What’s been on my mind lately is a bit of a tunnel. Hope you enjoy.

We (being millennials, where I’m probably the youngest possible millennial) are always scoffed at as the ‘participation trophy generation’ by the older folks out in the world.

“We’ve gone soft! We had to earn trophies back in my day!”

This has never made sense to me.

First, I was like 8 years old. An older person gave me the participation trophy for my Peewee football team going 3-5 at a pizza party banquet.

Don’t sleep though, we were a “3 yards and a cloud of dust” kind of program out on the gridiron.

I didn’t ask for the trophy! I wouldn’t have even known about it if it was given to me! How am I the problem here?

Doesn’t that make the older generation the ‘participation trophy generation’? They were literally buying the participation trophies for their kids & grandkids!

OK. Now that that’s off my chest, let’s continue with what I’ve actually been thinking about.

I’ll spare you the dime-a-dozen rant on participation trophies in one way or the other here.

What I’ve been thinking about lately is that the participation trophy was never actually about sparing children’s feelings and making them feel included.

I only realized that this weekend.

Inclusivity was the mechanism, but it wasn’t the reason.

The point of the participation trophy is to increase future profits and quality of revenue.

Let me explain.

The headline is the whole point.

If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s likely to come back for more. I read that in a critically acclaimed book, so I’m certain it’s true.

For real though, this mechanism works for the participation trophy especially.

If every single kid out there gets a reward, especially one revered by parents and other children like a real life trophy to sit on the mantle, each kid is much more likely to be engaged and come back out next year, regardless of skill level, interest, etc.

It’s all humans’ nature, not just dear, sweet children.

If you receive a carrot, you’re going to look back much more fondly on the experience than if you received a stick for your troubles. In this case, the carrot is the trophy, and the stick is the lack of one - especially if your team had a bad year, other kids you know won the trophies, you weren’t all that good to begin with, etc.

The participation trophy was just a sneaky way by the organizations in charge of youth sports to improve revenue quality by minimizing future churn. Kids that would normally not come out or wouldn’t have made the cut have been incentivized to come back as long as they’re eligible.

By incentivizing participation and maximizing inclusivity, organizations maximized the likelihood that all kinds of people will pay for a chance to participate in the future, not just the ones that excel at sports.

In this case, I want to go on the record saying that I don’t think this is a bad thing. Until you get to the travel ball level (and I don’t want to touch that private equity-backed monstrosity with a ten foot pole in this edition), I think that inclusivity in youth sports is largely an awesome thing for kids and communities as a whole. More kids being interested in sports is a good thing, and incentives to bring a larger net of children into the community (while ensuring the community’s organizations can grow) is something I’ll always root for.

The problem I see is when this incentive system is put on at a much larger scale with a lot more money involved. That’s where maximizing future revenue is laid bare and out in the open, and the benefits are minimal.

I’m talking about college football, people.

This weekend, stories circulated that the College Football Playoff committee is going to officially announce an upcoming 24-team playoff as soon as next year.

For context, we’re not even three full seasons into the 12-team playoff format. And, in the 2 full seasons, we’ve yet to find even 8 competitive teams that actually could win the title.

To sum this up succinctly, take a look at the video below. Michael Bratton, an SEC analyst, goes wayyyy off-script about the expansion and told it like it is on the SEC network pregame on Saturday.

I’m sure the CFP committee has blacklisted this guy in between Saturday and this post going live, but dude - WORTH IT. Thank you for what you’ve done for the sanity of our population.

Once I read the headline that we were hurtling toward a 24-team playoff, my mind immediately went to “we’ve effectively made the playoffs into a participation trophy”. There are nowhere near 24 teams that can actually win the playoffs. We haven’t even seen 8!

What surprised me though was that, as Bratton and Finebaum discuss here, they can’t quite understand the financial implications of doing this.

It’s plain as day that the CFP Committee’s decision is not about getting revenue right now from the playoff teams.

They made this decision to maximize future revenue under the guise of inclusivity. It’s just like the 8 & Under basketball participation trophy mechanism, but on a national scale.

They’re widening their net to maximize the number of programs and fanbases.

There have only been 27 different playoff teams since inception in 2014. That’s less than 20% of the eligible teams.

Of those 27, 16 have only appeared in the playoffs one season and only 15 of the total 27 have actually won a game. That’s 11% of the 136 eligible teams that have actually won a playoff game.

