Doug is joined by University of California Riverside Athletic Director Wesley Mallette to discuss his plan to make Riverside athletics financially viable, and the next step in the evolution of NIL.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, want to welcome int.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Doug Gottlieb.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
This is all ball.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We'll get into some hook discussion and.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Future all balls.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
But we got part two of West Mallette, who, of
course is the athletic director of UC Riverside. He saved
UC Riverside's program. They were gonna do away with Division
one athletics. And if you miss part one you can
download or if you download this podcast. But in part
two we talk about NIL, how it should work, how
(00:35):
it could work, what adjustments could be made. It's all
the talk of college athletics. And who better to talk
with than a guy who's been on both sides of
the aisle, if you will in West Molette.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Here's part two of our discussion.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Okay, so open up the hood for me here a
little bit. You know, we operate in a world where,
unless you really know, you think college athletics are just
swimming in money, right, swimming? Those aren't tissues you have
at your next year desk. That's dollar bills that you
(01:11):
wipe your nose with. Right, So let's take up you're
in the Big West basketball wif right, what are the
what are the challenges like financially because you have you
have several right, you have most of the schools are
driving to distance, but you have Hawaii in the league.
You don't have a gigantic arena. It is on campus,
(01:32):
so there's no cost there acceptings in the security, but
there's also a limit to what you could make. You
don't have the influx of massive TV dollars outside of
the Big West tournament.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
So what what?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
So if basketball is your one, men's basketball is kind
of your only shot to make money correct.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
At a sizeable level, if you will, I think for
every program in the Big West. I can't speak for
the rest, but I would, you know, surmise to say that,
you know, it's important to be able to get into
the tournament and go deep into the tournament, at least
one two rounds into the tournament for all of us,
you know, I mean, outside of the other revenue generation
strategies that people would have. But to your point, you know,
(02:12):
specifically men's basketball, and I think it applies anywhere, and
it's it's nothing against any of the other sports, but
in non football schools, men's basketball tends to be the driver.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Okay, And then is there a way to like, how
hard is it to just break even with other sports.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So just across the board as an athletics programs, it's tough, right.
Our deficit isn't really that much in the grand scheme
of things, right because it's it's a program that you know,
it needs to be funded. Right when you look at
men's basketball for US, guarantee games, you know, the games
(02:52):
we get paid to go play people bigger schools with
bigger budgets are critically important. And for Mike, Megpie and
I when we sit down down, our strategy is really,
let's do it where we're not crushing the kids, right,
but we're also generating enough revenue to help the program,
athletics program overall, and men's basketball. Right. So we do
(03:16):
about four guarantee games a year, give or take, and
we won a good number of them right over the years,
going back a few years right before I got here.
If you look at the Power four now Power four
teams that we built that we've beaten. We beat Washington
by fifteen fifty seven forty two neutral syche game in Vegas,
(03:37):
We beat cal We beat Nebraska, We beat Arizona State
on that buzzer beater that you know everybody remembers from
I guess three years two years ago, now we beat
LMU being down eighteen, came back and one by one,
one by one or two. You know, we played Oregon
within five six points two years in a row. We've
(04:00):
got a program that's got moxie, you know, and it's
it's it's in our women's side. Women. The women have
done the same thing over the years. And in softball
they've taken down Power five teams as well Power four. Now,
you know, even baseball's had one or two wins. The
Midweek went against USC last year. Right, So my philosophy
(04:21):
and focus is, let's compete, let's play, right. I'm not
gonna worry about what they have and what we have
or what we don't have that they may have, because
you have to have a lots to have some things,
the haves and the have nots. Right, And like you
talked about with Belzer, it's like this is there's no
real middle class in college athletics anymore. Right, it's either
have a lot, you may have a little something, or
(04:43):
you're you're kind of figuring it out. So when I
look at our budget and I look at our program
and then what we need to do, those guarantee games
are critical. They are important when you look at fan attendance,
Like the misnomer that people have is they see a
packed house, you know, they see a lot of people
in the building, depending on the school. They all assume
everybody's operating in the world of Texas and ou and
(05:04):
Ohio State in Michigan and so on, and we're not right.
We talked about the education model versus the business model.
Those programs. When you have you know, fifty sixty seventy
ninety hundred thousand set stadiums and you have arenas where
you're working to fill those, and you are filling them
in a good year, that revenue that comes in is
(05:25):
so much different than what we're looking at. We're not
looking at. It's not the same model, it's not the
same it's not even the same universe in terms of
how it works. Having been at CAL having been in
the PAC twelve, and having done work for a lot
of power for schools over the years as an independent consultant,
I can tell you flat out it is. It is
a different world now. Not everybody is swimming it like
(05:46):
people think they are right. You do have a few
commissioners at the highest level and a few ads at
the highest level, you know, making seven figures plus. Right,
you have a handful of people in the mid to
high six figures, but the vast majority of people And
I don't I can't say percentages, but if I were
to throw it out there, I'd say probably eighty to
(06:08):
eighty five percent of those of us who work in
college athletics have climbed the ladder, and we're making decent
salaries for what we do. But it is not this you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Know, you're not killing it, right, this is not the
private sector. You're not like that's it's one of the
things that bothers me a great deal. First of all, Like,
even if you were making twice what you're making, right,
this is twenty years, twenty five years into building a career, correct,
you know, with a degree from JMU and all your experience, Like,
(06:42):
it's not that still not that much money, Like we
don't have a especially living in southern California, correct, with kids. Right,
Both we act like it's a bad thing for administrators
or coaches to make anything when they had to work.
Like you started as a college student athlete and then
you work your way up and now you're running.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
An athletic department, so it's a very weird thing.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I don't really understand the kind of shaming of coaches.
And look, some of the head coaches salaries are obscene, right,
and it's because of the competitive landscape, I get, right,
But a lot of like you said, the vast majority
of them are pretty reasonable, and especially the we act
(07:27):
like administrators are making huge amounts of money and that's
just not true, right, And.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
To your point, I think, like, I'm just going to
be fully transparent. Over the course of the next year,
You're going to see me out there a lot working,
you know, to really shift this narrative, right, because at
the mid major level, listen, our reality is like we
talk about and I steal this from Earl Edwards, the
ad at UC San Diego. We went before the UC
(07:54):
regents in January of twenty three at UCLA. We were
meeting with them there talking about the UC the University
of California student athlete experience and Earle, this is what
I'm stealing from Earle. Earle talked about the fact that
there is the education model and the business model in
college athletics. The vast majority of us are in the
(08:15):
education model. This is the model where you know, we
don't have big football programs. We've been at schools that
have that. You know, all of us have had our
fair share at the highest level, at the mid major level.
But this is the education model, which is the five
UC's and the five cal States in Hawaii, in the
Big West, UCLA and CAL and you know Stanford USC.
(08:37):
Those there's still education base, but they're much more on
the business model side. You're not paying Lincoln Riley what
you're paying them, and paying coaches like Lincoln Riley's salary
it's probably five x our entire athletics budget right for
the whole program, So you're not even in the same
universe when you're talking about the financials. But for most
(08:58):
people who don't know or understand the college athletic space
like you and I do, they're looking at everything through
the lens of big football, right. I think I will
say this. You know, I heard what Chip Kelly said
the other day. He's right right, and this is the
thing that people don't want to talk about, But I'll
say it. If you were to lop off and I'm
(09:19):
a football guy. It helped me in so many aspects
of my life. I love the sport like there's no tomorrow.
But if you were to lop off the highest level
of college football bets think about it. The CFP is
not an NCAA championship, right, but it's a however many
millions maybe billion dollar industry in and of itself, right
(09:42):
with you look at the TV deals, you look at staff,
and you look at like advertising, you look at the
bowl games, you look at the whole College Football Playoff,
everything that goes along with it. There's a lot of
money wrapped up in that, right. That money is being
made on the backs of the kids who play the sport.
Let's really be honest about this now. Okay, administrators at
the highest level, commissioners at that highest level, coaches at
(10:04):
that level would not be making those exorbitant salaries if
it weren't for the kids who are playing the game. Right,
you take those kids out of the game, you don't
have a product on the field that people are going
to pay to go see. And then what right you're
at the mind major level, Because you're not, you don't
have those that money coming into your call fers. So
when you look at where we are now, if we
(10:26):
the way to really address, this is, this is a
this is and this is what no one wants to
really say or talk about. You have to look at
this that if you were to take big time college
football and make it its own thing. Now I know
all the things that we'll go into that, right are
the student athletes, employees? Are you looking at you know,
you're going to talk about unions and then you're looking
(10:48):
at workers comp and you're looking at you know, like
you talked about in the in the pod with Bellsert.
You're looking at you know, if they're under contract. You know,
you've got the title line stuff, stay does it go away?
You know you can? Can you fire a kid if
they're an employee? All of those things and all of
the mess that that is. In my opinion, the reason
people don't want to venture down that path is to
(11:09):
hide behind amateurism prevents you from having to deal with
all that. But it's not going to be that way
for long. We're not gonna be able to hide behind
that for long because at some point people are going
to say the vast majority of people are going to
get sucked into this whole thing that's going to destroy
opportunities for tens of thousands of student athletes because we're
going to have to figure out how to support big
(11:31):
time college football on the backs of at the expense
of everyone else competing.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So okay, okay, so let's let's let's let's talk this
thing out of bit. Okay. So okay, So.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
How many how many big time there's flaws to what
ship is saying? Okay, the first thing is what we're
dismissing is, hey, the conferences work, and we're in this kind.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Of brave new world where the Big ten is become the.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Big eight, you know now eighteen.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, it become this super this super conference.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Which we also I mean a couple of years ago
where it was going to be two super conferences of
eighteen to twenty. And it's trending that way with the
SEC in the Big ten, right, and.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
The and and and you do wonder if the ACC
and the Big twelve combined or what what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
The issue is that, you know, you have TV companies
and I guess you know streaming as well, right, and
they lock into deals, right, and obviously there has to
be a value there because they keep paying more and
more money, at least for the Big ten the SEC,
not for the Big twelve that that value hasn't gone up,
(12:43):
and not for the ACC that value will not will
not gone up.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
But the question becomes like.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
How do you if it's if it's if you split
it back to east and West, well, it doesn't have
the value the West Coast teams again fact with it
not having the value, right, Like he's talking about having
seven teams in the West. You know that sounds great,
but there's a reason that those schools aren't getting a
cut or a full cut of the TV revenue initially
(13:11):
or maybe ever because they're just not that valuable.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And so you still run in the same problem, right.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
And right, I think I think no, so uh.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And then you know, then you have the Okay, so.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
We're talking about let let's let's begin with the idea
of breaking off college football or maybe college football and basketball.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm not sure which you think. Do you do one
or do you do both?
