Safe to say Pitt's firing of AD Heather Lyke on Monday shocked the college sports world. Lyke, a recent member of the NCAA D-I Council and D-I Football Oversight Committee, has been one of the more involved ADs at the national level. She was also honored as NACDA’s AD of the Year in 2023 and was one of just seven female ADs at the Power Four level.
Local media has reported fundraising concerns and infrastructure around NIL were part of the impetus for a drastic move, along with Lyke's recent candidacies at Northwestern and Ohio State.
That said, Lyke’s firing was a massive surprise to most of my sources and creates a major administrative shakeup right at the start of football season.
House settlement remains on hold. Here’s why
Time really is a flat circle, huh?
The NCAA remains embroiled in settlement discussions around the House, Hubbard and Carter antitrust cases. Last week’s hearing with Judge Claudia Wilken was, in theory, a chance to get the framework agreement rubber-stamped.
That didn’t happen. Instead, the NCAA finds itself arguing in favor of the very thing that has it in this situation in the first place -- that pay-for-play is bad.
Rakesh Kilaru, an attorney representing the NCAA, addressed the court on Thursday in trying to establish why revenue sharing is not “pay for play” and that boosters offering athletes NIL deals is, in fact, that. Wilken visibly shook her head.
"If this House settlement goes through,” she contended, “you're explicitly paying for play [via revenue sharing].”
So where does that leave things? The NCAA basically has two options: Cave on its stance that it needs to regulate third-party NIL or find another way to do it that’s less limiting, or likely head to trial and take its chances.
Collective thinking
As you'd expect, NIL collectives aren't exactly fans of the NCAA’s stance regarding oversight and regulation.
“They should have solved the old problem, helped revenue sharing go into place, and then let the market take it from there,” Russell White, president of The Collective Association, told me. “Trying to throw everything into this -- that’s just their old beef with collectives, their ego coming into it of ‘How do we try to get this power back?’ ... All the ancillary stuff is, frankly, garbage.”
Wilken already ruled against the NCAA in the O’Bannon case just under a decade ago. That she might be swayed this go around feels, well, unlikely.
Kilaru, for his part, noted the NIL oversight piece to the settlement "is a central part of the deal, and without it, I'm not sure we have a settlement to submit."
Truly, nothing is ever simple in college sports.
Shifting college landscape has schools like Utah creating CRO roles
Utah made headlines last week when it poached Patrick Nowlin from Notre Dame to be its new chief revenue officer.
Why? Call it planning for the future.
“Our industry is going to be faced with awesome opportunities for student athletes in terms of sharing revenue, and we wanted to try to be ahead of the curve in that regard,” Utah AD Mark Harlan said. “We went about designing a job that we had not had here previously that when this person wakes up, they're going to be thinking about revenue all the way to when they go to sleep at night.”
Utah’s addition of a CRO isn’t novel . Athletic departments around the country are reshaping their organizations with the belief they’ll need to focus more on revenue generation and optimizing business elements of their operations.
That’s a shift for an industry that was content to break even year-over-year for the last century, despite massive influxes of cash.
“[Harlan] is somebody who has a great grasp on not only the present but also the future,” Nowlin told SBJ. “And talking with him really drew me to [the job]. I really enjoy driving revenue. ... I've had a lot of success with it in my past, and the way he explained the role and his vision for it really drew me to it and it was something that I was very excited about.”
Whether a settlement is reached in the House case or not, revenue sharing in some form will likely hit college sports in the coming years. That means schools need more money -- and more people focused on those endeavors.
“The way college athletics is going, the dollar is being pulled in a lot of different directions,” Nowlin said. “And if you don't have alignment within those or within your strategy, you're going to fall behind.”
RevelXP’s temporary builds becoming big business during college football season
RevelXP is offering a solution for those in need of more suite space without the hassle of major construction projects.
“I remember when Jerry Jones built field suites, everybody was like, ‘Nobody's going to sit in those things,’” joked RevelXP EVP/Venue Operations Tom Kleinlein. “Now everyone in America wants a field suite.”
RevelXP has been in the temporary build business for the better part of three years. The idea, on paper, was to create premium spaces in unused areas of a stadium.
