June 17, 2024

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College football’s postseason is changing, with potential payments to players on tap. … Stadiums around the country are trying to renovate in hopes of attracting big, money-making events. … Another LIV Golf player has won a major championship. … Front Office Sports Today explores the trials and tribulations of minor leaguers working their way to MLB. … And June 17 is a busy day in the history of the business of sports.

— David Rumsey [[link removed]] and Eric Fisher [[link removed]]

College Bowl Games Using NIL Contracts ‘Right Around the Corner’ [[link removed]]

James Lang-USA TODAY Sports

College football games are still a couple of months away, but the 2024 season promises to be unlike any other before it.

The NCAA and power conferences are close to a historic, $2.7 billion settlement [[link removed]] that could see revenue be shared with players. Meanwhile, the College Football Playoff is expanding from four to 12 teams, in a move that is already impacting the sport off the field, and even touching the NFL’s business [[link removed]], too.

With the impending changes creating plenty of uncertainties, Front Office Sports caught up with one of the most plugged-in people when it comes to college football’s postseason: Nick Carparelli, who is the executive director of Bowl Season, the organization that oversees more than 40 bowl games each year.

NIL Bowl Game Contracts for All?

Snoop Dogg, who will sponsor this year’s Arizona Bowl, recently announced [[link removed]] the game will become the first to provide name, image, and likeness deals to competing players. Could that model be the new norm for all bowl games? “That’s a decision that’s up to each individual bowl game,” Carparelli explains. “But I think we would all be naive to think that that’s not right around the corner for everybody.”

Last season, bowl games were riddled with players dropping out [[link removed]], either to prepare for the NFL draft or enter the transfer portal to find a new school. NIL contracts could keep more players in those postseason contests, but finding the funding could be complicated.

“Any payments to student athletes for participation in bowl games would need to be a shared initiative between the bowls, the conferences, and the institutions themselves,” Carparelli says, noting the millions of dollars already being shelled out. “If the conferences and the universities were to tell the bowl games, ‘Hey, we would like these payments to go directly to the student athletes through NIL,’ then that would be very easy for the bowl games to execute.”

Breaking From Tradition

This year’s bowl game schedule was recently released, and it looks different than years past because of the expanded CFP. Three first-round playoff games fall on Dec. 21, which is the third Saturday of the month that would typically kick off the bowl festivities with seven contests. As a result, Carparelli explained why Bowl Season moved some games up a week to Dec. 14, which is the Saturday that Army-Navy usually has to itself.

“[That] was a big decision that we did not take lightly,” Carparelli says. “At the end of the day, our hand was forced, with the new College Football Playoff schedule, to put some games on that day. But we were very, very careful to make sure that we did not infringe upon that exclusive TV window.”

Call for Unification

First-round CFP games will take place on schools’ campuses, but Carparelli said they should ditch that approach and become part of Bowl Season. “We feel that the entire College Football Playoff should be played in the neutral-site environments that bowl games offer,” he says. The CFP quarterfinals and semifinals will be played as New Year’s Six bowl games.

CFP expansion beyond 12 teams has already been considered [[link removed]], but the new format’s debut is still on everyone’s mind—especially bowl game organizers. “We will be curious observers as to how this first year of on-campus CFP games goes,” Carparelli says.

Major Selling Point for Cities Pushing New Stadium Projects: Big Events [[link removed]]

Carolina Panthers/Tepper Sports & Entertainment

The new pitch [[link removed]] for an $800 million renovation to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte runs along largely familiar grounds, namely updating a 28-year-old facility and bringing it fully into the 21st century for its two primary tenants: the NFL’s Panthers and Charlotte FC of MLS.

But there is an even bigger—and also increasingly common—goal with the proposed work: landing major events such as the Super Bowl, Final Four, and College Football Playoff that typically require a dome, particularly if played in colder-weather climates. As of now, the proposed Charlotte renovation does not include a dome, but that project is still deeply intertwined with going beyond local considerations.

“I’ll be blunt. I don’t think this city with an outdoor stadium is ever going to be on a Super Bowl rotation,” said Vinay Patel, chair of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, to the city council in advance of a scheduled June 24 vote on the stadium plan. “But we have an opportunity to go get it at least once after this. … We have everything we need that the NFL would look for.”

Growing List of Cities

The Queen City is far from alone in connecting its local stadium deliberations to big-event aspirations. Many of the same considerations are playing out in:

Chicago, where the Bears have proposed [[link removed]] a $4.7 billion downtown, domed stadium capable of bringing the marquee events to the No. 3 U.S. media market Cleveland, where the Browns are considering [[link removed]] a similar, domed facility in suburban Brook Park, Ohio, that could host such top-tier competitions—with that option standing against a less expensive, open-air renovation of the lakefront Cleveland Browns Stadium Jacksonville, where a proposed $1.4 billion renovation to EverBank Stadium to create [[link removed]] what local officials call the “Stadium of the Future” also has designs on remaking the venue into a “Super Bowl–ready facility” Kansas City, where a modern, potentially domed facility is central to a growing push [[link removed]] to lure the Chiefs across the border from Missouri to Kansas Washington, D.C., where a potential deal to remake [[link removed]] the site of RFK Stadium for a new Commanders stadium is predicated [[link removed]] in part on generating economic impact from events such as the Super Bowl Dollars Behind the Dreams

The impetus behind the elevated focus around the major events is easily understandable. Sports industry tentpoles such as Super Bowl and Final Four generate an economic impact far beyond any local pro team’s regular-season or playoff games, often extending well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Such fiscal impact studies have long been the subject [[link removed]] of scrutiny and excessive civic boosterism, and often need to be greeted with skepticism. But regardless of any specific number or how it’s derived, there is still little debate that events such as the Super Bowl have few rivals in what it can mean to a community.