The SEC and B1G are the powerhouses. Between those two, they pull in over half of all CFP revenue, and over $2.5B apiece in revenue. Of the 34 teams in the SEC and the B1G, 11 have won a playoff game and 15 have appeared in the playoffs.

What most are thinking here is that nearly half is plenty of representation at this level. The 11 winners in this batch are primarily the blue bloods that are contenders year-after-year and have national brands for their fanbases. Alabama, LSU, Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, and Georgia account for over 50% of the total playoff wins.

The 12-team playoff caters to these teams already. They are always dishing out and bringing in plenty of money. For nearly every season, they’ve got a chance at the playoffs for a while, so they’re fully engaged all year long.

The 12-team playoff, however, was NOT catering enough to the Illinois, Wisconsin, Mississippi State, Arkansas type of schools with large fanbases and plenty of additional revenue potential, but many of which were largely dead in the water by midseason most years.

This means there’s a ton of revenue on the table.

For the sake of brevity, I’m singling out the SEC and B1G here. There are obviously implications for many other college football programs as well that may not typically be represented in the playoffs. But given the CFP Committee’s proclivity to rank the SEC and B1G up and down the previously meaningless 13-24 rankings, that indicates to me that these programs stand to gain the most.

By Week 7-8, even in the 12-team playoff, there are maybe 20 teams with a chance to make the playoffs. Heck, maybe 4 out of the 12 at most that make it are seen as surprises based on the preseason rankings.

With rivalry heat dwindling and all other bowls being rendered meaningless, the playoff is everything to the survival of college football. There’s nothing to play for except for a playoff season. Nobody cares about the Meineke Car Care Bowl any more.

By Week 8, my 4-4 team is toast. The fanbase is thinking about next year. Several solid fans may not even tune in or attend games. This hurts ratings and leaves revenue on the table.

More than 80% of fanbases have never experienced the playoffs, and, with the playoffs being 12 teams (and before that, 4 teams), a vast majority of fanbases never even get close.

Now, we’re doubling the teams involved. This means many, many more teams have a chance at participating, and that chance extends a long time throughout the season instead of evaporating by Week 6 after a tough stretch.

This means more engaged fans across the board.

That means more money.

And the longer we can keep the chance alive, the more revenue we can harvest from that engagement level.

Instead of “season by season” for the participation trophy quality of revenue timeline, we’re looking at “week by week” engagement driving growth.

This is the name of the game. It’s hope!

Even if your team is 4-4, if you win out, you have a chance at the 23rd spot. Previously, this meant you were completely irrelevant, and likely had been for weeks.

Now, people and businesses are tuning in to teams that previously never had a chance.

Excitement = Engagement. This means consistently tuning in to watch your team and keeping up with the other teams that have a chance.

Engagement = Revenue. As more and more fanbases have a chance later and later into the year, there are more fanbases willing to spend money, more businesses willing to advertise on more eyeballs, more TV deals expanding to fight for playoff coverage, and dying down are those embers of the fears that the SEC and B1G might eventually break away.

24 teams means the CFP Committee is injecting meaning where there previously was (and perhaps, still should be) none.

Maybe this also isn’t a bad thing. Maybe South Carolina and Kentucky and Purdue having a chance to make the playoffs every year will be good for parity in the sport and a better product. Maybe more engagement and more meaningful games is a good thing.

I doubt it, but maybe I’m wrong.

I think that we’re sacrificing quality and integrity by selling fake hope to pander to the middle-to-bottom-third of fanbases that never actually have a legitimate chance. All thinly veiled exploitation of people’s identities to grow revenue under the guise of inclusivity.

Lol. So much more sinister than kid’s rec sports, but here we are.

I call it “Monte weather” because my dog, a big fluffball and a bit of a drama king when it comes to being outside in the heat, cannot be outside enough. Been soaking it up as much as I can, because we get like 2.5 weeks of this in Charleston before it’s 84 again for a week randomly and then we’re fully into winter.

Put simply: God forbid a big fella puts on a sweater.

Not exactly the soundtrack to my week - I just want you to share in the misery of these catchy tunes getting locked into your brain for the foreseeable future

Here’s a top 10 compilation. Didn’t watch all each all the way through so here’s a disclaimer that it’s probably NSFW.

Sincerely,

Zander Barth