After Michael Bamberger touted the role USGA President Glen Nager played in the stunning $1.2 billion, 12-year USGA television contract move to Fox Sports, it's almost as if the people who engineered this said, "hey look at us!"
Adam Schupak files a behind-the-scenes take with heavy input from the USGA's Sarah Hirschland on the process followed by herself, Wasserman Media Group and Executive Committee member Gary Stevenson (a former Wasserman executive). While the story lacks any input from the ESPN and NBC side and does not mention Hirschland's potential conflict of interest--her husband works as a producer on mostly second-tier Golf Channel events but is certainly now a prime candidate to move to Fox Sports where they'll be hiring--the Golfweek.com story provides plenty of stellar information to reveal several things:
- This deal was going to be finalized this week all along based on deadlines previously set. Meaning that barring some strange natural disaster, the USGA planned to upstage the PGA Championship. So my initial assessment of "tacky" was too kind, Joe. Put me down for "bush league" in today's scrubbing.
- This decision was rushed. Pure and simple, the folks involved had less than 48 hours to deliberate the three final offers? From the close of business Monday until sometime early Wednesday, a small number of people made a decision that will impact the organization for more than a decade.
- We learned that the Executive Committee was not engaged in the process, had little time to consider the ramifications of cutting the cord with more influential media entities in ESPN and NBC/Golf Channel which are usually the two channels you see on in any golf course or sports bar in America.
- The decision was almost immediately released which would seem to say the 15-member board apparently could not be trusted to keep a secret. We're talking lawyers, executives and accomplished folks here. Wow.
From Schupak's must read:
The USGA rifled through the offers internally one more time on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the USGA convened a meeting of its board of directors, where Fox was crowned the winner. The winners and losers learned their fates later that day, which precipitated a public announcement on the eve of the PGA Championship. A news release disseminated at 6:34 p.m. Aug. 7 stunned the golf and media industry.
“It was not apparent that Fox was an automatic winner by any stretch,” Hirshland said. “We had three compelling offers on the table. At the end of the day, when all was said and done, from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective, Fox was the leader in the clubhouse.”
So as I start to hear from intelligent, calmer USGA voices with big-picture sensibilities, they are horrified by the long term ramifications of severing ties with such influential platforms in the name of money. No, you can't put a dollar figure on the influence you get in having ESPN or Golf Channel on your side. Still, the ultimate question remains: what was the rush if, as Hirschland claims, “it was not apparent that Fox was an automatic winner by any stretch"?
Most of the Executive Committee and no doubt some past USGA presidents will convene next week at the U.S. Amateur and again early next month at the Walker Cup.
Why wouldn't you want to deliberate (face-to-face) the ramifications of such a huge decision and also take the chance of negative publicity for upstaging a Tee-It-Forward "partner" in the PGA of America?
