The State of NIL and the NCAA with Matt Brown + College Football Podcast for 5/12

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the solid verbal hell that for me. I'm
a man, I'm for it.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I've heard so many players say, well, I want to
be happy. You want to be happy for a day?
Da steak? Is that woo woom?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
And Dan and Tye.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome back to the salad verbal boys and girls. My
name is ty hilden Brandt, that fine gentleman over there
in sunny, springy summery yeah, Chicago, Illinois. Dan Rubinstein, sir,
how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I am wearing short shorts I mean, for me about
seven inch and seeing something like that, so you know,
the the legs are breathing. I got flip flops on.
I am having a guest. We are having a guest
on that we're especially always excited to have on. And
this is how I like to talk about Matt Brown
and his appearances on the show. He is he is smart,

(00:52):
he is well read, he is well connected, and he
is here to answer our questions about, you know, the
future of the sport and the business of the sport
and things happening behind the scenes. And we get to
yell at him. Though we don't yell at him. We
yell near him, we yell around him in his vicinity,
and he takes our emotion and atomizes it into sense

(01:15):
and insight, and so I'm especially excited for that. So
if I seem hopped up on caffeine or some other
sort of altering substance, it's just the natural enthusiasm I
have for a show like this.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
You forgot to add that he's got a Bob Diaco
caliber hairline. Almost well, absolutely, we're going to have Matt
Brown from Extra Points on momentarily here to talk about
all things nil Transfer Portal, NCAA. The sport's changed, at
least feels like it's changed a lot in a very
short period of time, and we could think of no
one better to bring him back and talk through what

(01:50):
it all means. Because Matt does this again for his
newsletter Extra Points. We'll be talking with Matt Brown for
the better part of an hour here, so stay tuned
for that episode. All of our episodes brought to you
by our good friends over at Geico. Don't forget to
subscribe to the Soliverble podcast. We do two episodes publicly
every week on Tuesday and Thursday. We also do a

(02:14):
bonus episode where we answer your questions part of something
we call the brew and a. You can go on
out too verballers dot com for more info. On our patreon,
we release this episode all of our episodes a little
bit early via our early access promotion. Can also view
video versions of all of our interviews and shows that's
available out there as well, in addition to extra bonus

(02:36):
content like the pizza show Dan, that we got to
put together.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's true. That, it's very true. Our Patreon, our verballers
at verballers dot com. It's not a collective per se.
But it's not not a collective. It's not not a collective,
not a collective, so I would get involved with it
right now.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Last, but certainly not least solid giveaway dot com is
where you can throw your name in the hat to
win that Frank Beemer signed mini helmet. We will draw
the winner at the end of May. Again, just a
few quick, free and easy steps that you need to
go through in order to get your name in the running.
But yeah, folks have been very interested in the Frank

(03:17):
Beamer helmet. So Frank a couple of weeks yet if
you're interested. Yeah, absolutely all right, Dan, we invited back
one of our favorite guests. It is because a lot
is going on in this universe of college football. Matt
Brown of Extra Points with Matt Brown, which you can
find at extra Points mb dot com. It is a
daily newsletter on all the off the field forces that

(03:41):
shape college sports from FBS to nai A. Matt Brown, Sir,
how are.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
You, fellas. It's always good to be back here. I'm
doing well. The sun is out, there's yeah, we have
I've joked about this a lot, and I think with
you guys, we're all blessed to be working and writing
about this sport and interesting times, even if we wish
sometimes it wasn't so interesting. But as someone who hates
being bored, this is great. There's always something to dig into.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Interesting. To the extent that we just talked a little
bit off air, none of us have taken a vacation
in quite some time.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
No I did.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
I It were working. That was a working vacation.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
So yeah, I recorded episodes while I was away, and
you and I, I mean, it wasn't vacation, but we
were in New York and we did record an episode
in a hotel room. So we got away and worked.
So that it's pseudo, it counts a little bit. So
I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, it's it's working. It's it's working without home field advantage, right,
it's working in a different place, looking at different walls.
That still counts for something.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Correct, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
So Look, we had you on back in February, and
I feel like a lot has changed since then.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Now.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Collectives collectives, if not much more a thing than they
were then, are definitely more front of mind for a
lot of college football fans, sort of like the new podcast. Right,
everyone's got a collective these days, at least I'm willing
to talk about it. We've seen a star receiver, Jordan Addison,
enter the portal officially for professional development, unofficially because of

