Last Saturday, the college football world spun off its axis as Michigan beat Ohio State and Cincinnati broke into the College Football Playoff Top 4. Michigan's victory was the first in the Jim Harbaugh era, and launched the Wolverines into the Big Ten Championship Game. It also secured the future of Jim Harbaugh, (a true "Michigan Man"). Just how thin was the ice Harbaugh was standing on prior to Saturday? And how did the U of M President, Mark Schlissel, find himself on the "way out" a year earlier than his contract required?

I visit with a terrific reporter who knows the Michigan political world and regularly reports on the ins and outs of higher education and athletics, David Jesse. 

David is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. He has covered higher education in Michigan for more than a decade. He's written extensively on sexual assault on college campuses, (including at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan); higher education finance, college affordability, and small colleges that are actually growing their enrollment. He also co-authored a great piece on how meal money is spent for men and women in the Big Ten and the MAC conferences-surprise!

David was a 2020-21 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia University School of Journalism. The Education Writers Association named him the top education reporter in the nation in 2018.

Over the last 12 months or so, a great reawakening has been happening in the consciousness of sports fans. Some are just now discovering that female college and professional players can generate significant revenues for their schools/employers and themselves is growing. The television eyeballs for the recent WNBA championship series broke records–Game 2 alone averaged 789,000 viewers on ESPN. After 25 years, the game has arrived, both as a social media influencer and finally receiving some of the respect it has long been denied by broadcasters and marketers.

College basketball has benefited from the same ecosystem. The 2021 Women’s Final Four championship game averaged over 4 million viewers, despite much controversy surrounding the treatment of women athletes when it came to comparing facilities and access to the men.

So what will it take for college athletic departments to both accept and adjust to this new world order--that some women’s sports should be treated as substantial revenue generating sports? I have just the expert to tackle this question. David Berri is a sports economist and professor at Southern Utah University. Known by his Twitter handle @wagesofwins, David is on outspoken advocate for the underserved and underappreciated potential in women’s athletics. David is also a contributor to my new book, “Sport Finance: Where The Money Comes From And Where The Money Goes”, authoring a fantastic chapter on the comparisons between the financial growth of NBA and the WNBA. 

Collegiate athletics has never seen so much change coming at them so fast. Athletic departments continue to deal with the fallout of the pandemic, the safety, mental health and wellbeing of their student athletes, conference realignment, advances in data around human performance, fiscal resiliency, and now, names, images and likenesses as well as the recent labor opinion from the General Counsel of the NLRB.

Today, I want to talk about how all these changes are affecting how university leadership (including Athletic Departments) are evaluating their current policies and procedures around risk management and compliance. Simply, how do you keep the university out of trouble when the goalposts keep shifting?

My guests today are two consultants from Baker Tilly, a Top 10 advisory and consulting firm that supports higher education. Dave Capitano has more than 30 years of experience working with college and university leadership and boards, is a CPA and host of the podcast, Higher Ed Advisor. He leads the firm’s higher education practice and co-leads the college sports division.

Adrienne Larmett is a senior manager in the risk advisory practice, focusing on internal audit and enterprise risk management. If ever an enterprise was under great stress and risk, it is college athletics today. 

Heard of the metaverse? Want to know how to leverage this tech for recruiting Gen Z students to your campus? Then, this podcast is for you.

Some of you may know that I have a deep interest in tech and media, particularly as it influences college sports. I’ve written about data privacy issues and talked with thought leaders in that space. The acceleration of change in this space can be overwhelming, but for campus senior leaders who have to manage both the financial and legal implications of allowing increasingly unique tech tools and experiences on their campuses, they need to know more. We’re in luck with our guest today. I’m joined by Kathleen Hessert. I can describe her talents this way: Strategic Communications, speaker, consultant, speech writer, social media, influencer, researcher, with a deep focus on sports, entertainment and Generation Z. Kathleen and I have known each other for some time, and when she posted an astounding video on her Linked In page involving USC Head Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley using Augmented reality in a Covid-19 pitch (get your shot!), I knew we had to have a conversation on the podcast. And, by the way, Staley just signed the largest contract extension for a women's basketball coach in NCAA history, $22.4 million over 7 years.

I'm also sharing a new "metaverse" video featuring Coach Staley. Click on the link and have your smartphone ready to view Dawn standing in the same space you are in! 

You may have heard that Facebook is moving into the metaverse. Click here to find out more.

Here's the launch press release for the Covid-19 PSA

Take the Shot! South Carolina Gamecocks’ Dawn Staley and Aliyah Boston Team Up With Sports Media Challenge and Avatar Dimension for New Holographic PSA to Encourage Student Action Against COVID

New Holographic PSA Designed Specifically for Always Connected GenZ

CHARLOTTE, N.C. and WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 22, 2021 -- It’s a battlecry for students to take action in the fight against Covid-19. Sports Media Challenge and Avatar Dimension have teamed up with Hall of Fame college basketball coach Dawn Staley and esteemed player Aliyah Boston, both of the top-ranked NCAA women’s basketball team, the South Carolina Gamecocks, in a new, state of the art holographic PSA that encourages Generation Z (Gen Z) to “take the shot” and get vaccinated. The PSA is now available to view and share on social media starting today.

See new PSA here:

https://sportsmediachallenge.com/gamecocks-psa/

In the past year many Division I schools tried to drop sports. Most tried to drop men’s sports; some, like William and Mary and Stanford, dropped a large number of Olympic sports. Almost immediately, the players took to the internet, finding law firms to help them in their quest to reinstate their teams.

