Consider Garth Glissman’s path to becoming SEC men’s basketball point man winding, to say the least.
Glissman played a year of basketball and three years of football for Nebraska in the early 2000s. Law school, eight years as a high school boys basketball coach and an overlapping six-plus years at a law firm in Omaha, Neb., eventually landed him in the NBA league office.
Seven years and three jobs — the last as VP of basketball operations — later, Glissman was hired in 2023 as the SEC’s associate commissioner for men’s basketball as the league looked to develop a better product amid the changing college sports landscape.
That kind of journey gives him layers of perspective on the SEC’s increasingly prominent product and the current state of college basketball.
“The way I look at the SEC is it’s this incredibly iconic tradition, rich conference,” Glissman said. “And within the context of all of that tradition, men’s basketball is still very much a growth opportunity. It’s this unique contrast. On one hand, we have all of the tradition and passion that makes the SEC special, but yet this unique growth opportunity that exists within men’s basketball.”
The SEC, for its efforts, is having a banner year. As of late February, the sport of college basketball was down in viewership, but ESPN/ESPN2/ABC was up 9% compared to the same point last year, thanks in large part to the league’s performance.
More broadly, SEC-controlled games on ESPN have averaged 1.28 million viewers, up 25% year over year and the highest average for such games in a decade. The Feb. 15 Auburn-Alabama game, which drew 2.8 million viewers, was also the most-watched SEC-controlled men’s basketball regular-season game since the 2018-19 season.
“That’s the beauty of the opportunity in front of us is that the SEC has been around longer than the NBA, so the tradition and the fans and the passion is all there,” Glissman said. “But yet, there’s this widespread recognition that there’s still a lot of upside in basketball.”
That the SEC is thriving, however, comes in the midst of a college basketball landscape that’s trying to find its footing beyond March Madness, which begins this week, and the semi-standalone attention it receives between the end of the college football and NFL seasons.
How to better showcase the sport against more crowded times on the sports calendar is a complicated endeavor. That said, Glissman — a member of the NCAA men’s basketball oversight committee — suggests more high-profile matchups at the beginning of the season could assist in driving ratings and attention earlier in the year.
“My message to college basketball is we have to work harder to compete for our fans,” he said. “Our fans and people everywhere are increasingly distracted. They have more entertainment options than before, and so we have to be more strategic with our scheduling.”
