Like the Soup Kind or the Strike Kind?

Welcome to the Pigskin Economics newsletter. By signing up for this newsletter, you're joining a community of dozens of hard-hitting, 4.4-running individuals looking to master the playbook on the business of college football. If you'd like to receive this newsletter directly in your inbox once a week, go ahead and subscribe to never miss an email!

Happy Friday, folks.

First, I want to thank you all for being loyal readers. The growth and support that you've given me has been humbling, and I appreciate every one of you. To return the favor, I'm working on a rewards program for your friend referrals. I'm thinking of writing a comprehensive guide to some of the more important business concepts in college football, whether media rights deals or NIL.

Do you have a specific topic in mind that you'd want to get a deep dive for? Shoot me a reply and let me know. In the meantime, make sure to continue to forward this to your friends and family to continue to grow the roster. Playoffs bound!

Now, onto your regularly scheduled newsletter.

You get a transfer. I get a transfer. We all get a transfer.

Chances are, every player on your favorite team has cleaned up his locker to go play somewhere else next season. That's right. The transfer portal opened up on Monday, a 45 day period in which players are allowed to transfer to another school and receive a free pass to do so.

In the past, transferring meant that a player would have to sit out a year before being able to play, but as of 2021, the first transfer is on the house. Sandwiched within this period is also the relatively new "early signing period" for high school prospects to sign their letters of intent with colleges towards the end of the month.

There are few people that I envy less than college coaches trying to manage their own rosters, recruit transfers from other schools, recruit high school players, manage their rotating coaching staff, and oh yeah, coach actual football.

In total, more than 1000 players entered the portal in the first two days alone, with Monday accounting for 75% of them. It's not just players looking for playing time elsewhere, either. There are multiple multi-year stars, like DJ Uiagalelei and Spencer Sanders, looking for new homes.

Whatever. It's madness out here. Wake me up in August when the dust settles.

About a month ago, I hinted that we might be seeing more states legalizing NIL at the high school level to keep up with the Calis and Oregons of the world which were already allowing it. Lo and behold, two more states have joined the ranks.

First, Pennsylvania legalized NIL, and four star wide receiver and West Virginia commit Rodney Gallagher II became the first player in state history to sign an endorsement deal before taking his algebra 2 final.

Failing to be first yet again, Tennessee quickly followed suit, allowing high school players to monetize their name, image, likeness. Not only is Tennessee likely the opening of the gates for these legal changes throughout the football-crazed South, but it's also a bit ironic considering the rumored $8 million deal that the Vols' collective used to entice a high school quarterback out of California to commit last summer...

If you watched any games this year, you were one of many. A whole lotta people watched college football, and now, we know which games people watched the most.

The Game was the game of the year yet again. Going back to back like Jordan in '96 and '97, the Ohio State-Michigan matchup had high stakes, both times propelling the Wolverines to the Playoffs over their Big Ten rival. In total, 17.1 million people tuned in, far outpacing the runnerup's 13.1 million.

The most watched time slot was the 3:30 ET kickoff, good news for CBS' deal for the SEC Game of the Week. Tenn-UGA was the top game from this batch, coming in at second overall, followed by the Vols hosting Bama with 11.6M. The SEC Championship took first non-medaler, suggesting that people in the South might like the sport.

Already did a coaching carousel special edition last week, but a few notable ones since then:

• Ex-Jackson State HC Deion Sanders is headed to Colorado where he'll be making $29.5 million over 5 years. It's the largest contract in Buffs history, and possibly the most noteworthy hire of this coaching cycle.

• Scott Satterfield is headed to Cinci under a six year, $21.9 million deal creating an opening at Louisville. Sorta awk that the Bearcats and Cardinals are playing in the Fenway Bowl in a couple weeks...

• Jeff Brohm is packing his bag and headed home to take the briefly vacated Cardinals job, where he'll be making $35 million over 6 years.

• Jamey Chadwell is abandoning the coolest field in CFB as he trades his Coastal Carolina gear for some Liberty swag. He's doubling his salary and earning $4M/year through 2030.

• Coastal filled its opening quickly by bringing in NC State OC Tim Beck on a five-year deal worth just over $5 million in total.

• Arkansas DC Barry Odom is learning to bluff and taking over UNLV on a 5 year deal worth around $9.25 million in total.

• Tennessee OC Alex Golesh is trading the checkers in Neyland for the neon uniforms in SoFlo as he takes the USF job. Side note, Golesh was born in Moscow. He's gotta be the only Russian-born HC in CFB, right?

• Tulsa hired Ohio State OC Kevin Wilson to be its new HC for the next 5 years.

• Former Louisville OC Lance Taylor is putting on the big man visor and taking the Western Michigan head gig.

Not all coaches are scouring LinkedIn for new jobs, though. In fact, a few are deciding they kinda like it here, and they're gonna invest in that new outdoor fire pit afterall.

