m told, have more affordable means of raising capital that won’t require them to give up equity or control. The most appealing thing about particular types of PE involvement is that those firms might have operational or subject matter expertise that college athletics administrators may lack…like in maximizing sponsorship revenue, or growing internationally.

But there are ways to partner and gain that expertise without giving up your authority and autonomy. Or, at least, there are when you’re as rich as the Big Ten.

I understand the apprehension from many low-major fans/administrators, or even anybody who isn’t attached to a blue-blood Big Ten or SEC program. Feeling like you aren’t in control is terribly stressful, and between Congress, the Courts, and a growing revenue and political power gap…smaller schools aren’t in control. They’re just not.

The interesting question to me is how an entity that isn’t the Big Ten or SEC could force some decisions about long-term governance structures and financial modeling. Will it be employment status? Congressional oversight? Some other financial crisis? Sankey watching Marist earn a basketball tournament spot that he thinks should have gone to Mississippi State?

Right now, I don’t know. And unless some outside investor proposes a dramatically different and more enticing plan, I think that might be the most important question.

I’ll see you on the internet this weekend. If you’re in Utah County on Saturday, drop me a line!

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