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MAILBAG! Tiger vs. bear food, small college paywalls, realignment and more
Travel time means mailbag time
Matt Brown
October 22, 2025
Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
I’m on the road for a few days. By the time you open this email, I’ll actually be back in my old stomping grounds of Columbus, since I’m teaching a few seminars on open records reporting at The Ohio State University (and catching up with a few #sources). I’ll be back in Chicago on Thursday afternoon.
I was also at Penn State last week for a similar journalism event, and while I love being on the road and working with college students, it also means I don’t have quite as much time to hit the phones and the FOIAs for newsgathering.
These transition periods are great opportunities for me to turn the time over to you and answer some of your questions, mailbag style. As always, I accept mailbag questions on a rolling basis, but the best way to get one in the newsletter is to hit me up on social media. I’m at @MattBrownEP on Twitter and @MattBrown on BlueSky.
Reader John asks:
Great question John. In fact, I actually reported out and wrote about this exact thing last year. From that story:
Data shared with me from one major gambling monitoring service suggested that roughly $160 million was legally bet on Hawaii football games last season, just behind UNLV for the highest “team handle” in the Mountain West, despite the fact that Hawaii didn’t even play in a bowl game last season. $160 million would also be more than some P4 programs, I’m told.
Of that $160 million, the gambling data suggests more of it came from games played late at night on the islands. Last year, Hawaii hosted Stanford for a Friday night game that kicked off at 11 PM ET. That game alone had more than $50 million bet on it, a figure that would be significantly higher than a typical regular season P4 contest. Other data suggests that Hawaii games played later at night attract substantially more gaming activity than those that kick off at say, 4:00 CT.
I’m told there are similar trends for Hawaii men’s basketball, as the program had a larger total handle than multiple power programs, and attracted more gambling activity than nearly any other Big West program. When games tipped off after 7 PM, gaming data shows Hawaii basketball outperformed typical mid-major competition.
I don’t have the most updated data from the 2025 season so far, but given that a) Hawaii is pretty good this year, b) Hawaii has one of the coolest stories in all college football and c) Hawaii has played four super-late-night home games so far, I suspect that trend has continued.
The more interesting question, as Hawaii formally moves into the Mountain West Conference for all sports next season, is how the school and league can turn that increased attention into money, without hurting its athletes, athletic department or university.
But TL;DR, yes, college athletic events in unique broadcast windows tend to attract more gambling interest.
Which live mascot is the most expensive to care for?
— Gordon (@gordon9.bsky.social)2025-10-20T23:55:42.287Z
Okay, this is the sort of question that is begging for some hard-hitting data journalism. I’m going to add FOIA THE MASCOT BUDGET to the ol’ idea board, so we can spend the time to check my hypothesis.
But that’ll take at least two weeks, so let’s do some back of the napkin math.
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