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I think basketball. I think basketball can stay that. Like
if you look at the current construct, right and the
way everything's out, basketball still competes in the n c
with the NCAA Tournament and the way that that runs,
you got what sixty eight teams now that can get
in and and it's it's a real tournament, right, And
it's a tournament where when we've seen this, regardless of
(14:03):
your budget, regardless of what resources your athletics program have
has every year we see a fifteen sixteen seed, surprise
someone and you know, every other year and make a
run in the tournament.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
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listen live.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Okay, can you how hard would it be to break
off football?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I mean, how do you?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Like? Everybody's like, wow, you just break off football? Like, well,
that's kind of hard, you know. And this idea of
well you do these things so you can avoid Title nine, Like,
good luck with that one.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah, that work?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So what are what are the realities of what are
the possibilities? Because because you kind of work not necessarily
for the networks, but on both sides of the aisle,
you have a good sense of this thing.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
What's the realities to what's possible?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So I think it's it's well, I will say this,
I don't have the answer, right, I think what Chip
is talking about is what on a on a baseline level,
if you were to lop it off and just create
a league, you know, it's basically on the minor league
NFL system where you'd have the AFC in the NFC,
and you've got the North, the South, you know, the West,
(15:21):
the East, you know, central whatever it is now, and
you could you could you could group teams geographically, right
and then they play, you know, whoever they play.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
You mean you mean like you mean like the Pac
twelve and the Big ten and the Big twelve.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Like we just had this ship and everything everybody away with.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
It, right, we just had it. And that's you know,
it's kind of where like now it's like, you know, okay,
so what do we what do you do? But I
think when it is a football issue, it's a big
time football issue. I mean, the realignment is based around
football at that level. Right. It's like people aren't, you know,
people aren't trying to figure out where they're going for
their Olympic sports. The Olympic sports are the casualty or
(16:00):
the byproduct of, you know, where the football programs are
going to go, because those are the drivers that the
Olympic sports, or revenue drivers, the way football is, it
would be a different conversation, right, But that's it's the
reality of this is driven by football and everybody wanting
to make the jump and figure out how to get
to the highest level and build a successful program. And
(16:20):
there's nothing wrong with that, right, I have no I
have no issue with that. I do have issue with
the fact that the mid majors and the eleven conferences
that were not included in the Division on Transformation Committee.
You know, discussions et cetera, et cetera, are to remain
Division one. You're getting stucked into that and you're along
(16:40):
for the ride, right, you know, there was talk of
everything splitting. That talk is still on the table. I
think at some point it may. I think that's a reality.
I don't think that a lot of programs are just
going to go away and just disappear. But I do
think that universities are going to be put in a
position where the cost of remaining Division one is going
(17:02):
to be significant and you're going to have to make
decisions as to are we going to do this, are
we not? And if we do this, what does that
look like? Years ago, we had discussions, you know, circa
fourteen fifteen sixteen about because people saw this, this is
what's happening right now for those who are in the
college athletics space is not a surprise on any level, right.
(17:24):
We saw this eventually, this eventuality, you know, coming to fruition.
I think when you look at if you look at
the title nine piece and you have football, from a
financial standpoint, you may be faced with what is a
two and eight or two and six model, which is
football and men's basketball, and then you pick your other six,
(17:45):
right or your other four, And that is what we
talked about before, is where you're going to end up
with so many student athletes who are no longer affording
the opportunity because you're not going to be able to
sustain if we're if we're if we're following with chur
the Baker put out and we were putting into an
endowment for kids at thirty grand a pop, programs aren't
(18:06):
gon to be able to keep all their teams if
you want to remain Division one, or if you want
to remain if you want to sustain your program, it
is not financially possible to do that for the vast
majority of programs unless you know there's a magic windfall
of money that comes in from somewhere, right, you're not
gonna be able to do it and be competitive.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So, you know, it's so what happens to his proposal.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I don't know, because the thing about it is it's
kind of like there's there's no other proposal on the
table right now, you know. I think here's here's what
I think has to happen. I think those of us
at the mid major level and those of us not
at the top of the food chain, if you will,
in the Power five level, those of us meeting the
programs because we all move around, right but for where
(18:54):
all of these programs are right now, there needs to
be a plan of action as to what it's going to,
what it needs to look like to preserve amateurism, to
preserve the model that we're under in terms of how
we provide opportunities for student athletes, you know, educational opportunities
through sport, and the true meaning of why we got
(19:15):
into this in the first place. This thing has been
so muddied by football and the revenue and the TV
revenue and everything that goes with it that everybody's been
dragged along and the rest of the majority of people
who aren't familiar with college athletics don't understand, like, you're
literally going to eliminate if this thing goes the way
it's going, you're going to eliminate tens of thousands of
educational opportunities for student athletes.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I agree, I agree, Like listen, I think, So here's
my actual read in the football thing, and so you
lived it okay at the high major level. I'm more
of a casual observe. I'm more of an observer, and
of course I've covered it. I personally think the values
(19:58):
of the players are bullshit.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
I just I just thought. But part of it is
because the schools.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Have never and I understand that the piece that you
and I value, the educational piece, has become less value
by society and especially less value by members of the media,
which becomes kind of like the running narrative. But there
still is something very significant to just getting into a
(20:27):
school which you couldn't get into if you didn't play
college football. You know, and like is always told, like
nine nine percent of them, I'm playing pro anyway, and
in the NFL it's a very short lived career foremost.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And so we're.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Moving all of this stuff around dramatically changing for a
small portion.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Of we're moving around and we're dramatically shifting the landscape
to I'll use the words of one of my colleagues
in the Big West, all of this started. We started
down this path when the salaries and the money got
really big for a handful of people. Sure, you know,
that's where we're that's where and we're selling like we
(21:07):
meaning the collective because we're all even though we may
have different missions, right, we're all responsible at the end
of the day if we're selling these kids this dream, right,
think about this, Doug and I challenge anybody how many
people years after they're done playing, what are your stats matter?
(21:30):
You know, it's a talking point. It's something you did
that helped build you for other things in life. What
is like whether you're all conference, all world, all this
all that, you know, it's like you can monetize it
for a period of time. But we're so hyper focused
on the monetization for a handful of people, a handful
of people that the rest are all going to be
(21:50):
left in behind. And like you talked about before, the
rank and file is the eighty five ninety percent of
the individuals who will be impacted.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Right, So so so you and I we agree, we're
pretty lockstep on that. And I actually think, I actually
think that that the everybody points to the transfer portal,
but they're miss they're mislabeling what they don't like.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It's not the transfer portal.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's the ability to transfer without any repercussion, right to
sit out, to not sit out. And I understand that,
you know, I don't know legally obviously, if there's basically
what it is the non compete, right. And I actually
think a lot of this started when people wouldn't enforce
(22:39):
the n UH, the NLI, the national letter of intent
because it would just get too ugly. Right, you sign
the contract, that's where you go to school, or if
you decide you don't want to go to school, there
you sit. But no one wanted to take the bad
press because they thought, well, that will hurt me from
getting a kid in the future, Like what anyway.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Well, don't let's add this part in there. The cavette
that I would add in there. Coaches leaving, coaches getting fined,
coaches making decisions to go elsewhere, and the person or
the coaching staff that recruited somebody somewhere is no longer there, right,
So that and that instance, they should be able to,
you know, be released from the the NL, the NL.
(23:22):
I you know, but go ahead, keep going.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Sorry sorry, okay, no no, so so.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Let me do what you get my train thought for
one second, so I think you know, look, all of
this stuff is it's like sugar.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It immediately makes you feel good if you're the kid
to get money in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Oh my god, I'm getting all this money.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
What you don't realize is, and I said this on
my radio show, all of these kids that put on
their Instagram posts forever, a Trojan forever, a bulldog forever,
a corner Husker forever, a Hurricane forever, a Buckeye.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
No, you're not.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
No, you're not.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
You leave a school, it's like leaving a company. You're out.
When you're out, you're out. And what we have is
I'll give you an example. Spencer Sanders.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Spencer Sanders was a starting quarterback at Oklahoma State for
three years. Put himself in the portal, and look, I
think he wanted to come back. I do think that
it was one of those relationships which may have gone bad.
But he's a talented kid. He did leave him to
a Big twelve championship game. He goes to Ole Miss,
he doesn't play. Now he's academically ineligible for the bowl
(24:47):
game that he would have played in because their quarterbacks
have put their names into the portal.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
In addition to the.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Fact that he's not going to really play or get
a chance to shine. Not does not he's not a pro.
Whatever money he made is actually money he loses in
the back end because if you're a four year start
at Oklahoma State, you're always a cowboy. And look, Oklahoma
State people like they're not gonna thumb their nose at
him when he comes back. No, NOSU guy, he left right,
(25:16):
you leave your out. And so we not only do
damage to all of those student athletes who are probably
going to lose opportunities, we do damage to high school
kids because the transfer portal allows you to recruit guys
that are seasoned, that are ready to play. But even
the kids that transfer, they're gonna be damaged because when
(25:40):
you multiple multiple times transfer, like where's your home because
and I don't know if you're you know, obviously your
path is different. But I would say high percentage of
football and basketball players, you get done playing, and the
first person you call when you need a job is
your coach, right, coach or administrator right, and they the
(26:03):
administrator may help you out, the coaches may may help
you out, but for the most part, like you've been
there for six nine months, like they don't know. Yeah,
you're a mercenary. So I think we do damage. I
think that. I truly believe this, and I've gotten criticized
roundly because I've never been a pay the player's guide is.
