What does Rory McIlroy’s resilience reveal for the rest of us? This week’s MoneyCall

Sports

add

Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Rory McIlroy, Paige Bueckers, Nico Iamaleva, Elise Devlin, Maxx Crosby, Shedeur Sanders, Caitlin Clark, Jordon Hudson, Ken Griffey Jr., Bill Chisholm and more. Let’s go:

Driving The Conversation

New coverage to meet the moment

A lot of sports reporting — here at The Athletic and elsewhere — is focused on making sense of the sports world through the quantifiable. Just in the past few days:

📺 Superlative TV ratings, like Rory McIlroy’s dramatic Masters championship (unsurprisingly!) leading to the most-watched Masters final round in seven years.

📃 Notable player contracts, like Unrivaled paying newly minted WNBA superstar Paige Bueckers more for one year than she will earn in the WNBA in four.

📉 Disruptive market dynamics, like star college QB Nico Iamaleava’s breakup with Tennessee over millions in NIL payments.

But our coverage of organizational or individual success stories (or failures) often hinges on less quantifiable (but no less powerful) details. And some of the most fascinating and instructive sports reporting can offer relevant lessons about what makes for successful leadership and even your own personal development.

To wit: Rory’s triumph was so compelling precisely because of his recurring failures to win the Masters, his resilience and ultimately his redemption. And those themes resonate far more deeply than “most-watched since ….”

That’s why this week’s launch of The Athletic Peak, an entire reporting team dedicated to covering leadership and personal development, should be of particular interest to the MoneyCall community.

Start by checking out the Peak page (and follow it in The Athletic’s app) — personally, my favorite Peak story from this spring has been my colleague Elise Devlin talking with Michael Phelps about his journaling practice, then trying it for herself.

Much more to come. For now, let’s zip back down to ground level …

Get Caught Up

A new WNBA era and another celebrity college GM

Big talkers from the sports business industry:

⛳ About those Masters ratings: As the thrilling tournament finished up Sunday night, you knew fans were tuning in en masse (the final round averaged 12.7M viewers). I do wonder if this is peak Masters: The Rory redemption story was so unique, given his decade of attempts and his nearly two decades of being a fan favorite. (Really compelling alt argument from Brody Miller that the Rory-Bryson-Scottie Era is set to be huge for golf.)

Related: Helpful review of CBS’s Masters broadcast by Richard Deitsch.

🏀 Welcome to the Paige Bueckers era: Paige isn’t the singular supernova of Caitlin Clark, but she is popular and talented enough to instantly join the top tier of stars in the WNBA. Hopefully, this Dallas franchise doesn’t squander its young star.

Give Bueckers credit for at least some of Monday’s draft ratings — 1.25M, second-highest ever (after Clark’s draft last year, obviously) and up 119 percent over 2023. We talk a lot around here about the rising “new floor” for women’s sports TV ratings (even beyond any Clark effect), and this is a key exhibit.

Looming over the WNBA season (including the overlapping dynamic of top college stars like Olivia Miles and Azzi Fudd skipping the W to stay in school for vastly more money) is the pending contract negotiation between the WNBA and its players union.

Everyone agrees the economics of WNBA player salaries are way off; how disruptive will things get en route to a labor deal? Boffo TV ratings this season will bolster the players’ case — as will competing leagues (including college) offering bigger bucks.

🌽 Related: ESPN is going to air Clark’s preseason exhibition game in Iowa versus the Brazil national team on May 4, per our Andrew Marchand and Ben Pickman. I’ll put the over/under on viewers at a bright-line 1 million. (BTW: The worst seats in Carver-Hawkeye Arena are going for more than $250 on secondary ticket markets, and that number will only go up closer to game day.)

🎰 Just published: “Big parlays, fake injuries and Telegram tips,”  Mike Vorkunov’s deep dive into the betting scandal in college and pro sports.

🎓 Trend Watch: Maxx Crosby joins the list of pro players who are becoming college “assistant GMs,” mostly as a way to drive NIL funding to secure players. Crosby will become the first active NFL player to take on the role, at his alma mater Eastern Michigan (where his sizable donations already got the football field named in his honor).

The NBA has also had a few (Steph Curry, Trae Young, Terance Mann), and Crosby definitely won’t be the last in the NFL. (The one I want to see, given the combo of star power and net worth: Josh Allen as assistant GM at the University of Wyoming.)

🏈 NFL Draft prep: Tons more on the business of the draft coming next Wednesday, but for now, enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like for players to wait to get the phone call that they have been drafted.

Other current obsessions: Jordon Hudson’s role at UNC … the Savannah Bananas’ 10-game TV deal with ESPN … the NHL’s quirky postgame victory trophies … Ken Griffey Jr. as a credentialed news photographer at the Masters …

What I’m Wondering

Playing Augusta after the Masters

My colleague (and frequent MoneyCall guest) Gabby Herzig covered the Masters and won the “media lottery” to play a round at Augusta National on Monday. Obvious question:

What’s it like to play Augusta National the day after Rory’s Masters win?

💬 In a broader sense, the course just puts you in a mental pretzel. It feels like you’re playing golf in a video game. But you’re clicking every button on the controller, simultaneously trying to make sure you don’t fail epically, but also because you have no idea what else to do.

It’s pretty hard to describe what it feels like to step up to each tee box, look around and envision the place lined with tens of thousands of patrons, with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer making putts and creating moments on those same greens. It feels like a simulation. An alternate reality. A daze. That also makes it really difficult to settle down and focus.

I was on complete auto-pilot on the first tee and somehow managed to make the most impressive par of my life on No. 1. No. 2 was a different story.

Fortunately, Herzig wrote an amazing column about the experience, including answering many reader questions. Absolutely worth your time today.

Grab Bag

Time for a lightning round.

Chart of the Day: Nielsen’s ‘Gauge’

(The Nielsen Company)

The key takeaway: More confirmation YouTube is the behemoth, with an audience nearly the size of Netflix and Disney combined. With an audience half of cable and more than half of broadcast, anyone willing to bet against those latter gaps being closed completely in, say, two years?

2️⃣ Elevator Pitch: Retire player jerseys faster

This weekend at the Colorado football spring game, the program will retire Shedeur Sanders’ No. 2 and Travis Hunter’s No. 12. (That’s after retiring just four numbers in the program’s 122-year history.)

Some might say: Already?! My reply: Why wait?! What number of years — of distance from the enthusiasm — is more appropriate?

Iowa (appropriately) rushed to retire Caitlin Clark’s 22 basically as soon as she stepped off the court after her final game. Florida should retire Walter Clayton Jr.’s No. 1 next November at the season opener. When you know, you know.

⚾ Power Ranking: Top MLB Front Office

1. Dodgers
2. Rays
3. Brewers
4. Guardians
5. Yankees

See our entire rankings analysis here.

Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition

Puzzle No. 205

⏱️ Dan’s time? :24

Try the game here!

Worth Your Time

Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:

Speaking of personal development, I was fascinated by this reporting from my colleague Jay King about new (presumptive) Boston Celtics owner Bill Chisholm and how his experience playing college soccer impacted his path forward.

Two more:

What we can learn from Dan Campbell’s locker room speeches.

Why Liverpool (and its Premier League rivals) love hiring physicists.

Back next Wednesday! This week’s challenge: Forward MoneyCall to a couple of coworkers or friends, with your enthusiastic recommendation to subscribe! And check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s plans for their break were revealed

Celebrities - English

Next

trending_flat

Investigação da PF mapeou frota de R$ 2,8 milhões de Bruno Henrique e média salarial de R$ 731 mil; veja detalhes

O Globo