(05:11):
I think nil offers or opportunities. We have seen the
NC DOUBLEA over the last couple days ride in like
a white night and pass some retroactive rules which hopefully
you can help us decipher. And on Tuesday, on your
website or through your newsletter Extra Points with Matt Brown,

(05:31):
you wrote a piece about the FBS potentially splitting off,
or I should say momentum perhaps building around the FBS
splitting off and doing their own things separate from the
NC DOUBLEA. So a lot of this is going on
all of it, by the way, underpins the Ivory Tower
of mainstream college football analysis with a lot of kids

(05:52):
these days type of commentary, Did I leave out anything
important of note?

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Beyond all of that, we also still have the Transformation
Committee that's meeting right now to change scholarship limits, change
what it means to be a Division one institution, change
how postseason tournaments work and revenue and everything. So yeah,
just beyond a lot of the basic assumptions that kind
of underpin college athletics as we know it for the

(06:19):
past thirty years, being reevaluated, very slow offseason so far,
really make shapine for the days when we had to
pretend to be really angry about satellite camps.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Last time we had you on, you were pretty measured
about nil and I believe your stance then was, Look,
there's a class of elite players. They're going to do
fairly well from this. That's the way it's designed. Nothing
earth chattering, though everybody else stands to make a buck.
At least they'll have opportunities. Since then, we have seen
the Jordan Addison thing, and we've also had news about

(06:51):
the eight million dollar collective with the alleged player from Tennessee.
Things have changed, at least I think from the perception
of the everyday fan. There is this notion out there
that the sport has rapidly evolved in a way that
feels wrong and feels dirty and feels different. Has your

(07:12):
view as somebody who covers college football and specifically this
corner of college athletics, has your view? Has your perception
changed at all since we last spoke back in February.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
You know, honestly, it has, but I think maybe not
in the same way that other fans might might think
about it. So forgive me. This is getting a little
bit too into the weeds. But I think when we
last spoke, and this was part of my line when
I would talk to athletes themselves or talk to administrators,
you know, I really believed in this idea that lots

(07:45):
of different athletes could still make some money through marketing
deals that were designed to help a company actually make money.
You can go onto a marketplace, you can cut a
social media deal, you can go back and you can
work with with your high school athletes, and you're in
your hometown.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
And that's romantic. You're a romantic, right, That's romantic.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Let me be clear. That still exists. People are still
making money from that. One thing that I have seen
in this industry, though, I think over the last several months,
is the legit I don't want to say legitimate, Like
the market driven NIL world is simply not as large
as I think the collective business community thought it was
going to be last June. And there's a couple of

(08:24):
different reasons for that. The biggest one, and I'm trying
to beat this into the skull of everybody here. I
don't think as fans and even reporters, we fully appreciate
how little free time a college athlete has. It's not
a fifteen or even a twenty hour week time commitment.
If you're a wide out at PIT, you can't just
go decide to study abroad in Italy like you've got
weights and meetings and other training and all the others

(08:47):
things here. And so a lot of people have decided,
I don't want to spend that tiny, limited amount of
free time chasing ads on Instagram, and then when I
do decide to do that, what brands are realizing increasingly
is that athletes, and I say this with love, Buy
and large are pretty bad at social media. And that's
and and you know they're not. They're not Twitter brain

