Last weekend’s Collegiate Championship Invitational seven-a-side tournament underscored the relative promise of college rugby as the code’s most visible presence in the massive United States sporting market. The tournament, which was aired in part on network television, was a commercially-organized invitational rather than a championship event structured by USA Rugby so the sides involved were picked by the sponsoring organization rather than by a qualification process. This selection process allowed tournament organizers to mix legitimate top rugby programs with less impressive rugby sides that come from noted college sports brands.
The event was a success, and the top rugby sides invited rose to the top with Utah edging California in the grand final, but the event underscores a tension in the growth of the college game. With some exceptions, the best college rugby sides in the United States are not from famous sports brands. While storied California-Berkeley is a school with a recognizable sports brand, other strong national contenders come from smaller fan markets such as Arkansas State (to say nothing of soon-to-be college rugby powerhouse Life University) and schools with moderate fan bases such as BYU and Utah.
Consider, for example, the most recent report (from last year) of the top twenty college sports programs in terms of revenue generated. They are:
1. Texas
2. Ohio State
3. Florida
4. Michigan
5. Wisconsin
6. Penn State
7. Auburn
8. Alabama
9. Tennessee
10. Oklahoma State
11. Kansas
12. LSU
13. Georgia
14. Notre Dame
15. Iowa
16. Michigan State
17. Oklahoma
18 Stanford.
19. Southern California
20. Nebraska
Of these, only Penn State and Tennessee were among the 16 sides in the national Division I tournament this year. Both lost in first round and failed to make the quarterfinals. In the past five years, only two more of the twenty top revenue-earners have made the national rounds (LSU in 2009 and 2010, and Ohio State in 2006). None of the top 20 revenue-earners has even won a collegiate championship, though Penn State and Stanford has finished second (multiple times for Penn State).
In short, the big-money colleges in the United States have some catching up to do on the rugby union front. The question, then, is should they be developed to attract audiences from the schools’ bases, or should the attention stay on the already-strong programs from colleges with smaller fan bases? A purist’s perspective might be to let the quality of a rugby program determine what schools get into the big events such as the recent sevens invitational, but it is naive to ignore the commercial logistics of modern sport.
For those in college rugby interested in capitalizing on other college sports brands, the much-discussed reorganization of many of the United States’ college athletic conferences this week is of interest. While USA Rugby is not traditionally aligned with traditional sporting conferences and a new elite college competition focuses on top rugby programs rather than top brands, a few small groups of schools have opted to try to mirror the traditional American sporting conferences instead of participating in USA Rugby’s national championship structure. The difficulty with this approach, though, is that once again the best rugby is not played in the schools aligned with the typical American powerhouse conferences. The famed Southeast Conference of American football glory boasts only two sides among its 12 schools that have appeared in the collegiate rugby national rounds in the past decade. The well-known Big Ten conference does slightly better with four of its 12 programs making the national rounds over the past ten years.
So if rugby sides were aligned along traditional American sporting conference lines, what would be the top conference? An argument can be made for the less-renowned Mountain West. Of its ten sides, six (Air Force, BYU, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah, and Wyoming) have made the national rounds in the last ten years, with one more (Colorado State) making the tournament before that. Three of the 16 sides in the 2010 tournament were from Mountain West schools. Two MWC schools (BYU and Air Force) have won national championships in the last decade, and one more (San Diego State) won a final before that–no small feat when you consider that only five different sides have won the national tournament since its inception in 1980. Considering that the MWC would be the SEC of rugby if American rugby organized into traditional American sporting conferences, it becomes apparent that it would be a challenge to reconcile the discrepancy between quality college rugby and big sporting money.
So while some work toward selectively peppering rugby invitationals with big college brands that produce less-than-stellar rugby and others call for formation of recognizable athletic conferences, the problem remains: Great college rugby and big college sporting money are some distance from each other at the moment. Is it possible to bring them together, and is an effort to do so even in the interest of the sport in the United States?
While you mull that, have a look at the full footage from Day 2 of last weekend’s seven-a-side invitational, which showcased the best college rugby on offer in the United States as well as the challenges involved in trying to squeeze top rugby out of some of the big college brands:
