USC Next Level Sports Conference: Talking college sports’ future

In a conference that featured some of the biggest names in sports media and business, it was a USC freshman track and field athlete who stole the show.

Though Ezra Frech is no stranger to the limelight — he was a two-time gold medalist in this year’s Paralympic Games — he’s a relative newcomer to the ever-changing field of college athletics. Frech only spoke for around five minutes during the nearly seven-hour conference, but he made the most of that time, his passion for fellow disabled athletes on full display as he stressed the need to push boundaries on the traditional concept of a collegiate athlete.

“I genuinely feel that I was put on this Earth for a few things: to normalize disabilities — be an example of what’s possible as an amputee — and to inspire the world,” Frech said. “There were not a lot of collegiate opportunities for someone with a physical disability to play sports … now I’m the first above-the-knee amputee to ever commit to a Division I school for track and field.”

Frech was one of about two dozen speakers at Thursday’s USC Next Level Sports Conference at Inglewood’s Intuit Dome, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers. The inaugural conference touched on nearly all things related to sports business, from emerging technologies to the changing media landscape and the future of fandom. Speakers also highlighted USC’s leadership position in the new age of collegiate athletics.

“Our students want to do great things. They don’t come to universities to do OK,” USC President Carol Folt said. “What is so important is that we meet them there in all their endeavors, whether it’s in the studio, or in the laboratory, or on the playing field. Those students are carrying all that aspiration into their entire lives.”

New conference, new opportunities

One of the highlights of the day was a panel discussion featuring Folt and Tony Petitti, commissioner of the Big Ten Conference. The two discussed USC’s opportunities in the university’s new conference and the effect of the NCAA’s new revenue-sharing model, which allows schools to pay athletes directly through name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.

“I’m really excited that we’re going to be able to revenue-share directly with student-athletes for the first time. It’s been overdue,” Petitti said. “My focus is making sure we get this new paradigm shift right.”

The two also dispelled the idea that conference realignment and NIL opportunities have been detrimental to college athletics.

“I hear things like ‘college sports is broken’ — that’s not accurate,” Petitti said. “What we needed to fix was the relationship with the student-athletes. That’s not saying it’s broken, but rather it’s just time for a change.”

What it means to be a student-athlete

Trojan basketball stars JuJu Watkins and Kiki Iriafen, as well as UCLA water polo player Lauren Steele, joined Frech on stage to speak about their roles as student-athletes, representatives of their universities and ambassadors of their respective sports.

Watkins and Iriafen’s Women of Troy pre-season team currently ranks third in the country. That means expectations and media attention, but in the age of NIL, those expectations can turn into much more. Luckily, Iriafen said, USC is a program that understands the scope of NIL and helps put its athletes in the position to capitalize on their marketability, while also succeeding on the court and in the classroom.

“You still have to keep the main thing the main thing, but NIL is something that they also want us to benefit from,” Iriafen said. “Not everybody on our team wants to continue to play professionally [after college], but our school and our coaches still pour into us and give us the resources that we need so that we can be successful off the court for years to come.”

Frech talked about his path to USC and how this was one of the few track and field programs that would allow him to compete with nondisabled athletes. That’s allowing him to change peoples’ perspective of what a Division I athlete can look like.

“It’s easy to get caught up in these superficial things like likes or views or followers, but in my head, every like, every view, every comment, every follower, every person I meet, every conversation I have, a disability is slightly more normalized,” Frech said.

USC’s role in the future of sports

USC’s role as a trailblazer in college athletics was a common theme among all Trojans who spoke at Thursday’s conference. Whether it was Frech as trailblazer for the disabled community or Watkins and Iriafen as leaders in women’s basketball, Trojan athletes showed that they are in touch with the direction the sports industry is headed and the impact sports can have on different communities.

“Our students are incredible,” Folt said. “They’re better than they’ve ever been before, and they’ve got all this amazing stuff that really does inspire young kids everywhere.”

In 2028, the eyes of the world will be on Los Angeles when it hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Trojans on stage Thursday hope to be front and center, inspiring the next generation of athletes.

“We’ll continue to move the needle in the right direction with conversations like we’ve been having today,” Frech said. “We have a lot of work to do, but then this big, beautiful moment in L.A. 2028.”