Young Coaches Are I-Bankers Without the Money
Plus: The hotel that NBA players hate, UCLA's ticket sales, and Tiger Woods' mugshot capsule collection.
Here are six sports business items to start the week…
A Great March Madness Photo 🏀: On Sunday Yahoo Sports published a great profile of Michigan men’s basketball coach Dusty May, whose team plays for a national title tonight in Indianapolis. It opens with an anecdote about May’s first Final Four in Indy, when he and three other Indiana student managers spent a few days in a hotel lobby trying to land jobs with coaches in town for the tournament. This is a photo of them that morning (May is in the light blue) 👇
The story covers May’s whole career trajectory, starting with his decision to stop playing college basketball and instead transfer to Indiana in the hopes of getting a very competitive student manager role with Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers1. I’ve read stories like this about dozens of coaches, and I’m always struck by how unglamourous a career this is in the beginning. Insane hours, loads of stress, little job security. It feels like investment banking but with one major difference—there’s also very little pay.
The financial rewards, of course, definitely eventually exist for the top 1% of coaches. May makes $4.6 million at Michigan, and will pocket a $400,000 bonus if the Wolverines win the title tonight.
A Great March Madness Stat 🎟️: The UCLA women’s team won its first NCAA title on Sunday with a blowout win over South Carolina. The Bruins have simmered just under the sport’s highest tier for almost a decade, a good reminder that the so-called women’s college basketball boom hasn’t hit everyone equally.
I was struck by this stat. In the 2023-24 season, when the team went 27-7 and spent time ranked No. 2 in the country, UCLA sold just $313,000 worth of women’s basketball tickets. That ranked 34th among public FBS schools, one spot ahead of Toledo. Both Iowa and UConn, for reference, topped the list at $3.3 million.
Sign of the Times 👕: Tiger Woods’ apparel company, Sun Day Red, has been running these ads on Instagram, promoting the blue polo shirt that the golfer was wearing during his car crash and subsequent DUI arrest last week. I don’t know what’s more revealing, the fact that the company took this approach or the fact that the $125 shirt is now reportedly sold out, with vibrant sales on the secondary market.
Speaking of golf merch, I’m choosing to believe that this hat for sale at the Masters’ on-site shop is the golf establishment throwing shade at Woods.
What Made Me Laugh 🛏️: NBA social media has been obsessing recently about the city of Memphis, sparked in part by comments LeBron James made on a recent golf YouTube channel. Much of the wider hate from players, however, seems to stem from the Westin hotel that road teams use when visiting the Grizzlies. Here’s a master cut of players complaining about it.
Internet creator GFed, who gained a sizeable online following by reviewing pro and college stadiums, drove this weekend from Chicago to Memphis to stay in the now-infamous Westin. Here’s his review of the hotel.
Sportico Story of the Week 🍶: Leo Messi’s arrival in MLS has gotten a lot of attention, and rightfully so, but there’s another great MLS business story unfolding in Los Angeles with LAFC and South Korean striker Son Heung-min. Perhaps the league’s second-biggest signing of the past half decade, Son’s arrival has opened up a wealth of commercial opportunities for the team in Korea and with the large local Korean-American population. Our colleague Justin Birnbaum wrote about this last week by focusing on my favorite Korean export, soju.
Non-Sportico Story of the Week 💰: I really enjoyed this story from The Athletic about how the richest athletes in the world make money. From team equity (Messi) and deferred payments (Ohtani) to massive bonuses (Ronaldo) and salary cap increases (Curry), it breaks down how the economies vary across leagues and sports.
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In the late 1990s, Indiana had 16 (!) student managers. Each year, over 100 students would apply for the four open roles.
The fact that LeBron doubled down and said that he didn't just hate Memphis made me laugh.