Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

The 2024-2005 Fall Athletics season has already started, with college women’s soccer programs kicking off (get it?) last week. The college football season begins this weekend. Last week was full of updates on various collegiate sports legal challenges, recruiting drama and administrative changes. There’s a lot to talk about.

So naturally, I want to spend this morning talking about Northern Arizona.

The NAU Lumberjacks are not a preseason favorite to make noise in the FCS ranks. The Lumberjacks were picked 9th in the Big Sky Preseason Media Poll, and they haven’t advanced beyond the First Round of the FCS Playoffs since 2003. When I think NAU, I think about dominant cross-country programs, the Skydome, and Louie the Lumberjack, one of the few mascots that regularly caries a weapon. All very cool, but generally not the sort of thing that leads Extra Points in late August.

But NAU is doing something different in their mascot department, even more different than “giving the mascot an axe.”

For six times next season, Northern Arizona won’t be the lumberjacks. They will be the Astrojacks.

NAU will roll out a completely new color scheme, new marks, new uniforms, even a completely new mascot. Introducing “Blouie the Space Ox.”

Blouie and the Astrojacks moniker won’t be used for any NAU football games this year, but the branding will be used for select soccer, volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball games this season.

And if you’re wondering why NAU is leaning hard into the space branding here, it’s because Flagstaff apparently has a rich history in space research. The city is the home of Lowell Observatory, was designated as the first “Dark Sky City”, and was where Pluto was discovered. NAU now joins the legion of other schools, from Rice to Purdue to UCF, who claim space-related branding. Personally, I think they should hold some sort of space-themed MTE to see who gets to keep the moniker for the next season.

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This isn’t just a goofy one-off promotion. I actually think it’s a strategy that can be scaled and replicated across mid and low-majors to bring in actual money

If you are a dominant program that perennially competes for national championships, you’re going to be able to sell tickets. I don’t want to say that folks at Ohio State football or Duke basketball don’t have to try to move tickets or find sponsorship partners, because I know they do…but on some level, there is an understanding that you could just throw the doors open and lots of people are going to show up.

Northern Arizona is not one of those programs. Most schools in DI aren’t. They do not have the ticket and promotional model of most major professional sports teams. The value proposition to watching Big Sky college basketball, Southland football or MAC baseball is closer to that of minor league sports.

If I were to buy tickets to see the Chicago Dogs next weekend, am I doing it because I care deeply about if the Dogs can leapfrog the Kane County Cougars and the Celburne Railroaders to get to first place in the American Association East Division? Do I care about watching championship caliber baseball?

No, almost nobody does. I’d buy tickets because I like live baseball, I can afford to actually take my family to a game and buy hot dogs and pop without having to fill out a financial aid application, and because there’s going to be some goofy stunts to hold the attention of my six-year-old. Multiple somebodies are going to be in hot dog costumes. There will probably be a Stars Wars night at some point. It’ll get weird.

It’s not a perfect analogy to mid-major college sports (I didn’t graduate from the Chicago Dogs, nor do I have any sort of deep-seated emotional attachment to any part of the organization, other than a shared love of encased meats), but there are plenty of similarities. If minor league ball clubs want folks to show up, they know they have to be prepared to stand on their head a little bit.

I look at a Space Cows promotion as something similar…and the move can generate more than just ticket revenue

Sorry, Blouie the Space Ox. Typo.

Sure, the promotion is a chance for NAU to share their community connection to celestial research, which is an objectively cool thing the university should do, no matter how angry it makes UCF fans online. And I imagine that the presence of a giant Space Ox will help sell a few more tickets to volleyball and basketball games.

But I think there’s multiple potential revenue streams here. NAU will debut new Astrojack uniforms for these games… I’ve seen mockups for the basketball uniforms, and I think I can say they represent an, uh, healthy departure from the most conservative base uniform set (think something closer to the Marquette baby blues, only Space themed).

Challenges with existing apparel contracts, retail distribution channels and minimum orders will make it very difficult for most mid-majors to produce a one-off alternate uniform package to sell in the bookstore and local athletic apparel shops. But I don’t think there is anything stopping NAU from, say, auctioning off the uniforms at the end of the season. Split the money with an NIL collective, use them as flagships for a donor silent auction, make them a grand prize attached to donor points, etc.

All the uniforms, branding, IP that is created from something like this creates assets that can be sold, donated or utilized as part of other department campaigns. Look at what Hawaii is doing. This is a good idea! Maybe other schools should steal it!

You don’t need to trot out the actual Blouie seven times a year to, say, sell stuffed Blouies in the bookstore, or license Blouie t-shirts to your apparel partners, or have Blouie show up to your local ribbon-cutting type events. Not so often as to undermine the brand equity that you’ve developed with your other marks, but enough to drive value in other ways.

Not everybody can make a space themed promotion. But there’s a “space promotion” out there for almost everybody

So maybe you’re worried about the oversaturation of space in the name of mining additional licensing revenue. I get it.

But just about every other university has a unique tie to a particular industry, community or niche, one that can be celebrated via their athletic department. Maybe that means Wazzu does something to lean into the region’s rich agricultural history (here’s Butch T. Cougar and his new friend…Lenny the Lentil!), or a rubber or tire themed promotion for Akron, or Utah Valley can tap into the rich history of the Wasatch Front with a Pioneer promotion, or Tech Startup promotion, or perhaps “door to door security system and essential oil salespeople” promotion.

These are rough drafts. I’m a reporter, not Don Draper for Cartoon Mascots. The Actually Well Developed Mid-Major Promotional Idea Newsletter costs extra.

But here’s the TL;DR. Every single college athletic department needs to find new ways to earn revenue. I believe that means it’s time to consider space oxen

The extra money to fund Alston awards, Cost of Attendance and whatever level of revenue sharing each D-I institution isn’t going to come from ESPN or Fox cutting a bigger check out of a sense of magnanimity. It might not come from your likely already over-stretched donor base. It won’t come from the NCAA. If it’s coming, it’ll have to come from somewhere new.

For many programs, I think there’s still revenue out there in tickets, sponsorships, licensing and merchandising, but it won’t be realized without taking a few risks. That might mean selling your stadium naming rights to a musician. It might mean rolling out a basketball uniform based on a design written in crayon by a local eight-year old. And it might mean rolling out a goofy new alternate mascot.

And look, I recognize that not everybody can do the space theme. But listen, Arkansas, if you’re reading, I do think this idea might have some juice.