🤕 The One Rule That Broke College Football

Deon Sanders wasn’t lying when he said “Look good, feel good, play good.”

That’s based on a recent study that just found that players with lower jersey numbers were perceived as thinner and faster than players with higher jersey numbers.

Don’t believe me, I’ll prove it at the end of today’s newsletter. I’ll also give you an update on how you can win a free jersey for yourself!

In the meantime:

🗞 The Big Story: The NCAA Accidently Ruined College Football

📉 Biggest Loser: Coach Prime Makes the Sportsbooks Pay

🏆 Winner’s Circle: From MLS Bust to Cowboy’s Kicker

⬇️ Listen: Disney’s latest collaboration with the NFL is genius. Listen to this week’s episode of Sportonomics to hear why:

🗞 The Big Story

Last offseason, the NCAA implemented three fairly under-the-radar rule changes in college football to help increase the pace of play:

1. Running clock after first downs, except for in the last two minutes of each half

2. No back-to-back timeouts to ice the kicker

3. No untimed downs at the end of the first and third quarter

The Goal: Shave off an average of 15 plays per game to reduce game times from an average of 3 hours and 30 minutes closer to the NFL average of 3 hours and 10 minutes. The NCAA claims this is to help improve player safety and fan engagement.

The Result: TV networks still sold the same number of ads, and games still run close to 3 hours and 30 minutes but now there are 14 fewer plays and 2.3 fewer drives per game.

That means a greater percentage of commercials per broadcast, which has led to some unwatchable TV.

 The Proof: One Redditor did an analysis of the Week 1 LSU vs. Florida State game and what he found was pretty telling:

• Total Broadcast Time: 3 hour and 23 minutes

• Total Gameplay Time: 2 hours and 27 minutes

• Total Commercial Time: 55 minutes and 48 seconds

  • 131 total ads

  • 27% of the entire broadcast

There was even a stretch where ABC was so pressed to hit its ad quota that it put three ads in between three individual plays.

But I think Chip Kelly summed it up best when he said

“This new rule… that’s crazy. We had four drives in the first half. This game goes fast, I hope you guys are selling a lot of commercials.”

📉 Biggest Loser

Coach Prime is taking no prisoners in his first season with Colorado. Not even the sportsbooks are safe.

Americans Love Gambling: 73.5 million people (that’s 28% of the entire country) are planning to bet on the NFL this year, and it’s even more if you take college football into consideration.

The House (Usually) Always Wins: With this influx of bettors, the sportsbooks cleaned up last week. Here were some of their biggest wins:

• $200,000 on the Commanders -6.5 against the Cardinals (BET LOST)

• $1,000,000 on the Seahawks -3.5 against the Rams (BET LOST)

• $400,000 on the Steelers +3 against the 49ers (BET LOST)

Prime Time Effect: Usually when there’s a huge public favorite like Colorado was last week (the books reported the Buffs received 4x the betting volume compared to any NFL team), that’s good for the house.

But Colorado -2.5 against Nebraska was the sportsbooks’ biggest loss of the year so far.

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💰 Pick of the Week

Puka Nacua was the waiver-wire darling in most fantasy leagues this week, but there’s no way he can repeat his Week 1, 10 reception, 119-yard performance again this week… right?

Well, lucky for us he doesn’t have to because Sleeper, is offering higher or lower on 0.5 receiving yards for him this week. You read that right.

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🏆 Winner’s Circle

Three years ago the Cowboy’s 28-year-old rookie kicker was making $160,000 as a software engineer, and that was considered disappointing.

Brandon Aubrey’s Background:

• Four-star high school athlete who was ranked 24th nationally for soccer

• NCAA National Champion at Notre Dame

• First-round draft pick by Toronto FC in the MLS SuperDraft

However, after bouncing around a few lower-level USL teams, Brandon decided to hang it up and put his Notre Dame degree to use as a software engineer.

We’ve All Been There: One day when watching an NFL game, a kicker missed a field goal and Aubrey’s wife said something we’ve probably all thought:

“You could do that.”

But in Aubrey’s case, it was true… so the next day he went out to a local field and like a scene from a movie realized he could make a 60-yard field goal.

Lacing ‘Em Up (Again): Aubrey spent the next two years during the pandemic working during the day and training with a kicking coach in the mornings and evenings.

He was eventually drafted by the USFL’s Birmingham Stallions but had to take a 50% pay cut to play with them.

In two seasons with the Stallions Aubrey only missed one field goal, and this summer he got the call to come out to Cowboy’s camp.

Done Deal: Aubrey made a 59-yard field goal in the Cowboy’s final preseason game and made the team, earning himself the NFL minimum salary of $750,000.

Just to think, his original dream was to make $65,000 in the MLS…

⏱ In Other News

• A new study finds that players wearing smaller numbers are perceived as skinnier, even with identical body sizes.

• Colorado has sold $430,000 in tickets since its TCU upset. The average price for a Colorado home game is now $517.

• BetMGM didn’t pay this teacher the $214K he won, until now.

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👋 There are a lot of new people here because of the jersey giveaway I’m running on TikTok. As promised, I’ll announce the winner right here next Friday.

In the meantime, I hope you stick around and just know I only send one email per week that looks a lot like the one you just read with exclusive stories, quick sports business breakdowns, and (sometimes) giveaways.

See you next Friday!