College athletic departments are now spending big on their communication departments. NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Ellyn Briggs, a contributor to Front Office Sports, about why.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
I’m going to play a little bit of a commercial for you.
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SHAQUILLE O’NEAL: What if I told you there’s a place, a place so special, so unique, that three letters tell a thousand words?
DETROW: That is former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal doing something he is quite familiar with – selling something. But he is not promoting Gold Bond or Icy Hot or JC Penney. Shaq is selling a university.
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O’NEAL: Welcome to LSU. Welcome to your future.
DETROW: College athletic departments are pouring money into their marketing departments, trying to reinvent them for an era where student athletes can make money and attract big sponsors. Ellyn Briggs wrote about this new phenomenon for Front Office Sports. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
ELLYN BRIGGS: Thanks so much for having me on, Scott. I’m excited to be here.
DETROW: So I always love to hear from Shaq.
BRIGGS: (Laughter).
DETROW: But why was that particular video a good example of what we’re seeing here?
BRIGGS: Yeah, I think it’s a great example because Shaquille O’Neal, as you mentioned in your intro, is kind of the premier advertiser of our time, and to get him on board to produce a promo for your university and its athletes is kind of the highest-level spokesperson you can get. So it speaks to the amount of investment both in dollars and headcount and talent that universities are pouring into content production within their athletic departments.
DETROW: So you’re seeing this high-quality video. You’re seeing all over social media, all sorts of different packaging. Who is this for? Is this to recruit more students because college athletes are basically free agents every year now? Is this to get people to give money to the program? Like, who is the primary audience here?
BRIGGS: Yes. Yes to all of the above. So they’re making these investments in kind of these in-house content studios with a few primary goals – first and foremost to attract and retain the best athletic talent that they can. Like you mentioned, college athletes are essentially free agents every year, and the market for them has never been more competitive. So that is the first and foremost goal of these content teams, is to put their university and their athletic department brand out there to pique the interest of athletes, get them on campus and then hopefully convert them into full-time athletes.
DETROW: We started with LSU, and I feel like if you like sports, you know the big SEC schools, you know the big Big Ten schools. Can you walk me through an example of a smaller school that has really found its groove with this and has really kind of risen their presence?
BRIGGS: Smaller schools where their intention is not to preserve a brand but to grow their brand and simply get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible, they are a little voicey (ph) with their content. And a great example out of the University of Tulsa is their recent Portal House experiment, wherein they rented a studded-out kind of Airbnb with all the bells and whistles – pool, mini golf in the backyard, that sort of thing – near their campus for the entirety of the two-week transfer portal in January. That’s when college football players are able to take visits to different schools and transfer if desired. So they rented out this house…
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UNIDENTIFIED FOOTBALL PLAYER #1: Portal House, here we go.
UNIDENTIFIED FOOTBALL PLAYER #2: Portal House 2026. Let’s roll.
BRIGGS: …Holed up all their coaches within it for the two weeks and kind of invited recruits to come hang out with their coaches there via daily episodic videos that they put out on their social channels documenting…
DETROW: They made it like a reality show, almost.
BRIGGS: Yes, exactly. It’s – they called it the Portal House. They packaged it very much like a reality show, just in, you know, vertical, social-first video. And they landed 30 visits from that effort and 22 commitments, which is way more than they’ve seen in previous recent years.
DETROW: I mean, we’re talking about this reinvention, the content studio here. Like, what does that tell you about the moment colleges are in right now and the direction they may be heading?
BRIGGS: Colleges, and more broadly institutions of – traditional institutions of all kinds, there’s a loss of trust and faith generally in the value of these organizations. So the fact that colleges are pouring money into content studios speaks to their desire to overcome that issue, put out a new narrative, highlight the aspects of colleges that are doing well right now and are attracting interest versus maybe some of the struggles that they’re facing.
DETROW: That’s Ellyn Briggs, a contributor to Front Office Sports. Thank you so much.
BRIGGS: Thank you, Scott.
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