Three themes from my time at NACDA

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

I am finally back in Chicago after spending the past few days in Orlando for NACDA, the main conference for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

This is a big event on the off-the-field calendar for the college sports industry, because it’s really a bunch of conferences all rolled up into one huge gathering of officially licensed collegiate polo shirts. There are professional development and network gatherings for folks who work in sports information and communication, in ticketing, in licensing, in compliance, and almost any other job title you could think of. There’s a massive vendor hall full of folks selling everything from astroturf to scoreboards to compliance software. And of course, the hallways are all full of sidebars … folks interviewing for jobs, gossiping with friends, checking out pitchdecks, the works.

I really enjoy these events because I don’t get the opportunity to actually see many of my readers (and sources) in person, and I think it’s important for folks to know that I am a real human being who owns multiple polo shirts. But it can also feel a little overwhelming.

I didn’t get a chance to pop into many of the seminars or professional development interviews, even though I wish I had. I needed to make sure I could allocate time to demonstrate Extra Points Library to ADs who were interested in our data product, catch up with our existing partners and talk to as many people as I could to better understand what the heck is happening in the industry. Efforts to clone myself have so far been unsuccessful.

Based on all the conversations I had in conference rooms, hotel lobbies and barrooms, I came away with three main themes.

Everybody needs more money. But there are no magic revenue solutions out there.

The largest immediate expense, of course, is athlete revenue sharing, now that the House settlement has finally been approved. Just about every power school is planning on contributing the full $20.5 million permitted in direct athlete payments, but more than a hundred other D1 schools will be paying at least some money to athletes. Those payments weren’t a budgeted expense back in FY22, so they need to come from somewhere.

There are other changes coming. Many D1 schools are struggling with declining enrollment due to demographic changes, or it’s at least become more expensive to sustain current levels of enrollment. Dramatic cuts in federal funding put stress on institutional budgets, making it harder for athletic departments to secure institutional subsidies. Tariffs can increase the price of everything from construction materials to athletic apparel.

So everybody is trying to find new revenue sources. But almost everybody told me that while growing revenue is a solvable problem, there won’t be a single solution. There simply aren’t many levers to pull that can deliver $20 million. Instead, there’s a truckload of options that might return an extra $100,000 here, $65,000 there.

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