SBJ College: Making sense of Big 12’s pursuit of UConn

The Big 12 and its membership remain locked in ongoing discussions on whether the league should add UConn . While nothing is necessarily imminent, another chess piece is being sized up.

Optically, yeah, it’s a little weird. There aren’t a whole lot of similarities between Manhattan, Kan., and Storrs, Conn. But as we’ve learned in recent years, geography doesn’t mean a hell of a lot when it comes to conference realignment. Money drives that bus.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has long had fixations on creating the best basketball conference in America. Frankly, he probably already has. That said, adding a true blue blood of the sport isn’t a bad way to solidify things. Yormark already courted Gonzaga before that idea was tabled. The UConn pursuit, though, is his baby.

As one Big 12 source characterized the potential move, the league needs Yormark long-term. Appeasing the commissioner, for lack of better wording, in snagging the northeast member he desperately craves isn’t the worst thing in ensuring he sticks around for years to come.

Still, this move isn’t as easy as A-B-C.

Multiple reports suggest UConn wouldn’t move to the Big 12 for football until 2031. That’s an eternity in conference realignment years. The other interesting factor is that timing almost exactly coincides with the expiration dates on several major TV deals (the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on TNT/CBS, NCAA women’s basketball/Olympic sports package with ESPN, the Big East’s recently signed deal with Fox, TNT and NBC and College Football Playoff deal with ESPN, to name a few). Point being, it’s not crazy to think the college sports ecosystem is shaken up again by then and UConn football never makes it to the Big 12.

And what about the Big East?

While a move for football may not happen until 2031, a move for basketball and many other sports could be in the cards sooner. The Big East is not the ACC, and UConn isn’t going to court it over grant of rights issues. However, Big East schools must give a heads up of 27 months for such an early exit, plus a $15 million exit fee (likely not cost prohibitive). And if UConn wants out now, you have to figure it’ll be negotiating a higher exit fee with the Big East.

There are also trickle-down effect to think about. UConn, the two-time defending NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament champion, is a cornerstone of the new deals with Fox, TNT and NBC, and reports say those deals have language that would lower the value to the Big East should a school like UConn depart. Not ideal for a media deal that hasn’t even started yet, should that come to pass.

Tough out here for a football indie

UConn AD Dave Benedict laid out the difficulties of being a football independent in 2024.

“Ultimately, it's more about the direction and where things are headed from a CFP standpoint and how money is being distributed relative to the CFP and the conferences,” he said. “That's probably the bigger challenge for us being an independent, because unfortunately, when the people get together to talk about the CFP and establish rules around the CFP, no one's representing the independents.

“Notre Dame gets its own representation, but they're only representing themselves. They don't care about UConn. That piece is becoming more and more important. ... That's something that certainly is on the top of my mind.”

It’s no secret there’s a chasm between the Power Four and the rest of college sports these days. Just last week,  Mark Jackson left  a cushy, non-football-centric gig as Villanova's AD to take on a Northwestern job that has been, shall we say, messy in recent years. But hey, Big Ten money is Big Ten money.

All this is to say UConn potentially going to the Big 12 certainly won’t make sense to basketball traditionalists. Doesn’t matter. Not a lot around college sports makes sense these days anyways.

Gary Stokan has seen it all in 40-plus years in the sports business.

Stokan, CEO and president of the Peach Bowl, is experiencing one of his busier years in recent memory. The Aflac Kickoff game this past week saw No. 1 Georgia wallop No. 14 Clemson. Atlanta will also host the SEC Championship, Peach Bowl and CFP national title game over the next six months.

And yet Stokan has some thoughts about future setups.

“I would contend the conference commissioners ought to look at doing games in the front side of the season, like we've done with matchups between the [Power Four] conferences,” he told SBJ. “Just like in basketball, where you have ACC versus Big Ten, schedule the Big Four -- the Big 12 plays the ACC, the SEC plays the Big Ten -- and schedule those games at the bowl sites at the beginning of the year, which would be tremendous for college football.”

Stokan’s idea isn’t without merit. Player opt-outs, a bigger CFP field and other issues have put bowl games in an increasingly precarious spot as they fight for survival amid college football’s postseason changes.

“I've told my bowl brethren that they should do this,” Stokan said of featuring high-profile programs early in the season. “If you look at what's happening at the end of the year -- potentially even more so with the 12-team playoff -- how many more opt-outs are you going to get at the end of the season?"

Stokan's example focuses on the excitement of the beginning of the season, not the end.

“Take two teams -- Iowa versus Ole Miss -- you put that in Nashville, and Iowa and Ole Miss are both in the top 20, you know the fans are going to go to the game because they haven't seen college football in nine months," he said. "At the end of the season, if those two teams are 8-4 [or] 7-5, how many people are excited about those games as much as you would be if you're undefeated at the beginning of the season, first game of the year?”

That kind of thinking is also what’s seen some college administrators pitch the idea of a Group of Five playoff that could feature bowl games more prominently. And while that idea was largely thought to be dead on arrival, it still intrigues some throughout the industry.

But those concerns are for the future. As noted, Stokan’s 2024 plate is plenty full between last week’s contest and those coming to Atlanta over the next few months. That all also coincides with the College Football Hall of Fame’s 10th anniversary -- a place Stokan was intimately involved in bringing to the city a decade ago.

“[We’re] just reinforcing that Atlanta's the capital of college football,” he said.

Selling season tickets is an increasingly tricky proposition, and a company now named “Attend” has a perceived solution.

The company, which is rebranding from Season Share, designed to create more friendly ways for fans to buy tickets in bulk with the flexibility of single-game tickets is experiencing massive growth in its fifth year of existence. So much growth, in fact, its original name needed a revamp.