(09:07):
poisoned maybe the same way that I am or some
of our reporter colleagues are. And if they're going to
chill something on Instagram, the big brand is realizing if
I work with a mom blocker, or if I work
with the professional influence, theer's somebody who has thirty hours
a week to invest in production quality and lighting and
campaign metrics, I'm going to get a better experience than
a twenty year old who's doing this on their way

(09:28):
to class. So I did a couple of these deals
in last July, September, October like not me, like I
mean I did, But I'm talking about the Buffalo Wild
Wings of the world. And now they have close to
a year of data, you're seeing a pullback. And so
I think we have to acknowledge that many of the
valuation's hypothetical valuations that we see on social media and
they get that gets sent out by some of these companies,

(09:50):
which I think ge reshared because people want to celebrate athletes,
They're just not accurate. And the actual market driven endorsement
world for athletes is not as large as I think
it would be. In last February. It's not as large
as a lot of venture capital firms thought it was
going to be last July. It could get that way
in the future, but I think it is fair to
say overwhelmingly of the total NIO market, it's dominated by collectives,

(10:14):
and it's dominated by deals that are not market driven
but recruitment driven.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right, And we're now at the point where there appears
to be attempt at governing and preventing and legislating and
enforcing retroact. Like there's all sorts of different pillars about
how the NCAA or Confidence whoever is going to be
doing any of this governing and enforcing. Nothing makes sense.

(10:44):
Nothing makes sense as I read everything. It's like, Okay,
players have value, but schools aren't paying. Boosters aren't paying specifically,
but they're putting money into a fund. Like in a way,
it legitimizes value because players intrinsically we're talking about football players,
but all sorts of athletes have value. We're talking about
football players. They have value. And now we're saying, okay, well,

(11:08):
boosters can should continue to not have contact, But of
course collectives work around that by having non boosters run
the collective and somebody's talking to a coach or recruiting
coordinator somewhere. Doesn't it feel like we're all it's just
we're like when there are explosions in big cities. I'm sorry,
this is going in a number of big directions, but
it's like illegal gas lines plugged into each other, you know,

(11:31):
everything is jerry like. It just feels like this is
not at all a sustainable way to run what is
now a billion dollar industry. My question to you is sorry, no, yeah,
a long winded way of saying this. Doesn't this all
feel like theater? Doesn't this all feel like there's nobody
in charge and there's value for players, and yet we

(11:52):
have to like make everybody go through a crazy number
of hoops to convince ourselves that it's okay.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, I definitely think the way this is set up
up right now is dishonest. Yeah, and and it is.
I also think that it is, while not as exploitive
as the previous system, it's still exploitive of some of
the people that are doing the exploiting are different. And yeah,
I would rather have a little bit of money than
no money. But I don't want to sit here and
pretend that this is okay. We did it like a

(12:19):
couple of economists whoreight we fix college sports, and to
your point, by creating the system where we rather than
have the athletes enter into any kind of employment agreement
or have some of the structure that they would enjoy
in literally any other athletic marketplace in the world that
I'm aware of, and instead by by kind of doing
this wink week nolge knowdge, we're kind of laundering money

(12:40):
through increasingly fake charities to get to these athletes. Here.
I look at this and think, man, forget what you
thought about like exploitation for the NC douable A. Some
of this is tax fraud, some of this is actual
capital ce crimes. And so I admit, and as somebody
that I think was maybe a little maybe a little
bit more romance that I guess from retrospect, I should

(13:01):
have been about how this can change lives and help athletes.
I definitely look at this world right now and think
some of the system sucks. There's no way around it.
And this is coming from somebody that I think is
generally pretty pro athlete and as advocated for athletes on
my platform. I don't feel good about a lot of
the intermediaries. In a way, with this money is moving
around right now.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
In a way, it legitimizes things in that there are
contracts being signed in that we assume athletes and people
who have the best interests of these athletes, whoever those are,
if their parents, guardians, whoever, are paying taxes. It's no
longer on a certain level, recruiting is no longer a
cash business. It's no longer under the table. So there
are interests, be it the irs, be it somebody who

