The Disambiguation of Marketing the NCAA (American Amateur Sports)

In this Edition:

1. Chaos State: Amateur Sports

2. Why The Big Game Still Matters

3. Being Less Ambiguous: From the Civil War to D-Day

4. The Day The Earth Stood Still

5. USS Kearsarge vs. CSS Alabama

6. History Repeats Itself

7. The Day the Earth Moved

8. Cries Of Treason and Rebellion

9. Ambiguity Personified

10. A Case for the Ladies

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Chaos State: Amateur Sports

American amateur collegiate sports are in a state of chaos.  Led by its most popularly viewed sport, we witnessed this year’s football season as one punctuated with controversy and strife from Florida State University beginning the season with veiled threats of secession from their conference over revenue gaps versus competitive conferences to near empty stadiums in this year’s non-playoff bowl games due to the lack of significance of these games during an era of a robust transfer portal, pay-to-play for the players in Name Image and Likeness (NIL) and players hedging a potential injury versus pending professional success via opting out of playing in their final game in these bowl games.  On the other hand, some would say the United States’ National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is ok despite a $59 million dollar loss in 2021, the organization reported net assets of over $450 million.  Beyond the ambiguity, the NCAA will continue to change and if one thing is constant it is change and to better understand that sometimes you have to look at history.

Photo: Unofficial Assistant Coaches/Youtube

Before reflecting on antiquated history, let's reflect on this year's 2024 Rose Bowl. The College Football Playoff final between the University of Alabama and the University of Michigan was an instant classic and did not lack entertainment value. It featured two storied college football programs that have both one multiple championships at the Rose Bowl and who before that day had only played five times. To truly understand the significance of the disambiguation of the NCAA and that game, you have to go back further in history.

Photo: Midjourney

Being Less Ambiguous: From the Civil War to D-Day

Cherbourg, France is a harbor town situated hard and fast at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in northwestern France.  The harbor sits on the English Channel directly across from England and is approximately 31 miles from Utah Beach, one of the Allied troop’s D-Day landings.  

On June 11, 1864, the Confederate screw-sloop-of-war, CSS Alabama limped into Cherbourg harbor badly in need of repairs following five successful missions raiding commercial U.S. Union ships along the vital Atlantic Ocean trade routes.  The sloop’s boiler was burnt out and much of its machinery was in disrepair. Twenty-two months of sailing had caught up with the Alabama and its captain intended to dry dock at Cherbourg for the repairs, but those intentions were soon cut short.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Four days later and after two years of pursuit, the Union screw-sloop-of-war USS Kearsarge reacquainted itself with the renegade Alabama at Cherbourg harbor.  The Kearsarge was an idiosyncratic beast of maritime war, outfitted with a form of makeshift armor-cladding that gave it the maritime equivalency of chain mail protecting its most vulnerable sections of the hull.  Given that Alabama was in a protected neutral port, The captain of the Kearsarge, Captain John Winslow chose to wait out the Alabama via blockade at the Harbor’s entrance and exit.

USS Kearsarge vs. CSS Alabama

On Sunday, June 19, the Alabama raider ran out of options.  The Alabama ran up the Confederate Stars and Bars flag and exited Cherbourg harbor.  After exiting the harbor and French territorial water, the Alabama drew first fire with its 100-pound pivot gun, but it would be one of only two that hit the Kearsarge as the two ships engaged in circling about one another and both ships attempting to broadside each other.  Adding to the energy, the water-borne battle was witnessed through the eyeshots of hundreds of spectators on the French coast.  After more than an hour of exchanging cannon fire, the Kearsarge’s more accurate gunnery rang true enough to penetrate several cannon shot holes below the Confederate raider’s waterline.  In the end, the Kearsarge’s accuracy and ironclad armor are credited with Kearsarge’s sinking of the Alabama.  Despite the captain of the Alabama and fourteen of his crew escaping via a British rescue ship to Southampton, England, the Union victory was met with hope and joy back in the Northern U.S. and the battle was so famous that modernist French artist Edouard Manet produced two paintings of the battle and American marine artist Xanthus Smith painted six versions of the maritime skirmish.  Finally, the battle was also commemorated in the sea shanty or work song for sailors called “Roll, Alabama, Roll”.  The lyrics of “Roll, Alabama, Roll” describe the ship from its construction in 1862 at the onset of the American Civil War until its sinking at the 1864 Battle of Cherbourg and some see it as the precursor to Alabama’s famous “Roll Tide” cheer.  

Image: Midjourney Prompt: "The old sea shanty song "Roll the Cotton down" as sung by Black longshoremen in southern ports of the United States, outdoors, natural light"

“The words were set to the melody of an older song ‘Roll the Cotton Down’ which is believed to have originated amongst black longshoremen in southern ports of the United States.”[1]) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roll,_Alabama,_Roll. 

Image: Midjourney prompt: "The 1915 film, "The Birth Of A Nation" movie poster in 2024"

History Repeats Itself

Fast forward sixty-two years to the 1926 Rose Bowl where the University of Alabama’s victory over the University of Washington was viewed by some as a redemptive win for the Old Confederate South.  The resulting championship inspired a new fight song for the University of Alabama, “Yea Alabama”.  It included the lyrics “Hit your stride, you’re Dixie’s Football Pride”, throwing illumination to the school’s southern roots.  It’s no surprise that this also occurred less than eleven years following the 1915 release of Hollywood’s first blockbuster, the silent film, “The Birth of a Nation”.  A film that was also “condemned for the racism inherent in the script and its positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)” which some credit the film and its source, the novel “The Clansman” as creating a revival of the KKK and the continued violence to Blacks in the U.S.

