Mailbag! EACFB27 updates, conference realignment, budget notes and more

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

Let’s check in our Bracket Challenge Presented by Short Courts, shall we?

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Here’s our current leaderboard heading into the Final Four:

Quick note: I am going to be at the Online News Association annual conference today and tomorrow here in Chicago. I’m speaking at a few panels, catching up with friends, and trying to do a little professional development here for Extra Points. If you’re around, drop me a line! I’d love to say hello.

A disruption in my regular day-to-day schedule means it’s a perfect time to open up my ol’ mailbag. As always, mailbag questions are accepted on a rolling basis (email, Twitter or Bluesky) and when we get to a critical mass, I do a mailbag newsletter. My email is matt @ ExtraPointsMB dot com.

Reader David asks,

Well, I dunno if I’m the video game guy, but I do know a teensy bit about EACFB27, thanks to recently obtaining some correspondence between EA/CLC representatives and various campus personnel.

For one, let me be the first to break this critically important news. Yeah, they’re planning on making another college football video game. EA Sports College Football 27 is currently being targeted for a July of 2026 release. And no, before you ask, I don’t know the exact date (it wasn’t given in any of the emails I’ve read), nor do I know if the game is coming out for Switch 2, PC, or additional video game platform from last year.

I also know that the game is using the same licensing system as last year. That means players will earn $1,500 and a copy of the video game for their participation in the game. That’s the same rate that players were given for EACFB26.

Speaking of last year and licenses, emails obtained by me also state that EA will continue to stick with an 85-man roster limit for the game, even though programs can now have up to 105 players on scholarship. EA is also only seeking coach IP for head coaches and coordinators, same as last year.

I’m sure there will be significant gameplay changes, as well as tweaks to the main game modes from EACFB26 (Dynasty, RTG, Ultimate Team, etc). But as far as the intellectual property licensing side? It appears the asks from schools and players are very similar, at least so far, compared to last year.

Speaking of video games,

Reader Doug asks,

Right now, we have four Extra Points games: Athletic Director Simulator 4000, Concessions Stand Simulator, Who’s That Football Team? and NIL Agency Tycoon 95.

ADS4000 requires a premium Extra Points subscription, which is only nine bucks a month. The other three games are completely free.

My current focus is to help get a massive new update of Extra Points Library across the finish line. We’re in beta-testing right now, but hope to be ready to push the update to all users within the next two weeks, maybe earlier. Once Extra Points Library 2.0 is finished and in public, my plan is to spend a little more time continuing to update and fine-tune our existing games. We update these at least every two weeks, either to fix game balance issues, add new features, improve quality of life, etc.

If you’ve got games ideas, I’m all ears. I’ll probably try to take a little time off after the Final Four and then am happy to work on future games projects, so long as folks keep playing and enjoying them. I’ve got a few ideas, but I’m very open to suggestions and/or colaboration. I will say, I’d love to move beyond simulator/tycoon type games…

Reader Mike asks,

Yeah, West Florida moving to D1 hasn’t been an especially well-kept secret in my neck of the woods. The university is teasing a “major athletics announcement” on April 2nd, one that will involve the university president and athletic director. My expectation is that this announcement will be that the program intends to join the ASUN/UAC. There’s been mutual interest in getting to this point for years, but my current understanding is that these conversations began to really accelerate in mid-January.

Will anybody join them in the immediate future? Not that I am currently aware of. I previously reported that Nova Southeastern and Lincoln Memorial are exceptions to the current moratorium on schools reclassifying to DI, as they completed paperwork showing they had legitimate interest from D1 leagues…but I do not currently have information that would make me believe either of those schools are about to accept and announce any invitations.

My current understanding is that additional realignment moves in the next few months are likely to center around the WCC, Big West, OVC and UAC/ASUN. Lots of leagues would like additional members…but there aren’t that many schools looking to change leagues.

Reader Maggie asks,

I think this is a tie between volleyball and ice hockey.

Both games translate well to television but are especially fun to watch in person. Both sports can fill up an arena with fans and both sound excellent and feature lots of fast-paced action. But selfishly, the thing that I think I really love about both sports is that I understand them enough to be impressed by an athletic play, but I don’t understand them enough to be able to think deeply about tactics or strategy.

That means that when I go to a hockey game, even if it’s for work, it doesn’t feel like work the same way that a basketball or football game, does, you know? I can turn off that part of my brain and let myself clap like a seal over something loud and cool, just like everybody else. That sensation is harder and harder for me to tap into, now that I’ve been writing about sports professionally over the last 15 years.

That isn’t to say that I couldn’t learn to love lacrosse or wrestling or gymnastics or anything else. Just that’s what I enjoy the most if I’m not at a football game.

I think I’d like college baseball, as a fan, a lot more if I lived somewhere where the weather wasn’t butt for most of the season.

Reader Gopherballs asks,

This is a broad question, but I’ll do my best to answer this.

Beyond your head coach and your three assistant coaches, a mid-major basketball school is going to have a DOBO, or Director of Basketball Operations. This person does everything from travel logistics to game scheduling to equipment ordering to unlicensed therapy. It’s also common for mid-majors to have at least two staffers dedicated to video/scouting/analytics and some sort of player personnel role (or GM). Women’s basketball will have a similar staffing structure, although sometimes they might share a GM or player personnel staff.

Beyond those folks, you’re going to have at least one sports information director assigned to that sport. You’ll have at least one “Sports Performance” coach (think strength coach), at least one academic support specialist, and an athletic trainer. There’ll also be other support personnel in communications, NIL, creative services, television and radio production, marketing, and others that might be shared across multiple sports. Some of those folks will be fellow undergraduates, but not all of them.

Plus, you have all your cooks, equipment managers, facilities staffers, ticket sales, MMR operations, etc. Even low-major athletic departments will employ dozens and dozens of people.

The Extra Points Library has more than 11,000 PDFs, from athletic director and coach contracts, to itemized athletic department budgets, sample revenue sharing contracts, GM contracts, vendor deals, and much, much more. It’s already become a leading industry toolkit for athletic departments, law firms, agencies, and more. If you’re looking for an affordable solution to your data needs, check out Extra Points Library today.

And finally,

Reader Dan asks,

Okay, I’ll come clean. “Dan”, in this case, is Dan from The Solid Verbal. I recorded a sports business segment with those guys last week, and I believe the show will drop very soon. Dan asked me about this on the air, and I responded with MMR, or Multimedia Rights.

But after we stopped recording, I thought of another answer. Extra Points readers, of course, should be well acquainted with MMR and where it fits, financially, with the rest of the athletic department.

But another source of revenue that you might not think about that much? Sports camps.

Via Extra Points Library, here are the top 13 schools in reported revenue from sport camps in FY25:

If your athletic department generates $160M+ in revenue, yeah, two million bucks from sports camps isn’t going to make or break you. But this revenue is often used to help supplement head and assistant coach salaries in sports like swimming and track. You might be surprised to learn that assistant coaches, even at the D1 level, often make less money than high school coaches/teachers…so being able to throw a few thousand dollars (or more) to those coaches from the camp circuit is the difference between keeping or losing a staffer. It’s real money.

How much of the money from a camp goes to the school, head coach, assistants or other funds varies from school to school and coach contract to coach contract. You can find that sort of information in the Extra Points Library.

So yeah, MMR, in terms of dollars and cents? Way bigger deal. But don’t sleep on camps!

These days, every dollar matters.