Figuring Out the College 7s Landscape

USA Rugby's Collegiate Council-sanctioned college 7s championships, the NCCR 7s, is set for May 14-15 at Kennesaw State University's main stadium, and there are some familiar aspects to the event.

Both this AEG/CRAA/Collegiate Council event and National Collegiate Rugby's May Madness carry features from the old CRC 7s which ran from 2011 to 2019. NCR's May Madness uses the name and has received license to use logos and and the CRC's old social media account. 

The NCCR 7s has linked up with NBC, which showed the CRC for almost its entire run, and has re-introduced a key aspect of the old CRC's business model—teams are on the hook for a portion of the ticket sales.

Now, this isn't new. College Football Bowl Games expect participants to sell tickets, and, as we said, the old CRC expected participating teams to sell several thousand dollars' worth of tickets. We talked to Life University Head Coach Colton Cariaga, who has been involved in developing this event (in part because the event is on his doorstep in the Atlanta area). Cariaga said that college rugby programs that played in the old CRC, or who wanted to play in it, understood that the ticket-selling thing was part of the deal.

Basically, invited teams need to buy $5,000 in tickets (100 tickets), which ideally they'd sell to fans or alumni who would attend the event, fill the stadium, have a great weekend watching some college rugby, and look good on TV. (This $5,000 is, if memory serves, less than what the old CRC expected of the men's-team invitees.) The idea is to leverage team loyalty to get fans in seats. 

Note: the other aspect is that teams at AEG's NCCR get accommodation, food, ground transportation, as well as the fields, refs venue and TV coverage.

Cariaga, who remembers playing 7s at Life and not being invited to the CRC, and then qualifying to play and showing well, and then coaching there, says playing in a big stadium with lots of fans and on television "is a game-changer. We're not talking about having a championship that's just the same old thing we used to have most of the time, but a true experience."

It matters, he said. It matters to the fans, the school, and the players, to have the stage be big. And the question arises: is $5,000 all that much? For some teams, if they are not well-funded and find themselves unable to sell those tickets, it could be a problem. But the answer might also be, if you're serious about performing at a high level on a national stage, should you be able to sell 100 tickets to your faithful?

Life University got invited back to the CRC not because they made the 2013 final, but because they brought fans, loud fans in matching T-shirts. The same is true of Kutztown. 

With 60 teams hoped for in six brackets, might we see 6,000 fans in the stadium thanks to this plan? Quite possibly.

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Ah yes—brackets. So May Madness will have brackets for D1 Men Premier, D1 Women Premier, D1 Women Club, D1 Men Club, D2 Men, and Small-College Men. Six championships. For the NCCR 7s (AEG's event), it's D1 Men (which will mostly be D1A teams), Women D1 Elite/NIRA (a mixture of the four D1 Elite teams plus the NCAA programs), D1 Men Club, D1 Women Club, Open Men, D2 Women.  

Both events have TV contracts, with NBC, along with CNBC and Peacock for the AEG event May 14-15, and CBS Sports Network for the NCR event May 28-30. How teams qualify for these events is especially clear. AEG wants qualifiers to be done early so they can plan and get license to use university logos, and other things. Some conferences pushed back on the timeline and AEG did ease the deadline somewhat. The May Madness event appears to be more of an invitational, but both events have their invitational aspects.

We'll keep you updated on that, and one which teams are trying to sell tickets, and who is going where. For now, here, updated, is our list of college 7s tournaments. Let us know if we missed one.