(26:26):
I just think that because it's become the wild, wild West,
and because of everyone's need for kids to have actually
too many rights, you know, too many rights, that we're
doing damage across the board. And while we like to
act like everything is free market, no it's not.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Nothing is truly free market.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
We don't live in a completely free capitalistic society.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
What we have is laws and guardrails in place, voted
on by Congress, just like we have with the NCAA. Now,
can we say that it shouldn't be like the Senate
where everybody gets two votes, right, It should be more
like House representatives, where the bigger conferences maybe get a
bigger chunk of the votes. I think I would be
down with that. I think that's a little bit more
(27:13):
reasonable way of doing it. But there has to be
some form of created loyalty because it actually helps the
kids in the end more so than this freedom of
complete movement and self autonomy, which I think is going
to hurt everybody across the board.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Right, right, So that there's a lot there, and I
hear you. I mean, I was just taking a few
notes on what you were saying, and I love this
discussion because the thing about it, Doug is this is real. Right.
So a few things. One, you're not wrong in any
of the stuff that you're saying, right, But what I
think that one of the things to add to what
you're talking about is one we have to look at
(27:54):
the long term damage that's being done to student athletes
in a system that has been set up. How we
know how we got here, right, We got here because
you had some politicians in my state and our state
who tend to look at this thing as this is
the Texas, the ou, the Ohio state, the Michigan, you know,
(28:17):
the Florida, Tennessee, Alabama model, right, and we're not that.
So one, there are thousands of kids who get lost
into portal every year. Right, So the system that's been
set up in terms of being able to hit the portal.
You know, it's funny because some of our coaches they
call it portal combat, right, because it's what it is.
(28:38):
It's portal combat. And so what happens is here like
the in looking at it from a student athlete perspective
and keeping student athletes in a realistic place here, Right,
let's start with this, n I l for what it was.
We knew this, We all knew this was going to happen.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Of course we did. Of course we did. No.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
No, this is about guys getting money to sign autographs, bullshit.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
This is about pay for play.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
This is about recruitment, and it ultimately comes down it's
inducement in the form of recruitment and retention. Right, how
many coaches are Every coach in the country is going
crazy because they have to re recruit their players. There's
student athletes once they have them. Because the mid major level.
I'll take it one step further, and I'm going to
say this publicly, the mid major level is now the
(29:28):
new juco right. And who because if you're a P five,
P four powerful coach, group of five coach and you know,
and you're recruiting, and you look at the portal and
you can get a kid who is one or two
or so years into college. What do they have. They
know how to be coached, they know how to practice,
they know how to go to school, they know how
(29:48):
to act on campus. One would assume, right, they have
college experience. So it's almost like when you're interviewing people
for a job, more than likely you're going to go
with the person who has a level of experience versus
someone who's fresh out of school, right because why that person.
The opportunity for you to be successful with that person
is going to happen faster. And in a world where
(30:09):
coaches are I always say this, eighties don't fire head coaches.
Head coaches fire themselves, right, But if a head coach
is fighting for their job and they want to make
sure they stay in the hunt every year, and depending
on what the metrics of success are, they're going to
recruit the kid who's going to give them the best
chance to win right away. So gone are the days
of trying to build from the ground up with high
(30:31):
school kids that you turn into two three four year
players and those student athletes. You build a program and
you have longevity. Now everybody's in a one to two
year model. They got to win now because they feel
the pressure. And if they don't feel the pressure from
their administration, they're feeling the pressure from their boosters or
their donors. They're feeling pressure from the media and depending
on the market you're in, and they're feeling pressure like
I need to I'm coaching for my job right So
(30:53):
right there, that's one area where we've gone, you know,
a sku of where we should be. Now what it
has that done? That has also put high school kids
in a position where the high school kids are getting squeezed.
You have the portal, You have the COVID year. I
think next year is the last year of the COVID
year twenty five, so we're coming up on the end
of that. Right. You have the COVID year, you have
grad transfers, you have you know, and you have the
(31:18):
opportunity to recruit kids out of the portal as undergrads
who get ann You have international kids, right, high school kids.
Unless you are the elite of the elite on the
high school level, you're going to get squeezed. High school
kids are now forced to say, am I going to
go to prep? Am I going to go to Juco?
What am I going to do? And if I'm good enough,
can I go play overseas for a year or two? Right?
(31:39):
In basketball? Right? So, now you combine all these factors
with the hype around nil and when you have people
out there talking about we need thirteen million in our
collective so we can keep a quarterback or get a
quarterback and blah blah blah. Now the whole spirit of it,
and I've listened to it, and I've seen it. Right,
we all see it. It is absolutely gone to pay
(32:00):
for play in the minds of boosters and donors. And
where I think it's going to go left or right
of center, or it's going to start to wane at
the lower levels. And I say the lower levels because
donors and boosters in their mind, they're believing they're buying
a kid that's going to help them win a championship.
And when that championship doesn't come together, and when that
coach isn't winning and they're investing however much money they're
(32:22):
investing into the collective or directly into a kid, they're
not going to see what the return on their investment,
because that's how the person who's putting the money into
it is looking at it, right, So as ads one
of the things that I say now, and I've had
this conversation with our people, I've said, look, I've got
to think about fundraising from the different lens now, because one,
(32:44):
you have to be able to compete at some level
in the NIL space, right and we know it can't
come straight from the athletics programs, so it's got to
either come through the collective or through outside donors. So
we have to be able to figure out how do
we compete there. We have to also make sure our
development off are able to help us as we're raising
money for the program overall, because we still need money
(33:04):
to run our programs. And then you've got a factor
in your multimedia rights partner. You know whoever your multimedia
rights partner is. In our case, it's lear Field, and
we need that money coming in. But now the multimedia
rights partners are talking to sponsors, whether they're brands, local
national brands, local businesses, regional enterprises, whatever, and those entities
are saying, am I going to put the money into
(33:25):
the athletics program or am I going to just buy
a kid and have the kid come sign autographs and
I pay the kid and I get the same return
on investment I was looking for. So now you've got,
you know, those three areas that you got to think
about from an AD's perspective. And then to bring it
all together, we set up a system. We meaning all
of us in the NCAA and the government, the Fed, etc.
(33:45):
Et cetera. The congressional people. We haven't set it up.
A system has been put in place where it now
values the highest paid kid, and then you forget that
that kid is still eighteen to twenty two, twenty three
years old, it's still maturing, and they're under pressure of
having to perform at a really high level because some
of them are getting paid more than professors on campus,
(34:09):
faculty on campus, administrators, and coaches. So what have we done.
We've set up a system that is absolutely going to
fail at some point because it's not sustainable because it
will fail at one of two levels. You're not able
to keep up with it, or the corruption will tear
it down.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So Jason proposed, and it's been rumored the idea of hey,
what if private equity comes in and buys up an athletic.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, and now now you've completely If private equity becomes
a player in this, God help us all you know.
I mean, it's you know again, education versus a business
model and athletics. We have to at some point, we
the collective in college athletics, we have to stop and say, look,
(35:00):
are we ultimately doing a reparable harm to these student apps,
these young men and women at the at the highest level,
if you will, because yes, no, let me back up
real quick. We see at our level we absolutely have
nil deals that are true nil deals. You know, a
little bit of money here and there, not anything substantial
for appearances, autographed signings, put social media posts, endorsing a product, whatever,
(35:24):
may be the true spirit of what it is, right,
but we have to look at this whole thing that
where nil has it, like we talked about doug, where
it has become pay for play in essence, and we
have to really look at is it doing a reparable
harm long term to these young men and women who
are I hate to say it because I never like
to look at it this way. We cannot make them
(35:46):
commodities for big universities. You know, I know, as you know,
you know, my son plays at Pepperdine.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
But but but people want them to be.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
They want them to.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
I understand it. They want them to be.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
They want them to, which is where we have to base,
we say, at some level. And again I don't have
the answer. But I look at it like this. My
son plays at Pepperdine, as you know, right, I'm his dad.
I'm also an ad I see some of the nasty
text messages that come through from fans, you know, from people,
from grown men who are doing things and you know,
(36:21):
finding ways to put young men and women in situations
where they're coming down on them like they're pros. Right,
these are kids, These are young men and women that
are still developing. If we don't figure it out quickly,
we're going to allow irreparable harm to be done to
these individuals, whether it's people getting kids, getting a whole
bunch of money and not understanding that you have to
(36:43):
pay taxes on all this stuff, not understanding the financial
implications of what they're receiving. It's not a gift, you know,
it's not like here's X number of thousands of dollars
or tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions and
we're paying We're given this to you, Like, that's not
free money, right, And when they are in their mind,
they're like, well, this is for my name, image of likeness.
But ultimately it's like, no, the people who are giving
(37:06):
you that. To your point, if the if the private,
if private equity comes into it, they're going to expect
a level of performance that gives them an r a
return on their investment. Right. This is where, honestly, and
I'll say this till the cows come home, we have
to do a better job protecting our student athletes. We
have to. We have to. We need a better system,
(37:27):
and we need a better way, and and it's so
complicated and so many and there's so many hands in
it and so many special interests. You know, this thing,
this train has left the station. You know. Now we
need Superman at the end of the tracks to flat
out stop it and figure out how do we redirect
it or redirect it, you know, because we're going to
destroy what we spent decades trying to build. Those the
(37:52):
vast majority of us who've competed at the mid major level,
et cetera, et cetera, you know, doing it for the
academic red for the educational opportunities and all the things
we're supposed to We're going to destroy that system, and
that's going to be the unintended consequence of everybody thinking
that they know what they're doing. Right, Like you talked about,
(38:12):
this is the way. How can anybody be an expert
in something that literally just started? Like you're an expert
in something it hasn't been around three years and you've
had experts in it. How how are you an expert
in something? You're an expert from your vantage point, right,
and you may have you're an expert from having a
perspective on it. I think Belzer's perspective Again. I keep
(38:33):
going back to Jason because I think he has a
He has a fantastic perspective that's realistic about where this
thing is heading. Right. Everything that you guys talked about
in terms of collective bargaining agreements, in terms of unions,
in terms of employee status, in terms of you know,
firing a student athlete if they're not performing, if they're
(38:53):
an employee, all of these things are the things that
people aren't really understanding because they're only looking at it
the limited lens and the limited scope of what they
have versus being a former student athlete, being an administrator,
being someone who's responsible for running a program, and being
someone who ultimate at the end of the day, is
responsible for the mission. And I will say this the
(39:16):
mission of college. Every school is going to have a mission.
