Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
Today, I have some exciting news!
Extra Points is excited to announce a new partnership with College Sports Solutions, a leading college sports consulting company.
This non-exclusive partnership will make data and documents from the Extra Points Library available for all CSS projects. CSS will also share documents from previous consulting projects with the Extra Points Library, which will be accessible to all EPL users.
Wait, what’s College Sports Solutions?
CSS is a college sports consulting company led by Jeff Schemmel, former San Diego State athletic director and longtime college sports industry expert. Schools across college sports, large and small, regularly use consulting companies to help them with benchmarking, executive searches, sport sponsorship studies, and other specific department projects. CSS, with its collection of former ADs, marketing experts, sports lawyers and other professionals, steps in to assist with those types of projects.
CSS consultant Kristi Dosh will be spearheading new projects arising from this partnership. Kristi is an attorney who founded Business of College Sports® in 2010 and has written two books on the industry. Combining her experience and research with the Extra Points Library, Kristi will help schools and conferences access the information and insights they need to make informed decisions in the quickly changing landscape of college athletics.
Examples of those projects include a conference affiliation and football feasibility study for Wichita State, an operational review of UConn athletics, and the Big West Conference commissioner search that resulted in the hire of Dan Butterly.
Folks interested in potentially working with CSS should reply to this email, and I can make an introduction.
And for folks that would like to meet all of us in person, we’ll be holding a Happy Hour on Wednesday (Jan 14) evening at the NCAA Convention. Specific details to come soon, but mark your calendars now!
Why would Extra Points Library want to work with a consulting company?
We’ve spent a lot of time collecting and categorizing college sports data for Extra Points Library, a database that now includes more than 9,000 documents. That includes hundreds of itemized athletic department budgets, vendor contracts, coach contracts, GM contracts, and much more. We spend that time and energy building the database because we think this information, when organized correctly, can improve academic research, newsroom coverage and athletic department decision-making.
Since we believe that, we want this information to get in front of as many people as possible that could use it. We’re a small company, and I’m only one guy, after all. By partnering with a firm like CSS, we can help get our data in front of more people, and help make our data better.
Is this an exclusive partnership? Is Extra Points part of CSS now?
No and no. We’re not producing original work product for CSS or directly participating in any consulting projects. We are simply making our data product available for CSS clients and CSS projects. We’d be happy to secure a similar relationship with other consulting companies, law firms, newsrooms, academic research networks, or any other large organization that would benefit from college sports data.
Personally, I think when a school hires a consulting company, they’d want those folks to spend their time providing expertise and analysis, rather than chasing down budgets or contracts. I’ve already done all that stuff! These partnerships just make it easier for others to use what we’ve already built.
“We are thrilled about this new partnership with Matt Brown and Extra Points.” adds Schemmel. “This will expand our ability to scrutinize the marketplace and provide our clients with the best analysis and recommendations as they look for ways to achieve their financial goals and become more efficient in their operations. Extra Points Library has become the very best source of critical data in college athletics, and we can now take that data and help conferences and universities plan effective strategies to maximize their returns.”
We all believe this means CSS will get better and Extra Points Library will get better. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Help things get better.
You can check out Extra Points Library for yourself here, or learn more about CSS here.
If you’re interested in licensing EPL for your organization, drop us a line at matt @ extrapointsmb dot com.
