Brand Bedlam: Collapse of Big 12 Highlights Risk of Brand Run

College football is back, but sadly the on-field action has been overshadowed by news that the Big 12 is falling apart.

For a sport that usually evolves slowly, the Big 12’s ongoing collapse has occurred at lightning speed.

To review: Last May, Nebraska decided to move to the Big 10 and Colorado then jumped to the Pac 10. Now it seems almost every team is looking for a way out. Lawsuits may preserve the conference for a while, but the conference will never be the same.

The Big 12 boasts some of college football's great-named rivalries, including the Red River Shootout and Bedlam. The Texas / Texas A&M rivalry is even sponsored by State Farm. How could the conference collapse while the underlying football remains so popular?

Welcome to the brand-run era.  

A brand run is like a bank run with sponsors. Bank runs happen when depositors doubt a bank's stability and hurry to withdraw their money before the bank goes bust. As more and more customers leave, the bank's position is weakened. Finally, word gets out, panic erupts and the bank's fate is sealed. Even fundamentally sound banks can be broken this way.

Today, many brands face a similar risk. The individuals that comprise the brand are like the depositors. They have trusted an umbrella organization to manage important assets—in the case of the Big 12, their TV contracts—and if they doubt the organization's competence or stability, they can choose to withdraw.  

Nebraska's departure weakened the Big 12 brand by lowering the league's average on-field strength, which made it tougher to get good TV contracts in the future.

Colorado's stampede set off the panic.

When a middle-of-the-pack team like Colorado leaves, the rest of the conference rank and file must also explore their options or risk being among the last teams stuck in a small, irrelevant conference.

Once that process starts, the end is inevitable.

Media trends, especially social media, are making it easier for brand runs to occur. Teams and athletes are connected to fans via Twitter and Facebook like never before, so the cost of moving from one league or team to another is greatly diminished.  

For the great sponsorship companies like Nike, Reebok and Adidas, these are scary times, even if they don't realize it yet.  

Remember how quickly sponsors turned on Tiger Woods? Imagine how quickly the athletes themselves would dump their sponsors if a sponsor company messed up badly enough.

Bottom line: The balance of power in sports, as in many businesses, is shifting toward teams and athletes that establish permanent emotional connections with their fans; secondary brands, like conferences and gear providers, are weakening.  

People in the sports business must be conscious of where they stand in the hierarchy of fan loyalty or they risk facing the same fate as the Big 12.