Does bowl association really play needed role?
Claiming he’s overwhelmed, director doesn’t seem to be
TUSCALOOSA, ALA. — He claimed to be one of the busiest people in college football this month. But at 9:30 one December morning, on a day he had said he couldn’t possibly find time to talk, Wright Waters waved a reporter inside.
“Alright, I can give you 30 minutes, as long as you don’t mind interruptions,” said Waters, executive director of the Football Bowl Association, a little-known trade association that works on behalf of the 40 games that cap each college football season.
Waters, 70, made $205,000 last year to run the FBA, whose $800,000 in revenue comes from a combination of annual dues from bowls and a trade show each April. He is the FBA’s lone full-time employee, and he works from his stately, brown brick home on the shore of Lake Tuscaloosa.
A few weeks before, Waters had said he would be happy to address skepticism that the bowls — despite being powered by ESPN, which has billions invested in the games — need a trade association to promote and protect them, and that that trade association needs a full-time director. But then Waters changed his mind and cancelled, citing his around-the-clock schedule.
“I just don’t know how I could make it work,” Waters said over the phone, in canceling an interview scheduled for Dec. 5, a few days before the bowl schedule would be announced. “The closer we get to December 8th, it gets worse and worse. And after we get there, it’s just nuts.”
Travel arrangements had already been booked, though, so on Dec. 5, a reporter knocked on Waters’ door anyway, hoping he would change his mind again, and let a visitor observe a morning in the life of one of the busiest people in college football. Waters answered the door dressed casually, in olive slacks, gray sneakers and a gray Nike windbreaker, and led a reporter to a small office adorned with football memorabilia.
“Whatever you want to know, I have no secrets,” Waters said, leaning back in his chair. He placed his cell phone on his desk, within arm’s reach. In emails and phone conversations a few weeks before, Waters had mentioned the torrent of calls he gets this time of year, from frantic bowl directors, ESPN executives and conference officials trying to hammer out the bowl schedule.
“Mornings are usually nuts this time of year,” he’d said.
In the grand scheme of college sports, the $205,000 Waters makes is a drop in a multi-billion-dollar bucket. Alabama coach Nick Saban, who made $8.3 million last year, earns Waters’ annual income about every nine days. For NCAA president Mark Emmert, who made $2.9 million last year, it takes about 25 days. To Waters’ bosses — bowl directors — the FBA and Waters are a reasonable expense to help protect a treasured tradition that generates more than $600 million each year for major colleges and universities.
“We needed somebody to be a voice for the bowl system,” said Eric Poms, chief executive of the Capital One Orange Bowl, who made $680,000 last year. “Wright’s done a tremendous job.”
“He’s been a great advocate for us,” said Rick Catlett, chief executive of the Taxslayer Gator Bowl, who made about $407,000 last year. “I can’t think of a better person to sit on a front porch with, pour a little glass of bourbon, smoke a cigar, and talk college athletics.”
But to advocates for college athletes, Waters’ job - which didn’t exist before 2012 is just another example of the fun-house economic structure of college sports, a professional entertainment industry where the market forces that determine salaries are distorted by the fact that college athletes are unpaid.
Over the course of nearly two hours in his home office - with one short interruption Waters portrayed himself as playing an essential role in preserving the bowl industry, by advocating on the bowls’ behalf with the NCAA and in the media.
“As long as you’re taking care of your bowls. … I don’t think you have to please John Doe in Des Moines, Iowa,” Waters said, when told that some people were surprised by the existence of his job.
As Waters spoke, he periodically glanced at his phone, and expressed confusion at its silence.
“I’m surprised the phone hasn’t rung,” he said. “It usually does.”
Money making
The arc of Waters’ career follows that of the increased professionalization — and money making — of major college sports.
A native of Montgomery, Alabama, he attended Livingston State College, later rebranded University of West Alabama, earning a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in secondary education.
He worked in several athletic departments, including Florida and Tulane, then moved to the Southern Conference, where he advanced to commissioner. In the late 1990s, he worked briefly running Crimson Tide Sports Marketing — a corporate partnership that owns the commercial rights to Alabama athletics — before becoming commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference in 1998.
