Put a little skin in the game

College athletics is going through the most significant economic upheaval of my lifetime, and nowhere is that being felt more acutely than at programs outside the biggest conferences.

You don't have to look very far to see it. UAB is searching for a new athletic director at a moment when the job itself is changing dramatically. Troy, South Alabama and Jax State are navigating the same larger economic realities, as are Memphis, Tulane, Southern Miss and dozens of other programs across the G6. Athletic departments need more revenue. They need stronger corporate relationships, more donors, more ticket buyers and more engagement from their fans. Increasingly, the message to those fans is pretty straightforward: If you want us to compete, we need you to participate.

I don’t disagree with that message. The math of college athletics has changed.

But there’s another part of that equation that isn’t getting nearly enough attention. At almost exactly the same time these programs need their fans to become more engaged and more financially invested, the independent media infrastructure that helped create and sustain those fan bases has been disappearing.

Those two things are connected.

I’ve spent nearly four decades in the sports media business, and for part of that career I was one of the people who had to make the decisions that contributed to what we’re seeing now. I had budgets to manage and businesses to run. I knew what good coverage looked like, and I also knew what it cost. There were times when the economics forced me to reduce coverage that I would have preferred to keep.

That’s one reason I don’t blame newspapers, television stations or other traditional media companies for what has happened. The old model became increasingly difficult to sustain, particularly around programs that couldn’t generate the audience necessary to justify the traditional cost structure. Eventually the spreadsheet wins.

Last week, McClatchy cut more than 90 journalists at newspapers across the country. The Sacramento Bee lost its entire sports department. Earlier this year, the Washington Post eliminated its sports department. Even the major recruiting platforms have been quietly reducing coverage around G6 programs — shifting resources toward the schools that drive their economics. The math makes sense for them. But it leaves these fan bases with fewer and fewer places to turn.

But something important gets lost when that coverage disappears.

A reporter covering a college program every day isn’t simply producing stories for people who are already fans. That coverage is part of what creates the fan culture in the first place. It introduces people to players and coaches. It explains decisions. It creates conversations and controversies. It gives people something to talk about at lunch or send to their friends. Most importantly, it keeps that program present in people’s lives on all the days when there isn’t a game.

That matters enormously when those same athletic departments are asking people to buy tickets, contribute to NIL, donate to the athletic foundation and convince local businesses to invest.

You cannot separate the economics of college athletics from the economics of the media ecosystem surrounding it.

That’s a big part of why we’re building Diehard Sports Network.

We’re not trying to recreate the newsroom economics I spent much of my career working within. I already know where that road leads. We’re building a different business model with a radically different cost structure, using technology to give talented local publishers capabilities that once required substantially larger organizations.

That changes the math. It doesn’t eliminate it.

There still has to be a business underneath the journalism, and ultimately the people who say they want this kind of coverage have to put some skin in the game.

That doesn’t always mean money.

Registration on Diehard is free. Reading is free. Our newsletters are free. Registering tells us you’re there. It also allows us to walk into a local business and demonstrate that there is a real, identifiable community around this coverage rather than simply pointing to a page-view number.

For people who want to do more, we have $10-a-month VIP memberships and our Starting 22 program. Businesses have a role, too. We’re not particularly interested in building a business around dumping as many ads as possible in front of as many eyeballs as possible. We want businesses that see value in these communities and want to help sustain the coverage those communities care about.

Fans, businesses, publishers and the programs themselves all exist in the same ecosystem. If one part weakens, eventually the others feel it.

We’re already seeing evidence of this as we build Diehard. Some communities have organized quickly — registering, subscribing, becoming VIP members. Others are reading in large numbers but haven’t yet taken the step of raising their hand. Both tell us something. Readership tells us people want the product. Registration and membership tell us whether a community is willing to organize around it.

That’s the question this entire experiment eventually has to answer.

We believe we’ve solved a significant part of the problem by changing the economics of producing the coverage and building the business. But we can’t solve the other part with technology. Fans have to decide whether the coverage they say they value is something they’re willing to participate in sustaining.

That question is much bigger than Diehard.

The G6 is entering an era in which its programs are going to need stronger communities around them, not weaker ones. They’re going to need people paying attention in February and May, not just six Saturdays in the fall. They’re going to need businesses that see value in being associated with those communities. They’re going to need the next generation of fans to develop the same connection previous generations developed when newspapers, radio stations and local television covered these programs every day.

Somebody has to create that conversation.

For decades, the traditional media business helped do it. I was fortunate enough to spend much of my career inside that world, and I also had a front-row seat as its economics changed.

We’re trying another way now.

We’ve changed the math enough that I believe professional local sports coverage can work again in places where the traditional model no longer supports it. But the new model requires something the old one didn’t always ask directly from its readers: participation.

If you’re reading Diehard, register. It costs you nothing, and it matters. If the work is valuable enough that you want to support it financially, become a VIP. If you want to go a step further and help us build the foundation for this coverage for the long haul, become one of our Starting 22. And when a local business steps up and supports the coverage, remember who helped make it possible and support them when you can.

Put a little skin in the game.

Because if these programs matter enough for us to worry about their future, the ecosystem that keeps people connected to them has to matter, too.