It's time for my annual reminder to be a Debbie Downer about the Flutie Effect

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

I’m back in my old hometown of Columbus, Ohio, for a fun event at Ohio State. The Ohio State University Sports and Society Initiative is hosting a discussion with Armen Keteyian, the author of "The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football's Era of Chaos" tonight at 5 PM. This event will also include a panel conversation with Andy Schwarz (economist and regular commentator on antitrust and college athletics), Mark Pantoni (the GM for Ohio State football)…and me. I think the event is technically sold out, but if you want a break from basketball, you can watch a livestream of it here.

Because of travel and various airport delays, I missed a decent chunk of college basketball last night. But I was able to piece together the biggest upset of the day, when McNeese State knocked off Clemson, 69-67. Of course, I’m typing this before the Michigan and Texas Tech games have finished. So I guess I’m just assuming McNeese is the biggest upset.

This isn’t a completely shocking upset. There’s a reason NC State is about to hire Cowboys coach Will Wade, 12 over 5 upsets happen just about every season. McNeese State even tried to prepare their IT staff in advance, knowing that if they pulled off the upset, their website was about to get a lot more traffic.

Whoops! If it matters, when I checked for myself at 10:20 PM ET, the website worked just fine.

There’s a fair amount of research that indicates a school like McNeese is likely to enjoy all kinds of short-term marketing benefits as a result of this upset victory. You might hear it called the Flutie Effect, after former Boston College QB Doug Flutie. Boston College reported substantial increases in applications and student interest after the Eagles knocked off the Miami Hurricanes thanks to a Flutie Hail Mary.

This is the sort of thing that fits exactly in the Extra Points wheelhouse, which is why I’ve written variations of this post several times. But I feel like I have to do it again, since we’re undoubtedly about to get a ton of news stories about how college basketball is the front porch of a university, and now a regional state school is about to bask in the glow of new applications, new donations and a new lease on life.

The actual academic literature on the relationship between unexpected March Madness (or elite college football) success and enrollment/applications suggested a modest, and limited, boost.

The huge jump in interest and applications that often comes from these upsets are almost never sustained over long periods of time, especially if athletic success reverts to historical norms (something that’s likely with McNeese, seeing as their coach is about to leave, and the program has only been to the NCAA Tournament twice when they were coached by somebody who wasn’t Will Wade). There’s also academic evidence to suggest that different caliber of students are impacted differently by athletic success, (i.e, higher ACT score applicants are less likely to be attracted than more marginal students), and that the publicity benefits are more marginal for regional public institutions.

After all, if your student body mostly comes from a 150-mile radius around campus, you don’t benefit as much from a sudden burst in McNeese State Awareness in Seattle, Chicago, or Baltimore…even if the headlines point to a massive number in earned media.

That doesn’t mean the benefits don’t exist. I am quite confident this quarter is going to be the best licensing quarter for McNeese athletics…maybe ever. They’re going to sell a ton of t-shirts, they’re going to improve athletic fundraising, and they’ll have memories that will last a lifetime. It’s a cool thing, and it’s half the reason schools work so hard to stay in D-I to begin with.

Just treat it like found money, not the centerpiece of an enrollment strategy or fundraising campaign.

If you are trying to build out an athletic fundraising campaign, it helps to know where you stack up with the rest of your conference peers. At Extra Points Library, we’ve put together some basic benchmarking data for the Horizon League, Summit League, Big West and Mountain West…and will be finished with the MAC, Big Ten and SEC early next week. These reports break down how each athletic department stacks up in revenues, expenses, and several specific line-items.

The reports are designed for industry professionals or academics, but we’ll make ‘em free for anybody who is interested…just shoot me an email at [email protected], and we’ll get you copies of the league you want.

And you can find all of our athletic department financial data, as well as thousands of contracts for MMR sales, athletic apparel, athletic directors, coaches and more, at the Extra Points Library.

Here’s what else we wrote this week:

• I think it is critical for colleges to speak out about how they serve their communities, and how athletics fits into that equation, because this industry is under attack. Here’s how my life has benefited from higher education. 

• The NCAA Tournament is big money…via NCAA Tournament Units, TV deals, and also what it means for athletic apparel contracts, coach and AD bonuses, and more. I dug into our FOIA Library to crunch some numbers. 

• The other men’s college basketball tournaments, sadly, started on a rough note. The sledgehammer to the NIT instead created three pretty meh postseason events, and for what? Greed?

• And finally, I’ve been getting contracts of GMs (football and basketball) to try to understand what this gig actually does, what sort of people are being hired, and how schools are defining success.

I’ll fly back to Chicago late Saturday afternoon. Thanks for reading, everybody, and I’ll see you on the internet.

And if you enjoy Extra Points, maybe tell a friend, huh? Or a colleague? Or a subreddit? Word of mouth is honestly the biggest way this newsletter keeps growing.