The Blue Moose Burgers and Wings franchise in Alcoa, Tennessee, has a unique geographic distinction: It is nearly equidistant from three NFL cities. Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville are all around 3-4 hours away.
Which pro team will get top billing this fall on the biggest of the restaurant’s nearly four dozen TVs each Sunday will be a tough call.
So said hostess Kailey Cline.
“It’s hard to say which team has more fans,” she said. “Maybe the Titans, because they’re from Tennessee, but it’s tough to pick, especially when they are bad.”
There’s no confusion on Saturdays.
“It’s the Vols,” she said. “They’re by far the favorite team around here.”
Cline expects the fans to be ready when the University of Tennessee takes on Syracuse in its season-opener Saturday.
The restaurant will be stocked with beer, burgers and wings. Can’t make it? No worries. Just check the huge poster featuring all the Vols games that’s next to the entrance to see when they play next.
To be fair, the school’s Knoxville campus is approximately 15 miles away, making the Vols the home team. And the idea that a college team can have more support than a pro team certainly is nothing new in the South.
But in this era of pay-to-play college athletics, where you need to tap into passion to bring in the bucks, that distinction is far more important.
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It’s hard to imagine anyone in New Jersey — even in New Brunswick — saying they are a bigger fan of Rutgers than the Eagles, Giants or Jets. Or even the Cowboys, if that’s their pro team of choice.
Overcoming this hurdle will be the biggest challenge for the new president and athletic director at Rutgers, which opens its season Thursday night at home against Ohio University.
President William Tate and AD Keli Zinn both mastered the NIL playbook when they were at LSU — an SEC school in an area where the college team can go head-to-head with the NFL team.
And win.
So said Luke Johnson, an LSU graduate who has covered the Saints the past eight years for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
“LSU is immensely popular down here; it’s a huge part of the culture of the state,” he said. “They have an intensely loyal, passionate, die-hard fan base.”
Johnson said there are plenty of Saints fans, especially when the team is good – and it hasn’t been lately – but that fandom only goes so far.
Given a chance to go to a Saints game or an LSU game, Johnson said it’s no contest.
“Maybe it’s 50-50 in New Orleans, but in the rest of the state, it’s going to be LSU without question,” he said.
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It must be noted, Big Ten schools have shown they can compete with the SEC on the field. After all, they have won the past two national championships in football.
And while some Big Ten schools can compete with the SEC on fan support (and NIL money), most cannot. Rutgers is in that category.
Of course, a recent ruling by the NCAA was aimed at fixing these inequities.
Loosely put, each school is now allowed to raise $20.5 million to pay its athletes. The rule, however, does not necessarily limit schools — and its most marketable stars — from raising revenue and making money in other ways.
In other words, schools with passionate fan bases still are going to get more deals from companies looking to tap into that.
That’s how Matt Baker, a partner at Genova Burns in Newark, a former college athlete and an expert on NIL, sees it.
“The House settlement was supposed to smooth out regional differences in donor enthusiasm by allowing the schools, themselves, to pay athletes, by capping the total amount of shared revenue,” he said.
“That said, we’re beginning to see ways in which schools are trying to get additional revenue for their athletes without landing on the College Sports Commission’s naughty list. For instance, schools are reaching out to apparel companies and multimedia rights partners to ensure that, as part of their relationship going forward, these companies prioritize NIL deals and marketing.
“Northeastern schools might be crowded out of this marketplace, if apparel and multimedia companies have limited budgets for these types of partnerships and have to look at the return on investment for every dollar spent.”
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The biggest obstacle to overcome for the new crew at Rutgers may just be history. New Jersey – and the Northeast – have a long love affair with pro sports.
The Giants played in the game that launched pro football, the 1958 NFL title game. The NFL was decades old at the time, but it didn’t reach the South until 1965 (in Atlanta) and 1967 (in New Orleans). And both franchises have been bad for most of the years since.
And while Rutgers may have played in the first-ever college football game — a you-wouldn’t-recognize-it event in 1869 — college football still does not have a strong foothold here.
College football, meanwhile, always has ruled the South. It’s become part of the culture. In fact, the SEC has long used the slogan, “It Just Means More,” when talking about their commitment to athletics.
It’s a feeling that can be traced through attendance at the games, donations of its alumni, sponsorship dollars of local businesses and the 40 times of its players.
It’s a feeling that can be seen at a Walmart in Northport, Alabama, just a few miles from Tuscaloosa. The store has more than just a room specifically set aside for Alabama gear, it also has flags hanging from the ceiling that honor the school’s 18 national championships.
The only difference between Tuscaloosa and Tennessee? Determining how many favorite college teams the locals have.
The cashier at the Northport Walmart had two: “Alabama – and whoever is playing Auburn.”
When it comes to raising NIL money, you can’t put a price on that type of passion.
