Applying data to key college football topics

Maestas: “All the time, we publicly see beliefs that are in direct conflict with the data. »

AJ Maestas, founder and CEO of Navigate the search, a leading data and analytics company, has agreed to write a regular column for the Hotline on the business and economics of college sports. The following is his first contribution.

The business side of college athletics is unique, interesting, frustrating, fun, full of political mines and often confusing for fans.

It grows in some areas, stagnates in others, and ultimately constitutes a space full of arbitrage opportunities and inherent risks.

Although the change may be slower on the collegiate side than in the pros, it is never-ending and never boring.

For all of these reasons – and because the on-field product is also my greatest passion – I decided to write a regular column for the Pac-12 Hotline.

My goal is to take the research, data and analysis that my company, Navigate Research, uses to consult in the world of sports and entertainment and combine it with my experience to help inform readers on a variety of topics that have an impact on the universities and programs they love.

Over the coming months (and hopefully years), this column will cover major topics and questions such as:

* What is the economic reality of a person having control of their name, image and likeness?

* Will the fragmentation of college sports into different divisions and conferences continue?

* How is the changing nature of consumption affecting college sports?

* What can be done to maximize revenue at the college level and how does that impact fans?

I hope to interact with readers and address additional topics as they come to the forefront of the regional and/or national conversation.

I am sure there will be no shortage.

Before we get into it, I want to share a little more information about me and what I do.

*** What you need to know about me

*I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, obsessed with baseball despite our very short summer season. We were multi-generational Alaskans, which placed us in a small group of locals. My grandfather was even, reluctantly, considered a pioneer.

* Attending the University of Washington was a transformational experience – the catalyst for a life unlike anything I could have imagined.

I met my wife at the UW and made lifelong friends who I still travel with today. I grew up a lot in Seattle and I’m still connected to this place that gave me an incredible gift.

College athletics is an important part of that connection. A failed attempt to play baseball in college was a life-changing springboard experience.

*At Navigate, the research and analytics consulting service I founded in 2006, we have worked with sports teams, leagues, brands, networks and agencies around the world, including the NFL, NBA, the Big Ten, ESPN, NRL, CAA, IMG, Toyota, Visa and Anheuser-Busch.

One of the joys of our work is the people and places we call business.

It’s part of our job to be there every year at places like the Super Bowl or the Waste Management Open on a competition weekend.

***The landscape of college athletics

College football is my greatest passion – the reason I decided to write this column.

This is an incredibly challenging time, full of opportunity and risk, for college sports.

Here are these entities, these athletic departments, located within nonprofit universities and filled with very risk-averse executives.

Leaders aren’t ill-intentioned, but they end up with such a wide range of stakeholders and decision-makers and a risk-reward system that can get you fired for a mistake but doesn’t give you a bonus for generating revenue or scaling gradually. the university forward.

It’s often regressive and reactive.

The irony is that universities are supposed to be safe spaces for innovation, but they continue to crack open textbooks.

If you took a snapshot of a classroom and asked all students to put away their laptops and iPhones, the situation would be no different than it was 100 years ago.

And here’s where college athletics stands:

To expect the two or three percent of a university’s budget spent on athletics to not be influenced by the main campus – that’s crazy.

The challenge is therefore:

How do you fit into this environment that is supposed to be this, but is often something else, and how can you move it forward?

What you see is it’s moving very slowly, very carefully, reactively, and only after it’s been triple proven that it’s safe.

It’s the opposite of what this space should be.

The opportunities are incredible, and that explains some of the things we’ll cover in my next columns.

We’ll talk about revenue, particularly student-athlete revenue. It’s not a bad word, even in a nonprofit scenario, if it serves the ultimate mission.

If you can maximize revenue and implement best practices, that money could go toward the mental and physical well-being of student-athletes.

This could be used to continue their education, to protect them in the future from some of the risks they will take, to train them for their role as a parent or spouse and to be an active member of society.

All of these things are falling behind because college athletics is in a risk-averse world that, I might add, is very fragmented.

How can we move forward towards an inevitable future with so many constraints and controls?

When I say inevitable future, I don’t mean that it’s necessarily the right place. A strong argument could be made that college athletics should be what it was: pure amateurism.

But forces pull him toward economic maximization, toward parity and fairness, toward serving constituents who don’t have a strong voice, student-athletes.

When you hear the public debate about college sports, it’s often from a very biased perspective: someone using anecdotal evidence to tell their story.

My goal with this column is to represent the important points on each side, supported by objective, independent third-party information that will allow readers to draw their own conclusions.

Even if people weren’t promoting their own agendas in public dialogue, there are many strongly held beliefs that we at Navigate don’t believe are accurate.

This is also true for professional sports, which are commercially a decade or more ahead of college athletics — and professional sports itself is often five or ten years behind the mainstream business world.

*** The outline of this column

We want to address these major topics and much more:

* What is behind the drop in attendance?

Ticket prices and departure times are often cited as an explanation, but we’ve done extensive research that reveals bigger challenges like traffic, public transportation, and the opportunity cost of time in exchange for value of what fans get in return.

* Increased benefits and compensation for college athletes.

What is the economic reality of a person controlling their name, image and likeness? And what does it mean to attract and retain student-athletes in a changing legal landscape?

* Will the fragmentation of college sports into different divisions and conferences continue?

Navigate often consults to universities and conferences on realignment.

* How is the changing nature of consumption affecting college sports?

In an increasingly digital world, the number of hours in a day is limited. We found that the average fan spends about eight times more time reading about their team, posting on social media, and interacting with others than consuming the product itself.

* What can be done to optimize income at the university level?

The playing field is not level when it comes to media rights, fundraising, ticket sales, licensing and concessions.

Our goal is to answer what your university should be doing to compete at the highest level.

* Increased recruitment investments and socio-economic factors.

(We will cover this topic before the early signing period in December.)

We constantly see publicly expressed beliefs that are in direct conflict with the data.

Navigate occupies a rare position in the middle of the industry: