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How Prime Time Deion Is Changing College Coaching And The Transfer Portal.

By: Leonard Armato for Forbes.com

By: Leonard Armato for Forbes.com

It was national news when Deion Sanders was hired last week as the head coach of Colorado University’s struggling football team and college football will never be the same. “Prime Time” Deion lit up the media with his press conference announcing his new coaching job and his first meeting with the current University of Colorado football team.

At his press conference Deion made it clear that he was “old school” and that there was “new sheriff in town” that would hold his players to the highest standard of accountability both on and off the field. He then conducted a players meeting and told them to go get on the portal or be ready to compete against the top tier new talent he would attract to the school. Following his announcement, it was reported by On3.com that the school has had over 200 players including a number of 4 and 5 star recruits inquire about transferring to play at Colorado and 4 star running back Dylan Edwards de-committed to Notre Dame and put Colorado on his list, alongside Kansas State as his school of choice. The smart money is on Colorado and Coach Prime.

BOULDER, CO – DECEMBER 4: Deion Sanders, CUs new head football coach, holds up a personalized … [+]
DENVER POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Deion’s media blitz made it clear to the world that college coaches are the new rock stars of collegiate sports and have the power to transform a program through the use of the transfer portal. But Deion wasn’t the first charismatic coach to re-ignite a flagging program through the use of the portal. Lincoln Riley did it spectacularly this past season for the University of Southern California by taking a 4-8 team to a record of 11-2 by taking Caleb Williams, his Heisman Trophy front runner and star quarterback with him from Oklahoma via the transfer portal. Riley also brought in roughly 40 new players via the portal including star wide receiver, Mario Williams and CB Latrell McCutchin.

The message is now clear to conferences and universities that charismatic coaches are the key to building a successful program and schools must be willing to make the investment if they hope to compete. Deion Sanders agreement averages roughly $6M per year and while Colorado has never awarded that type of lucrative contract to a coach before, the expectation is that the investment will provide the school a handsome return by transforming the football program and super charging fundraising from boosters of the school. Sponsorship and ticket sales have already increased dramatically and boosters are for the first time in years lining up to provide financial support to the program.

The effects of all this have filtered up all the way to the Conference level. At the Sports Business Journal Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in Las Vegas this past week all of the Conference Commissioners discussed the importance of their media deals and how they were driven by the success of their football programs. Pac-12 Commissioner, George Kliavkoff, was one of the few Commissioners still in the midst of negotiating the media deal for his Conference and he said they would not likely conclude until early 2023. It has been widely reported that ESPN and Amazon are the prime candidates to secure these rights but that the parties are still far apart. Admittedly several factors will impact the value of that deal and how the negotiations ultimately conclude. One is whether UCLA will be permitted by the California board of Regents to withdraw from the Pac-12. That decision is expected by next week. If UCLA is somehow forced to stay that would strengthen the Pac-12’s hand in its media rights negotiations. And second, Kliavkoff openly shared his enthusiasm that Colorado (a Pac-12 schools) had secured Deion Sanders as its head football coach. If you read the tea leaves, Deion will likely turn the Buffs into a football powerhouse which makes the Pac-12 media rights significantly more valuable.

It will be exciting to see where this is all headed but every Conference and University needs to come to grips with the reality that coaches are king and every school is but a charismatic head coach away from being a contender for the National Championship and the money and prestige that comes along with it.

Legends of Sport Feature : Sports Agent and Entrepreneur Leonard Armato.

Sports agent and entrepreneur, Leonard Armato, is known for representing elite athletes Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His resume includes creating the sports marketing brands of Golden Boy for Oscar De La Hoya and Dunkman for Shaq.

From Left: Shaquille O’Neal with Agent Leonard Armato

From the Legends of Sport website, written by Andrew D. Bernstein

Sports agent and entrepreneur, Leonard Armato, is known for representing elite athletes Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His resume includes creating the sports marketing brands of Golden Boy for Oscar De La Hoya and Dunkman for Shaq.

Leonard studied law and combined his passions for both the legal field and sports media to form Management Plus Enterprises.

“You got to do something you’re passionate about. I always wanted to help people because my dad was a professor and loved to share knowledge with people. Being a trial lawyer wasn’t for me,” Leonard said.

Leonard says his mentor, former USC basketball coach Stan Morrison, helped push him towards his current career. “He said, ‘Well, you play basketball, you understand the mentality of an athlete, why don’t you become a sports lawyer, and help these people who are losing all their money and who only play three, four years and then have nothing, help them make the transition from professional athlete to business person.’”

Leonard’s first client was former USC and NFL defensive legend Ronnie Lott. He recalls meeting Ronnie and selling him on himself as sports lawyer despite his lack of clientele and without backing from a large firm.

