Jordan Love’s First-Round Status Worth $18 Million In Draft-Day Exposure For Utah State

The NFL draft process can serve as a months-long commercial for college football programs, providing a valuable opportunity for smaller schools that otherwise do not enjoy the spotlight too often.

This exposure opportunity was particularly great in last week’s draft, where a sports-starved viewing audience generated record TV ratings for the networks that carried the event live. However, only one school outside the sport’s traditional power structure was able to successfully reap the benefits of this free advertising.

That school was Utah State, which saw quarterback Jordan Love go 26th overall to the Green Bay Packers in Thursday’s first round. In a draft dominated by major-conference prospects, Love was the only Group of Five player selected in the first round and one of just five from outside the Power Five conferences to be picked in the first two rounds.

The benefit of that draft-day exposure for Utah State? The equivalent to roughly $18 million in advertising spending according to Joyce Julius and Associates, which measures the value colleges gain from prospects’ coverage in TV broadcasts, print media and internet exposure.

“We monitored Utah State’s exposure in relation to Jordan Love for a 24-hour period surrounding the first round of the draft,” explained Joyce Julius director of sponsorship analytics Jeremy Creutz. “Utah State received over eight minutes of exposure on each network that aired the draft (ESPN, ABC, NFL Network). They also received over 3,500 mentions throughout news media (print/internet/TV news) stories and were mentioned within 6,511 social media posts. This provided Utah State with an estimated exposure value of more than $18 million.”

The relative payoff is significantly larger across the entire pre-draft process when a smaller program features an elite prospect – particularly when that prospect is a quarterback.

For example, Wyoming commissioned Joyce Julius to assess the advertising equivalent of quarterback Josh Allen’s media exposure prior to Allen going seventh overall to the Buffalo Bills in the 2018 NFL draft. Joyce Julius determined that Allen delivered $46 million in media impressions during the 2017 football season alone, and Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman said that he expected the value to double between the end of that season and draft night in April 2018.

“I can’t imagine in the history of the University of Wyoming any one player or situation having greater brand exposure than Josh Allen has had this past year,” Burman said at the time.

The polarizing Love was the only prospect in a somewhat similar position this year, in a draft that saw just 22.7% of all selections (58 out of 255) come from non-Power Five programs. At No. 26 overall, Love tied Central Florida’s Breshad Perriman (the 26th pick in the 2015 draft) as the lowest-drafted prospects from outside the Power Five in the last decade – dating back to 2011, when Temple’s Muhammad Wilkerson went 30th overall.

Lowest-Drafted Prospects From Outside the Power Five

• 2020: No. 26 Jordan Love, Utah State
• 2019: No. 9 Ed Oliver, Houston
• 2018: No. 7 Josh Allen, Wyoming
• 2017: No. 5 Corey Davis, Western Michigan
• 2016: No. 2 Carson Wentz, North Dakota State
• 2015: No. 26 Breshad Perriman, Central Florida
• 2014: No. 3 Blake Bortles, Central Florida
• 2013: No. 1 Eric Fisher, Central Michigan
• 2012: No. 11 Dontari Poe, Memphis
• 2011: No. 30 Muhammad Wilkerson, Temple

Had additional non-Power Five prospects emerged as first-round candidates, this was an exposure opportunity like none that previously existed. Because of the COVID-19 shutdowns across the country, the NFL’s “virtual” draft drew a massive audience of 55 million viewers across three days to ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes and the NFL Network, plus streaming digital channels. That represented a 35% increase over the 2019 audience.

In the first round alone, 15.6 million viewers tuned in, the draft’s biggest opening night ever and a 37% increase from the 11.4 million who watched a year ago. Viewership increased considerably in every major market, including 52% bumps in both Philadelphia and Boston. And in Ohio, where the Cincinnati Bengals used the No. 1 overall pick on home-state prospect Joe Burrow, three cities produced the draft’s highest ratings: Columbus (16.7/32 share), Cleveland (15.9/29 share) and Cincinnati (15.6/28 share).

Perhaps it was that same shutdown that resulted in so few small-school selections this year, though. March and April are prime times for college programs to hold their pro days and for prospects to participate in individual workouts with pro clubs. The coronavirus shutdown canceled much of that pre-draft activity, preventing small-school and borderline prospects from turning player personnel execs’ heads at these events.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that NFL clubs used most of their picks on major-conference prospects instead of potential diamonds in the rough. FCS programs, for example, took a huge hit this year.

Axios reported Monday that programs from the FCS level collectively produced 18 draft picks per year between 1993 and 2019. This year, they produced just six: Southern Illinois safety Jeremy Chinn (No. 64 overall), Dayton tight end Adam Trautman (No. 105 overall), Rhode Island wide receiver Isaiah Coulter (No. 171 overall), Tennessee State offensive lineman Lachavious Simmons (No. 227 overall), James Madison quarterback Ben DiNucci (No. 231 overall) and North Dakota State defensive end Derrek Tuszka (No. 254 overall).