Alabama’s public-facing Confederate embrace would continue another thirty-seven years to June 11, 1963 (99 years to the day the CSS Alabama limped into Cherbourg harbor.) when the then-Alabama governor physically tried to block black students from integrating the school.  It took another seven years before the football team desegregated in 1970 following a bitter loss to the University of Southern California’s all-black football backfield.

History makes its point. Our NCAA is built out of America as much as any other institution from the good to the bad to the collegiate teams whose rivalries, mascots, and cheers evolved out of 19th century battle cries to ageless border rivalries.

The Day the Earth Moved

A full 160 years following the sinking of the CSS Alabama, the University of Michigan Wolverines defeated the University of Alabama Crimson Tide on January 1, 2024, in the NCAA Football Semi-Final Rose Bowl playoff game to reach the championship game on a fourth-and-goal on the three-yard line overtime goal line stand.  The significance of which should not be lost given Michigan played in and won the first Rose Bowl in 1902 (49-0 vs. Stanford) and Michigan’s Wolverine mascot’s origin story is the stuff of disputed legend and ambiguity.  The source is the 1803 “Toledo War” border dispute between Michigan and Ohio.  Legend has it either the Ohioans chose to call the Michiganders Wolverines slanderously referring to the aggressive and gluttonous habits of the Wolverine or the Michiganders took it upon themselves to be called Wolverines reflecting on that animal's more positive competitive traits of tenacity and strength.  Regardless, both states continue to hash out this “war” on the football gridiron between the University of Michigan and the Ohio State University in what continues to be described as college football’s greatest rivalry.  Michigan leads the series with 61 wins to Ohio State’s 56 and the largest margin of victory came in 1902 (the same year Michigan won the first Rose Bowl) when Michigan defeated Ohio State a whoop-arse-worthy 86-0.

Cries Of Treason and Rebellion

It should also not be overlooked that Michigan’s Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass who presided over the “Toledo War” with Ohio, years later became U.S. President James Buchanon’s Secretary of State during a time when Buchanon took a soft stance versus the South’s growing secession crisis.  As a result, Cass resigned from Buchanon's cabinet in protest stating, "he had seen the Constitution born and now feared he was seeing it die".   Further, following South Carolina’s secession in December 1860, the outgoing Michigan Governor, Moses Wisner delivered a speech to the Michigan Legislature in defense of the Union and the U.S. Constitution, stating, “This is no time for timid and vacillating councils when the cry of treason and rebellion is ringing in our ears”.

Ambiguity Personified

Now the NCAA exists in an era of extreme ambiguity and to survive it will have to fend off its rebellion to prevent an all-out conference consolidation meltdown.  In an era of hyper sports conference consolidation and bulging sports betting books, the NCAA will need to find its true north. These are times when beginning this year it will be the norm to see West Coast schools playing and traversing multiple time zones in the East Coast-centered conferences AKA the ACC and Big Ten. NIL will continue to grow for the star collegiate athletes and we have to wonder at some point what is next given all the increased high school sports games getting national TV exposure. Will high school NIL be next? Our nation's appetite for sports and now sports betting is unyielding. Where will it end?

Image: The Globe and Mail "JuJu Watkins, USC"

A Case for the Ladies

Here is where it CAN begin: the one positive constant and potential true north for the NCAA has been women’s sports.  Despite the challenges of inequity and bias, women continue to do their thing and in the NCAA there is no exception.  Following record-setting viewership for the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Final to the University of Nebraska Cornhusker women’s volleyball team breaking the women’s sporting event attendance record at 92,003 fans at the outdoor Memorial Stadium, the NCAA women’s ascension seems to have no end.

Growing up in a household where the idea of sibling rivalry was my being flanked by an older sister and a younger sister, I have always been a fan of what women can accomplish.   I recall learning in Sales Management class in college our professor and textbook presented a study that women can outsell men 3:1.  While I don’t recall the source, you can google “Study that shows women outsell men” and you will see more than enough supporting data.  Why this matters in sports is that many of the reasons cited include how men and women approach problems differently, but more importantly how women are more willing to collaborate and work together as a team.  So it is no surprise that watching women play team sports like basketball, volleyball, soccer, etc., can be so entertaining because real fans appreciate the way women compete and approach the sports so differently.  WNBA features a version of basketball that is beautiful to watch for its emphasis on team play versus relying heavily on star power. From the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team’s historic legal win for equal pay to Kansas City, Missouri building the first and already sold out for the 2024 season soccer stadium dedicated solely to their professional women’s soccer team (the Kansas City Current), women’s sports are rising.

The potential to market women's sports is also rising.  The growth in the amateur/collegiate side of the sport in 2023 will undoubtedly fuel more passion and marketing on the professional side shortly as many of the collegiate stars like Angel Reese and Catlin Clark exit college and enter the pros. While there is some contention about the impact of NIL relative to going pro, the reality is despite the lower salaries for women, this renewed interest in professional sports will also include the ancillary benefits of endorsements for the best and brightest talent. The choice and path to upside growth are very clear. In an era where we are seemingly tapped out and reduced to inner squabbles on the men's side, women represent expanded boundaries.

There are no easy answers to the future of the marketability of amateur and collegiate sports in America and whether you believe the role that women will play or that this year’s addition of a 12-team college football playoff will pay off and hopefully prevent the NCAA from eating itself through consolidation and making the remaining bowl games in more insignificant or if the NCAA restructures the portal transfer timeline to better suit the players and their fans.  Women are key to a healthy diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) future for the NCAA. Healthy women's sports will lift the NCAA as a whole. What we can count on is women will be a constant through all the battles and noise on the men's side and continue to play a role and perhaps be the light that can help illuminate the NCAA out of its current shadows of ambiguity.

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