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Good Thursday Morning. Bringing you an abbreviated, “snack size” version of SBP this week.

#1: An underdiscussed reason why the power conferences will keep investing in football and basketball: the payouts that come from success fuel the flywheel

🗯️ My thought bubble: Most of the schools in the SEC and Big Ten are going to find ways to cover their revenue sharing budgets along with all of the other line items. That being said, getting almost $800,000 in mailbox money (units are expected to pay out $360,000 each next year — [$360k x 35 units]/16 school = $787k per school) essentially covers your revenue sharing budget for one of your main Olympic sports. Plus, this figure will climb each subsequent year over the next six, and SEC schools will end up making $4.3 million from this over this year’s units’ term.

This also doesn’t even factor in what’s being earned from the CFP payouts.

As I mentioned last week, you can start to see some parallels between college sports and European soccer with the need to invest in payroll in order to create the revenue flywheel that comes from championship appearances, which in turn funnels back into the payroll.

Don’t sleep on the women’s units either. This will likely continue to grow and provide a decent chunk of changes going forward.

#2: This is one of my favorite March Madness sequences ever. Ian Eagle delivers an incredible call, and Bill Rafferty’s “woohoo!” at the end is the perfect icing on the cake

#3: An unforeseen benefit to the NWSL’s rapid expansion: additional unsold TV inventory

#4: A long running ownership dispute for the Minnesota Timberwolves is over, with incumbent owner Glen Taylor giving up his lawsuit and agreeing to sell to new owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez.

🗯️ My thought bubble: This was one of the more interesting public ownership disputes we’ve ever seen. The structure of the deal had Lore and Rodriguez’s group taking increasing stakes each year until they became majority owners, which gave them time to continue to source capital.

But, it also gave Glen Taylor time to get cold feet due to the skyrocketing valuations of NBA teams since he agreed to sell in 2021. The $1.5 billion purchase price four years ago looks paltry now compared to the $4 billion Mat Ishbia paid for the Suns in 2023 and the Celtics now potentially selling for more than $6 billion.

On this last point, it will be interesting to see how much diligence the NBA does around the Celtics deal given it likely has a series of stair step ownership clauses and the new owners will gradually assume control. The Timberwolves fight was ugly, but it’s a small market club and the dispute mostly played out in the courtroom and was outside of the general public’s mindshare. Having similar issues play out in public on a marquee franchise is something the NBA wants to avoid at all costs.

#5: Have to respect the right fielder for showing off the cannon, regardless of the situation

Until next time, sports fans!

-Alex