Let's talk about the time a grown man named Jimbo called a press conference to say Nick Saban should have been slapped
Matt Brown
May 20, 2022
Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
I try very hard to be fair in this newsletter, to try and examine complicated issues with nuance and respect, to go beyond the Twitter drive by. It means that I spent a lot of time in the weeds on NIL, on media rights, NCAA policies, what have you.
I'm happy to keep doing that. But sometimes, you need to stop and marvel at something stupid in college sports. And friends, that's exactly what I intend to do today.
I had to completely nuke my publishing schedule because Nick Saban claimed that Texas A&M bought their recruiting class, which led to Jimbo Fisher calling a dang press conference to say somebody should have slapped Nick Saban, and also somehow managed to use God as a pejorative?
Anyway, the SEC told both coaches to stop fighting in public, the dust seems to have settled for the moment. On behalf of the blog complex and sports radio hosts everywhere, I say, thank you to both coaches.
On today's Going For Two, Bryan and I toss aside our plans to dig into this dust up. In particular, we cover:
Why this is all deeply, deeply funny
The similarities to current Texas A&M and what the SEC (and industry) thought about oh, 2016 Ole Miss
Why so many coaches, administrators, lawyers, companies and others are getting flat out emotional over how a few collectives are acting about NIL (it's about a culture of compliance), and how the fight isn't exactly over athlete compensation
The best burns from the press conference
How you can save 15% off your first order at Homefield Apparel by using promocode EXTRA POINTS and more
Also, we covered why I think it's dumb for athletic departments and various collectives to dive headfirst into Crypto and NFT projects right now, especially after the absolutely disastrous week the industry just had. If people are mad at Matt Damon for pushing this stuff on them after it blew up, they'll be mad at your athletic department!
If you MUST do a deal with Crypto, in my humble opinion, only work with coin projects that are backed by TRULY stable reserves. Like Arizona Iced Tea.
Going For Two is the free podcast of Extra Points, which drops every Wednesday and Friday. You can find it via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
You can also find the videos of our previous podcasts right here.
Here's what else we published on Extra Points this week
In case you're new around here, Extra Points publishes every single weekday. This week's stories included:
Andy FOIA'd the University of Missouri to learn how the school has decided to award Alston academic benefits to their athletes. His reporting also shows how SEC schools are leading the way in providing this benefit, but there's real variance in how different schools are approaching this new world.
The Big Ten and SEC are highly likely to make a LOT more money than other power conferences from TV distributions over the next decade. I dug deep into the argument that this will make it impossible for schools like Clemson and USC to compete for national titles ($), and that spending big money on football doesn't automatically mean you'll be successful. HOW you spend that money is very important!
Speaking of how you spend money, we also filed FOIAs for every P5 athletic department to learn how many schools are paying football-related buyouts ($), and how that spending has changed over the last few years. You might be able to guess that Auburn and South Carolina are at the very top, but plenty of other schools are paying well into the seven figures right now.
Our other Going For Two this week was free, but paid EP subscribers ($) got extra context into how new NCAA changes in recruiting limits and schedules will shape roster management strategies in the near future.
Collegiate Sports Connect subscribers (and hey, it's free to sign up!) also got interviews on D-II conference realignment, the future of the media rights business, Utah Tech's big rebrand, coaching changes in college softball, and more.
We're able to make all this content, record all these interviews and podcasts, file all these FOIAs, and more, because of your support. You can make sure you get access to every single Extra Points newsletter by upgrading to a paid subscription.
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Thanks for reading everybody. We're excited about next week, and the weeks to come.
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