“I said, ‘Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse. I will work for you for 30 days for free. You don’t have to pay me a dime. I will prove to you that I’m the very best for you. And if at the end of 30 days, you don’t agree with me, I will walk away. You have no obligation whatsoever.’ And it caught him off guard.”

Leonard’s pitch worked and he devoted “24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” to proving his value with his first client and eventually turning sports management into a business. Leonard quit his litigation job to pursue sports management and help athletes transform the way they market themselves.

“One of the things I’ve always enjoyed doing in my career is looking for challenges and trying to do something innovative. When I saw Shaq, I thought because he’s really unique. Maybe we can transform the way that athletes and celebrities are marketed,” Leonard said. He explains that Michael Jordan was the gold standard of endorsements and promoted products but Leonard wanted to push the boundaries for his athletes.

“Michael Jordan was the endorsement king. His agent did a great job of doing deals for him where you make a bunch of money endorsing Nike products, you make a bunch of money endorsing Fruit of the Loom, or Gatorade, or McDonald’s. But I started to think, well, maybe an athlete could be a brand, and he could own his own intellectual property, and ultimately license it to all different partners.”

Leonard compares his approach to David Stern’s management of the NBA and explains how he built value among his clients by first creating a sense of community.

“Through feeling a part of the community, you can build more value in the brand. What we did was shocking, I’ll never forget, the first deal we did was two deals, they were Reebok and Pepsi. Both of them agreed to put a lot of marketing behind Shaq. I got Lee Clow, who is a legendary creative, to create a logo that we would own and license to Reebok. He created the Shaq Dunkman logo and the associated logos. We licensed it to Reebok. We licensed it to everybody who was in business with us and said, ‘You got to use this in your advertising and that will help build value in that brand.’ It all kind of worked.”

In addition to working one-on-one with clients, Leonard is responsible for creating the AVP tour: The first professional beach volleyball league and tournament.

“When I was a young sports agent, I used to play beach volleyball with friends. Before it was a pro sport, some of them asked me, ‘Oh, can we organize and become more professional.’ Back in the mid -80s, I created the AVP revival tour and it was quite successful. It was like the first lifestyle sport and it grew and exploded.”

After a hiatus, Leonard returned to the then-struggling AVP and helped launch it into a higher level of sport.

“The thing that I did, which I’m kind of proud of, is I put men and women together under one umbrella and with equal prize money, and equal television time for both men and women. It sort of grew. The next iteration of AVP which really launched beach volleyball is a women’s sport.”

“I’ve spoken a lot about inequality in sports when it comes to gender. Men’s sports in our society are given so much more exposure, credibility than women. So with beach volleyball, when we made prize money equal for men and women and made TV time equal for men and women, I think that was a big step. In the Olympic Games, women’s beach volleyball gets a good audience and people love watching it,” Leonard said.

Recently athletes have used their influence to discuss social issues and show their support for BLM, women’s rights, and many other topics.

“Everybody should be able to use their platform to promote good, and promote things that are going to change the world for the better. I think athletes should speak their mind and should exercise whatever political viewpoints that they want,” Leonard said.

“The last point I want to make is that athletes today have an opportunity that they’ve never had before, they have a powerful engine, so that they are now media companies that can have a direct relationship with consumers and fans, and that’s a huge opportunity. The engine that they have, whether it’s the NBA, or the NFL, or marketing partners, is sort of fuel for them to grow their audience. And by growing their audience, they grow their influence. And I think LeBron is a great example of that. He’s got tremendous influence, and he’s got 125 million people that he can reach directly across all those platforms. That’s power, and you have to use that power for good.”

Hear more behind-the-scenes stories from Leonard’s career and client list, plus his memories of Kobe Bryant. Listen to the Legends Of Sport podcast, and watch the full YouTube video featuring Leonard‘s interview and career journey now!

NFT Heat Podcast Episode #34 : Leonard Armato, Founder of Management Plus Enterprises.

Featured guest speaker Leonard Armato joins John Kraski and Justin Shenkarow on the NFT Heat podcast to talk all about the future of NFT's, and how brands can transition from web2 to web3.

Featured guest speaker Leonard Armato joins John Kraski and Justin Shenkarow on the NFT Heat podcast to talk all about the future of NFT’s, and how brands can transition from web2 to web3.

Leonard is a strategic adviser to high profile CEOs and is a Master at Enabling Greatness. He is considered a visionary leader in the convergence of sports, entertainment, marketing and technology and is now quickly taking these same principles that made him a powerhouse in Web 2.0 to becoming one of the top NFT and Web3 Thought Leaders in the world.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ENDORSEMENTS FOR ACTUAL FEMALE ATHLETES.