(13:45):
say it's better than it was, it's better than it was,
that we can sort of track income better than we
ever could. But on a certain level, we're still talking
about nonsense. We're still talking about schools and conferences. I
humongous TV deals and then our hands off allegedly when

(14:06):
it comes to the labor force monetizing their own value.
And so I understand there are different contracts, be it
TV contracts. And I think it was was it Jack
Swarbrick who said that, you know, twenty thirty whatever, Yeah,
there's a reckoning company, because that's the end of the
ACC TV deal. I believe was the illusion he made.

(14:26):
Is there any way that everything can be blown up
in an advantageous way before then.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Sure, there's there's I think a couple of different land
mindes that could happen before the early twenty thirties.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
One of those, and one that I know that athletic
leaders are very cognizant of is the federal court system.
There's another case working its way through the system right now. Incidentally,
you know, not far from ties backyard. It involves I
think at least one Patriot League team. It's a LA yet,
right is. I think I think one of the teams
named in the in the the case where in Villanova

(15:02):
and a couple other small schools are suing to be
considered to be employees and say that these schools owe
us minimum wage. And that's working its way through the
court system. We're not don't. The analyst I talk to say,
don't expect a resolution until like late next year at
the absolute earliest. But that could theoretically create something where
the government says you can't keep doing this. Athletes are

(15:24):
employees and they can collectively bargain. You have to give
them contracts, you can fire them, you have to treat
them the way everybody else does. And if that's the case,
we have to blow up most of the scaffolding that's
kind of holding up a lot of this system. To
the other the Congress could do this potentially sooner, and
I think that that's substantially less likely. And I know
that's why people, you know, tune into college football podcast

(15:46):
is to hear about what various senators are going to
be doing. But are there are federal lawmakers that have
proposed really ambitious changes, and that is something that could happen. Right.
The other thing is the National Labor Relations Board that
you know that that initially said Northwestern football players could
attempt to unionize, has basically telegraphed saying, Hey, somebody else

(16:08):
should try to unionize again, and we'll you know, I
think we will look over you favorably. And I think
it's telling that the two people that A files complaints
so far have not been athletes. They've been advocacy groups
working on behalf of athletes. I also think this is
very unlikely, but that could happen too. So you have
those three land mines and then you have the television
land mine where but over the course of the course

(16:30):
of the next several years, the earning gap between the
big ten, and the SEC is likely to dramatically increase
over the next several years. Right, I believe you know
what people have been telling me, Like the next big
ten deal, which is going to be finalized in a
few weeks, probably going to be north of a billion dollars.
We'll be looking at the end of this decade of

(16:52):
a of Northwestern and Purdue and Minnesota getting close to
one hundred million dollars a year, which is not what
Notre Dame or Wake Forest or Utah will be getting.
Maybe that causes some other tensions, Maybe it doesn't. I
don't know, And I know that this makes for terrible
podcasting and terrible sports radio. But I feel like the

(17:12):
more that I get into the weeds of this world,
and I feel like I'm pretty in these weeds, the
harder it is for me to come up with the
pithy take because there's so many unknowns that, right, I
can't sit here and say, like, yes, Notre Dame is
going to be playing in the AFC South in twenty
twenty eight, Like who knows? Man, Like a lot of
things can change.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
Is so you mentioned landmine, Dan, You use the word landmine, Matt,
you did as well. Is the landmine just because suddenly
we're talking about all these zeros. Is the land mine
because the money is so large, because the landscape has changed,
and where we're headed is to a place that college athletes,
perhaps on the back of some new rights that have

(17:51):
been granted to them by legislatures or the courts or wherever,
they start saying, Okay, now we need a piece of this.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah. I mean, you have people saying that right now,
and because it's not It isn't just that the total
amount of money has changed and it's exploded over the
last twenty years, but I think the obligations that we've
asked of athletes have changed too. You know. The the
what a traditionalist I think would tell you is this, say, listen,
these young men are getting an education that is something

(18:20):
that we didn't get, or at least a free education,
and that's a very expensive compensation. That's enough. And we
have to reckon with the fact that not only have
revenues gone up, but athletes generally don't get to pick
their major. They don't get to do internships or study
abroad the same way that maybe any of us did.
You are limited to what classes you can actually take
and your college experience narrows considerably around the athletic building.

