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

Friends, that was a weekend to remember.

On Saturday night, the Westminster Titans defeated the Marietta Pioneers, 27-13, in the inaugural Extra Points Bowl. This game, part of the Opendorse Bowl Series, was our first foray into event sponsorship. We wanted to better understand how event operations really worked, what actually goes into running a postseason event, the opportunities and challenges in the sponsorship space for small colleges…and, of course, to help throw a great event for D-III athletes.

The result was outstanding. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this event was truly one of the highlights of my career.

There’ll be time for perhaps more detailed analysis, especially as we prepare for next year’s Extra Points Bowl, but I did want to share four major takeaways I have from the experience.

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Where you play the game matters a lot

We were exceptionally fortunate to have just the ideal venue partner for the Opendorse Bowl Series: The Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio.

For one, it was highly accessible to fans of both schools. Westminster is about 75 miles away from Canton, and Marietta is only about 100 or so miles down interstate 77, both very doable drives. Canton is easily within driving distance from Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, and most of the other metro areas where fans of either institution would live, so the location would be unlikely to price out any fans.

But beyond that, the location was also a major draw. Tom Benson Stadium seats about 23,000 people, which I don’t mind saying, was waaaaaaay more than a D-III bowl game could ever possibly hope to draw in year one, especially when the weather was lousy.

But a larger stadium meant access to amenities that were well out of reach of most D-III-type stadiums, from multiple concession options, to indoor club seating, to massive scoreboards and state-of-the-art sound systems, to a large and modern press box. Most of the athletes participating in the game had never played in a stadium anywhere close to that size before, and they were thrilled to be there.

Plus, it’s the dang Pro Football Hall of Fame! The Chicago Bears played on that exact field just a few months ago. All four teams participating in the Opendorse Bowl Series got a tour of the Hall of Fame the day before. I walked with many of those athletes who told me they have never been there before and really appreciated the chance to take in some football history…and also to hop on the sticks at the Madden exhibit.

There are other D-III bowl games, and I think they’re awesome. Just about any team would be very happy to play in one of those games. But there’s something unique about being able to offer not just another game, but a game in a new, exciting and different place that adds to the entire athlete and fan experience.

This would have still been a great game if we had played it in, say, the Steubenville High School Stadium or something. But playing it at the Hall of Fame changed the experience completely into something even more.

Who you partner with also matters a lot

It takes a lot of people to make a game like this work…too many for any one person, organization or conference.

I feel secure in saying that we did legitimate help a lot. We helped secure additional sponsors and support for the game, helped sell tickets and drive media attention, accelerate some operational and logistical timelines, and more, but if this was just an Extra Points and Opendorse operation, there’s no way in hell this event would have happened.

We were exceptionally fortunate to have great support not just from the Hall of Fame, but from Visit Canton. None of the four conferences are based in Canton, I’m in Chicago, and Opendorse is in Nebraska. We did not have the on-the-ground operational expertise to figure out hotels, parking, concessions, police, and the gazillion other little tiny things that come up with hosting a huge event. The Hall of Fame and Visit Canton were outstanding in helping so much of the event operations run smoothly. I struggle to see how any event could be high quality without that level of expertise.

I’m also deeply thankful for the four conferences that partnered with us for the event: the Heartland Conference, North Coast Athletic Conference, Ohio Athletic Conference, and Presidents’ Athletic Conference. All four leagues were comfortable with a slightly-irreverent internet newsletter taking a large role in this process, were supportive when I asked lots of dumb questions over the last six months, and cared deeply about the event and the athletes.

Not every conference is going to be okay with bringing in a cosponsor called “The Sickos Committee.” I’m told that was a little touch and go until everybody realized that no, this was a group that talks about football…but it all worked out.

I don’t think this is the sort of thing you can only tepidly support. If you want to have a great bowl, a great basketball MTE, or a great event anywhere, you have to be all-in. I always felt like that was the case during the planning of this game.

We were also fortunate to have a broadcast partner, FloSports, who really took care to make this game as high-production value of an event as possible. This was a multi-camera event with professional broadcasters, instant replay and more, and from inside the stadium, it looked awesome.

We also had a great experience working with Opendorse. I felt the NIL and personal-brand related education seminars they offered to the athletes were really good, and with so many ex-small college athletes on staff, it was clear that their group cared about who they were partnering with, and why. I came away feeling like they were an outstanding partner for this type of event, rather than perhaps a company looking for more of a basic, transactional relationship. That’s fine too, but not what you need for a feature sponsor of a small, first-year event.

