Opening Drive
Good Morning, Professors! ☀️
We are about halfway through the semester for most of you. Hang in there. Spring break is right around the corner and the finish line is closer than it feels.
With March Madness approaching, 68 teams' administrators and coaches will sift through the operations and site manuals for schools that make it to the Big Dance. After the teams are announced, a tournament operations manual is distributed to each participating school. These manuals cover everything from rules and procedures to Powerade cups and financial benefits, even information for bus drivers.
There’s a lot of fine print most fans never see, so let’s take a quick look!
The Manual
Travel Party 🥳
The NCAA covers travel expenses for an official party of up to 75 people. Then, anything beyond that for a flight gets a little … uh … fun! The 75 can include band members, cheer squads and spirit personnel. Here is a fun wrinkle. While it is not explicitly permissible to promote or sell extra travel spots, schools often find ways to bring additional supporters.
Many athletic departments quietly offer premium fan travel opportunities to donors who want the full experience. It is rarely advertised publicly, but it is widely understood across the industry. These unofficial add-ons can run into the thousands of dollars and become a creative revenue opportunity. 💰
So … What about hotels?
Tournament lodging policies are just as detailed and structured as travel rules. Teams are assigned hotel blocks through NCAA coordination, with strict guidelines about room distribution, staff allocations and approved expenses. It is a great case study in operations management and resource allocation under tight regulations.
There are many good nuggets in this 84-page document. The information or privacy hasn’t changed over the last few years, but as a heads up, we have requests out for the 2026 manuals! The full file is below and can be found in the Professor Portal in Extra Points Classroom!⤵️
The Final Drive
Classroom Resource Spotlight
We recently uploaded new teaching materials to the Professor Portal that you can use right away. One activity we are especially excited about lets students act as the athletic director. We provide baseline data from a real FCS school’s total salaries, then ask students to decide or guess how they would allocate that department’s salary pool across coaches and administrators. After they submit their decisions, they compare their results to how an actual athletic department distributes those funds. It is interactive, practical and always sparks discussion.
Shout-out to Florida State, a fellow Extra Points Classroom user, for also suggesting and using an assignment that has students take three MFRS reports and do a deep dive comparing and contrasting schools. GREAT IDEA!
Quick updates from the Library
• 11,000+ Division I and II documents and growing weekly
• About 75% of 2025 data uploaded with new reports and contracts added daily
• Revenue share templates and GM contracts now live via category filter
• Updated football and basketball coaching contracts with more sports coming soon
• Thousands of admin salaries compiled with coaching tables in progress
• Library 2.0 is in development and coming soon
I have also been checking in with many of you, but if you or your students have any access issues, feedback or suggestions, please reach out anytime. We want this to be as useful in your classroom as possible.
As always, thank you for letting us be part of your academic programs.
Until next time friends,
KC Smurthwaite