In my opinion, my not so humble opinion on this,
the mission really comes out to one sentence, build and
prepare student athletes for opportunities in life through sport.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I completely agree.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay, but again, here's the thing we're strewing up the
most any of these. Let's just take football, since that's
really what the topic is, right. Football makes the most money,
it does, so football can the most money. So we're
given on a lot of these kids upwards of six
figures to play football. So they get done playing football
(39:56):
and they go into the workplace and.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
They're not going to find a job the sim amount.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
But but again, it's a lot like here's here's how
I would relate it to I think most here's how
it related to the common man. It's the remember the
first time you watched the big screen TV, right, well,
the first time you watched ht TV, and then you
went back to standard def and you're.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Like, this is terrible. What is this?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I can't even watch the game anymore. This TV is
tiny and standard deaf. I can't even see it. What
is going on here? All right, that's what they're all
going to experience. Worre you're you're you're right, Like the
whole job is to me, the ni l is you
get done playing, and now you get a killer job
because you played, and then you're you know, you're like
(40:43):
me where you're like a scholarship for life. You know,
anywhere you go, somebody wants to buy you beer. If
you need a job, they'll help you out. People like you.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You get to go to games occasionally for free.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
You get a cool letterman jacket, you get to cut
lines sometimes, like all that stuff. But this idea of
putting money in a kiss pocket again, it sounds great again.
The reality is you point out they're young. Agent's gonna
get some parents are going to get some people will
get a little will probably burn through it really quickly.
(41:14):
Let's see what happens if the tax when the taxman
wants his as well, And then we're creating this complete
facade of what they should expect in the workplace, you know,
Like I'll give you an example, a company that I
know that hires a lot of ex athletes where they
can make a lot of money eventually a striker, right,
(41:34):
striker is uh, you know they've all let's just say pharmaceuticals,
but it's also it's medical devices, medical right, right, So
I know people who have been in college athletics, have
a master's degree and a buddy of mine works for strikers. Like,
hey man, you want to know anybody wants a job,
like we got a good we got a good area
(41:55):
open seventy five with some bonuses, like you can you
can crack six figures if you bust your ass in
your first year. Like imagine you're a college kid because
you're not getting the seventy five, you don't have a
master's degree, you're not that where all, and somebody comes
to you and offers you fifty sixty thousand dollars when
you're used to making one hundred thousand dollars, which is
(42:15):
kind of conservative for some of these kids, but you know,
one hundred thousan dollars for alignment is not that crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
So you just you have no we're killing their perspective.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
If we look at how many like how many, how
many young people this is impacting that would be facing
that situation right, because we know, look, professional sport is
going to end one of three ways for all of us. Right,
you're going to age out, you're gonna get injured, or
you're going to get cut. Right, you're not going to
play flight when we're eighteen to twenty two. Usually you
(42:45):
the reality of that doesn't really set in until it
sets in, and then you know how many colleagues of ours,
friends of ours had a really hard time just adjusting
to life when you're not going to practice, when you're
not in the locker room, when you're not around your teammates,
when you're not on trips where you're not in the stadium,
where you're not in front of thousands, tens of thousands
(43:05):
of people, when you're not you know, when you're not
in it right and you're not.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
You know, you know, I'll give I'll give you an
example of the athletes that the people that figure this
out the hard way is. I had one of my
closest friends sky played with. He's probably the best college
player I play with him, Adrian Peterson PiZZ from northvill
over Rock Arkansas, third all time leading scored Oklahoma State.
He tore his ACL at Chicago pre draft, so that
(43:32):
next year when he rehabbed, he was like he was
never the same, And it was just because the idea
of trying to rehab when you're not part of a team,
when you don't have a coach telling you know, you
don't have a team to look forward to playing for it,
you don't have a trainer who designed your ass to
get in there and rehab every day. That's what it's like. Yeah,
(43:54):
people struggle to adjust to being a civilian, if you will.
It's really like coming out of the military, what are
you struggling to adjust.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
To real life?
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Exactly? You know, it's obviously I'm misspoken. It's not exactly that,
but it's the parallel is there, you know, in terms
of how you're gonna like, you know, adjust your life
coming out of coming out of it. You know, you
look at the expectations like you talked about for the
handful of people relatively speaking, like eighteen to twenty two
year olds that are gonna make this kind of money.
(44:24):
I'm not and again I am not opposed for the
opportunity for any student athlete to get what they can get. Right.
I'm not opposed to that at all, but I do
think that it does. It can. The unintended consequence is
it can create an overinflated sense of self, like you
see with so many of kids who go into the portal.
There's a reason thousands of the kids go into the
portal and end up nowhere, right because they have an
(44:47):
overinflated sense of self and they they think, Okay, I'm
just gonna I don't like it here. It's not working
for me for whatever reason. You know, I'm just going
to enter in or I'm going to enter and see
how much money I can get someone where, Right. But
a lot of them like it doesn't work out for
the vast majority of people. That's the thing people aren't
talking about. Right. So if you are one of the
(45:09):
handful that's getting a sizeable amount in nil and you
all of a sudden, college athletics ends and you're going
to get a regular job, if you will, you know,
and start your professional career in the workforce, you're right.
It is going to be like going from you know,
old school TD, you know, to watching something in four K,
but in the reverse and now you're like, what am I?
(45:31):
What is this? And then having an appreciation for climbing
the ladder and earning it. If you're not able to
take the experience you had in terms of what it
took to get you to where you were athletically and
the work you had to to do that, you have
to take that same that same skill set and apply
it into the professional world and wherever you are and
(45:51):
do that to climb the ladder like all of us have, right. So,
but I think, yeah, it's like that overinflated sense it
self can be an uninto and the consequence of having
too much too soon, and then all of a sudden
it goes away and you're like, Okay, what do I
do now? Or I'm in a position where I'm making
you know, pennies on the dollar relative to what I
(46:11):
was a student athlete, you know, in my at my
former institution. What am I supposed to do now? Right?
Because now you have to jug lifestyle and everything else,
and and if you're not walking into a real a
real world concept, a real world structure that everybody else
has kind of have to work the way into and
work the way through and then make the climb up.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Okay, last thing I tell Charlie Baker, he's got to
hire you. You're his policyman. Okay, he said, there's no
other proposal. What would you propose.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
I'm actually in the process of working on that. In
terms of what I would propose, I think there are
elements in there that provide a good framework, but I
think there are some that are misinformed. From the standpoint
that the unintended consequences like the whole investing at least
(47:12):
thirty thousand per year, you know, and for at least
half of this school's eligible student athletes, the unintended consequences
of things like that will destroy the vast majority of programs.
They won't be able to survive. Right. In my opinion
on this, I think that it's going to take and
it's going to be a proposal. It would have to
(47:34):
be a proposal. You're never going to please everybody, right,
You're never going to make everybody happy. But there's going
to be levels of changing the system that will involve
big time college football that won't make everybody happy. But
if we want to continue the academic model and amateurism,
(47:54):
it's the only way you're going to be able to
go you're not going to be able to do this
and try to keep big time college football intact as
is right now. And it's not it's not a negative.
It's just a matter of saying, look, either we're going
to we're going to do everything we need to do
to protect that we meaning the people involved, or we're
really going to look out for the vast majority in
(48:17):
the rank and file to keep this thing going so
everybody continues to have opportunities to compete and go to
school and put you know, for those who aund scholarship,
earn scholarship or at least have the opportunity to continue
their athletic career while earning their degree. But you're not
going to be able to have both. It's just not possible.
It's not plausible at this point. If I was working
(48:38):
with Charlie, I would absolutely work with him, you know,
each step of the way, because I do believe it
can be no and it's and I know I'm the
eternal optimist. I get that. I mean, Doug, I say,
I helped save a program from being eliminated. There's not
too much that I feel like I can't do, you know,
with the right team in place and the right approach
and moving and moving the special interest or the agendas.
(48:58):
And if we're all locked in on what is going
to be best for the kids we serve in athletics administration,
then we get there. If we're not going to be
honest about that, we're not going to get there.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Awesome stuff. Wes. Listen, man, you've been more than generous
with your time. Do me this favor.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
When you get that proposal done, will you do me
a favor and let's do another Let's do another problem.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Absolutely absolutely, because and this is one of those things
where I won't be doing this by myself. You know,
there's there's there are a number of ads and a
number of administrators and a number of chancellors and presidents
who are very interested in and what what else can
we do? And it may not be the be all
end all, but it's going to be something that's going
to point us, you know, in a in an informed
(49:44):
direction to help save the whole thing from collapsing. So
but you will be my first call. I promise you done,
I promise.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Thanks the.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
All right, that's it for this edition of All Ball.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Remember the Gottlieb Show airs daily three to five Eastern
twelve two Pacific. You can download it in podcasts for
and plus we have a podcast only hour. Just typeen
Doug Gotlieb. You can get all my stuff in the meantime.
