SBJ College: The SCORE Act got benched. Now what?

Spring meetings are off and running, and seemingly everyone I’ve talked to over the last week-plus has been annoyed about the college sports ecosystem. The College Sports Commission has been a target of ample criticism in recent months. Discussion around whether to expand the College Football Playoff, too, is getting its share of run. Oh, and then there’s the whole issue of whether the SEC and Big Ten might want to go off and govern themselves.

This quote from a Power Four source in my story Friday pretty much summed up everything going on at the moment:

“Could the CSC have set up an enforcement mechanism earlier and better? Sure. But the same schools who claim they wanted to be governed refused to sign a participation agreement.

“Don’t listen for one minute to the people bitching about the CSC. It’s the same thing as the NCAA. We blame the NCAA. That’s us [the NCAA] — we’re the idiots.”

See everyone in Destin, Fla., for SEC spring meetings next week. Surely there won’t be anything to discuss. ...

College sports leaders’ latest push for federal legislation has stalled.

The SCORE Act, which plenty around the industry hoped would reach the House floor this week, was effectively cast aside after the Congressional Black Caucus pulled its support for the bill on Monday.

By Tuesday, the House Rules Committee postponed its markup of the bill, leaving it in limbo. And, more likely, dead.

“The financial pressure on athletic departments are real and it’s being wielded on Capitol Hill, as a weapon against the very athletes this bill claims to protect,” Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) said during a Tuesday news conference. “What the SCORE Act would’ve delivered are massive handouts to the NCAA, SEC and Big Ten dressed up with modest concessions for a select group of athletes at the wealthiest schools. Meanwhile, every other athlete at every other institution gets left out in the cold.”

The SCORE Act has been the preferred congressional action of the Power Four commissioners to effectively codify parts of the House settlement and grant college sports the antitrust exemption plenty so desperately crave.

And now that it’s not going anywhere? We’ll see.

Many in the industry remain optimistic a bipartisan approach from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could be the solution. Cruz and Cantwell’s bill has been percolating for weeks, and there’s belief language could be released for broader discussion as soon as this week.

There’s also, well, politics at play with all of this.

President Trump has staked some capital on college sports legislation in creating a presidential committee composed of myriad stakeholders from in and around the enterprise to peck away at potential options. With midterms approaching, it remains unclear whether Democrats will be willing to help deliver the White House a legislative win on such a contentious issue.

Players push back on NCAA employment argument

One notable moment from Trahan’s Tuesday news conference came from two women’s basketball players who pushed back on the NCAA’s position that athletes do not want employee status.

Michigan’s Brooke Daniels and Maryland’s Oluchi Okananwa, who joined Trahan for the call, were asked about the NCAA’s and conferences’ repeated assertion that athletes generally do not want to be classified as employees.

They were, shall we say, not exactly aligned with NCAA talking points:

Daniels: “They don’t want that employee status to be a thing because when you’re an employee, you get the right to unionize. Being an employee also opens up doors for international athletes like Charlisse [Leger-Walker] and other athletes that I’ve played with at my time at Oakland and even at my time at Michigan.

“When you also are employees, once again, you have to listen and have somebody else at the table, and you can’t just make rules based off of how you feel. You have to have rules and involve everybody. Being an employee pretty much formalizes that you have to have different agreements and approvals involving different people that are probably going to go against your underlying issues that you’re trying to bring forward.”

Okananwa: “It’s honestly comical to have them say that we don’t want to be seen as employees when we’re kind of already operating as employee workers. I mean, our sport is at the center of everything that we do, especially with our time here at the university. Rightfully so, because it is something that we love and something that we 100% signed up for. But I think it’s time and they know it’s time to come to the truth, which is that we are employees. We should be treated as such and we should be brought to the table with employee rights.”

I’ve been skeptical of the persistent contention that athletes don’t want to be employees, but it was refreshing to hear a pair of high-major players actually enumerate those sentiments.

The Heisman is getting a new look to its senior leadership team, sources tell Sports Business Journal.

Heisman CEO Jeff Price, who was hired to his post in October, is set to announce the promotion of Tim Henning as SVP, operations and strategy, along with the additions of SVP of Brand and Partnership Marketing Kristen Condo, SVP of Foundation Adrienne Scherenzel and SVP of Content Charlie Widdoes.

Henning has been with the Heisman for 25 years in a number of roles. He’ll continue to handle the execution of Heisman Weekend, among other responsibilities.

Condo comes to the Heisman after serving as the SVP/partnership solutions for Fenway Sports Management. She also spent time at Legends and the NCAA.

Scherenzel spent the previous seven years with the Bulls, where she led community engagement and the Bulls Charities.

Widdoes comes to the Heisman after five years as VP of content for Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment. His career includes stops with the Clippers, 76ers, Knicks, MLB Productions and MLB Network.

As my coworker Terry Lefton noted in October, the Heisman has been taking a more commercial mindset to its operations since hiring Price. The addition of a senior leadership team is the latest step.

Lost in the chaos around College Football Playoff discourse and broader litigation around college sports, the ACC added another major sponsor during spring meetings last week.

Allstate will become the official insurance sponsor of the ACC and ACC Network and naming-rights sponsor of the league’s softball and men’s lacrosse championships.

