Stories about opportunities for college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness have been a dime a dozen over the past two months. It’s still a novel thing. Players used to only be able to take payment in the shadows or through multiple intermediaries. Now, it is all out in the open, and that is interesting to all of us that cover and love college football.
There have already been some really interesting partnerships. Miami quarterback D’Eriq King is endorsing the Florida Panthers. Wright’s BBQ in Fayetteville, Arkansas is sponsoring the Razorbacks’ entire offensive line. Dr. Pepper is building a national ad campaign around Clemson’s DJ Uiagalelei.
Sports radio stations and podcasts have been paying college football insiders for interviews during the season forever. Now that those payments can go directly to players, it was really only a matter of time before some group announced that would be their move.
Enter The Next Round, the new digital venture from the former morning hosts at Birmingham’s JOX 94.5. They tweeted on Monday that Alabama and Auburn fans would hear from their team’s biggest stars during the season. Mondays would feature Auburn quarterback Bo Nix. Thursdays it will be Alabama wide receiver John Metchie.
“Bo is an obvious choice, he’s the starting quarterback and the most talked about player at Auburn by a longshot,” host Ryan Brown told me when I asked how they decided who was the best investment in terms of creating interesting content. “We have conducted several interviews with John Metchie and really liked what he brought to us in an interview. We felt as though we had a really good chemistry with him.”
What will be so fascinating as radio and digital shows go down this path is exactly where the money will be. Birmingham routinely delivers some of the best TV ratings for college football in the entire country. Are mid-size Southern markets like that where there will be the best chance for players to make money?
Think about it. Even in Atlanta, where college football is huge, would an interview with JT Daniels or one of Georgia’s other popular players be worth the money to the station or interviewer? There is so much going on and the city is so full of transplants that it tends to be the pro teams that are the unifiers. The same is probably true in Cleveland. Ohio loves the Buckeyes, but does it make sense to pay for some of Chris Olave’s time if more of the audience wants to talk and hear about the Browns?
For the markets where the investment makes sense though, it can pay dividends in terms of listeners and revenue. That is why Brown calls it “the biggest game-changer in that realm in the entire time I’ve been doing shows.”
“Keep in mind, when I first started in sports media, back in my radio days, you couldn’t even interview SEC players live,” he says. “All interviews had to be pre-recorded and scheduled through the school media relations department.”
Athletes, especially college athletes, have never really done anything for me on air. Either they are from a program, like Alabama or Notre Dame, that invests so much money in teaching the players to say nothing, or they are 18 and 19 year old kids that, even with a little freedom, just have nothing interesting to say.
Maybe that changes now. No one wants to listen to a ten-minute interview that is nothing but coach-approved platitudes. If no one wants to hear it, no one is going to pay for it either. If there is money to be made, players could see the benefits of learning how to be interesting and entertaining.
It isn’t just the players that stand to make money. When we talk about name, image and likeness deals, our minds tend to go straight to the money being paid. We rarely think about the money being generated. Paying an athlete for their time means there is a level of reliability that you can then take to an advertiser. Suddenly, there is a new benchmark you can price at a premium.
“The players get a nice payday for 10 minutes on the phone, or in our case on video. We have a very attractive sellable product that can be a good revenue generator,” says Ryan Brown. The Next Round has sold Nix’s and Metchie’s appearances to local heavy equipment rental company CraneWorks. I don’t really see a loser in this whole deal.”
There will be a segment of the sports media that spends this entire colege football season wringing its hands over the damage NIL deals can do to the sport. They are going to focus on what will change for the worse. Smart hosts and companies will figure out how the new landscape can work for everyone.
It’s not just about what goes on the air today. Imagine using a name, image and likeness deal to secure time with a local star that doesn’t make it to the NFL. If he is good on air, don’t you then have a potential building block for your future already on the payroll?
There are so many ways to make this work. As Brown told me, “It is literally a situation where we all win.”
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