I thanks to Wes Malette. And if you have any questions,
you have any comments, remember download, subscribe, rate, review, and
tweet us. Tweet this out if you think it's interesting
(50:25):
at Gottlieb Show is the Twitter handle, and Gottlieb Show,
of course, is the handle of the Instagram page.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is all ball
Hey, want to welcome int.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Doug Gottlieb.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
This is all ball.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We'll get into some hook discussion and.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Future all balls.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
But we got part two of West Mallette, who, of
course is the athletic director of UC Riverside. He saved
UC Riverside's program. They were gonna do away with Division
one athletics. And if you miss part one you can
download or if you download this podcast. But in part
two we talk about NIL, how it should work, how
(00:35):
it could work, what adjustments could be made. It's all
the talk of college athletics. And who better to talk
with than a guy who's been on both sides of
the aisle, if you will in West Molette.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Here's part two of our discussion.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Okay, so open up the hood for me here a
little bit. You know, we operate in a world where,
unless you really know, you think college athletics are just
swimming in money, right, swimming? Those aren't tissues you have
at your next year desk. That's dollar bills that you
(01:11):
wipe your nose with. Right, So let's take up you're
in the Big West basketball wif right, what are the
what are the challenges like financially because you have you
have several right, you have most of the schools are
driving to distance, but you have Hawaii in the league.
You don't have a gigantic arena. It is on campus,
(01:32):
so there's no cost there acceptings in the security, but
there's also a limit to what you could make. You
don't have the influx of massive TV dollars outside of
the Big West tournament.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
So what what?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
So if basketball is your one, men's basketball is kind
of your only shot to make money correct.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
At a sizeable level, if you will, I think for
every program in the Big West. I can't speak for
the rest, but I would, you know, surmise to say that,
you know, it's important to be able to get into
the tournament and go deep into the tournament, at least
one two rounds into the tournament for all of us,
you know, I mean, outside of the other revenue generation
strategies that people would have. But to your point, you know,
(02:12):
specifically men's basketball, and I think it applies anywhere, and
it's it's nothing against any of the other sports, but
in non football schools, men's basketball tends to be the driver.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Okay, And then is there a way to like, how
hard is it to just break even with other sports.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
So just across the board as an athletics programs, it's tough, right.
Our deficit isn't really that much in the grand scheme
of things, right because it's it's a program that you know,
it needs to be funded. Right when you look at
men's basketball for US, guarantee games, you know, the games
(02:52):
we get paid to go play people bigger schools with
bigger budgets are critically important. And for Mike, Megpie and
I when we sit down down, our strategy is really,
let's do it where we're not crushing the kids, right,
but we're also generating enough revenue to help the program,
athletics program overall, and men's basketball. Right. So we do
(03:16):
about four guarantee games a year, give or take, and
we won a good number of them right over the years,
going back a few years right before I got here.
If you look at the Power four now Power four
teams that we built that we've beaten. We beat Washington
by fifteen fifty seven forty two neutral syche game in Vegas,
(03:37):
We beat cal We beat Nebraska, We beat Arizona State
on that buzzer beater that you know everybody remembers from
I guess three years two years ago, now we beat
LMU being down eighteen, came back and one by one,
one by one or two. You know, we played Oregon
within five six points two years in a row. We've
(04:00):
got a program that's got moxie, you know, and it's
it's it's in our women's side. Women. The women have
done the same thing over the years. And in softball
they've taken down Power five teams as well Power four. Now,
you know, even baseball's had one or two wins. The
Midweek went against USC last year. Right, So my philosophy
(04:21):
and focus is, let's compete, let's play, right. I'm not
gonna worry about what they have and what we have
or what we don't have that they may have, because
you have to have a lots to have some things,
the haves and the have nots. Right, And like you
talked about with Belzer, it's like this is there's no
real middle class in college athletics anymore. Right, it's either
have a lot, you may have a little something, or
(04:43):
you're you're kind of figuring it out. So when I
look at our budget and I look at our program
and then what we need to do, those guarantee games
are critical. They are important when you look at fan attendance,
Like the misnomer that people have is they see a
packed house, you know, they see a lot of people
in the building, depending on the school. They all assume
everybody's operating in the world of Texas and ou and
(05:04):
Ohio State in Michigan and so on, and we're not right.
We talked about the education model versus the business model.
Those programs. When you have you know, fifty sixty seventy
ninety hundred thousand set stadiums and you have arenas where
you're working to fill those, and you are filling them
in a good year, that revenue that comes in is
(05:25):
so much different than what we're looking at. We're not
looking at. It's not the same model, it's not the
same it's not even the same universe in terms of
how it works. Having been at CAL having been in
the PAC twelve, and having done work for a lot
of power for schools over the years as an independent consultant,
I can tell you flat out it is. It is
a different world now. Not everybody is swimming it like
(05:46):
people think they are right. You do have a few
commissioners at the highest level and a few ads at
the highest level, you know, making seven figures plus. Right,
you have a handful of people in the mid to
high six figures, but the vast majority of people And
I don't I can't say percentages, but if I were
to throw it out there, I'd say probably eighty to
(06:08):
eighty five percent of those of us who work in
college athletics have climbed the ladder, and we're making decent
salaries for what we do. But it is not this you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Know, you're not killing it, right, this is not the
private sector. You're not like that's it's one of the
things that bothers me a great deal. First of all, Like,
even if you were making twice what you're making, right,
this is twenty years, twenty five years into building a career, correct,
you know, with a degree from JMU and all your experience, Like,
(06:42):
it's not that still not that much money, Like we
don't have a especially living in southern California, correct, with kids. Right,
Both we act like it's a bad thing for administrators
or coaches to make anything when they had to work.
Like you started as a college student athlete and then
you work your way up and now you're running.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
An athletic department, so it's a very weird thing.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I don't really understand the kind of shaming of coaches.
And look, some of the head coaches salaries are obscene, right,
and it's because of the competitive landscape, I get, right,
But a lot of like you said, the vast majority
of them are pretty reasonable, and especially the we act
(07:27):
like administrators are making huge amounts of money and that's
just not true, right, And.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
To your point, I think, like, I'm just going to
be fully transparent. Over the course of the next year,
You're going to see me out there a lot working,
you know, to really shift this narrative, right, because at
the mid major level, listen, our reality is like we
talk about and I steal this from Earl Edwards, the
ad at UC San Diego. We went before the UC
(07:54):
regents in January of twenty three at UCLA. We were
meeting with them there talking about the UC the University
of California student athlete experience and Earle, this is what
I'm stealing from Earle. Earle talked about the fact that
there is the education model and the business model in
college athletics. The vast majority of us are in the
(08:15):
education model. This is the model where you know, we
don't have big football programs. We've been at schools that
have that. You know, all of us have had our
fair share at the highest level, at the mid major level.
But this is the education model, which is the five
UC's and the five cal States in Hawaii, in the
Big West, UCLA and CAL and you know Stanford USC.
(08:37):
Those there's still education base, but they're much more on
the business model side. You're not paying Lincoln Riley what
you're paying them, and paying coaches like Lincoln Riley's salary
it's probably five x our entire athletics budget right for
the whole program, So you're not even in the same
universe when you're talking about the financials. But for most
(08:58):
people who don't know or understand the college athletic space
like you and I do, they're looking at everything through
the lens of big football, right. I think I will
say this. You know, I heard what Chip Kelly said
the other day. He's right right, and this is the
thing that people don't want to talk about, But I'll
say it. If you were to lop off and I'm
(09:19):
a football guy. It helped me in so many aspects
of my life. I love the sport like there's no tomorrow.
But if you were to lop off the highest level
of college football bets think about it. The CFP is
not an NCAA championship, right, but it's a however many
millions maybe billion dollar industry in and of itself, right
(09:42):
with you look at the TV deals, you look at staff,
and you look at like advertising, you look at the
bowl games, you look at the whole College Football Playoff,
everything that goes along with it. There's a lot of
money wrapped up in that, right. That money is being
made on the backs of the kids who play the sport.
Let's really be honest about this now. Okay, administrators at
the highest level, commissioners at that highest level, coaches at
(10:04):
that level would not be making those exorbitant salaries if
it weren't for the kids who are playing the game. Right,
you take those kids out of the game, you don't
have a product on the field that people are going
to pay to go see. And then what right you're
at the mind major level, Because you're not, you don't
have those that money coming into your call fers. So
when you look at where we are now, if we
(10:26):
the way to really address, this is, this is a
this is and this is what no one wants to
really say or talk about. You have to look at
this that if you were to take big time college
football and make it its own thing. Now I know
all the things that we'll go into that, right are
the student athletes, employees? Are you looking at you know,
you're going to talk about unions and then you're looking
(10:48):
at workers comp and you're looking at you know, like
you talked about in the in the pod with Bellsert.
You're looking at you know, if they're under contract. You know,
you've got the title line stuff, stay does it go away?
You know you can? Can you fire a kid if
they're an employee? All of those things and all of
the mess that that is. In my opinion, the reason
people don't want to venture down that path is to
(11:09):
hide behind amateurism prevents you from having to deal with
all that. But it's not going to be that way
for long. We're not gonna be able to hide behind
that for long because at some point people are going
to say the vast majority of people are going to
get sucked into this whole thing that's going to destroy
opportunities for tens of thousands of student athletes because we're
going to have to figure out how to support big
(11:31):
time college football on the backs of at the expense
of everyone else competing.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So okay, okay, so let's let's let's let's talk this
thing out of bit. Okay. So okay, So.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
How many how many big time there's flaws to what
ship is saying? Okay, the first thing is what we're
dismissing is, hey, the conferences work, and we're in this kind.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Of brave new world where the Big ten is become the.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Big eight, you know now eighteen.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, it become this super this super conference.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Which we also I mean a couple of years ago
where it was going to be two super conferences of
eighteen to twenty. And it's trending that way with the
SEC in the Big ten, right, and.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
The and and and you do wonder if the ACC
and the Big twelve combined or what what that looks like.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
The issue is that, you know, you have TV companies
and I guess you know streaming as well, right, and
they lock into deals, right, and obviously there has to
be a value there because they keep paying more and
more money, at least for the Big ten the SEC,
not for the Big twelve that that value hasn't gone up,
(12:43):
and not for the ACC that value will not will
not gone up.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
But the question becomes like.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
How do you if it's if it's if you split
it back to east and West, well, it doesn't have
the value the West Coast teams again fact with it
not having the value, right, Like he's talking about having
seven teams in the West. You know that sounds great,
but there's a reason that those schools aren't getting a
cut or a full cut of the TV revenue initially
(13:11):
or maybe ever because they're just not that valuable.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And so you still run in the same problem, right.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
And right, I think I think no, so uh.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And then you know, then you have the Okay, so.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
We're talking about let let's let's begin with the idea
of breaking off college football or maybe college football and basketball.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
I'm not sure which you think. Do you do one
or do you do both?