Under Armour has been named Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year primarily for its novel approach marketing to women. The success Under Armour has enjoyed with its “I Will” campaign underscores why Title IX — while generating lots of positive results — has not succeeded in reshaping opportunities for women in sports marketing and redefining the way our society treats and values women’s sports.

Under Armour has been named Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year primarily for its novel approach marketing to women. The success Under Armour has enjoyed with its “I Will” campaign underscores why Title IX — while generating lots of positive results — has not succeeded in reshaping opportunities for women in sports marketing and redefining the way our society treats and values women’s sports.

Now, Puma has followed suit by signing Rihanna as the face of its women’s fitness line and giving her the title of “creative director,” and Nike has joined the ranks by inking a deal with top model Karlie Kloss.

When Under Armour debuted its “I Will” campaign with a TV commercial featuring Gisele Bundchen, I offered the opinion that, while the effort is effective, a double standard has been created by the media that has shaped viewing habits, public opinion and marketing. This trend does not bode well for the growth of women’s sports nor does it help top-tier female athletes who hope to build a brand for themselves or, at the very least, secure valuable endorsements.

The starting point of all this is that women’s sports get a fraction of the respect and audience that men’s sports do. The media has not historically promoted or distributed women’s sports. And most women athletes grew up looking up to male athletes as their role models.

Title IX was supposed to provide equality for women in athletics by ensuring that women could participate in organized competitive sports, and clearly there have been benefits. Reportedly, 2.8 million girls around the country play varsity sports leading to more than $1 million in college scholarships per year. Moreover, such participation clearly benefited women off the field of play in that sports teaches important virtues necessary to succeed in business: hard work, team work, and perseverance. In fact, 52 percent of women executives today, according to espnW, participated in competitive sports at the university level or above.

However, Title IX did nothing to improve equal opportunity for women interested in professional sports as a career — it just did not go far enough.

Girls got to play instead of cheerlead, but our sports viewing habits did not change. Why? The reason is that, while schools had to change and let girls play sports, the media was allowed to continue its old ways of ignoring women’s sports. A primary reason why we do not perceive male and female athletes equally is that the media treat women’s sports like second-class citizens, and advertisers only follow suit.

Bottom line, our attitude toward women’s athletes is shaped by sports media and Madison Avenue. And Madison Avenue sets the standard for our double standard of social currency among men (rich/winner/athletic) and women (attractive/youthful).

When it comes to male athletes, all that matters is whether you win at one of the major sports. The general rule is that if you are a winner — the best in the business — then you will be rewarded handsomely with endorsements or marketing deals like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James or Kevin Durant, to name a few. In marked contrast, the sports brands realized over the years that you don’t have to pay top women athletes the big bucks no matter what.

For example, when we represented Lisa Leslie, the best player in the WNBA, Nike kept reducing its offers to her even as she got better and more dominant as a player. The reasoning was that Nike discovered that male athletes were still driving the sales of the shoes anyway (girls looked up to the male athletes more because of the additional exposure and promotion that they received).

More recently, as women have been wearing workout gear or athletic apparel throughout the day (as men have done for years), the sports brands have started to experiment with different approaches seeing this as a growth market. Now, there is much more emphasis on whether a female athlete is attractive and youthful, rather than the best in the world. In fact, it is arguably better to be an athletic youthful model rather than an athlete who happens to be attractive (at least from Under Armour’s perspective). All of this is completely in line with Madison Avenue’s view of how to market women.

There was quite a bit of chatter around Under Armour’s signing of Bundchen to a reportedly whopping deal to be the face of its women’s athletic footwear and apparel line. Obviously, she is super-attractive, athletic and perhaps even a remarkable lady, but she certainly is not considered a world-class athlete nor is she the best in the world at a sport that large numbers of girls play (i.e. soccer, basketball or volleyball).

But who can argue with Under Armour’s results in light of the growth for its women’s business as a result of the “I Will” campaign?

I appreciate attractive female athletes, but I don’t think that being physically attractive should be the initial criterion when a sports brand is deciding whether to sign a woman endorser. But it seems the women who are buying the product don’t really care about this.

If we really want to see change, the sports media, starting with the major distributors like ESPN, Fox and NBC, should be required to promote and distribute a certain amount of women’s sports on TV. This would require legislative action much like Title IX or the Children’s Television Act. The Federal Communications Commission and perhaps the courts would likely follow to support and give teeth to that legislation.

Girls and women need to be conditioned to watch women’s sports. They make up more than half the viewing audience for goodness sake. Not only should sports companies apply the same standard to female athletes as they do to men, they should make women’s sports just as relevant to women as men’s sports are to men.

If the government were courageous enough to take affirmative action, this would likely happen.