(18:44):
And I think you don't have to be, you know,
a labor agitator to look and say the money is
going up in many ways. You know, my benefits are
going down, my health risks are going up. Something eventually
has to change. This is what we're seeing with NIL.
I think it's part of that.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Is there a possibility that there was an inflection point
at some point, whether it was when a certain TV
contract or contracts or something were signed and we had
an opportunity collectively as a sport. I am not a
part of the sport directly, but was there a moment
where the NCAA, with major conferences whatever, could have said, Okay,

(19:25):
this is an insane amount of money. This is a
bigger business than college football was ever intended to be.
Let's think about the future of the organization of the sport.
And they simply said, we'll get to it another time,
right and now, is it possible we are just too
far gone to do anything meaningful when there are so

(19:46):
many interests, with so many competing priorities.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
I definitely think there were a couple of points where
different leadership could have changed things Like if we go
back to the Oklahoma the Regent Supreme Court case in
nineteen eighty four, I think that's what deregulated college television
college football television broadcasts that allowed leagues and teams to
sign individual deals. That's what initially turned the cash figot on.

(20:14):
And you really began to see that in the early
nineteen nineties. That is something when the SEC realized like,
oh my gosh, we can quadruple our income here. You
could have done something. You could have done something in
the early two thousands, I think too, with the next
run of the really big mega contracts, and that didn't happen. Also,
there was an opportunity I think more recently, the NCAA

(20:36):
didn't have to appeal. Also in the Supreme Court they
got a mostly favorable reading and don Remi Aremi and
Mark Emmert, and I think a couple of their legal
council gave them what turned out to be really bad advice.
You could have changed a couple of things there now
like now, and I know it's really easy to beat
up on the NCAA. Obviously, your options are limited. We
could talk about that with collectives in a second. I

(20:57):
guess are much more limited. The bigger thing I think
for me isn't just that you have a limited number
of potential options. I think we've earned the right to
be skeptical of the people making those decisions. We have
a bunch of new commissioners in a lot of ways
that don't have a lot of personal trust with each other,
that don't some of them don't really have really deep
college sports experience. And one of the things that really

(21:21):
was kind of changed my thinking about this was the
discussion to expand the college football playoffs, where you had
every commissioner in that room wanted to do it. They
agreed on the major structural things, and there were a
couple of provincial, local, smaller sticking points, and they expensed,
get a ton of me of meals, and went to
a bunch of conferences and they couldn't get it done.

(21:42):
So that makes me think if you couldn't get something
done where you agreed fundamentally bout what you wanted to do,
how am I supposed to trust these same twelve to
fifteen people to fix something where they don't agree on
what they're supposed to be doing. In other industries, you
would be fired. They would bring in somebody else for that,
and that doesn't really happen in college sports. So even
as someone who I think is innately an optimist, it's

(22:04):
hard for me to look and go, well, this time,
this time, you know the Kreig Thompson's going to get
it figured out. You know this this time, Kevin Warren's
going to get it fixed. Like I I'll believe it
when I see it.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
It reminds me a lot of like if we go
back to the late nineties the early aughts, this sort
of inflection point that we had with music where suddenly
you could get it online and it was clear that
this was a new way that things were going. And
instead the RIAA chose to fight it yep until they
couldn't and suddenly it was like court cases out the wazoo.