“That’s the type of development that we would support in the District, one that delivers world-class sports,” Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser said on WTEM-AM regarding the potential RFK Stadium effort. “We’re not just talking about a potential Super Bowl. We haven’t been able to get the World Cup in the region because we don’t have a sufficient stadium. We weren’t able to get Taylor Swift to come to the region.”

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FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY From Delivering Pizzas to MLB

Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Chris Roycroft (above) was working odd jobs, delivering pizzas, and fixing cars while pursuing an unlikely dream: becoming a professional baseball player. He eventually worked his way up to independent baseball, in which he still faced low pay and long odds. This year, Roycroft’s dream came true when he took the mound for the Cardinals. He joins the show to tell his story of perseverance.

🎧 Watch, listen, and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], Spotify [[link removed]], and YouTube [[link removed]].

ONE BIG FIG Payday in Pinehurst

Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports

$4.3 million

Winner’s check for Bryson DeChambeau (above), who claimed victory at the U.S. Open on Sunday. That payment represents 20% of the overall $21.5 million purse, which is the largest for a golf major championship. However, other tournaments—like the PGA Tour’s Players Championship and most LIV Golf events—offer prize funds of $25 million. U.S. Open organizers said [[link removed]] they won’t try to be the richest tournament in golf, like it was in years past.

This marks the second major championship won by a current LIV Golf player, after Brooks Koepka’s win at last year’s PGA Championship. Following a near-miss by DeChambeau [[link removed]] at last month’s PGA Championship, this victory will certainly boost his off-shoot tour as its Saudi financial backers continue talks [[link removed]] with the PGA Tour.

TIME CAPSULE June 17, 2003: Start of a Revolution

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

On this day 21 years ago: Author Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, greatly accelerating the rise of analytics in not only baseball but all of sports. Lewis chronicled the 2002 A’s, who just lost several key players in free agency and had a $50 million payroll that was less than one-third of the Yankees’ outlay that year.

The book dived into the alternative approaches, led by general manager Billy Beane (above), to compete against that economic disparity, including a championing of sabermetrics and on-base percentage—as well as a marked downgrading of traditional scouting. The book helped advance a broad rethinking of how teams, even large-revenue ones, manage their roster development, and it later became a 2011 feature film starring Brad Pitt.

There was an underrepresented component, however, of Lewis’s celebration of Oakland’s against-the-grain strategy. Despite the disadvantages working against the A’s in 2002, the team still boasted many conventional stars—including that year’s AL Most Valuable Player (Miguel Tejada), AL Cy Young Award winner (Barry Zito), and two other frontline starting pitchers (Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson).

June 17, meanwhile, stands elsewhere as a rather notable day in sports history. In 1976, the long-discussed ABA-NBA merger became official. Thirty years ago, O.J. Simpson made his famous low-speed drive through Los Angeles while pursued by police, creating split-screen coverage on NBC stations with the networks’ coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals—an event broadly recalled following his recent death [[link removed]]. And, in 1997, the NHL unveiled a multiyear expansion plan placing franchises in Nashville, Atlanta (since moved to Winnipeg), Minnesota (St. Paul), and Columbus.

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This breakfast wouldn’t be complete without a small side of crispy Seasoned Potatoes [[link removed]], which are truly worth waking up for. Oh, and did we mention you get all that for just three bucks? So, grab a proper breakfast with Wendy’s new $3 English Muffin Deal at your earliest, literally, convenience.

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Conversation Starters The Chiefs unveiled their Super Bowl LVIII rings, boasting 529 diamonds, 38 rubies, and a removable top showcasing the game-winning “Tom and Jerry” play design. Look here [[link removed]]. Curry Brand has inked a multiyear deal [[link removed]] with former Nebraska star Keisei Tominaga, marking the brand’s first international-athlete signing. Think you can make a dynasty out of a small school? We’re giving away two copies of the highly anticipated EA Sports College Football 25 video game. Enter here [[link removed]] for a chance to win. See rules here [[link removed]]. Editors’ Picks Pro Football Focus’s Dysfunction Comes at the Worst Possible Time [[link removed]]by A.J. Perez [[link removed]]On the surface, Pro Football Focus has it good. Golf’s ‘Anchor Sites’ Have the U.S. Open on a Lifetime Plan [[link removed]]by David Rumsey [[link removed]]Pinehurst No. 2 will host four more U.S. Opens through 2047. ESPN Bought Its Tiny Stanley Cup Desk at a Canadian Furniture Store [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]An ESPN spokesperson says the tight spot was chosen for its view of the ice. Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Podcast [[link removed]] Sports Careers [[link removed]] Written by David Rumsey [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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