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Latitudes, Soda Contracts and How to Win a College Football Championship

Most every self-help and how-to-get-ahead book in existence includes an admonition to set goals. Motivational speakers, business leaders, sports coaches, psychologists and many others tout the benefits of setting goals. They will tell you that goals are the first step in creating the future you want, and setting them is a fundamental skill needed to succeed in every facet of your life, from relationships to work to play and everything in between. In other words, goals are important for everyone.

When I’m talking to clients, volunteering with organizations, or just chatting with friends, occasionally the conversation will turn to issues, struggles or concerns that they have and are looking to solve. The question is always how do we turn these problems into opportunities and change them from negatives into positives? At this point I will often ask, “What’s your goal? What are you trying to achieve?” 

The answer to that question – or non-answer as the case may be – usually clears up a lot of the fog surrounding the topic we’re discussing and points to some clear next steps. When you know what your goal is, there are generally clear pathways to achieve that goal. If you want to achieve this, you need to do that. Certainly there are the proverbial “gray-areas” to every problem, but identifying your goal is frequently a great method for getting on the road to achieving that goal.

Many of us in the United States are sports fans or sports participants and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that sports offer wonderful lessons in goal-setting. In fact, goals are so important in sports that many sports use “goals” as the way to decide who wins and who loses. Football has a goal line and goal posts. You score points by crossing the goal line or kicking the ball through the goal posts. Soccer has a goal. You score points by getting the ball in the goal. After which it’s considered de rigueur to yell, “GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!!” Basketball has a hoop, and putting the ball through the hoop on anything but a free throw is called a field goal. Ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, polo — these and other lesser-known sports all have goals. 

More specifically, here in Happy Valley, our sports-centricity is evidenced by the second-largest football stadium in the country, and a 15,000-seat indoor arena in a 1,100-square-mile county with only 158,000 people. Season ticket-holders for the football stadium have now been sent their invoices for the 2022 football season and the goal is for the 107,000 seats to sell out.

The larger goal though – the goal of all those season ticket-holders, as well as the players, the coaches, the staff, and the millions of Penn State football fans – is to win a national championship. Something the Penn State football team hasn’t done since 1986 (officially) or 1994 (according to the New York Times).

In addition, this goal has been voiced by head coach James Franklin who said publicly, “…my goal is to be the first African-American football coach to win a college national championship.”

So, we know the goal. How does the football team achieve this goal? The easiest answer is for the football team to win all its games. Since 2000, any Power Five conference football team that finished the season and postseason with an undefeated record was named the national champion.

But, besides the obvious “win all their games” answer, are there other things that Penn State and Coach Franklin could do to increase the chance of achieving this goal of winning a national championship? There are two, to be exact.

The first is the 36 degrees N latitude restriction. Since 2000, only one college football team whose campus is north of 36 degrees N latitude – Ohio State – has won a D-1 college football national championship. All the other national champions are from south of that latitude. Visually, if you are looking at a map, the closest way to describe the 36 degree N latitude line (the 36th parallel) is to imagine a line across the United States that runs along the north borders of North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and across to the Pacific Ocean. 

Now, the likelihood of Penn State packing up and moving its campus to, oh, let’s say Destin, Florida — with great weather and beaches — is non-existent. So it’s obvious the first “other thing” that Penn State and Coach Franklin could do to increase the chances of winning a national championship is impossible. How about the second? As it turns out, the second is definitely a possibility. It’s the soda rule.

There are two companies that control the majority of the carbonated soft drink market in this country. That’s soda (pop for you yinzers!). In 2020, the Coca-Cola Company controlled almost 45% of the soda market, and PepsiCo controlled almost 26%. Two companies with almost three-fourths of all the soda business in this country.

One of the ways that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo conduct business is to sign exclusive contracts with companies, venues, organizations and, yes, colleges and universities. These contracts state that the only brand of soda sold on the college campus – or the vastly predominant brand – is theirs. Penn State has such a contract – with Pepsi. Many other major colleges and universities have contracts with one or the other of these companies. 

Without traveling to each and every college and searching their on-campus soda stock, finding out which soda is “the” brand at any given school takes a bit of internet searching. I used a website called MuckRock, which is “a non-profit collaborative news site that gives you the tools to keep our government transparent and accountable,” for some of the schools I researched. For the others I went to their athletic department websites and looked for a Coke or Pepsi logo. And for others I went to their vending department webpages. All of which is to say, the data I’m going to present is not scholarly scientific research, but it’s close enough for columnist work!

Here is the soda rule: Since 2000, only one school with a current sponsorship with Pepsi has won a national football championship: the Florida Gators. Another national champion, the University of Texas, sells both Pepsi and Coke on campus. Every other football national champion since 2000 – Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Ohio State, Florida State, Auburn, Southern California, Miami (Fla.), and Oklahoma – are all currently sponsored by or have exclusive deals with Coke.

As I said, this is not scholarly research so it’s possible that at the time some of those schools won national titles they weren’t with Coke. But that seems like a lot of schools to be just a coincidence. 

Now, it’s also possible that because Coke holds such a large lead in market share, perhaps it has sponsorships with the majority of colleges, meaning it’s more likely that a Coke school would win a national title. Except that might not be the case. It’s extremely difficult to identify how many college and university sponsorships that Coke and Pepsi each have, but a little digging turned up two articles.

In July of 2021 American University announced Pepsi as its official beverage provider. On their student media website, they identified an email from the university that noted, “Pepsi already partners with more than 800 universities, colleges and community colleges nationwide.” 

Conversely, in September 2019 Oklahoma University Athletics announced on their website that Coca-Cola was involving the Sooners in the brand’s college-focused Share a Coke campaign. This meant that “OU is one of 53 college teams nationwide this year that will have customized branded 20-oz. Coke and Coke Zero Sugar bottles available for fans to purchase.”

From the looks of it it’s possible that Pepsi partners or sponsors almost 16 times as many teams as Coke. Or, possibly Coke only did customized branding at 53 of their partner schools and they have many others they partner with. The point is, it appears that Coke does not have an overwhelming majority of the college sponsorships and partnerships, making that overwhelming majority of national football championships something more than statistics or coincidence. 

And to take that one step further, let’s look at how things finished up this season. Below is the final top 10 in the AP college football rankings, along with the soda of choice on that campus: 

1) Georgia – Coke

2) Alabama – Coke

3) Michigan – Coke

4) Cincinnati – Pepsi

5) Baylor – Pepsi

6) Ohio State – Coke

7) Oklahoma State – Coke

8) Notre Dame – Coke

9) Michigan State – Coke

10) Oklahoma – Coke

Eight out of 10 for Coke, including the top three.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. We know what the overarching goal is – win a national championship in football. We’ve got the fans, we’ve got the money, we’re building and renovating and hiring and retaining and recruiting with the best of them. We can’t move the campus to Florida, but the Board of Trustees can quench everyone’s thirst just a little differently.

Here’s our goal: switch to Coke!