• PJ Fleck is staying in Minnesota for another 7 years, getting paid $42 million to yell "Row the boat!" and occasionally coach the football team.

• Sonny Dykes is getting an extension after just one year in Fort Worth. Pretty big no-brainer for the guy that managed to take the Frogs from a losing record last year to the CFP in 12 months... TCU is a private school, so the details of the contract don't have to be reported, but the new deal will reportedly keep him in his boots and purple cowboy hat until 2028.

Finally, it's bowl season.

Not the soup kind. Not the cereal kind. Not the "bumpers up" kind. Just me? Oh

It's college football bowl szn, meaning every team that finished at least 6-6 with no more than 1 of those wins coming against FBS opponents (that means 6-6 App State didn't qualify) and a select few 5-7 teams that might have been bad on the field but really buckled down in the class room, now knows where they'll be playing their final game of the year.

As mentioned last week, the playoffs will officially be expanded for the 2024-2025 season. With the wonky rules and upsets across the conference championship weekend, this year's field would have looked like:

For now, at least, we have just the four team model and a whole bunch of bowl games for the next month. All of them are officially set, and you can find the whole list here.

How are these games decided, though?

The process starts at the very top where the College Football Playoff committee ranks the top four teams. These teams play in a rotating two (this year the Fiesta and Peach Bowls) of the six (Rose, Sugar, Cotton, and Orange Bowls making up the others) "New Years Six" games.

The other four big games are then filled based on conference affiliations, partnerships signed between the bowl games and the conferences themselves to ensure them the first selection of non-playoff teams from the partner conferences.

Most of the remaining bowl games have contracts with conferences, too, paying for the right to choose in a certain order from the teams left over after the first 12 teams are all off the board. This ranges from the grandaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl always getting first choice of a Pac-12 against Big Ten team, all the way to the MAC having a guaranteed game with a Mountain West foe in the Idaho Potato Bowl.

If 86 teams fail to reach .500, the remaining spots are filled by 5-7 teams in order of their academic progress rankings, where the top performing academic team fills the first spot and so on until they're all filled. This year, only one spot was left up for grabs for teams that couldn't even win half of their games. It went to Rice. Of course lmao.

You might wonder why conferences are so proud to get two teams in the Playoffs, and why it was such a big deal that Utah crushed the Pac-12's opportunity to get just one team when the Utes beat USC last weekend.

The answer? Conferences get a nice little check for all bowl games, and understandably a bit more for each representative in the final four.

Conferences are paid $6 million per playoff team and another $4 million for each team making a regular bowl. The money doesn't stop there, though, as each bowl games tacks on their own individual payouts as well.

Starting with the Bahamas Bowl on December 16 between Miami (Ohio) and UAB, each team will be awarded $225K, though in reality, most of the payouts go to each team's conference bowl pools. On the other end of the scale, the VRBO Citrus Bowl, this year featuring the LSU Tigers and Purdue Boilermakers, pays participants more than $8 million.

How this conference pool is split gets a bit messy, as each conference has its own policy around how much each team itself gets to keep. Generally, playoff teams get to pocket around $2 million in addition to paid-for travel expenses with the rest going back to the general pool to be distributed evenly amongst members. Some, like the SEC are more generous with the school's cut and allow the team to pocket this and an additional $2 mil for reaching the championship. Others, like the Pac-12, don't let Playoff teams keep any of the semifinal reward. Can you guess which one hasn't had a team make it since 2016?

Even for the other bowl games, conferences have different rules on the cut of the payouts that each team gets to keep, some allowing for a larger share of individual bowl appearance earnings and others not allowing for any. Even after this, the general pool money is sometimes split between all conference members and other times between just those who qualified for bowl games. I think you're starting to get the idea, but it's a conference-by-conference decision. Is this CFB federalism?

Things get a little messier for Notre Dame and the other indie schools who are forced to negotiate these bowl contracts on their own, though most bowl games are willing to shell out significant money for one of the most irrelevant revered brands in. At least they got to keep the full $6 million when they got boat raced by Bama a few years ago.

Bowls are a mess, and honestly, you can spend hours getting lost in the choose-your-own-adventure that is following bowl tie ins and selections. And hey, if you think this process is bad, imagine how complex things get when you have to format the NCAA tournament every year... Luckily, my friends over at The Field of 68 Daily have the basketball newsletter for all of your March Madness needs:

Bowl season means big money for a bunch of athletic programs that already have big money. Big money + big money = more big money. College football, baby.

Tomorrow is the Army-Navy game at 3 ET, then no games until Friday. I

After watching the Black Knights dominate, you can help me as we band together to protest the travesty that is Stetson Bennet receiving Heisman Finalist recognition over Hendon Hooker. Caleb Williams deserves to win it, regardless, but just a year removed from snubbing Will Anderson in similar fashion, and I think it's time we require all voters to take a qualification test to make sure they know the forward pass is now legal.

Cheers to another day,

Trey