(22:40):
Eventually they found a way to turn on their own
spicket and turn that into a different business model. But
the NCAA fought this for a long time and they
found themselves in a really awkward spot. Now, Ross Dellinger,
I'm sure you saw it. Matt wrote a long piece
for SI about a week or two ago. I can
link it up in our show notes about how boosters
via collectives were getting involved in recruiting, and again it's long.

(23:03):
Everyone should take a chance to read it because it
is thoughtful. Ross does a great job. Now the NCAA
swoops in with new rules, I guess to try and
curb that practice. Where I'm confused is that my initial impression,
as Dan alluded, was that the NCUBLEA was sort of
in this loveless marriage with college football in a sense,
because it sort of confirmed that when it passed NIL,

(23:26):
like you guys, go do what you want, we sort
of don't want anything to do with it. As long
as we're not directly tied to it, it's cool. But
now it's taken this turn. Now they want to get
more involved. I can't imagine, Matt, they have the bandwidth
to keep track of, let alone investigate all of these
different things that are going on. How does the NC DOUBLEA,

(23:48):
via these new rules see itself getting involved. How does
the Matt Brown plan for the NC DOUBLEA for see
How the NCAA should be involved with nil in this
new world?

Speaker 1 (24:00):
I think let me try to answer the first question,
the first part of that question. I think there are
three things that fans should know about this potential new
regulation or I guess clarification of it of an existing rule.
One is your point about the NCAA not having bandwidth,
I think is super important. There's less than two dozen

(24:21):
investigators right now employed in Indianapolis. A bunch of these
people left during COVID and they weren't rehired, and morale
in that particular department, you know, was really low. People
did not like going to work every day thinking like,
what is my job to be the cream cheese police?
And Indianapolis has talked about wanting to restaff, but there's
a huge I mean, like, that's a very good question,

(24:43):
setting aside the legality of the rules, the morality of
the rules, the practical application of the rules, the you know,
Jean Smith is coming up here saying like, we want,
we can't let these things last for five years. If
we're going to get involved in the collective space, we're
going to turn things around in six months. Like I
would look at that and go in what army because
you don't you literally don't have the people. The other thing,

(25:03):
I think that that's worth noting. You know, on that note, though,
there's a lot of I think economists and attorneys and
some sports commentators are speculating, you know, pretty forcefully that
none of these rules would stand up in court. And
I think many people are familiar with Justice Kavanaugh's concurring
opinion in the Austin case where he kind of dared

(25:24):
somebody to bring amateurism and like I would be willing
to strike down the entire thing. I think it's important
to realize that that's a concurring opinion. It wasn't the
opinion opinion. If it was the opinion opinion, he was
just written that in there. Clearly not ever Justice agreed
with that particular point, and there's no guarantee that the
Supreme Court would ever hear a case like this, Like
as I have talked to attorneys, the idea of the

(25:46):
NCAA saying we're not going to cap the amount of
money you can earn from nil. We're only capping who
can participate in that market during a very specific window.
Because we're not saying you can't do a deal with
the booster once you're already on campus. They're only trying
to tell people you can't do a deal with the
booster before you're enrolled. That might stand up in court.
Sometimes you win in court sometimes you lose. I think
it is I think it is impossible to conclusively state

(26:09):
the nc double A can't do that, which ben I
think brings me to the third thing I think is
very important for everyone to know here. Everyone knew these
rules ahead of time, Like this was not a new
anything that was that was dropped earlier this week schools.
The initial guidance from the NCBA last July said, hey,
these deals can't be inducements to get anyone to go anywhere.
You as an institution have an obligation to monitor your boosters,

(26:31):
and all of these deals are supposed to be recorded
to compliance. So many of the people running these collectives
were so confident that the NCAA could or would do
nothing that they were exceptionally sloppy and setting up a
lot of these deals. And so if literally anybody in Indianapolis,
I think, looks at some of these contracts, they're going
to find people like basically saying like I committed recruit crimes,

