- Iowa's Caitlin Clark will be Gatorade’s second college basketball brand ambassador as part of new deal, reports SBJ's Austin Karp. She will join UConn's Paige Bueckers, who just over two years ago became the first college athlete to ever endorse Gatorade.
- ESPN had its best Heisman Trophy ceremony audience since 2019 on Saturday night, writes Karp. The network drew 2.3 million viewers for LSU QB Jayden Daniels’ win, marking the best audience since another LSU QB (Joe Burrow) won in 2019 (2.5 million viewers for that one).
- Following the Pac-12 Football Championship, and with the conference now functionally dead, college football’s future in Las Vegas feels shadowy, writes SBJ's Ben Portnoy.
- The size of the production for Season 2 of "Coach Prime," which is centered on Deion Sanders, doubled after SMAC (the production team) and Prime Video execs held an all-hands-on-deck meeting following Colorado’s spring game in April, notes SBJ's Erik Bacharach.
- SBJ this week unveiled our list of the most influential execs in sports business for 2023. From the college ranks, we included the Big Ten's Tony Petitti, SEC's Greg Sankey and Big 12's Brett Yormark.
- All but three of the FBS bowl games this season will appear on ESPN platforms, and the media company operates 17 of the events itself, notes SBJ's David Bourne.