I gotta be honest. There are some legitimate challenges in trying to put on an event in the D-III space, especially with novices like us

There were two things about D-III that I thought I understood intellectually, but didn’t really understand until I got in the thick of everything.

One, everybody in D-III is understaffed. You know how many full-time staffers a typically D-III league has? Like, three. Maybe. So those three people are handling championship events, compliance issues, corporate and community sponsorships, institutional engagement, NCAA governance, and like seven other critical things I’m forgetting.

That means, for as much as they cared about our bowl games, this was never the only priority for any particular employee…everybody had to squeeze in Extra Points Bowl time in between travel and gazillion other meetings. That just meant that a lot of decisions happened slower than they might in the Big Ten or SEC (or heck, The Southland). That isn’t anyone’s fault…it’s just that there was so much else going on. We also had one of the four conference commissioners leave for a different commissioner job over the summer, which led to some institutional knowledge loss.

There are also major capacity differences between different D-III schools. It might be dumb to admit this in public, but I didn’t realize for weeks that many potential EP Bowl schools didn’t have marching bands or mascots…or at least, too late for us to book other marching bands. Different schools have different roster sizes, which makes it tricky to order stuff like t-shirts or food. Some schools had videographers, some didn’t. The list goes on.

Thanks to the expanded D-III Playoffs, we also didn’t really know what schools were going to play in the game until almost the last possible moment. Two weeks before the game, our understanding is there were scenarios where six possible schools could have participated in the game. With the matchup only officially set six days before the game, there just wasn’t enough time to match every plan with the right schools.

Looking back on the experience, I think it’s safe to say that we got started later than we wanted on extra sponsorship sales, as well as some of the game-specific decisions, like the trophy, championship shirts, etc. But that’s okay! Part of the learning process is understanding what you didn’t know, and this was the first game for us, Opendorse, and all four leagues.

But working in D-III also brings some very special opportunities.

Let me tell you about a moment I had during the third quarter of the game.

I decided to walk down to the club section of the stadium, which was full of fans and parents who wanted to get out of the cold for a bit. I was handing out Extra Points Bowl stickers with my daughters, when a Marietta fan stopped me, wanting to talk.

This gentleman was the father of a player on the Marietta team. His son was a 5th-year senior who suffered a major injury early in the season. He wasn’t sure if he was going to get a chance to play again…but he healed in time for this game. The father reiterated how happy he was that he got another chance to watch his son play, and that his son got another chance to play with his friends.

I saw this on the field. I hear it while talking with players from both teams after the game, from talking to their parents, their coaches, their commissioners, and their friends. This was not a bowl game that players needed extra motivation to get up for. Nobody cared that the stands were mostly empty, or that the weather was cold and wet.

Matthew Howard, a senior offensive lineman for Westminster, might have said it best in the postgame press conference, when he said “a lot of teammates told me their football careers would end in Canton.”

Playing there mattered…but these guys mostly just wanted another chance to play with their brothers. One more bus ride. One more team meal. One more memory.

I joke that I spend a lot of time on what can feel like the Apocalypse beat in college sports. From writing about the (sometimes grimy) world of NIL, to the myriad legal challenges in college sports, to an uncertain legislative future, to a feeling of just being damn burnt out among many coaches and administrators. I understand why somebody on the college sports business and policy beat could get jaded.

But that was not what I saw on the field after Westminster’s victory. I saw tears of joy, of relief, and love for another. I felt I got a badly needed reminder of what else college sports is about…about the competition on the field, and the love, respect and relationships that develop from that competition.

I can’t speak for anybody else, but I know I needed that.

I needed a chance to catch a game with my whole family, while my girls played hide and seek in the various Stadium Suites in between trying to give away stickers to every person they met. I needed a chance to see a little son of a Marietta coach, maybe four years old or so, notice a few Marietta players warming up without shirts…so he decided to throw off his shirt and flex in front of the suite windows, hoping to catch the attention of his heroes.

I needed to see a group of young men flock to our little trophy and celebrate their championship, a job well done. And I needed to see a group of small college conference administrators, once the players and fans left, sprint around the turf on the Hall of Fame field, taking in the moment themselves.

I’m a pretty demonstrative guy, but I don’t get emotional all that often. But as I walked back to my car after the game, driving back to my hotel…I did cry a little bit. That just wasn’t a typical day at the ol’ office.

It was a hell of a weekend. I’m so grateful for all of your support in making this game happen. I’m grateful that it was meaningful to athletes who deserve special experiences. And I can’t wait to learn from these experiences, and make an even better event next year.

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