Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
By the time you read this email, I’ll be driving somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin, as we begin our big family road trip to Wyoming (by way of the Mall of America, Custer State Park and, uh, a lot of tourist trap rest stops). My plan is to return to Chicago late on July 28.
Don’t worry; the newsletter will keep publishing while I’m on vacation, and the Extra Points Library will still be updated on a regular basis. I’ve got a story pre-written, and some freelancers and special guests will chime in while I’m on the road. But please be patient, as I’m going to be much slower to respond to emails during that time.
A quick sports business story I want to highlight from the jump today: On Thursday, DePaul announced the first jersey sponsorship patch deal in the Big East, with Chicagoland’s Desert Cactus agreeing to become the patch sponsor for Blue Demons men’s basketball.
Desert Cactus is an e-commerce firm that specializes in officially licensed merchandise, from college and professional sports to Greek life to pop culture. As part of the sponsorship package …
“Desert Cactus will work with DePaul as a testing ground for new product innovations across several key retail locations, which will then be scaled nationally. The partnership will allow Desert Cactus to pilot and feature officially licensed products at the DePaul University bookstores on the Lincoln Park and Loop campuses, as well as in-venue at Wintrust Arena, creating new opportunities to connect with students, alumni and fans through DePaul-branded merchandise.”
To me, the most interesting patch deals aren’t just about the company or how much it paid … but about how the company and the athletic department can work and grow together beyond a single patch. If Desert Cactus can help improve the visibility of DePaul merch in Chicago (or on the internet), that could very well be more meaningful than whatever check it cuts to be on the basketball jersey. A trend worth watching elsewhere in the Big East, I think.
A buddy of mine, David Covucci of the excellent FOIABall newsletter, suggested I write something about which schools are the biggest pains in the butt to FOIA.
Between regularly updating the Extra Points Library, our own original reporting and other projects, I really do send a lot of these requests, and to just about every public school and university system in Division I and Division II (and occasionally, even beyond that). I’m sure there are reporters or newsrooms that send more, but I think I’ve been doing this enough to have some thoughts about this question.
Let me offer this caveat first: The folks on the other side of the email address (records clerks, PR specialists, lawyers, etc.) are humans just trying to do their jobs. We all have our good days and our bad days, but I really believe the vast majority of people in this ecosystem are ethical and trying to best serve the public. They are beholden to state law, university policy, the limitations of their budget and technical systems, and a multitude of other factors outside their control.
I’m also self-aware enough to recognize that I send out more requests than the average bear, and I would never blame any university employee who might hop into NextRequest and say, Oh, this $@*$(@ guy again?!?" Can’t he go blog about video games or something? We’re all only human, after all.
So first, let me highlight a few institutions that, in my professional experience, regularly go above and beyond the call of duty:
Miami (Ohio): One thing I love about Miami is that its athletic department proactively publishes a ton of the sorts of documents that reporters regularly FOIA. If you want a contract for a football game, head coach or major vendor agreement, you don’t even need to send an email. It’s already right here. A few other schools do this (LSU, Idaho, New Mexico and Tennessee, off the top of my head), but I think Miami is the fastest to update its, and it has erred on the side of over-complying with other requests I’ve made.
Texas Tech, North Texas and UTSA: College classes are often surprised when I tell them I typically have much better luck filing requests in Texas than in many blue states. Almost without exception, the customer service, speed and communication I get from Texas public universities, no matter their size or system, are among the best in the country. Texas state law does give corporations more leeway in redacting vendor contracts than laws in other states, but for nearly everything else, I have nothing but positive things to say.
Washington: Sometimes their system makes me pay like, 40 cents via credit card for a single document, which is stupid, but that’s not any of the clerks’ fault. I can’t say enough positive things about their willingness to help me find what I actually need, even if I haven’t used the exact, correct magic words.
Portland State, Georgia Southern, Louisiana Tech and Eastern Illinois: God bless these guys; they just send over a giant Google Drive that not only has all the coach and vendor contracts, but also contracts for stuff I hadn’t even thought to ask for yet, just to save time. May the Lord bless any university that tells me, “Look man, here’s our junk drawer; YOU look through it.”
Okay, here are the schools that frustrate me to no end:
The University of California system: Cal and UCLA are unique among Power 4 institutions in how long they take to finalize any contract. For example, Cal tells me they haven’t finalized a contract or offer sheet or term sheet for football coach Tosh Lupoi, a dude who was hired in December. It is not uncommon for UCLA to take five months or more to respond to relatively basic contract requests, either.
But I think this is really a problem with the entire UC system, a massive bureaucracy on every level that struggles to do much of anything quickly. Requests to other campuses, like Irvine or Riverside, regularly take me months. The Cal State schools often aren’t that much better, but the UC institutions are uniquely slow, in my experience. Not hostile. Just slow.
