While the nexus of going to Los Angeles this week was for the CAA World Congress of Sport, the reality…one which I am continuing to realize is a sad reality…is that the real learnings occur far away from the stage for the most part. What the value is resides well outside the room with the casual encounters, listenings, and learnings form those who aren’t the same pontificating on stage, although there are always enough takeaways to note for the journey. Some observations from those stage right in LA “Socks are the new neckties.”  I fully credit my friend and colleague Frank Brown with thi ..read more

The quest for success for spring football continues on, and personally I hope the models that the UFL is now going through works, and find great audiences, sell tickets, and give athletes, coaches and industry professionals at every level an opportunity at career success. Make the pie bigger. But will it work? Still hard to see the clear large scale road forward, even with some wins this spring. Steady progressional wins are needed to prove if “spring football”…not the NFL Draft or The Combine, not high level college spring games, not even the CFL…is actually a thing. However there is “a thin ..read more

Some great listens on three leaders literally carving paths never taken. From the first…and only…college coach who went through Name Image and Likeness as an athlete on the way to multiple championships, to a world class chess player who also likes to mix it up in the gym…to an entrepreneurial gamer  and world champion football player building a business, all are worth the time and the learning. You can hear all of our podcasts here. ENJOY Erin Matson on learning from greatness,  NIL and continuing a winning culture  Erin Matson, decorated field hockey star, and current nationa ..read more

Sports, at its core, is often viewed as a transactional business, a zero-sum game. After all, if you leave it for what it is, the score is there when the game ends. Somebody wins, somebody loses. However, the business that surrounds that score, that result, by those who actually play, is much more fluid. The intangible, personal results, go way beyond a score. I am lucky to be constantly reminded of those intangibles by the people we come across, those who we have known for 20 seconds or 30 years, who remind you that if you do the right thing, wins are much more than the numbers on a scoreboar ..read more

The simple things are usually the best activated, and we wanted to point out two tied to the great game of baseball. First was the story this week that Cracker Jack was teaming with Hall of Famer Dave Winfield and the National Baseball Hall of Fame to rekindle the value of the product we remember from our youth, tied to all the history of the game. It is a great way to link the past…legacy fans, to young people with a core tie…a sugar box of candy that really is literally embedded in the sport and its signature song. Winfield is a great spokesperson, and the Hall of Fame gets great legs for a ..read more

Last week we reached out to quite a few teams, leagues and brands to ask about their potential April Fools Day plans.  After all for decades creative and entrepreneurial folks have taken advantage to out one over on a passionate public (here is a look at some from recent years), so this year should have been no different right? Wrong. For almost all…with the exceptions being the PBR (which did even get some backlash for those who didn’t get the date and the nuance), Utah State Football, the Seahawks mascot…the answer was thanks but no thanks. The attention deprived, the risk of distracti ..read more

We are always looking for the biggest bang, the most impactful, the largest voice, but many times we forget that the very targeted success is the way we are judged. Let’s call it the audience of one. I was reminded of the value of one to one a few times in the past few weeks. First was a New York Times story about South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, and how she has redone her appearance literally from head to toe…in order to come more into the focus of one person…Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Another time it came up when talking to a colleague about a wide ranging impactful cause market ..read more

In her wonderful all access (see what happens when you give someone unfettered access and trust them to do a good job) piece on Purdue basketball, Dana O’Neil talked about the weight of pressure on the shoulders of Coach Matt Painter, identifying that weight as ‘The Albatross of Expectation.” I thought a lot about that Albatross Monday night, as we saw the relief and joy of players from UConn, especially Paige Bueckners  and her journey and Iowa while the disappointment and emotion from LSU and USC was also quite evident. However what really reminded me of the weight was the postgame mono ..read more

According to my colleague Randy Walker, March 31 is the anniversary of the day young Martina Hingis took the number one spot on the WTA Tour, making her at the time the youngest man or woman to take the top ranking…gender didn’t matter, story did.  I know this because I remember exactly where we were when the news became official that ‘The Swiss Miss’ was atop the rankings. We were in a Cracker Barrel in Hilton Head, SC, and we couldn’t go back to the press conference until Martina mastered this game where you take the golf tees and cross them over each other on a triangle until you get d ..read more

There is a scene in the TV show “The Odd Couple” where Felix and Oscar are trying to fly to Houston together to help eliminate Felix’s fear of flying. It was optimal as Oscar was going to cover a Houston vs. San Diego NFL game and they could travel together. The problem was the plane was full of skydivers who jumped off in Houston while the plane continued to San Diego.  It’s a lot funnier and more detailed when you watch the episode, but the relevant point was that Oscar mentioned he would watch the game on TV from San Diego and cover it that way. Not exactly the ideal in-depth idea ..read more