Waters remade the Sun Belt, converting it to a conference with football and locking in television contracts with networks including ESPN. He also created the New Orleans Bowl to host the annual Sun Belt champion.
From 2000 until 2011, when Waters announced his retirement, Sun Belt revenue more than tripled, to $12.2 million, and his pay more than doubled, to $340,000. But before Waters officially retired in 2012, the bowl bosses came calling.
At the time, Waters chaired the NCAA’s bowl committee, which effectively oversaw the bowls. As Waters recalled, the industry was in turmoil, thanks in part to the Fiesta Bowl scandal, in which that bowl’s director had been caught spending the nonprofit’s proceeds lavishly at a strip club and on illegal campaign contributions.
“I told them, ‘You guys have got to get organized. You need some direction,’ ” Waters said. “And so they called and they said, hey, before you really retire, would you be willing to do this?”
The Football Bowl Association had technically existed since the late 1980s, but it had never had any full-time employees. The director job rotated between bowl directors as an additional, unpaid responsibility. Waters agreed to take over.
In an interview, Mike Nealy, the Playstation Fiesta Bowl executive director, disputed that his predecessor’s scandal inspired the decision to hire Waters.
“Certainly that wasn’t the reason,” said Nealy, who made about $685,000 last year, running both the Fiesta Bowl and the Cheez-It Bowl. Waters’ main utility, said Nealy, is as an advocate with the NCAA, which licenses bowl games and produces a rule book prescribing proper bowl management.
Just like running a bowl game is a full-time job, Nealy said, so is advocating for the bowl industry.
“I can’t imagine not having an [FBA] executive director,” Nealy said. “He’s not making widgets on an assembly line; the needs change throughout the year… . But college football is a year-round sport … and you can extrapolate that to the bowls as well.”
Catlett, the Gator Bowl CEO, said one of the most important parts of Waters’ job is “to get the message out about the bowls.” When asked how Waters and the FBA — which does not have an advertising budget — promote the bowls, Catlett cited the FBA’s website, its social media accounts, and Waters’ interviews with the media.
But when it comes to promoting bowl games, the FBA gets significant assistance from ESPN, which owns and operates 14 bowl games, and, along with its sister station ABC, televises 35 of the 40 bowls. Throughout December and early January, ESPN blankets its platforms with advertising for clashes ranging from the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl, between Oklahoma and LSU, to the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl, between Utah State and Kent State.
This perhaps explains the FBA’s neardormant social media activity. The FBA’s Facebook page has published eight posts this year, most recently Sept. 3, with a message expressing excitement about that weekend’s matchup between Texas A&M and Clemson. Its Twitter account hasn’t posted since May 5, 2016.
Richard Southall, professor and director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, expressed skepticism that the bowls need a trade association.
“It would be interesting to find out, on a month to month and day to day basis, what work this association actually performs,” Southall said. “What does he say he actually does?”
Best matchups
“This is why I didn’t have time to deal with you today,” Waters said. “This is my life right now.”
Waters was staring at his computer, where a spreadsheet listed bowl-eligible teams by conference. His life is consumed this time of year, he said, by keeping track of how many teams have won the requisite six games to qualify for a bowl, and working his relationships across the sport to ensure each game gets the best matchup.
“I touch almost all of them. I don’t touch the CFP (College Football Playoff ) games… . That’s done by formula,” Waters said. “But almost all the rest of them we touch.”
Asked to elaborate, Waters sketched a hypothetical scenario in which the Southeastern Conference was considering sending Texas A&M to the Belk Bowl, played in Charlotte, North Carolina, but Belk Bowl officials really wanted Tennessee. Waters would work the phones, he said, starting with Mark Womack, associate commissioner at the SEC.
“I got to call Womack and say, ‘Hey, what are you thinking about Belk?’ ” Waters explained. “And he’ll say, ‘Well, I’m thinking I’m gonna send A&M.’ And I’ll say, ‘Mark, they ain’t going to bring anybody to Charlotte. It’s too far.’ And then he’ll say, ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right.’ Then we go from there.”
This claim came as a surprise to Nealy, the Fiesta Bowl director, who also chairs the FBA’s board. Asked if Waters had any influence over bowl placement, Nealy replied unequivocally.
“No, he does not have any input… . Most of that is all contracted,” Nealy said.