In the past, this has been an uphill battle for the players. Athletic departments could wait out the students and alumni, hoping their initial passion and anger would subside. But this year, something different happened. More often than not, athletes and alumni have been remarkably agile in articulating their perspectives (particularly as they relate to the school’s prior and/or current Title IX compliance), and finding very capable allies waiting to help.

One of those allies is Arthur Bryant. Twice named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, Bryant has been a civil rights icon for decades. The Philadelphia native made his initial mark by winning access for girls to the previously all-male elite public high school, Central High, and he hasn’t looked back. He successfully sued Temple University in the early 1980s to improve the standing of women’s athletics, and has now successfully represented more women athletes and potential athletes in Title IX litigation against schools and universities than any lawyer in the country. He has taken on Brown University, Dartmouth College and, more recently, won reinstatement of the Dickinson College women's squash program. 

An important note--we take a deep look at the emerging trend of colleges trying to comply with Title IX via "Prong 3"--fully accommodating the interests of the underrepresented gender. It's an important discussion. 

There have been a slew of books written about the faults and foibles of college sports, some hitting very close to home as to what is really going on. Five years ago, journalists Joe Nocera (then of the NYT, now of Bloomberg) and Ben Strauss (then of the NYT, now of the Washington Post) collaborated on a look into college sports titled “Indentured: Inside the story of the rebellion against the NCAA”. It was one of the first books to reframe the narrative surrounding college sports-instead of greedy athletes who illegally sold jerseys to make some extra cash (looking at you Terrell Pryor and other OSU football players), the narrative shifted to how outlandish the athletic department, conferences and the NCAA itself was behaving with billion dollar TV contracts, multi-million coaches, ADs and conference commissioners. The new focus from journalists and academics became about how corrupt the system was. "Indentured" lands squarely in the middle of that conversation.

I’m joined by Ben Strauss, co-author of Indentured, and currently a sports and media writer for the Washington Post. Ben understands the college athletics media space like few others. We discuss the challenges that Division I athletics is facing and why he is skeptical about reform, and try to answer the question "is college athletics imploding because Jim Delany retired"?

As states have rushed to deal with legislation surrounding names, images and likenesses, there are a lot of folks involved to help state legislators understand the industry. Its important to state governments that they have a working partnership with higher education institutions in order to factor in their perspectives. As the NCAA’s July 1 deadline approached, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania worked to get their law in place. In fact, PA became the FIRST to allow NIL, as their law went into effect on June 30. (Cue the School House Rock classic song, "I'm just a bill")

I am joined today by two Penn State University staff members who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help the Commonwealth create and pass this landmark legislation. My guests are Zach Moore and Bob Boland.

Zack Moore serves as the Vice President for Government and Community Relations for Penn State, communicating to elected officials the value that Penn State provides to the people of Pennsylvania as the Commonwealth’s flagship public university. Zack came to Penn State from Washington, D.C., in 2007 with lobbying and senior legislative experience in both the U.S. House and Senate. He brings his extensive legislative, policy development, and lobbying experience to the role of chief lobbyist for his alma mater, with responsibility over federal, state, and local relations efforts. In his time with Penn State, Zack has been a passionate advocate for the value of Penn State’s land-grant mission.

Bob Boland joined Penn State University as Athletics Integrity Officer in July 2017.  In this role, he works to ensure the Athletics Department is meeting all University standards related to integrity, ethics, staff and student conduct and welfare, as well as NCAA and Big Ten standards.

The position, the first of its kind, was created in August 2012 in an agreement with the NCAA, Big Ten and Penn State.  The officeholder is charged with oversight and reporting of internal and external investigations into athletics.  With that agreement expiring in August 2017, the University  maintained the position as part of its own broader Athletic Integrity Program.  Boland chairs the University’s Athletics Integrity Council, a group that brings together senior administrators and faculty to review matters related to athletics and reports to the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and the Board of Trustees.

If you are an avid listener to my podcast, you might remember a podcast we did about a year ago that introduced the concept of athlete biometrics and public vs private data collected from various performance software and clothing. Today, we’ll take that discussion one step further and look more deeply. My guest today is Kristy Gale, President & CEO HONOR Data Rights Management, Principal & Consultant Sports Data Strategies, Director, Institute for Biometric Data Optimization & Protection. To say she has spent the last decade of her life immersed in data rights and privacy would be an understatement.

This conversation is particularly relevant to Presidents and senior campus leaders because campuses collect a lot of data on their students. In athletics, that data is sold to emerging companies anxious to get a piece of the NIL world, as well as to improve their products.

Forbes companion article

A lot has been written about the legal challenges facing athletes in the new world of NILs--but do campus employees face legal heartburn as well? If that thought has crossed your mind, you are not alone. We are joined by former Vanderbilt University General Counsel (and current partner in Bass, Berry and Sims law firm) Audrey Anderson to discuss those issues and more. Topics include:

This week, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA was in violation of antitrust laws with its rules surrounding athlete compensation, specifically around limiting athlete’s educational benefits. My guests today are two UCLA Bruins who have been working on different paths, but both played significant roles in the outcome of this case.

I’m joined by Ramogi Huma and Makan Delrahim. Ramogi is the long-time Executive Director of the National College Players Association, a group that has worked for over a decade to bring the rights of college athletes to the forefront in NCAA decisions. He has tirelessly worked with state and federal legislators to bring about lasting change when it comes to athletes receiving the same rights and privileges as other students on campus, while strongly advocating for their mental and physical health and well-being.

Makan Delrahim returns to the podcast as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to this, he was a United States Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice where he specialized in antitrust issues. Makan drafted the Government’s brief in NCAA v Alston, that was eventually argued at the Supreme Court by the acting Solicitor General of the United States.