Happy New Year! I’m back for 2025 to help break down Sports Marketing for you. If you’re willing to reply, let me know what you like or want from this newsletter. Feedback can help me help you!

If you watched TGL & Tiger last night, here’s my Sports Marketing Framework I built off the debut last night. Any good Sports Marketing plan includes these four elements…

Sun Day Red built a landing page dedicated to Tiger’s Looks from his new simulator golf league, TGL. This is a GREAT way to capitalize on the conversation happening in social during the event.

In an ideal world, the marketing team works with everyone (product, merchandising, sales, social & digital) teams to get the key products on Tiger, have them ready to purchase on site and to align social content that highlights them.
It so rarely all works together, but their team seemed to do a great job on this one!

alright, onto Miami…

If there was a College Sports soap opera, there's only one place it would be set: The U. A blue blood program with brash boosters bringing big stars to the table. Sometimes it backfires. Miami is ground zero for the best and the worst of the NIL era. Let’s explore.

This week, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck announced NFL draft to join his girlfriend, Hanna Cavinder, at the U.

And of course they did it through a TikTok. You may scoff at the Cavender twins, but they are big business. With multi millions of followers, they had the first deal on day one of NIL history in New York Times Square.
Shortly thereafter, they had dinner at John Ruiz's house, a big Miami booster and a very loud and outspoken who use his business, Life Wallet to attract some of the top talent in the country in Men’s & Women’s sports. They transferred soon after and signed to Miami.

They also got the first NCAA sanctions because this is an inducement of recruiting. Meaning boosters aren't supposed to be a part of the recruitment process. wink wink.
This didn’t stop them from an Elite 8 run in both men’s and women’s basketball.

Miami represents the opportunity that a unique group of schools have. Classic blue blood programs that have been squandering over the last 20 years can now come back to prominence if they have rabid and invested boosters. See also: Texas & Michigan.

But, it also represents a place where the Coaches of yesteryear have burned out. The Men’s Basketball coach, Coach Larranga at 75 years old, just a year after his Elite 8 Run announced he was retiring a month into this season due to fatigue from trying to retain his team. Other notable retires coaching include Gary Patterson, Coack K, Coach Saban & others.

On the flip side, players can get a second chance. Carson Beck is expected to make around $4 million for his final college year, which is the going rate for quarterbacks this season. This is great for Beck because he showed us that in an SEC Championship game, you can have a really detrimental injury. He has to have surgery now, and it was going to affect his NFL draft status.

Hopefully, he can have a great story like Cam Ward, who was a debatable 3rd Round Pick out of Washington State last year. But, after he also pulled his name out of the NFL Draft, transferred to Miami for his final year, made a couple million dollars, got an adidas & Beats by Dre endorsement, became a Heisman candidate and will now be a first round pick.

The NIL era is a lot of things, but it's never boring.
And like most things in life, it is neither inherently good or bad, but a tool to be utilized …with tradeoffs.

Education:
The BrandFathers hit Boston to recap the Best Brand Campaigns of 2024.

If you’re looking for career advice, you can always visit HowToGetAJobAtNike.com for some of my career resources & advice as well.

Inspiration:
A Tiger arrival is +500 aura…

Is Shai the most underrated star of the NBA?

An 18 y.o. is growing fast by MAKING THINGS about Shai & others. What could you be DOING?

A worthwhile read on the ban of Tik Tok by a friend & now business partner…who I met through Tik Tok.

Blessings:

Incarcerated Firefighters have been working in a unique program in Los Angeles for years. They’re not making a livable wage at $5-10 per DAY. More on that below, but it’s a great opportunity for them to get meaningful life skills while rehabilitating…however, there’s a double standard when they couldn’t get hired for the same job after re-entry.
Hopefully, we can progress to give these brave humans second chances to rebuild a life, as they help others protect & rebuild theirs now.
If you’re interested in learning more about Ending the Exception to the 13th Amendment, check out End the Exception.

Lastly, it’s been said that we can give of our Time, Talents or Treasure.
Later in my career, I started to think of how I could give of my Talents to causes I support. In this instance, I helped connect the non profit Worth Rises to a great ad agency, EP + Co, who carried out a full campaign to try and End the Exception.

Second Chances can have reverberating impact years later!