Texas’ showdown with Georgia in Austin sums up why Longhorns made move to SEC

AUSTIN, Texas — Striding out of his office on Thursday afternoon, Chris Del Conte is on the way to another meeting. Such is life this week for the athletic director of the country’s richest athletic department.

This meeting, like many of the rest this week, is focused on logistics related to Saturday’s big home game: No. 1 Texas vs. No. 5 Georgia.

The game is, arguably, the biggest in Darrell K Royal Stadium this late in a season in 54 years and, perhaps some here contend, it is the biggest game ever given the circumstances: the SEC’s new blood against the SEC’s old blood colliding in a top-five, prime-time showdown in front of more than 100,000 people in the bustling downtown of one of America’s booming cities.

But there’s more, says Del Conte.

Formula 1, the international racing federation, is holding its annual Grand Prix just a few miles from the football stadium, where more than 200,000 people are expected over the three-day event — from practice rounds to Sunday’s finale.

Del Conte isn’t done yet. On Saturday night, as the Bulldogs and Longhorns tangle on the football field, an F1 concert unfolds featuring lead artist Eminem.

Wait, wait. There’s even more.

Right around the time the football game goes to halftime, the city’s professional soccer team, Austin FC, begins a match across town.

Del Conte shuffles into the logistical meeting looking like someone who’s slept little.

“Saturday’s going to be a mess,” he says before pausing.

“Look, the whole thing’s fine,” he continues. “It’s just chaos!”

Chaos. A mess. Or, perhaps, another description fits this Saturday in Austin: Perfect.

If one weekend could encapsulate the essence and motive behind the school’s move to the SEC, it is this one. The Longhorns left behind their decades-old rivals in the Big 12, shuttered even the Longhorn Network and, at least somewhat, ceded their power within conference meeting rooms to have Saturdays like this one — the biggest brands in college football coming to town for marquee, nationally televised affairs.

“That part is probably the least covered by the media given the impact,” says the school’s president, Jay Hartzell. “The media focuses so much on media rights deals. They don’t focus enough on the impact of home games.”

There are more nuanced explanations as to why Texas left for the SEC. Administrators here talk about the uncertainty in future television broadcasting revenues with the decrease in linear subscriptions (cord-cutting). They point, too, to the 2018 federal tax change that prevented boosters from exempting football-related ticket donations.

But all of the reasons end with the same simple explanation: The school craved a more valuable home schedule of big-brand opponents as a way to drive their main source of revenue — football ticket sales and donations, all of it used to subsidize what has arguably been the most successful athletic department in the country this decade.

And now, on this Saturday, three years after finalizing the conference shift, it arrives. Not only that, but a conglomeration of events this weekend has ushered into this party city its biggest bash — maybe ever.

“It will be our biggest weekend of the year, if not our biggest weekend in the history of the city,” said Drew Hays, executive director of the Austin Sports Commission. “F1 is usually our Super Bowl and now you’ve got a top-five college football game.”

Known for its music festivals, eclectic food scene and hip vibe, Austin is now in the midst of something else, says Hays.

“We are having our sports moment.”

Why SEC move was so important for Texas

In his first full year as president of Texas, while maneuvering around the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hartzell fired his football coach and changed athletic conferences. Three years later, from his office overlooking the university’s campus and Austin’s expansive downtown, he beams at the result.

“Think about what was set in motion that year,” he said. “To see it come to fruition is phenomenal.”

Hartzell is a money man, a numbers guy, an economist with a doctorate (from here) in finance. He speaks sometimes in code, using language like “fixed cost base” and “variable revenues.” A longtime tennis player and sports fan, his two loves — economics and athletics — often, especially these days, come together. In fact, his first published paper dove into the financials within the Boston Celtics’ franchise.

After the 2020 football season, when the school decided to fire coach Tom Herman, Hartzell examined the athletic department’s finances. He learned something: During seasons in which Texas hosted one of college football’s biggest brands in non-conference matchups, the numbers skyrocketed.

“One marquee opponent at home was fundamentally different to the economics of a season,” he said. “The power of the home schedule has been the least well understood.”

Football television revenue and football ticket donations are the two most significant ways that major college athletic departments generate revenue. In 2023, the Texas athletic department brought in $270 million, an NCAA school record according to USA Today. Texas generates more than $60 million annually in donations from boosters to go to premium seating — roughly one-quarter of its budget. About 15% comes from television distribution.

In 2021, Del Conte presented to his board and Hartzell “a menu,” he called it, on the landscape of college sports, including information on how the decrease in linear subscriptions could impact future broadcasting revenue and the Big 12’s impending TV deal. But perhaps the most important item concerned Texas’ home football schedule — something that, over the years, diminished in value.

