Johnson said the conversations with those have seen college sports evolve from the inside, including Dean Hood, director of football player development at the University of Kentucky, and the three alumni interviews — proved invaluable to the students.“I am personally very interested in college sports. I was a baseball player here for two years, and I’m […]
Johnson said the conversations with those have seen college sports evolve from the inside, including Dean Hood, director of football player development at the University of Kentucky, and the three alumni interviews — proved invaluable to the students.“I am personally very interested in college sports. I was a baseball player here for two years, and I’m an economics major,” he said. “Really, it’s just something that piqued my interest when I saw it over CentreTerm. We’ve had lovely opportunities throughout the term to experience what college sports is really made of and the economic side of it.”Johnson placed stiff prerequisites on the course, wanting a small group of motivated economics students to teach and help with research, which ranged from the connection between social media and revenue at Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools, the effect on a college football program’s revenue when making the jump between athletic divisions, and more.
“I’m going to be watching with interest to see where the current students end up when they leave Centre, and I know that people like Alan and Jordan are going to be there to help them out, offer advice, introductions and things like that,” Johnson said.Johnson has taught a variation of the subject since 1992, from a three-week CentreTerm class to a semester-long course. His longstanding expertise on the subject gave him a lens into the steady evolution of the big business of college athletics.Student-athletes can now profit off of their name, image and likeness (NIL), and are able to transfer more freely between schools thanks to the “transfer portal.” Schools have made changes as well due to TV deals, moving conferences and adding player personnel directors to help manage money flowing from boosters to players.Centre’s successful graduates — and Johnson’s network of alumni — helped students see where a Centre education could take them in the landscape of college athletics. Three alumni spoke to the class: Jordan Sucher ’04, who spent more than a decade as a personal assistant to hall-of-fame basketball coach Rick Pitino; Alan George ’05, now the director of communications at the Nashville Superspeedway after working in athletics departments at Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and Stanford; and John Whitehead ’85, an environmental economist currently teaching at Appalachian State University.For senior Brad Cotcamp, the course perfectly bridged two of his passions and offered a valuable perspective tied directly into his career aspirations.Substantial shifts in the college sports landscape presented an opportunity for Brown Professor of Economics Bruce K. Johnson to reshape one of his favorite courses: Economics of Sports.“Dr. Johnson has made the class come alive in different ways,” said Trace Bowman, class of 2026. “We took a field trip to (University of Kentucky athletics), we’ve had multiple different speakers — some of them Centre graduates — who’ve helped us learn about the economic scheme of college sports, specifically at their individual schools.”“By 2022, the college game had started to change because of the antitrust cases the NCAA had lost,” Johnson said. “It upended the amateur model and turned Division I athletics upside down.”