The agreement, which was brokered through Disney advertising, includes:

• Allstate serving as the premier sponsor of all ACC championship events.
• Funding athlete scholarships with each field goal and extra point kicked through the “Allstate Good Hands Field Goal Nets.”
• Spotlighting athletes across sports through the “Allstate Good Hands Plays” and storytelling efforts on ACC Network game broadcasts and studio shows

The move is another level in Allstate’s deepening commitments across college sports. The insurance giant also counts the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 among its sponsorship portfolio.

The ACC has doubled its corporate sponsorship roster during Commissioner Jim Phillips’ five years in charge. Food Lion and Gatorade renewed deals, while Ally, Allstate, Apple, Dr Pepper, Servpro and T. Rowe Price joined as new sponsors since 2021.

“It’s a really big moment for us,” Phillips said last week of the Allstate agreement.

Three athletic directors and $90 million later, Georgia Tech unveiled its swanky new sports performance building, the Thomas A. Fanning Center, on Thursday.

The facility includes the school’s first sports science lab, expanded sports medicine facilities, an upgraded strength and conditioning complex, nutrition and dining facilities and dedicated football meeting and office space.

The Fanning Center, too, is an interesting caveat in the shifting college sports arms race. Gone are the days of waterfalls in the locker rooms and supercharged recruiting lounges. Functionality and revenue reign supreme.

Georgia Tech AD Ryan Alpert gave Sports Business Journal a tour of the new building and touched on a few of the finer points of why the facility was so necessary in this day and age.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

SBJ: With a $90 million project like this, how do you balance that this isn’t necessarily a revenue-generating facility with the rising costs of college sports?

Ryan Alpert: “This project is about an optimization of athletes. ... It isn’t just about player acquisition today. It’s about player acquisition and then what are you doing to be able to maximize and optimize their performance. How are you compressing the time in which they’re off the field? Because the more time you can get your [starters and backups] back on the field, it’s going to up your winning percentage. And ultimately, the more talent you can have on the field at the highest level that they can play at, probably gives you the best winning percentage for your program. That’s what we’re looking to do.

“The more you win, obviously, the more then goes back into those capital projects and the return on investment for your perceived giving and your suites and all of your premium. It’s a balancing all of it. You’ve got to have the right coaches. You’ve got have the right players, but then if your players are here, do they think and understand how much you’re pouring into them to maximize their potential?”

SBJ: And I would imagine you see this project, on some level, as a way to protect your investment in players as well, correct?

RA: For this project specifically, it leans into, ‘What is Georgia Tech?’ If you take athletics out of it, Georgia Tech is one of the best public institutions in the country. Our president talks all the time about how we can be the leading university institute in the country when it comes to AI, technology and being on the cutting edge of where the world is going. In athletics, we think the same way. How can Georgia Tech athletics lean into what the institutional resources are and how can we be on the leading edge of optimizing sport performance? Ultimately, this building puts us on the leading edge.

Everyone has a great weight room. Who has the best sports performance? The best sports analytics? The best sports technology? How are we utilizing AI to improve our sports performance and analytics? This project is not the bowling alley. It’s not the tennis courts. It’s not the basketball courts in a football building. All of that was really critically important 5-10 years ago.

This is about how can we recruit and retain the best talent possible and then pour into those athletes and show them it’s not just words, it’s not just a building, but show them that if you come here, we’re going to improve you through all of these different metrics, rehab, getting back on the field and maximizing your strength and conditioning side and your sports performance.

SBJ: How do you prioritize facility projects in this day and age between revenue generating or not? How does the murkiness of the future play into that?

RA: “You’ve got to have the right coaches, the right players. But then how do you generate out of your revenue producing sports, more revenue to invest in across the entire department?

But I also think it’s about Georgia Tech’s commitment. As you look around the landscape, there’s the haves, the haves nots, who wants to be a part of the future of college sports?

This building, coming off of the [football] season that we had — who would’ve known that you go have a great season, you retain your great coach who’s an alum and then be able to open this building? Luck and timing in life is everything, but I think it speaks to where we are as an athletic department, where we are as our leadership of the institute believes that athletics is the economic driver, is the brand and marketing driver of the overall institute.

We’re not just the world’s leading engineering program, but we are the world’s leading engineering program, and we’re committed to being an elite Power Four school. Wherever the evolution of college sports goes, Georgia Tech is committed to being in that next iteration of whatever that is.”

• Georgia Tech showed off its 108,000-square-foot, $90 million training center Thursday, one that’s geared not just toward recruiting athletes and improving performances but also boosting the athletic department’s revenue.
• Less than a year into college sports’ revenue-sharing era, leaders within the ACC and across the Power Four are already confronting a familiar problem: Schools are spending beyond the system meant to control them, and no one is fully sure who has the power — or the will — to stop it, as powerbrokers consider governance options.
• North Carolina unveiled a handful of improvements and initiatives ahead of the 100th season at Kenan Stadium, such as a $10 million project that features two Daktronics video boards on the east and west sides of the stadium.
• St. Louis-based keepsake trunk company Petite Keep expanded its offerings with the Collegiate Collection, featuring officially licensed trunks with branding for Tennessee, Missouri, LSU, TCU, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Florida, notes SBJ’s Grace Kut.