“We’ve rebranded to Attend to really speak to the future [and] what we’re doing today more so than our past,” CEO Aaron Holland told SBJ.

Holland and Robert Beadle founded the company in 2019 as a way for fans to split and share season tickets. That quickly evolved to white-label, B2B positioning, creating three products that have since seen massive interest -- including delivering over $100 million in ticket inventory for partners across every major sports league in North America.

In simple terms, Attend is a way to bridge the gap between younger fans and, in the college space, alumni who aren’t quite to the point of buying season tickets, while giving them a more flexible way to buy packages.

App users can purchase varying packages, such as Utah home football games. Then, as one does with an airline app, fans check-in on game days to see what seat they’ve been assigned for that contest. The in-app interface also offers varying upgrades.

“It's positioned in the product ladder, so to speak, to move fans from being a single-game buyer, up to a plan buyer, and then, hopefully, into more of a donor-style, traditional product, like a full season [ticket],” Holland explained.

Attend has seen growth in college sports thanks to partnerships with schools like Florida, Tennessee, Ohio State and Oregon, along with varying work across professional sports.

“This industry, you can't be holistically disruptive the way you can in other technology businesses. You actually have to be additive,” Holland said. “We come in with an additive approach with technology that doesn't cannibalize from the full season ticket, because that's really important.

“If you come into an organization and say, ‘Hey, we're going to disrupt your season ticket business,’ then you're just not getting any responses to that presentation. [We] come in and say, ‘Hey, we're going to add new revenue. We're going to bridge that gap from fan to donor without degrading or cannibalizing these big, big number products you have.’ That's where we’ve found success.”

Las Vegas Bowl Executive Director John Saccenti has barely had a chance to catch his breath since Sunday night.

USC’s stunning win over LSU at Allegiant Stadium created the kind of headlines those in L.A. hoped for when they swiped Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma. For those based in Las Vegas, the neutral site contest between two of college football’s bluest of bluebloods delivered in all sorts of ways.

“We expected this to be a typical, marquee Vegas-style event where even if you didn't have tickets to the event, people were going to come to town and they were going to have fun and party and fill hotels and still watch -- similar to a Super Bowl, or March Madness or something like that,” Saccenti said. “And we did see that.”

As my colleague Austin Karp reported , the LSU-USC contest drew 9.2 million viewers on Sunday night without any NFL competition. Saccenti noted the DirecTV-ESPN/Disney debacle probably hurt that number a smidge, too.

On the ground, the game set records for the largest crowd at an Allegiant Stadium sporting event -- surpassing Super Bowl LVIII. Saccenti said final visitor numbers are also still being processed, but they project to far outpace this same weekend last year.

“Vegas did great. The stadium was rocking. TV was great,” he said. “Huge success all the way around.”

That the LSU-USC contest was such a roaring success comes amid an interesting dialogue in the bowl world. As mentioned, bowl games and early season kickoff games are being rethought.

Conference realignment also means we get more games like a USC-LSU by virtue of regularly scheduled contests. Just take a look at the Big Ten slate this fall for context. Oregon will face Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin. USC, too, is headed to Ann Arbor.

That said, there’s nothing quite like Las Vegas and the big-time feel the city centered on fun can provide.

“Sometimes in college football, we get away from what's best for the greater good of the sport,” Saccenti said. “And sometimes decisions are made with ‘What's good for me?’ and ‘What I want right now.’ ... You ask these schools, and you ask these fans how their experience was in Vegas, and I'm sure they would say, ‘Top notch.’

“We would love to do one of these every year. Anybody that wants to do one, give me a call.”

• Utah is adding a new role to its senior athletics staff, as the school is set to hire Patrick Nowlin as its new CRO. TurnkeyZRG assisted in the search.

• The Big Ten and Big Ten Network have a multiyear deal with Hilton, making the hotel brand the presenting sponsor of all Saturday prime-time football games on BTN.

• Georgia Southern signed a multiyear on-field sponsorship with the Sack Company that will include logos on the 25-yard lines at Evans Family Field and on the press box. 

• Rhoback revealed its latest round of college football NIL partnerships: star QBs Quinn Ewers (Texas), Jalen Milroe (Alabama), Riley Leonard (Notre Dame) and Cade Klubnik (Clemson); DBs Malaki Starks (Georgia), Benjamin Morrison (Notre Dame); and RB Nick Singleton (Penn State).

• The Army-Navy Game's latest sponsor is the American Legion in a multiyear deal alongside presenting sponsor USAA and participating sponsors Chevrolet, Exchange, Duke Cannon Supply Co. and Palantir.

• In this week's magazine, SBJ's Terry Lefton talks to executive search experts such as TurnkeyZRG Chairman and CEO Len Perna and Manager Director Billy King about trends in college sports -- such as universities creating CRO and GM roles in their search for new revenue sources.

• In the 18th annual Sponsor Breakthrough study fielded by MarketCast for SBJ, research director David Broughton notes four NCAA sponsors -- Buffalo Wild Wings, Reese’s, Capital One and Wendy’s -- led the way in terms of the biggest year-over-year growth among any league’s official sponsor recognition.

• Powerade signed NIL deals with five college football players, reports SBJ's Austin Karp -- Georgia QB Carson Beck, LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier, USC WR Zachariah Branch, Iowa RB Kaleb Johnson and Florida State DE Patrick Payton.

• Texas QB Quinn Ewers starts his junior year with the Longhorns with a handful of NIL deals totaling several million dollars, negotiated by Rubicon Talent, notes Lefton. This includes national TV spots for Dr Pepper and Hulu.