Friday Dump 🥟 - Student-athlete employees, Conference name change, RIP Logo

Ohhh Friday Dump 🥟 can you see… 

Each Friday, we’ll breakdown 3 sports business stories that have caught our eye throughout the week. They will be assembled in the following format:

🔴 - Stories that make us stop, think, and question.

🟡 - Stories with a hint of risk and unpredictability.

🟢 - Stories that make us feel good to go and empowered.

…By the dawn’s early light.

🔴 One step closer to unemployment? We swear, there’s always something going on when it comes to college athletics. Every time we turn around we see a new lawsuit, a new rule change, and a new revenue generated implementation. We get that it’s a $16B industry but my goodness, can we just take a breathe? On Thursday, word flowed through the Hill that Congress is one step closer to passing a federal law that would prohibit college athletes from ever being classified as employees. If this makes your head ache even more, we get it. It’s why we did an initial writeup on the issue with Dartmouth a few months back. So what is going on?

• The House Committee on Education and Labor voted to send the “Protecting Student Athletes’ Economic Freedom Act” (aka H.R. 8534) through to the House for consideration on governing college athlete compensation.

  • The vote ended up being pretty split: 23 Republicans in favor, 16 Democrats opposed.

• Why is this so partisan? Honestly, because of its proximity to a pro-union push within President Joe Biden’s administration.

  • Republicans are besides themselves — they essentially think the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) is doing everything they can to expand its authority and unionization across the country.

• It’s important to mention, this bill has made it further than any other on the subject of athlete compensation. But it faces a long road ahead…

🟡 Pay us millions, take our conference name. As the SEC and Big 10 continue to gobble up all of the prestigious schools and their athletic department budgets, the mid-tier conferences are left picking their noses in the corner of the classroom. I mean what else are they supposed to do? They don’t have the money, the clout, and the competitive number of teams to make any sort of headway. Honestly, what should we expect? Well, the Big 12 is making moves and this might put the blueprint in place for the rest of these mid-tier conferences who got left at the alter. Reports came out on Thursday that the Big 12 considering selling the conference’s naming rights to a sponsor as well as looking for additional private equity money from CVC Capital Partners 😳. Wait, so what the hell is going on?

• According to Action Network, the Big 12 Conference is said to be in talks with insurance behemoth, Allstate, for a deal to input their name smack dab on the conference name.

  • The deal is said to be worth between $30M and $50M annually.

  • Name possibilities include, “The Big Allstate Conference” or “The Allstate 12 Conference.”

• On the private equity side of the coin, CVC Capital Partners could invest upwards of $800M to $1B in exchange for a 15-20% stake in the Big 12 🤑.

• Additionally, according to Yahoo! Conference USA is exploring a multimillion-dollar naming-rights sponsorship with Globe Life.

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🟢 Long Live The Logo. Within a span of a couple weeks, the NBA lost two legends of the game. Hall of Famer and Grateful Dead fanatic, Bill Walton, and Hall of Famer, the outline of the Logo, and “Mr. Clutch”, Jerry West. It’s a no-brainer to point out how great of players both Walton and West were in their heyday. But what’s so interesting about West was his ascension from being one of the best players in the NBA during the late 1960’s and 1970’s to becoming one of the most successful executives and General Managers the NBA has ever seen. It’s only right to reflect on the moves he made and and teams he overlooked. Between his career as a player and executive, West won 9 NBA titles.

Los Angeles Lakers

• He helped drive success during the Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar “Showtime Lakers” years, winning 5 NBA Championships.

• He then laid the groundwork for the franchise’s 3-peat in the late ’90s and early 2000s by famously trading Vlade Divac before the 1996 draft for the draft rights of Kobe Bryant.

• Later that summer, West signed Shaquille O’Neal in free agency from the Orlando Magic.

• In 1999, a year before he left the organization, West hired Phil Jackson as coach, fresh off the end of the Chicago Bulls dynasty.

Memphis Grizzlies

• In 2002 he was named the general manager of the Memphis Grizzlies, a year after the team moved from Vancouver.

• West drafted future Hall of Famer Pau Gasol in 2001 and was named executive of the year for the second time in his career in 2004 after turning Memphis into a playoff team.

Golden State Warriors

• West joined the Golden State Warriors as an executive board member in 2011 and famously threatened to resign from his job if the Warriors traded Klay Thompson for Kevin Love in 2014.

• Just a year later, the Warriors, led by Klay and Steph Curry, won their first title in 40 years.

Los Angeles Clippers

• He was working with the Clippers since 2017 and was involved in the team landing future Hall of Famers in Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in 2019. He helped turn the franchise into a multi-year playoff contending team.