Meet College Football’s 47-Year-Old Freshman 👴🏻

For those of you who aren’t chronologically online, the wildly popular YouTube golf group Good Good found themselves in hot water this week after releasing an ad with Callaway that featured Garrett Clark (the channel’s largest personality) pushing down a woman who was about to touch his new driver.

The ad was quickly deleted, but has since been reuploaded and sparked backlash against the brand, including Good Good’s products being removed from Golf Galaxy stores across the country and a delay of their new show with the Golf Channel.

I’ll give you my take on this whole thing at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: Meet College Football’s 47-Year-Old Freshman

📉 Biggest Loser: What’s Going On With The Former AZ Cardinals GM?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: College Sports Are Broken, This Law Might Fix It

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How did this 47-year-old pastor go from not playing football for three decades to walking on to a college football team?

Background: This is Justin Buzzard. After four years of high school football and one year of college football in 1997, his career was cut short by injury. Now, like most people, Justin simply moved on with his life. He got married, had three kids, and started a church in San Jose, California.

But then, earlier this summer, one of his sons showed him a story of a 60-year-old cancer survivor who joined a DIII football team in Maryland, which gave Justin an idea of his own.

Old Dog, New Tricks: Now, if you read Justin’s website, you’ll quickly learn that his whole life philosophy is that if you don’t risk, you rust.

Obviously not wanting to rust, the 6’3, 215-pound dad decided to reach out to the coach at nearby San Jose City College to see if he could try out for their football team. Much to Justin’s surprise, the coach agreed, but as he soon found out, just because he was old enough to be most players’ dad, it didn’t mean they were going to take it easy on him.

Now, luckily for Justin, even after getting beat up a little during tryouts, his younger teammates still welcomed him with open arms.

Justin admits to having more bruises and aches than he can remember in a long time, but he was rewarded for it by making the team as a walk-on, where he’ll play defensive end. The same position he played 30 years ago.

Which means his only goal now is to “go the distance” and make it through the rest of the season.

What the hell is going on with former Arizona Cardinals GM Steve Keim?

Because just three years after resigning from his job due to “health reasons”, he’s just completed what can only be described as one of the most shocking downfalls in NFL history.

Background: Earlier this summer, a story broke about an alleged scam involving a 24-year-old named Mohamed Coulibaly who received millions of dollars in “investments” from NFL players and executives to launch several Shopify drop-shipping stores.

Coulibaly’s “business,” called Motion Ventures, guaranteed investors:

Now, if this all sounds too good to be true, you’re obviously right.

It turns out Coulibaly was just using the money he received from one investor to pay out the next. Still, the 24-year-old was allegedly able to convince dozens of players and executives to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars each into his Shopify stores, including:

But how?

Pitch Deck: Well, aside from his promises of guaranteed returns and potential $100M valuations, Coulibaly seemed to benefit from the fact that Motion Venture’s Chief Operating and Growth Officer, and the only other person listed in his company’s pitch deck, was none other than former Cardinals GM Steve Keim.

Now, according to the pitch deck, Keim’s role involved, among other things, “building partnerships,” and while it’s unclear who exactly Keim helped recruit, Seahawks GM John Schneider has already said he was introduced to the opportunity because of Keim. Meanwhile, Keim openly admits to bringing in “eight friends” to invest, though he doesn’t specify who they are.

But that’s not the end of this story.

Deadly Downfall: Because just two weeks after that initial report broke on July 15th, Coulibaly turned up dead in his pool, which Keim said is a result of him likely feeling like “the walls were closing in,” calling into question if anyone involved in this scam will ever actually get their money back.

What’s going on with college football right now?

Because just as the season is about to start, Congress is considering a new law that would completely change college sports, but most fans still don’t seem to understand what it actually does.

Fan Sentiment: There’s no debating that since student-athletes began getting paid for their name, image, and likeness in 2021, the entire model of college athletics has been forced to evolve. Between:

It’s fair to ask if these well-intentioned changes have actually done more harm than good, and that’s not just coming from me.

Because according to a recent fan survey from FGS Global, even though fans generally consider things like revenue sharing, NIL and increased transfer opportunities to be good developments, there’s also a rare, overwhelming support from those same people for congressional action to regulate them.

But how?

I’m Just a Bill: There’s actually a bipartisan bill being debated in the Senate that has strong support from Division 1 conferences, including the Big Ten and SEC, called the Protect College Sports Act. If passed, experts say it could “dramatically change the future” of all college sports, but what’s actually inside it?

To read more about how fans feel about the issues in college sports that Congress is debating, and the state of the sports industry more broadly, from sports betting to youth sports, click here to check out FGS Global’s full report.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

By the time you’re reading this, I don’t suspect that the Good Good situation has gotten any better. When it comes to sports marketing fumbles, I usually start by seeing what my friend of the newsletter, Jordan Rogers, has to say:

TL;DR: If you’re ever in a meeting and think an idea might be bad, speak up! Odds are, you’re not the only one.

As for my personal opinion, I’ve written in this newsletter before about how in a brand x creator relationship, brands act as “risk mitigators.” This ad seems to be the outlier, and if anything, proves that there’s such a thing as relying too much on the creator for creative direction. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of creativity by committee, but creators can often exist in bubbles, reinforced by vanity metrics like views and likes, and sometimes their “gut instincts” need to be reigned in.

It’s a good reminder to all of us with an audience to accept feedback, even from brands. It could save you from making a massive mistake.