Can you run a Premier League team?
Plus: College football changes, ESPN's mascot, and a GOAT rebrand
Back by popular demand, here are six sports business items that caught our eyes to start your week.
The Sportico Story of the Week 🏈: Two great pieces exemplified the chaos engulfing college sports right now, with a 25-year-old West Virginia 🏔️ defensive lineman winning another year of eligibility through the courts, and Stanford 🌲 tapping an ex-Nike CEO to run its athletic department, with it looking more like a business than ever. We’ll talk more about this on tomorrow’s Sporticast, but the amount of behind-the-scenes changes going on across the country is still going underdiscussed, I think. This is very much a different sport we are now watching.
The Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🐂: I can’t wait for Seth Wickersham’s upcoming book on the evolution of quarterbacks, a topic I find endlessly fascinating, given how it reflects 75 years of American history. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying excerpts, including this one on Arch Manning’s “1975” recruitment.
What Made Me Laugh 🤡: I’ve come around on App-E. ⬇️
I’m not usually a big mascot guy, but something about ESPN’s new avatar’s retro vibes has won me over. It’s giving Clippy.
What I Played 🎮: The Financial Times created a Premier League simulator solely focused on the intricacies of navigating the league’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR). I still don’t really understand the system, but I would play a full game based around this kind of thing.
Give it a go and let us know how you do in the comments!
What I Don’t Understand 🤔: Does anyone else get the same video of LeBron James putting on another player’s glasses served in their X feed like twice a week? And each time it has like 3 million views?? Just me? It always comes as a reminder that that place isn’t what it once was.
What I (Almost) Bought 💰: Something from Lacoste’s new G.O.A.T. collection, honoring Novak Djokovic. I’m not even a Nole fan, but a brand changing its own signature logo for a star athlete really spoke to me. Then again, this (now out of stock) tee shirt was $100.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.