Take North Carolina. The school engaged RevelXP to create the Tar Heel Patios. The seats tucked in a corner of Kenan Stadium might otherwise sell for around $20 apiece, if they were even sold. The premium section, instead, brought UNC upward of $4,000 for the area when filled.
Interest is growing, too: Year 1 saw the company complete just two of these premium builds, while it has 14 on the books for this fall.
“The hardest premium for people to sell is single-game premium, because you’ve got a commitment that, if you build a suite, it’s got to be full all year long,” Kleinlein said. “Well, these are a way to offer single-game premium, pretty close to the field with a cool, unique view.”
Premium demand
Major construction projects are being put on pause nationwide as the collegiate model shifts dramatically. That means stadiums in need of facelifts (read: more premium seating) are in a holding pattern.
Meanwhile, Revel XP’s offerings permit for monetizing sections of the stadiums that were otherwise selling at low rates. The temporary builds also allow for third-party MMR partners to sell sponsorships to the spaces (Georgia, for example, sold sponsorship space to QuikTrip for its on-field boxes).
“The reality is, right now, there's some people out there via social media kind of like, ‘What is this?’" Kleinlein said. "But every one of these builds, when people have gone and sat in them and experienced them ... it's just a very cool experience.”
Toledo re-ups with Learfield for multimedia rights
Toledo and Learfield have agreed to a five-year extension of their multimedia rights deal, sources tell SBJ. Financial details were not available at press time, with an official announcement expected Wednesday.
The Rockets athletic department has seen significant growth under AD Bryan Blair (a 2024 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree ) since he took over in 2022. Toledo has won 11 MAC championships the last two years, three straight Reese Trophies (top MAC men’s program) and the 2024 Jacoby Trophy (top MAC women’s program).
Learfield has been the exclusive multimedia rights holder for Toledo the last 17 years.
Speed reads
- Texas’ 31-12 win over Michigan on Saturday drew 9.35 million viewers, marking college football’s best audience this season to date (even with the lopsided score), notes my colleague Austin Karp. Big Ten Network is also off to a hot start, with CFB viewership up 46% this season (Western Michigan-Ohio State in prime time drew 1.7 million, marking BTN’s second-best non-conference game yet). Earlier in the day, ESPN’s “College GameDay” led the pregame battle (2.2 million for the whole show vs. 1.3 million for all of “Big Noon Kickoff” on Fox). In the final hour, ESPN led Fox 2.9 million to 2.2 million. Tennessee-N.C. State and Arkansas-Oklahoma State led all ESPN/ABC games on Saturday (each with 3 million viewers).
- College athletics has been at the heart of the significant growth over the last half-decade for Bespoke Sports & Entertainment, as the Charlotte-based agency has increased its conference/official bowl partners from just one to 12 in that span. The company’s work, which includes experiential and strategy focuses, runs the gamut from bowl games to the SEC. Bespoke was instrumental in helping Academy Sports and Outdoors land ESPN personality Marty Smith as a spokesperson. It helped add Sprouts Farmers Market as the presenting sponsor of the Collegiate Quad gymnastics event featuring schools from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC.
- Wake Forest and developers Carter and Front Street Capital unveiled plans for the first phase of the mixed-use development called The Grounds that will sit between Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium and Lawrence Joel Coliseum, reports SBJ's Bret McCormick. The Grounds will replace a series of vacant lots and parking areas with a pedestrian-focused 40,000-square-foot retail village connected to Allegacy Stadium by a new Deacon Walk gateway.
- NILLY, an NIL platform co-founded by former NBAer Kendrick Perkins, is receiving an investment of up to $200 million from Palm Beach, Fla.-based private investment firm Harlan Capital Partners, writes SBJ's Irving Mejia-Hilario.
- In an op-ed for SBJ this week, Chad Menefee, EVP/strategic intelligence at SSRS, writes under the header, "College football walks a fine line between growth and alienating its fan base."
- Cosm’s immersive, shared reality venues are offering fans a mesmerizing way to experience live sports, and that included last weekend's Texas-Michigan game at the company's facility just outside Dallas. My colleague Chris Smith profiled Cosm for this week's cover story.
