📦 College Sports' Opens a Pandoras Box

As I get older, I’m starting to realize summer really is the best season.

I think everyone goes through a phase in their early 20s when they ride hard for fall, but now that I can control/afford the air conditioning in my own home it’s hard to beat warm weather.

The only valid counterpoints are football and tree-scented candles.

Here’s what we have on tap:

🗞 The Big Story: College Sports’ Pandoras Box

📉 Biggest Loser: Is It Illegal To Coach?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Summer’s New Favorite Sport

⬇️ Listen: The PAC-12 was dead 42 years ago. We explain why…

🗞 The Big Story

Every day college athletics starts to look more and more like itself: a greedy, overly capitalistic enterprise that only serves the fat cats at the top.

But there’s one final threshold that it has yet to cross, a Pandora’s Box that it’ll never be able to close. And Florida State just cracked that box open.

You see, last week an interesting story came out in Sportico which reported that Florida State University is working with JPMorgan Chase to raise money from private equity firms.

Now, as I mentioned, this would be an unprecedented move for college athletics. In fact, the only other time this idea has ever even been uttered was in 2019 with the PAC-12 and we saw how that turned out.

It would involve FSU selling off some of its future media rights revenue to investors in exchange for cash now.

But the real question is: why would they do this?

Let’s examine two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Florida State is Strapped for Cash

This theory wouldn’t be far-fetched since schools across the country have recently been borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the building of new facilities in an attempt to keep up with other programs and attract top talent.

In fact, the average debt of a Big 10 school has risen from $133 million to $164 million in just the past five years and reports show that Florida State spent $150 million last year alone.

But those same reports show that FSU also ran at a $10 million surplus last year, so I’m guessing they’re not strapped for cash.

Scenario 2: Florida State Wants Out of the ACC

This much more plausible theory is where things start to get dangerous for the future landscape of college athletics.

For context, the ACC (the conference Florida State is in) is locked into a horrible deal with ESPN until 2036 that pays schools less than half of what programs in the Big 10 and SEC are making on their new deals.

And their only two options to get out of this deal are to:

1. Dissolve the ACC entirely

2. Leave the ACC and pay a $120 million exit fee

So my guess is Florida State is trying to raise money from investors to pay that fee with the understanding that they’ll make the money back on a much bigger media deal with another conference.

But it’s not them leaving the ACC that’s the issue, it’s how they’re doing it.

You see, Florida is one of the only states in the country that allows its universities to operate their athletic departments through separate nonprofits called direct-service organizations or DSOs.

All you need to know about these DSOs is that they give the school more flexibility with how they can raise and spend money all while having fewer disclosure requirements.

Translation: They can run their athletic departments like private companies and no one can ask any questions.

And this provides a legal pathway for athletic departments to start raising private money, which would basically make college athletics run just like every other pro sports league with investors/owners running the show instead of public university officials.

Now, whether or not this is a good thing is yet to be seen.

My take is that we should just totally separate these multi-billion dollar athletic departments from public universities and make them operate as private businesses without the help of taxpayer money.

But don’t be surprised if you begin seeing other states start to allow these DSOs which will officially mark the end of college athletics as we know them today.

📉 Biggest Loser

A high school just spent $26,000 to fire their girl’s soccer coach for bullying but players are upset he’s leaving.

I encourage everyone to read the full report in the Marblehead Current, but here are the cliff notes:

• Marblehead High School Girls’ Soccer Coach, John Dormer, was fired for “bullying” under Massachusetts state law

• An independent investigator found that Dromer’s words and actions, “although not intentional,” met two of the six criteria for bullying:

  • They caused emotional harm

  • They created a hostile environment

So what exactly did Dormer do to warrant this investigation?

Well, the school-hired investigator outlined three recurring themes she found after interviews conducted with 11 families and five current and former players that include:

1. Poor communication

2. Bullying

3. Retaliation

Poor Communication

Apparently, Coach Dormer would create “lingering confusion” with respect to players’ roles on the team.