Speaker 4 (13:40):
I think basketball. I think basketball can stay that. Like
if you look at the current construct, right and the
way everything's out, basketball still competes in the n c
with the NCAA Tournament and the way that that runs,
you got what sixty eight teams now that can get
in and and it's it's a real tournament, right, And
it's a tournament where when we've seen this, regardless of
(14:03):
your budget, regardless of what resources your athletics program have
has every year we see a fifteen sixteen seed, surprise
someone and you know, every other year and make a
run in the tournament.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Okay, can you how hard would it be to break
off football?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I mean, how do you?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Like? Everybody's like, wow, you just break off football? Like, well,
that's kind of hard, you know. And this idea of
well you do these things so you can avoid Title nine, Like,
good luck with that one.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah, that work?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So what are what are the realities of what are
the possibilities? Because because you kind of work not necessarily
for the networks, but on both sides of the aisle,
you have a good sense of this thing.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
What's the realities to what's possible?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
So I think it's it's well, I will say this,
I don't have the answer, right, I think what Chip
is talking about is what on a on a baseline level,
if you were to lop it off and just create
a league, you know, it's basically on the minor league
NFL system where you'd have the AFC in the NFC,
and you've got the North, the South, you know, the West,
(15:21):
the East, you know, central whatever it is now, and
you could you could you could group teams geographically, right
and then they play, you know, whoever they play.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
You mean you mean like you mean like the Pac
twelve and the Big ten and the Big twelve.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Like we just had this ship and everything everybody away with.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
It, right, we just had it. And that's you know,
it's kind of where like now it's like, you know, okay,
so what do we what do you do? But I
think when it is a football issue, it's a big
time football issue. I mean, the realignment is based around
football at that level. Right. It's like people aren't, you know,
people aren't trying to figure out where they're going for
their Olympic sports. The Olympic sports are the casualty or
(16:00):
the byproduct of, you know, where the football programs are
going to go, because those are the drivers that the
Olympic sports, or revenue drivers, the way football is, it
would be a different conversation, right, But that's it's the
reality of this is driven by football and everybody wanting
to make the jump and figure out how to get
to the highest level and build a successful program. And
(16:20):
there's nothing wrong with that, right, I have no I
have no issue with that. I do have issue with
the fact that the mid majors and the eleven conferences
that were not included in the Division on Transformation Committee.
You know, discussions et cetera, et cetera, are to remain
Division one. You're getting stucked into that and you're along
(16:40):
for the ride, right, you know, there was talk of
everything splitting. That talk is still on the table. I
think at some point it may. I think that's a reality.
I don't think that a lot of programs are just
going to go away and just disappear. But I do
think that universities are going to be put in a
position where the cost of remaining Division one is going
(17:02):
to be significant and you're going to have to make
decisions as to are we going to do this, are
we not? And if we do this, what does that
look like? Years ago, we had discussions, you know, circa
fourteen fifteen sixteen about because people saw this, this is
what's happening right now for those who are in the
college athletics space is not a surprise on any level, right.
(17:24):
We saw this eventually, this eventuality, you know, coming to fruition.
I think when you look at if you look at
the title nine piece and you have football, from a
financial standpoint, you may be faced with what is a
two and eight or two and six model, which is
football and men's basketball, and then you pick your other six,
(17:45):
right or your other four, And that is what we
talked about before, is where you're going to end up
with so many student athletes who are no longer affording
the opportunity because you're not going to be able to
sustain if we're if we're if we're following with chur
the Baker put out and we were putting into an
endowment for kids at thirty grand a pop, programs aren't
(18:06):
gon to be able to keep all their teams if
you want to remain Division one, or if you want
to remain if you want to sustain your program, it
is not financially possible to do that for the vast
majority of programs unless you know there's a magic windfall
of money that comes in from somewhere, right, you're not
gonna be able to do it and be competitive.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So, you know, it's so what happens to his proposal.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
I don't know, because the thing about it is it's
kind of like there's there's no other proposal on the
table right now, you know. I think here's here's what
I think has to happen. I think those of us
at the mid major level and those of us not
at the top of the food chain, if you will,
in the Power five level, those of us meeting the
programs because we all move around, right but for where
(18:54):
all of these programs are right now, there needs to
be a plan of action as to what it's going to,
what it needs to look like to preserve amateurism, to
preserve the model that we're under in terms of how
we provide opportunities for student athletes, you know, educational opportunities
through sport, and the true meaning of why we got
(19:15):
into this in the first place. This thing has been
so muddied by football and the revenue and the TV
revenue and everything that goes with it that everybody's been
dragged along and the rest of the majority of people
who aren't familiar with college athletics don't understand, like, you're
literally going to eliminate if this thing goes the way
it's going, you're going to eliminate tens of thousands of
educational opportunities for student athletes.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I agree, I agree, Like listen, I think, So here's
my actual read in the football thing, and so you
lived it okay at the high major level. I'm more
of a casual observe. I'm more of an observer, and
of course I've covered it. I personally think the values
(19:58):
of the players are bullshit.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
I just I just thought. But part of it is
because the schools.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Have never and I understand that the piece that you
and I value, the educational piece, has become less value
by society and especially less value by members of the media,
which becomes kind of like the running narrative. But there
still is something very significant to just getting into a
(20:27):
school which you couldn't get into if you didn't play
college football. You know, and like is always told, like
nine nine percent of them, I'm playing pro anyway, and
in the NFL it's a very short lived career foremost.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And so we're.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Moving all of this stuff around dramatically changing for a
small portion.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Of we're moving around and we're dramatically shifting the landscape
to I'll use the words of one of my colleagues
in the Big West, all of this started. We started
down this path when the salaries and the money got
really big for a handful of people. Sure, you know,
that's where we're that's where and we're selling like we
(21:07):
meaning the collective because we're all even though we may
have different missions, right, we're all responsible at the end
of the day if we're selling these kids this dream, right,
think about this, Doug and I challenge anybody how many
people years after they're done playing, what are your stats matter?
(21:30):
You know, it's a talking point. It's something you did
that helped build you for other things in life. What
is like whether you're all conference, all world, all this
all that, you know, it's like you can monetize it
for a period of time. But we're so hyper focused
on the monetization for a handful of people, a handful
of people that the rest are all going to be
(21:50):
left in behind. And like you talked about before, the
rank and file is the eighty five ninety percent of
the individuals who will be impacted.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Right, So so so you and I we agree, we're
pretty lockstep on that. And I actually think, I actually
think that that the everybody points to the transfer portal,
but they're miss they're mislabeling what they don't like.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
It's not the transfer portal.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's the ability to transfer without any repercussion, right to
sit out, to not sit out. And I understand that,
you know, I don't know legally obviously, if there's basically
what it is the non compete, right. And I actually
think a lot of this started when people wouldn't enforce
(22:39):
the n UH, the NLI, the national letter of intent
because it would just get too ugly. Right, you sign
the contract, that's where you go to school, or if
you decide you don't want to go to school, there
you sit. But no one wanted to take the bad
press because they thought, well, that will hurt me from
getting a kid in the future, Like what anyway.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Well, don't let's add this part in there. The cavette
that I would add in there. Coaches leaving, coaches getting fined,
coaches making decisions to go elsewhere, and the person or
the coaching staff that recruited somebody somewhere is no longer there, right,
So that and that instance, they should be able to,
you know, be released from the the NL, the NL.
(23:22):
I you know, but go ahead, keep going.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Sorry sorry, okay, no no, so so.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Let me do what you get my train thought for
one second, so I think you know, look, all of
this stuff is it's like sugar.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It immediately makes you feel good if you're the kid
to get money in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Oh my god, I'm getting all this money.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
What you don't realize is, and I said this on
my radio show, all of these kids that put on
their Instagram posts forever, a Trojan forever, a bulldog forever,
a corner Husker forever, a Hurricane forever, a Buckeye.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
No, you're not.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
No, you're not.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
You leave a school, it's like leaving a company. You're out.
When you're out, you're out. And what we have is
I'll give you an example. Spencer Sanders.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Spencer Sanders was a starting quarterback at Oklahoma State for
three years. Put himself in the portal, and look, I
think he wanted to come back. I do think that
it was one of those relationships which may have gone bad.
But he's a talented kid. He did leave him to
a Big twelve championship game. He goes to Ole Miss,
he doesn't play. Now he's academically ineligible for the bowl
(24:47):
game that he would have played in because their quarterbacks
have put their names into the portal.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
In addition to the.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Fact that he's not going to really play or get
a chance to shine. Not does not he's not a pro.
Whatever money he made is actually money he loses in
the back end because if you're a four year start
at Oklahoma State, you're always a cowboy. And look, Oklahoma
State people like they're not gonna thumb their nose at
him when he comes back. No, NOSU guy, he left right,
(25:16):
you leave your out. And so we not only do
damage to all of those student athletes who are probably
going to lose opportunities, we do damage to high school
kids because the transfer portal allows you to recruit guys
that are seasoned, that are ready to play. But even
the kids that transfer, they're gonna be damaged because when
(25:40):
you multiple multiple times transfer, like where's your home because
and I don't know if you're you know, obviously your
path is different. But I would say high percentage of
football and basketball players, you get done playing, and the
first person you call when you need a job is
your coach, right, coach or administrator right, and they the
(26:03):
administrator may help you out, the coaches may may help
you out, but for the most part, like you've been
there for six nine months, like they don't know. Yeah,
you're a mercenary. So I think we do damage. I
think that. I truly believe this, and I've gotten criticized
roundly because I've never been a pay the player's guide is.
