STARKVILLE — Whether college football is played this fall is quite literally a billion-dollar question.
With television contracts and ticket sales combining to produce the vast majority of athletic departments’ budgets nationwide, a year without football could prove disastrous to those schools and sports teams that thrive on the money produced from the gridiron.
Speaking with the Starkville Rotary Club via Zoom on Monday, former Mississippi State Athletic Director Larry Templeton and ESPN’s Director of College Networks Programming Jeramy Michiaels offered their insight into the weaving of college sports and television networks, and, of course, whether football could return to some degree given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think if you’re going to have fans or you’re not going to have fans, it’s going to be a huge impact, and it’s going to be an entirely different atmosphere than what we’re accustomed to,” Templeton said in reference to playing in empty stadiums. “I know (SEC commissioner Greg Sankey) and the athletic directors have spent a lot of time having those conversations. I don’t know that anybody has made any decisions yet.”
A 1969 graduate of MSU, Templeton served as the school’s athletic director from 1987 to 2008. Among his other roles, he was tabbed the chairman of Southeastern Conference athletic directors by his colleagues and more recently served as a consultant for the SEC office. Templeton also served on the NCAA Baseball Committee, NCAA Championship Committee, NCAA Management Council and the NCAA Bowl Certification Committee.
But in the decades since the former Bulldog took the helm of the MSU athletic department, the continuing intertwining of television and sports has grown exponentially.
In the final year of Templeton’s 21-year reign at MSU in 2008, the former administrator revealed the school’s athletic department budget was roughly $39 million. By contrast, the check ESPN will send MSU officials in June due to the ever-expanding SEC Network will climb over $41 million.
Further, when the SEC Network launched in 2014, it became the most widely distributed network in television history according to Michiaels — reaching an estimated 60-65 million households. In comparison, the ACC Network which began its run in 2019 has garnered just over half that viewership.
“It’s a number that I don’t think ever will be beaten,” Michiaels proclaimed.
With the SEC Network and other varying television networks becoming more and more integral to the landscape of college athletics, the task of filling air time has become a task in itself due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Michiaels, who previously worked in varying roles with NASCAR and the NCAA, is charged with helping ESPN fulfill its contractual programming obligations that he said range from 400-450 events per year. However, he also noted that the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports” has long sought to exceed the bare minimum and thus has been able to survive in the wake of live sports being put on hold.
“Because we’ve been in the practice of over-delivering we’re, for the most part, meeting our contractual obligations with the distributors and keeping the SEC Network whole,” he said. “Which I’m sure is near and dear to a lot of the athletic programs because we do contribute a decent amount of money to the bottom line each year, and making sure that we’re able to keep those checks coming is obviously a big importance.”
With SEC Network programming continuing to flow and television contracts becoming more and more important in the landscape of college sports, the need for a football season — in some shape or form — has become all the more crucial. And while neither Michiaels nor Templeton offered any exact predictions for when teams could theoretically return to the gridiron, they did offer some thoughts on the billion-dollar question.
“I just know sports fans are craving for live events and we’ll be ready with some form of plan,” Templeton said. “There’s probably a plan for every day of the week, every month of the year. It’s been over-talked. We just need to know when and how we can get started.”
“…A lot of people assume about college sports and pro sports being one in the same,” Michiaels added. “But we’re not going to be able to play college sports unless students are allowed on campus, because the student-athletes are students, and if they’re not allowed on campus, they’re not going to be able to play.”
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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