The Longhorns play their top rival at a neutral site each year (Oklahoma in Dallas), and with Texas A&M’s move to the SEC, they lost a game against their in-state rival.

“You can no longer write off your tickets,” Del Conte said, referencing that 2018 change in the tax code. “Who you play matters now.”

It doesn’t only matter for economics, adds Hartzell. At Texas home games, “family reunions are had, friendships are forged, networks created, business deals are done or rekindled,” he said. “Six times a year, we get 100,000 people around each other and find common ground.”

It’s a simple formula really: the bigger the opponent, the more people show up; the more people show up, the more revenue is generated; the more revenue generated, the more victories are had; the more victories had, the more people show up.

The cycle repeats.

At a time with college sports in its greatest transformation — a year away from directly sharing revenue with athletes — money is more important than ever.

During an interview Thursday, Hartzell sums up the state of college football in a few sentences.

“The way the economic forces in college sports are going is going to exacerbate the gaps between the haves and have-nots,” he says. “Cutting the cord at the household level is causing pressure on media deals. Generally, live sports are one of those things that generate a ton of interest and demand. College football is the biggest driver but not all of those games are equal. The games with the big brands drive the revenue.”

It is why SEC and Big Ten officials are in the early stages of discussing a scheduling partnership — a way to pit the industry’s most valuable programs against one another. For the same reason, outside entities have proposed new models for the future of college football, all of them with at least one commonality: the best brands play the best more often.

“It’s all coalescing around it,” Hartzell says. “I don’t have an end point in mind, but this trend of trying to find ways to get the marquee brands to play each other more frequently, I don’t think it’s over.”

“Big games in college football matter,” Del Conte says. He gestures toward the television viewership data from the first half of the college football season, where the new-look SEC goliath is off to what is likely its most watched season in history.

Sixteen of college football’s 20 most-watched games this season involve an SEC team. Ten of those 20 are SEC-only games.

“Well,” says Del Conte with a wink, “there’s your story.”

With future of college sports in flux, Texas is sitting pretty

The scene here this week will be a spectacle of riches.

Private jets line the runway. Helicopters buzz overhead. International dignitaries walk the halls of Austin high rises. Celebrities will grace both the football field and race track.

The average nightly rate for one of Austin’s 50,000 hotel rooms is about $500, Hays says, and the projected economic impact of this weekend’s smorgasbord is more than $500 million.

Good luck getting tickets. The football game is on track to be the best-selling game of the season with an average cost of $477, according to Vivid Seats. Get-in prices for tickets to the F1 Grand Prix are about $350, and trackside suites are going for $17,000.

This weekend serves up a unique blend of two big money-making events — one a wholly professional industry (F1) and another half-professional entity (major college football). Barring something unforeseen, this is the final college football season without direct revenue sharing between athletes and their schools.

Call it the last hurrah, it seems, for NCAA amateurism. The death of decades of athlete compensation restrictions. The fall of a bygone model. Starting next July, if the House antitrust settlement is approved, schools will be permitted to share as much as $23 million annually with their athletes.

College sports has been shoved to this place, pushed to the brink of professionalism through court orders and state laws — many would say a victim of its own slow evolution. For universities, the revenue-sharing price tag plus additional investment in scholarships could exceed $30 million annually.

The new cost comes as college enrollments nationally are dipping; as linear television deals are at an uncertain place; and as athletic departments, having splurged on coaching contacts and gaudy facilities to stay competitive, are fighting through debt.

The future of athletics at many universities is at a most precarious position, says Hartzell.

But his concern is not with Texas. The school is at the top of the food chain, with perhaps more influence, power and money than any athletic department in the country.

“I worry about schools below a certain threshold and I do worry about how they are going to keep up and keep competing,” he says. “At the end of the day, you’re going to have a lot of them that are going to find themselves having to subsidize athletics even more. It’s going to cause another cost pressure on the academic side of the house, where people are going to feel like they’re going to have to find ways to save money on academics to make sure they keep the athletic program where it is. It’s going to cause a set of questions at some of those schools: Is it really worth it?”

Some athletic departments, already losing $10-20 million a year, could find themselves in a further hole of $40 million with the onset of revenue sharing.

“Well, $40 million,” Hartzell says, “that’s a lot of professors. Are you going to raise tuition? There are a set of schools that may face a really hard decision about athletics versus academics.”

But not at Texas.

Not in their rich new conference and not with their big-brand matchups. Saturday is more than just Texas vs. Georgia. It’s why the Longhorns are here in the SEC and why, perhaps, they are ripe for success in the revenue-sharing world of college sports.

“It’s going to be fun,” Del Conte says. “All these games are fun. I hate it for myself. I’m going to have to take a dose of Pepto-Bismol.”