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I think we can all agree that the most important thing about college athletics is the multi-million dollar marketing agreements between universities and media companies. That much is obvious.
So it's a bit of a shock to hear the news that Syracuse University has terminated its agreement with global sports and media business thingy IMG. That they're terminating the agreement about seven years early is all the more shocking.
IMG, together with a company it merged with, ISP, had been marketing SU sports since 1999. IMG sold everything from signage at the dome to the Time Warner logo on football coach Scott Shafer's headset. It also had been paying the lion's share of salaries for SU's top coaches and a share of the salary of SU's athletic director, Darryl Gross.
IMG handled all of SU's marketing for football, men's and women's basketball and the coaches' radio show for those sports, as well as running men's lacrosse play-by-play radio and SU game programs. IMG handled all of SU sports' Internet rights, event marketing and game promotional rights, video rights, publication rights and all facilities signage rights.
IMG pays most of Jim Boeheim's and Scott Shafer's salaries, not to mention kicking in a decent chunk for DOC Gross.
Basically, if its media-related, IMG handled it for Syracuse. So I would hope SU has a good idea of how they're going to replace all of that work, income and media access. Knowing DOC, he probably does. Perhaps a move related to an impending ACC-specific media network/deal? We'll see.
