MAILBAG: What do we think of the latest SuperLeague proposal?

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

Feels good to type that again! Thanks for being so patient with me while I took a little time off in March. I needed to catch my breath for a second, both because my kids were off for Spring Break, and also to rethink a lot of how Extra Points currently runs. I’m going to be making a lot of changes in the near future that I hope you’ll enjoy.

One of those is a re-indexing of the massive Extra Points archives. I’ve been writing this newsletter since 2019 (!!!), but thanks to multiple platform changes, it can be hard to find stories in our archives. I’ve been manually going back and adding new tags for schools, conferences and new topics, so everybody can more easily find everything. A surprisingly large number of these newsletters are evergreen and still useful!

I’ll share more updates once I can. For now, though, our regular schedule will resume next week, and I have turned premium subscriptions back on.

Enough about all that though. What better way to get back in the ol’ swing of things than with a reader mailbag? As always, I am happy to take your questions via email, Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, DMs, even mailed letters. Yes, I actually got one of those this week! If you’d like to mail me something, please send it to:

Good Spot Publishing LLC

C/O Matt Brown

PO Box 411023

Chicago, IL, 60641.

And with that, let’s answer some questions!

Lots of p_eople asked about this. According to a story published Wednesday afternoon by Andrew Marchand and Stewart Mandel of The Athletic, a group of sports industry executives have been trying to meet with conference commissioners and are pushing a plan they call “College Sports Tomorrow”. This group would include ~80 college football programs (a permanent group of 70 teams, plus 10 that would be promoted or relegated from the rest of college football), a unified broadcast contract, a standardized postseason based on division championships, collective bargaining, and more.

I think this is a proposal that warrants a longer look, but my first thoughts from reading the story is that I don’t think this exact proposal is going to work.

For one, I would be concerned that the top 70ish college football programs breaking off to sign a single broadcast contract would not only trigger potential litigation from their existing broadcast partners (who have signed longer term TV deals), but also potential antitrust concerns from broadcasters who get shut out of the bidding. As I understand it, efforts to re-combine many broadcast rights among power leagues post Regents in the late 1980s were quashed out of litigation fears.

Schools would also give up massive amounts of autonomy and history (adios conferences!), and would still potentially be on the hook for revenue sharing/employment/antitrust litigation for the rest of their athletic departments.

This proposal also seems to hinge on the idea that there is a lot more revenue (broadcast and otherwise) in the ecosystem just waiting to be unlocked with the right professional management. That might be true. But it’s also possible that we’re very close to the top of what the broadcast market will pay for college rights, and there won’t be enough to go around to pay athletes, schools and placate aggressive investors.

Some sort of Super League is probably coming. But based on what I’ve read so far, I’d have far, far more questions about the CST.

For one, I haven’t heard anything yet that would make me think CUSA feels they have to invite anybody this Spring. I’ve heard that school leaders would like to make sure that WKU sticks around before seriously engaging with additional expansion. I’ve also heard from a few folks close to CUSA schools that nobody in the league really feels like they’re in a hurry to pick anybody. Anybody that is interested in CUSA now will likely still be interested in June, or August, or even next year.

The way this has been explained to me from industry people…is that Tarleton is perceived to have more football upside, based on location and administrative commitment. The school’s most senior leadership has a reputation for being very involved with athletics…which is seen as both a positive and a negative, depending on what other college president you talk to. Missouri State is perceived to be “safer” and have more upside in non-FB sports, but there are influential voices in the Missouri State world that would really rather be in the Sun Belt…and if they can’t get there, maybe aren’t convinced they have to reclassify at all.

I don’t know enough right now to prognosticate how this all ends. Those aren’t the only two FCS schools on the proverbial CUSA radar, and who gets an invitation will depend not just on football and budgets, but administrative fit, money, and a slew of other factors.

The sad answer is…lawsuits. With rare exceptions, power conference schools generally aren’t looking to add any sports right now, unless they’re worried about Title IX lawsuit exposure.

There are a few exceptions. A single donor might throw a massive amount of money to jumpstart a project (like Penn State hockey or Utah lacrosse). A conference may change their sponsored sport portfolio, and a school may tweak their offerings to better line up with their peers. There are a handful of other exceptions.

But the biggest reason D-I schools typically add sports, beyond lawsuits, is for enrollment purposes…and no power conference school really uses athletics to explicitly bolster enrollment. I’m sure there are plenty of power schools that could field women’s wrestling programs that would become highly competitive…but if you’re terrified about those House antitrust penalties and potential athlete revenue sharing, the appetite for more sports is limited.

Mostly, they ignored me. I didn’t have a formal relationship with their communication team for an entire year, and most of my internal sources at the company came from relationships I had already developed from other stories or projects. My understanding, as retold to me from third parties, was that Learfield and EA were uh, less than thrilled with my enthusiastic use of open records requests.

Now, I’d say that I have a positive and professional relationship with multiple people at EA (in comms, development and elsewhere), as well as with Learfield and other licensing agents. I’m generally not a scary and adversarial guy. But I also understand that nobody really likes some rando snooping around their emails, especially when you’re not used to it.

Speaking of open records requests,

Sadly, private schools are not obligated to respond to open records requests (along with a tiny handful of public schools, like Penn State and Delaware). I’ve certainly cultivated administrative and industry sources at several private schools, but nobody who would be willing to, say, hand over their FY23 FRS report or a copy of some of their vendor contracts for me to publish on the internet.

That being said, my tips line is compliance @ extrapointsmb.com. For my friends at private institutions reading this, if the spirit moves you to leak me some nerdy stuff, by all means, I await with open arms.

Reader TP asks two important questions:

Not to stunt on everybody here, but if I’m going to a game for work purposes, I’m generally not buying anything from the concession stand. Press boxes generally have food, so I’ll grab whatever caffeinated soda they have and enjoy a sandwich or something. For what it’s worth, the best press box food I’ve ever had in my life was at Rutgers.

If I’m just going as a fan, I’m much more pragmatic. If I can get the local specialty, I’ll do it, but if the line is shorter at the hot dog and popcorn stand, then I’ll just grab a hot dog and get back to my seat as soon as possible.

As for realignment, I’ve heard whispers about a few different leagues, and a deeper examination of the ACC situation probably ought to be its own newsletter. But since you asked so nicely, I’ll say that I’m hearing Mercyhurst to the NEC could be official as soon as this week.

And finally,

Boy, that’s a great question. I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments or my various social platforms.

My first impulse would be to suggest that men’s college basketball switch to the quarter system that is used in high school basketball, women’s college basketball, professional basketball, and just about every other system. I think that would provide a more clean game experience that’s better aligned with the rest of the basketball world.

I’d probably also push for more professionalized officiating (this is a bigger problem in women’s college basketball, but boy howdy watching a men’s game with Activist Judges can be ROUGH) and take away two timeouts from each team to try and speed up end of game situations.

But I also don’t know the blood and guts of ball to have a strong opinion about, say, the size of the key or the length of the three point line or FIBA goaltending rules. I’m open to being talked into something else!

Might be a good newsletter feature in the near future, though? I’d love to hear your thoughts on other rule changes for other sports.

Thanks again for being so patient with me. It can be tough to try to find time to implement changes to the business, but I think we’re on the right track to making a better Extra Points for everybody.

I’m going to take the rest of the day off today (I turn 37 today! Who wants to file FOIAs on their birthday? Not me!), and will look to get back into regularly scheduled action starting next week.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see y’all on the internet.