Georgia and Georgia Tech: In 2016, Georgia amended its open records law (colloquially referred to as Kirby’s Law, thanks to Kirby Smart’s lobbying) to allow universities up to 90 days to respond to any request. They do not have to wait 90 days. In fact, Georgia Southern, West Georgia, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, Valdosta State and others will happily respond to a request as soon as possible, generally in under a month. But Georgia and Georgia Tech will absolutely take all 90 days, just because. This makes filing anything pegged to a news cycle almost functionally impossible.
Georgia at least publishes its MFRS report, so folks don’t need to FOIA it. But it also, in my experience, tends to charge higher fees for searches than Tech does.
Michigan and Utah: I don’t think either of these institutions can blame state laws for slow response times, as I almost never have problems getting documents from Michigan State, Utah State, Weber State, Eastern Michigan, etc. But these two schools take FOREVER, just because they can. Michigan has also charged me for documents, only to refund the check 10 months later because it decided the documents don’t actually exist … but it couldn’t tell me that from the jump. Both of these schools will decline to share documents that you know exist — and that other in-state institutions have provided — just because. At least Utah has an online portal to track requests …Michigan doesn’t even have that.
Buffalo: I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a single document back from Buffalo in less than four months. I’m still waiting on stuff I asked for back in January from these guys. New York FOIA law is terrible, and I don’t think there’s a SUNY school that is GOOD at any of this stuff, but Buffalo is overwhelmingly the worst in the MAC.
Troy: I have never, ever gotten a document via conventional FOIA channels from Troy. Its former athletic director once told me the school had worked out something with a retired Alabama Supreme Court judge to somehow shield it from requests, but he didn’t know how it worked. I usually don’t even get denials … I just get straight-up ignored. I know it isn’t a residency thing, because I have folks with Alabama residencies file for me. Troy apparently just ignores the requests, and nobody has stopped it? IF any of you guys know what the deal is here, please let me know.
Delaware and Delaware State: They claim they don’t have to respond to any athletics-related requests due to their state law. One of these days, I’ll find the right lawyer in Delaware and get this overturned. But in the meantime, we’ll just have to go without contract or budget details from the First State.
Northern Colorado: It is the year of our Lord 2026. I should not have to FAX or PHYSICALLY MAIL a request. Anybody who makes you pay fees via paper check (most regional Southern schools) is dragging on purpose, but Northern Colorado is the only place I’m aware of where I have to go to the library and figure out how to send a FAX. This is supposed to be a tech-friendly state!
The College Sports Industry Data You Need to Make Better Decisions
Extra Points Library gives college sports professionals instant access to the contracts, financial records, salary benchmarks and operational data shaping the industry. Whether you’re benchmarking salaries, researching vendor deals, comparing your school to its peers, reporting a story or simply trying to better understand how college athletics actually works, Library gives you the data behind the headlines.
It’s built specifically for professionals who work in college sports. Start searching over 13,000 documents here.
Also read about all the new changes we recently launched here, including sports specific spend vs performance, updated financial comparisons, an AI chatbot, game contracts and more.
And get a free benchmarking report comparing your school to a subset of your peers. See how your school stacks up.
Here are some other things we’ve been working on:
Speaking of FOIA, we used it to track how much money every public school in D-I reported generating from corporate sponsorships and licensing in FY25. We’ve got the big charts, plus some more detailed context behind those charts, here.
Many athletic departments are considering adding new sports, for all kinds of reasons: to improve enrollment outcomes, better comply with Title IX, advance in the Directors Cup rankings and more. But which sports make the most sense? I’ve talked to a lot of folks in the emerging sports world, and I have a few recommendations, depending on a school’s goals.
Early industry feedback around the Big 12 Monster deal was negative. I think that’s premature.
If you prefer your college sports business content in audio or video form, I sat down with my old pals at Split Zone Duo to do a show on the EA Sports Microtransaction Drama, jersey patch sponsorship deals, the Michigan situation and more.
And we’ve also added a few dozen more documents to the Extra Points Library, plus pushed a few more quality-of-life improvements with our games.
I can pay those FOIA fees, buy software that actually works and spend time making phone calls and doing everything else we do around here thanks to your support. Ad revenue is wonderful, but subscriptions still pay the bills. If you enjoy what we do, please upgrade to a $9/month subscription and help keep independent media going. Plus, you get even more cool stuff to read!
And if you can’t swing that, hey, you can always get free premium access by sharing Extra Points with your friends. We give referral bonuses!
Have a great weekend, everybody. I’ll check in from the road, and I’ll see you on the internet when I get back.
We’re taking all of a school’s financial reports, coach contracts, vendor agreements, benchmarking and sport-specific analysis and rolling it into one comprehensive report. We’re starting with Michigan.
This report will unpack the financial picture of the athletic department and show how it compares to others in the Big Ten. It’ll share where Michigan ranks in spending (and revenue) in every major sport, trends over the past few years and much, much more.
The digital report will be ready on July 28 and will be free for all Extra Points users with an annual premium subscription plan ($84/year). Pre-order your report here by upgrading.
