USU prof knows bowl game business
When Mike Parent watches football, he sees more than just X’s and O’s.
He sees $$.
Parent, a business professor at Utah State for 32 years, served as the chair of the Division I Bowl Certification Committee from 2001 to 2002. The committee oversees the operation of postseason college football games for the NCAA.
For a professor who has taught marketing for 32 years, he said, the experience provided real-world examples of the marketplace at work.
Football bowl games are independent from the NCAA and compete for the highest profile teams that will provide the best matchup and conferences compete for the most prestigious bowl alliances, Parent said.
“That’s markets and marketing, and that’s what I think is so fun,” he said.
The Bowl Championship Series, Parent said, is another prime example of a marketplace.
The BCS conferences (Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, Southeastern, along with independent Notre Dame) have developed traditions of strength that make their programs household names.
Because they are viewed as powerhouses, a bowl game featuring a team from these conferences can draw more TV viewers than teams from a lesser-known conference that hasn’t developed the same “brand equity,” a marketing term used to describe the value of name recognition.
“The NCAA today is organized to provide representation for everybody, but some additional power in the form of those conferences,” Parent said. “I think that then gets reflected in the kinds of things that you read in press accounts. Those that don’t have the power will obviously attack that type of an organization, those that do want to sustain it and protect it because of what they might have to lose.”
While the split national title caused by the BCS this year has been a subject of debate across the country, Parent doesn’t think it’s particularly a bad thing.
“Of all that higher education owes to society, way down the list and several pages back is a [college football] national champion. The fact that everybody’s got these opinions is not all bad. It generates a lot of discussion.”
Despite this view, Parent said the result of this year’s BCS game was interesting.
“There is a bittersweet irony in this,” he said. “The irony is this is the system that was put in place to quiet the need for a playoff.”
Parent’s connection to athletics at the university level came about because of “lucky circumstances,” he said, he is grateful for the opportunities Utah State has given him.
He was serving on USU’s athletic council in 1992 when the athletic director left to take another position. He was then named as the interim athletic director while a search took place. A new AD was named the next year, and Parent was then elected president over the Big West Conference, working closely with the commissioner and being involved in the operation aspects of the conference, from 1994 to 1996.
After being selected as the Big West representative to the NCAA’s Championships and Competition Cabinet, he was assigned to the Bowl Certification Committee in 1998.
He served for three years on the committee before being elected as its chair for a year and a half, a job that had its challenges.
Even though there are huge amounts of money involved in running championships, Parent said there’s still not enough to go around.
“The challenge was financial, because even after you allocate those funds to the operation of the NCAA, send a portion of those funds to help support Division II and Division III, now you’ve got a certain amount of money left.”
That money is used to provide quality championship experiences for the student-athletes and equitable access to championships for both men and women.
Those two focuses don’t compete, Parent said, but require an expenditure of money that is greater than the money brought in.
“The goose that lays the golden egg is the NCAA basketball tournament,” he said. “The funds from that basketball tournament are what run the NCAA and provide the budgets for championships.”
The funds are also redistributed to conferences and universities.
Considering the high cost of collegiate athletics, Parent said the reason universities spend money on athletics is because they are a marketing tool.
“The intercollegiate athletic programs are a mechanism of universities to create name recognition for themselves,” he said, one more reason for a marketing professor to pay attention.
“There are business and market principles that really do apply,” he said.
-royburton@cc.usu.edu