There were certain unofficial designations that were created including “swing players” who floated between JV and varsity and “practice players” who only got the chance to play during practice and who would often be left without jerseys for games in favor of younger players.

The investigator also revealed that these unofficial, and often implied designations were not communicated clearly with players or families, which had induced so much anxiety in one player that she suffered several panic attacks.

There were also reports of Coach Dormer doing things that he claimed were a joke, like when starters would get their own seat on the team bus to a playoff game, while everyone else would have to ride two or three to a seat.

Bullying

Dormer’s dry, sarcastic sense of humor was apparently often misinterpreted by players.

One example includes Dormer telling one of his players to “smile more” when she asked for feedback on her game. This resulted in that player “getting in her head” and trying to force herself to laugh and smile more at practice.

The investigator also talks about how Coach Dormer may have often crossed the line between “tough coaching” and “bullying” by making targeted comments at players with no instructional value, while also making what players and families described as empty promises in regard to their role on the team.

Reportedly, Dormer would also make repeated comments to players in front of others about weaknesses in their game causing those players to feel belittled and embarrassed, with there being multiple reports of players coming home and crying after games and practices because of it.

Retaliation:

And when asked why they didn’t speak up, players said that they noticed themselves being treated differently by their coach if they did - which discouraged them from even asking for feedback from Dormer.

My Take:

There were a lot of comments on my original coverage of this story that basically went something like, “That just sounds like coaching.”

And frankly, the issue I have here isn’t with the coach… it’s with these state guidelines around bullying and how that played into Dormer inevitably being fired.

Because the law in Massachusetts says that “the intent of the alleged aggressor doesn’t matter, just the impact their words or actions have on the victim.”

But here’s the issue: we can’t control how people react.

And furthermore, Dormer wasn’t made aware of this investigation until it was already happening, meaning he never had the chance to fully learn how others had been reacting to his coaching until it was too late.

By all accounts, Dormer isn’t a malicious guy. A bit too sarcastic around issues that are serious to some people? Maybe. But it doesn’t seem like it came from a lack of caring for his players.

And if he were made aware of how his players felt more clearly I think there’s a chance he would have altered his coaching style.

Now, that’s all to say players and parents hadn’t come up to him already and expressed their discontent but if we’re now going to be firing high school coaches because we don’t like how they hand out jerseys, then we’re going to start losing a lot of good coaches.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

Hockey and summer go together about as well as peanut butter and mustard… unless you’re from Minnesota.

I wanted to shout out the great work our team is doing with Da Beauty League, a summer hockey league that features over 40 current NHL and NCAA hockey players who play 4-on-4 games in a high school arena.

The beauty of this league is that the rules are arbitrary, both on and off the ice.

And our team has done a great job pushing the envelope of what it means to market a sports league by leaning into the culture of hockey more than the actual play happening on the ice.

We’re not afraid to talk to the girl who made Erik Haula a “Cane’s Suck” bracelet or ask a goalie to say three random words in the middle of a game.

Every idea we have from sponsorship fulfillment to player promotion starts with “how can we make the best piece of content,” which has already resulted in us being featured on the feeds of the NHL, Bleacher Report Open Ice, TSN, Spittin’ Chicklets, and more in the first month of the season.

A special shoutout to Aaron and Ryan McFarlane who produce all of our social content, our talented team of videographers including Jack Jones and Oren Hamilton, our photographer Bjorn Franke, and our content host Anna Behning!

⏱ In Other News

• Turns out KT Tape is also a scam.

• A Somali Sprinter goes viral and causes chaos in her country.

• The Orioles suspended their broadcast for checks notes… reading?

👋 My co-founder Jake is in the Boundry Waters of Northern Minnesota without cellphone service. That mean’s I’m acting CEO of Uncle Charlie for the next week. Lord help me…