(26:26):
I just think that because it's become the wild, wild West,
and because of everyone's need for kids to have actually
too many rights, you know, too many rights, that we're
doing damage across the board. And while we like to
act like everything is free market, no it's not.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Nothing is truly free market.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
We don't live in a completely free capitalistic society.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
We don't.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
What we have is laws and guardrails in place, voted
on by Congress, just like we have with the NCAA. Now,
can we say that it shouldn't be like the Senate
where everybody gets two votes, right, It should be more
like House representatives, where the bigger conferences maybe get a
bigger chunk of the votes. I think I would be
down with that. I think that's a little bit more
(27:13):
reasonable way of doing it. But there has to be
some form of created loyalty because it actually helps the
kids in the end more so than this freedom of
complete movement and self autonomy, which I think is going
to hurt everybody across the board.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Right, right, So that there's a lot there, and I
hear you. I mean, I was just taking a few
notes on what you were saying, and I love this
discussion because the thing about it, Doug is this is real. Right.
So a few things. One, you're not wrong in any
of the stuff that you're saying, right, But what I
think that one of the things to add to what
you're talking about is one we have to look at
(27:54):
the long term damage that's being done to student athletes
in a system that has been set up. How we
know how we got here, right, We got here because
you had some politicians in my state and our state
who tend to look at this thing as this is
the Texas, the ou, the Ohio state, the Michigan, you know,
(28:17):
the Florida, Tennessee, Alabama model, right, and we're not that.
So one, there are thousands of kids who get lost
into portal every year. Right, So the system that's been
set up in terms of being able to hit the portal.
You know, it's funny because some of our coaches they
call it portal combat, right, because it's what it is.
(28:38):
It's portal combat. And so what happens is here like
the in looking at it from a student athlete perspective
and keeping student athletes in a realistic place here, Right,
let's start with this, n I l for what it was.
We knew this, We all knew this was going to happen.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Of course we did. Of course we did. No.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
No, this is about guys getting money to sign autographs, bullshit.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
This is about pay for play.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
This is about recruitment, and it ultimately comes down it's
inducement in the form of recruitment and retention. Right, how
many coaches are Every coach in the country is going
crazy because they have to re recruit their players. There's
student athletes once they have them. Because the mid major level.
I'll take it one step further, and I'm going to
say this publicly, the mid major level is now the
(29:28):
new juco right. And who because if you're a P five,
P four powerful coach, group of five coach and you know,
and you're recruiting, and you look at the portal and
you can get a kid who is one or two
or so years into college. What do they have. They
know how to be coached, they know how to practice,
they know how to go to school, they know how
(29:48):
to act on campus. One would assume, right, they have
college experience. So it's almost like when you're interviewing people
for a job, more than likely you're going to go
with the person who has a level of experience versus
someone who's fresh out of school, right because why that person.
The opportunity for you to be successful with that person
is going to happen faster. And in a world where
(30:09):
coaches are I always say this, eighties don't fire head coaches.
Head coaches fire themselves, right, But if a head coach
is fighting for their job and they want to make
sure they stay in the hunt every year, and depending
on what the metrics of success are, they're going to
recruit the kid who's going to give them the best
chance to win right away. So gone are the days
of trying to build from the ground up with high
(30:31):
school kids that you turn into two three four year
players and those student athletes. You build a program and
you have longevity. Now everybody's in a one to two
year model. They got to win now because they feel
the pressure. And if they don't feel the pressure from
their administration, they're feeling the pressure from their boosters or
their donors. They're feeling pressure from the media and depending
on the market you're in, and they're feeling pressure like
I need to I'm coaching for my job right So
(30:53):
right there, that's one area where we've gone, you know,
a sku of where we should be. Now what it
has that done? That has also put high school kids
in a position where the high school kids are getting squeezed.
You have the portal, You have the COVID year. I
think next year is the last year of the COVID
year twenty five, so we're coming up on the end
of that. Right. You have the COVID year, you have
grad transfers, you have you know, and you have the
(31:18):
opportunity to recruit kids out of the portal as undergrads
who get ann You have international kids, right, high school kids.
Unless you are the elite of the elite on the
high school level, you're going to get squeezed. High school
kids are now forced to say, am I going to
go to prep? Am I going to go to Juco?
What am I going to do? And if I'm good enough,
can I go play overseas for a year or two? Right?
(31:39):
In basketball? Right? So, now you combine all these factors
with the hype around nil and when you have people
out there talking about we need thirteen million in our
collective so we can keep a quarterback or get a
quarterback and blah blah blah. Now the whole spirit of it,
and I've listened to it, and I've seen it. Right,
we all see it. It is absolutely gone to pay
(32:00):
for play in the minds of boosters and donors. And
where I think it's going to go left or right
of center, or it's going to start to wane at
the lower levels. And I say the lower levels because
donors and boosters in their mind, they're believing they're buying
a kid that's going to help them win a championship.
And when that championship doesn't come together, and when that
coach isn't winning and they're investing however much money they're
(32:22):
investing into the collective or directly into a kid, they're
not going to see what the return on their investment,
because that's how the person who's putting the money into
it is looking at it, right, So as ads one
of the things that I say now, and I've had
this conversation with our people, I've said, look, I've got
to think about fundraising from the different lens now, because one,
(32:44):
you have to be able to compete at some level
in the NIL space, right and we know it can't
come straight from the athletics programs, so it's got to
either come through the collective or through outside donors. So
we have to be able to figure out how do
we compete there. We have to also make sure our
development off are able to help us as we're raising
money for the program overall, because we still need money
(33:04):
to run our programs. And then you've got a factor
in your multimedia rights partner. You know whoever your multimedia
rights partner is. In our case, it's lear Field, and
we need that money coming in. But now the multimedia
rights partners are talking to sponsors, whether they're brands, local
national brands, local businesses, regional enterprises, whatever, and those entities
are saying, am I going to put the money into
(33:25):
the athletics program or am I going to just buy
a kid and have the kid come sign autographs and
I pay the kid and I get the same return
on investment I was looking for. So now you've got,
you know, those three areas that you got to think
about from an AD's perspective. And then to bring it
all together, we set up a system. We meaning all
of us in the NCAA and the government, the Fed, etc.
(33:45):
Et cetera. The congressional people. We haven't set it up.
A system has been put in place where it now
values the highest paid kid, and then you forget that
that kid is still eighteen to twenty two, twenty three
years old, it's still maturing, and they're under pressure of
having to perform at a really high level because some
of them are getting paid more than professors on campus,
(34:09):
faculty on campus, administrators, and coaches. So what have we done.
We've set up a system that is absolutely going to
fail at some point because it's not sustainable because it
will fail at one of two levels. You're not able
to keep up with it, or the corruption will tear
it down.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So Jason proposed, and it's been rumored the idea of hey,
what if private equity comes in and buys up an athletic.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, and now now you've completely If private equity becomes
a player in this, God help us all you know.
I mean, it's you know again, education versus a business
model and athletics. We have to at some point, we
the collective in college athletics, we have to stop and say, look,
(35:00):
are we ultimately doing a reparable harm to these student apps,
these young men and women at the at the highest level,
if you will, because yes, no, let me back up
real quick. We see at our level we absolutely have
nil deals that are true nil deals. You know, a
little bit of money here and there, not anything substantial
for appearances, autographed signings, put social media posts, endorsing a product, whatever,
(35:24):
may be the true spirit of what it is, right,
but we have to look at this whole thing that
where nil has it, like we talked about doug, where
it has become pay for play in essence, and we
have to really look at is it doing a reparable
harm long term to these young men and women who
are I hate to say it because I never like
to look at it this way. We cannot make them
(35:46):
commodities for big universities. You know, I know, as you know,
you know, my son plays at Pepperdine.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
But but but people want them to be.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
They want them to.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
I understand it. They want them to be.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
They want them to, which is where we have to base,
we say, at some level. And again I don't have
the answer. But I look at it like this. My
son plays at Pepperdine, as you know, right, I'm his dad.
I'm also an ad I see some of the nasty
text messages that come through from fans, you know, from people,
from grown men who are doing things and you know,
(36:21):
finding ways to put young men and women in situations
where they're coming down on them like they're pros. Right,
these are kids, These are young men and women that
are still developing. If we don't figure it out quickly,
we're going to allow irreparable harm to be done to
these individuals, whether it's people getting kids, getting a whole
bunch of money and not understanding that you have to
(36:43):
pay taxes on all this stuff, not understanding the financial
implications of what they're receiving. It's not a gift, you know,
it's not like here's X number of thousands of dollars
or tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions and
we're paying We're given this to you, Like, that's not
free money, right, And when they are in their mind,
they're like, well, this is for my name, image of likeness.
But ultimately it's like, no, the people who are giving
(37:06):
you that. To your point, if the if the private,
if private equity comes into it, they're going to expect
a level of performance that gives them an r a
return on their investment. Right. This is where, honestly, and
I'll say this till the cows come home, we have
to do a better job protecting our student athletes. We
have to. We have to. We need a better system,
(37:27):
and we need a better way, and and it's so
complicated and so many and there's so many hands in
it and so many special interests. You know, this thing,
this train has left the station. You know. Now we
need Superman at the end of the tracks to flat
out stop it and figure out how do we redirect
it or redirect it, you know, because we're going to
destroy what we spent decades trying to build. Those the
(37:52):
vast majority of us who've competed at the mid major level,
et cetera, et cetera, you know, doing it for the
academic red for the educational opportunities and all the things
we're supposed to We're going to destroy that system, and
that's going to be the unintended consequence of everybody thinking
that they know what they're doing. Right, Like you talked about,
(38:12):
this is the way. How can anybody be an expert
in something that literally just started? Like you're an expert
in something it hasn't been around three years and you've
had experts in it. How how are you an expert
in something? You're an expert from your vantage point, right,
and you may have you're an expert from having a
perspective on it. I think Belzer's perspective Again. I keep
(38:33):
going back to Jason because I think he has a
He has a fantastic perspective that's realistic about where this
thing is heading. Right. Everything that you guys talked about
in terms of collective bargaining agreements, in terms of unions,
in terms of employee status, in terms of you know,
firing a student athlete if they're not performing, if they're
(38:53):
an employee, all of these things are the things that
people aren't really understanding because they're only looking at it
the limited lens and the limited scope of what they
have versus being a former student athlete, being an administrator,
being someone who's responsible for running a program, and being
someone who ultimate at the end of the day, is
responsible for the mission. And I will say this the
(39:16):
mission of college. Every school is going to have a mission.
