Postseason Swag Disappearing in Some College Conferences

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↵The story of goodies distributed to college athletes every bowl season is always a fun one to read. It’s a bit of a trend piece, because it gives you a look at some emerging tech. While the bowl season usually gets all the shine when it comes to swag, let us not forget conference tournaments in other sports. Often times athletes will pull down some sort of tote bag, but what gets stuffed into those tote bags is generally way more interesting. SportsBusiness Journal has a list of this year’s items along with the number of gift packs being distributed at end-of-year tournaments.:↵

↵↵Host committees pay for the ACC gifts, to ease some of the burden, but more interesting is the trend that some conferences are doing away with the practice all together. Missing from this list: the Big Ten, Pac-10 and MAC. How much does this save?↵

↵↵⇥By eliminating the distribution of these packages for all sports this school year, the MAC expects to save $40,000. The Pac-10 and Big Ten figure to cut at least $300,000 from their annual expenses. Men’s and women’s basketball tournament gift packages typically make up about 75 percent of the major conferences’ annual gift budgets.↵↵↵It’s a decent chunk of change conferences are saving, and no one can fault them for trying, particularly in the case of a league like the MAC where there isn’t an enormous TV deal. Not sure what the Big Ten/Pac-10 excuse is. But back to the fun stuff: Who has the best swag?↵

↵↵The ACC offering is strong because so many conferences put you in a “choose one” position. Of those pools of “choose one” stuff, I’ve got to go with either the SEC or Conference USA. ↵

↵↵Read more over at SBJ.↵

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