In my opinion, my not so humble opinion on this,
the mission really comes out to one sentence, build and
prepare student athletes for opportunities in life through sport.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I completely agree.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Okay, but again, here's the thing we're strewing up the
most any of these. Let's just take football, since that's
really what the topic is, right. Football makes the most money,
it does, so football can the most money. So we're
given on a lot of these kids upwards of six
figures to play football. So they get done playing football
(39:56):
and they go into the workplace and.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
They're not going to find a job the sim amount.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
But but again, it's a lot like here's here's how
I would relate it to I think most here's how
it related to the common man. It's the remember the
first time you watched the big screen TV, right, well,
the first time you watched ht TV, and then you
went back to standard def and you're.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Like, this is terrible. What is this?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I can't even watch the game anymore. This TV is
tiny and standard deaf. I can't even see it. What
is going on here? All right, that's what they're all
going to experience. Worre you're you're you're right, Like the
whole job is to me, the ni l is you
get done playing, and now you get a killer job
because you played, and then you're you know, you're like
(40:43):
me where you're like a scholarship for life. You know,
anywhere you go, somebody wants to buy you beer. If
you need a job, they'll help you out. People like you.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You get to go to games occasionally for free.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
You get a cool letterman jacket, you get to cut
lines sometimes, like all that stuff. But this idea of
putting money in a kiss pocket again, it sounds great again.
The reality is you point out they're young. Agent's gonna
get some parents are going to get some people will
get a little will probably burn through it really quickly.
(41:14):
Let's see what happens if the tax when the taxman
wants his as well, And then we're creating this complete
facade of what they should expect in the workplace, you know,
Like I'll give you an example, a company that I
know that hires a lot of ex athletes where they
can make a lot of money eventually a striker, right,
(41:34):
striker is uh, you know they've all let's just say pharmaceuticals,
but it's also it's medical devices, medical right, right, So
I know people who have been in college athletics, have
a master's degree and a buddy of mine works for strikers. Like,
hey man, you want to know anybody wants a job,
like we got a good we got a good area
(41:55):
open seventy five with some bonuses, like you can you
can crack six figures if you bust your ass in
your first year. Like imagine you're a college kid because
you're not getting the seventy five, you don't have a
master's degree, you're not that where all, and somebody comes
to you and offers you fifty sixty thousand dollars when
you're used to making one hundred thousand dollars, which is
(42:15):
kind of conservative for some of these kids, but you know,
one hundred thousan dollars for alignment is not that crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
So you just you have no we're killing their perspective.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
If we look at how many like how many, how
many young people this is impacting that would be facing
that situation right, because we know, look, professional sport is
going to end one of three ways for all of us. Right,
you're going to age out, you're gonna get injured, or
you're going to get cut. Right, you're not going to
play flight when we're eighteen to twenty two. Usually you
(42:45):
the reality of that doesn't really set in until it
sets in, and then you know how many colleagues of ours,
friends of ours had a really hard time just adjusting
to life when you're not going to practice, when you're
not in the locker room, when you're not around your teammates,
when you're not on trips where you're not in the stadium,
where you're not in front of thousands, tens of thousands
(43:05):
of people, when you're not you know, when you're not
in it right and you're not.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
You know, you know, I'll give I'll give you an
example of the athletes that the people that figure this
out the hard way is. I had one of my
closest friends sky played with. He's probably the best college
player I play with him, Adrian Peterson PiZZ from northvill
over Rock Arkansas, third all time leading scored Oklahoma State.
He tore his ACL at Chicago pre draft, so that
(43:32):
next year when he rehabbed, he was like he was
never the same, And it was just because the idea
of trying to rehab when you're not part of a team,
when you don't have a coach telling you know, you
don't have a team to look forward to playing for it,
you don't have a trainer who designed your ass to
get in there and rehab every day. That's what it's like. Yeah,
(43:54):
people struggle to adjust to being a civilian, if you will.
It's really like coming out of the military, what are
you struggling to adjust.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
To real life?
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Exactly? You know, it's obviously I'm misspoken. It's not exactly that,
but it's the parallel is there, you know, in terms
of how you're gonna like, you know, adjust your life
coming out of coming out of it. You know, you
look at the expectations like you talked about for the
handful of people relatively speaking, like eighteen to twenty two
year olds that are gonna make this kind of money.
(44:24):
I'm not and again I am not opposed for the
opportunity for any student athlete to get what they can get. Right.
I'm not opposed to that at all, but I do
think that it does. It can. The unintended consequence is
it can create an overinflated sense of self, like you
see with so many of kids who go into the portal.
There's a reason thousands of the kids go into the
portal and end up nowhere, right because they have an
(44:47):
overinflated sense of self and they they think, Okay, I'm
just gonna I don't like it here. It's not working
for me for whatever reason. You know, I'm just going
to enter in or I'm going to enter and see
how much money I can get someone where, Right. But
a lot of them like it doesn't work out for
the vast majority of people. That's the thing people aren't
talking about. Right. So if you are one of the
(45:09):
handful that's getting a sizeable amount in nil and you
all of a sudden, college athletics ends and you're going
to get a regular job, if you will, you know,
and start your professional career in the workforce, you're right.
It is going to be like going from you know,
old school TD, you know, to watching something in four K,
but in the reverse and now you're like, what am I?
(45:31):
What is this? And then having an appreciation for climbing
the ladder and earning it. If you're not able to
take the experience you had in terms of what it
took to get you to where you were athletically and
the work you had to to do that, you have
to take that same that same skill set and apply
it into the professional world and wherever you are and
(45:51):
do that to climb the ladder like all of us have, right. So,
but I think, yeah, it's like that overinflated sense it
self can be an uninto and the consequence of having
too much too soon, and then all of a sudden
it goes away and you're like, Okay, what do I
do now? Or I'm in a position where I'm making
you know, pennies on the dollar relative to what I
(46:11):
was a student athlete, you know, in my at my
former institution. What am I supposed to do now? Right?
Because now you have to jug lifestyle and everything else,
and and if you're not walking into a real a
real world concept, a real world structure that everybody else
has kind of have to work the way into and
work the way through and then make the climb up.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Okay, last thing I tell Charlie Baker, he's got to
hire you. You're his policyman. Okay, he said, there's no
other proposal. What would you propose.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
I'm actually in the process of working on that. In
terms of what I would propose, I think there are
elements in there that provide a good framework, but I
think there are some that are misinformed. From the standpoint
that the unintended consequences like the whole investing at least
(47:12):
thirty thousand per year, you know, and for at least
half of this school's eligible student athletes, the unintended consequences
of things like that will destroy the vast majority of programs.
They won't be able to survive. Right. In my opinion
on this, I think that it's going to take and
it's going to be a proposal. It would have to
(47:34):
be a proposal. You're never going to please everybody, right,
You're never going to make everybody happy. But there's going
to be levels of changing the system that will involve
big time college football that won't make everybody happy. But
if we want to continue the academic model and amateurism,
(47:54):
it's the only way you're going to be able to
go you're not going to be able to do this
and try to keep big time college football intact as
is right now. And it's not it's not a negative.
It's just a matter of saying, look, either we're going
to we're going to do everything we need to do
to protect that we meaning the people involved, or we're
really going to look out for the vast majority in
(48:17):
the rank and file to keep this thing going so
everybody continues to have opportunities to compete and go to
school and put you know, for those who aund scholarship,
earn scholarship or at least have the opportunity to continue
their athletic career while earning their degree. But you're not
going to be able to have both. It's just not possible.
It's not plausible at this point. If I was working
(48:38):
with Charlie, I would absolutely work with him, you know,
each step of the way, because I do believe it
can be no and it's and I know I'm the
eternal optimist. I get that. I mean, Doug, I say,
I helped save a program from being eliminated. There's not
too much that I feel like I can't do, you know,
with the right team in place and the right approach
and moving and moving the special interest or the agendas.
(48:58):
And if we're all locked in on what is going
to be best for the kids we serve in athletics administration,
then we get there. If we're not going to be
honest about that, we're not going to get there.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Awesome stuff. Wes. Listen, man, you've been more than generous
with your time. Do me this favor.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
When you get that proposal done, will you do me
a favor and let's do another Let's do another problem.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Absolutely absolutely, because and this is one of those things
where I won't be doing this by myself. You know,
there's there's there are a number of ads and a
number of administrators and a number of chancellors and presidents
who are very interested in and what what else can
we do? And it may not be the be all
end all, but it's going to be something that's going
to point us, you know, in a in an informed
(49:44):
direction to help save the whole thing from collapsing. So
but you will be my first call. I promise you done,
I promise.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
I appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Thanks the.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
All right, that's it for this edition of All Ball.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Remember the Gottlieb Show airs daily three to five Eastern
twelve two Pacific. You can download it in podcasts for
and plus we have a podcast only hour. Just typeen
Doug Gotlieb. You can get all my stuff in the meantime.
I thanks to Wes Malette. And if you have any questions,
you have any comments, remember download, subscribe, rate, review, and
tweet us. Tweet this out if you think it's interesting
(50:25):
at Gottlieb Show is the Twitter handle, and Gottlieb Show,
of course, is the handle of the Instagram page.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is all ball
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