(26:54):
notarized booster so and so. Where it's going to be
so easy to prove that someone stepped out here that
you might not need twenty investigators and a The biggest
reason for this too, not just for the collectives, is
through the agents that are representing these athletes, most of
many of whom are not real agents because you don't
have to be a real agent to represent a college athlete.
And so through so many people that are getting into

(27:16):
this world that were the same runners and uncles and
kind of third party people that were always boogeymen over
the last several years. Now they just hung up a
different sign on their door and said their marketing agency.
And they have I think done their athletes into service
by making it very easy to get them into trouble
if anybody's.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Well, and that was going to be my next question,
who gets in trouble? Because the schools have clearly tried
to build a firewall between themselves and the business dealings.
Here you've got third parties, boosters, collectives, businesses, shell corporations, whatever,
that are actually funding these athletes. Ultimately, it's the athlete

(27:55):
that signs on the dotted line. So is it such
that they're given bad advice? They signed the agreement, and
when the whole ship goes down, they're the ones that
take the fall. That doesn't seem fair.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
It doesn't seem fair, And this is part of why
I write about this a lot, I mean, and not
to get really political, but like that's also kind of
how a lot of financial dealings, and like the justice
system works, Like when the deal goes bad, is it
the twenty year old football player that gets in trouble
or the billionaire? Generally odds favored the billionaire. Right, the
booster could get in trouble insofar as the NCAA forces

(28:29):
them to disassociate from the school, which to some people
is a big penalty. To some people, they don't care.
The school could theoretically get in trouble for failing to
build a culture of compliance, failure for institutional control. We'll
see that that might take six years. Championships are forever,
even if they take the banner down. But it's the
athlete who could lose eligibility, the athlete who could be

(28:50):
in trouble with the irs, the athlete who generally, I
think faces the most risk. And that's why I say
this is still an exploitive market. It's just a different
kind of exploitation because the biggest risk, and my view,
is still being shouldered by the individuals that have the
least representation and the least ability to handle it.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Who is this for? Who is this sort of governing
and enforcement for? Right like that? Like, yeah, okay, so
we have smart people at the NCAA on a certain level.
They know if they say right, they know that if
they say retroactively, we're gonna go after boosters who are
dealing with recruits in an illegal way. Whatever. Here's what
the boosters are going to do. They're going to do

(29:30):
exactly what anybody else who is experienced and motivated to
commit a financial crime is going to do. A booster
is going to say, I am no longer dealing with
the collective, but I'm donating five million dollars to Steve's genes.
And oh look at that. A blue chip quarterback has
a three million dollar deal with Steve's genes. And it's
going to be laundered elsewhere and we don't have the

(29:54):
forensic accountants. And what's going to happen is if somebody
is motivated, they will always find a way. Right, Yeah, yeah,
I watched The Big Short too, Right is what is
what is all this effort for? What is the endgame?
Is to what make Purdue fans happy?

Speaker 1 (30:11):
That?

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Like, what who are we doing this for?

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Man? It's a great question because the system who have
benefits right now are the middleman. Right, there's a new
cottage industry of compliance software companies, nil marketing agencies, agents,
both above board and below board. Certainly not sports business newsletters.
I mean where that I would I wouldn't categorize them
as diabolical rent seekers. But yeah, like there's this whole

(30:36):
like new world that kind of gobbles up all the
money from that inefficiency. Like I look at this and
it sounded like maybe you too a degree. My mind
has changed on this. I think it'd be a lot
easier just saying, look, your employees, and that doesn't necessarily
ruin everything. Graduate students are employees and that hasn't ruined college.
We could say, as part of your employment agreement, you

(30:57):
have to go to chemistry class and you have to
know you live in company housing or something. But we're
going to do this, so Steve Steve's genes doesn't or
the real estate Prince of Shreveport or whoever it is,
it's get to be involved in here. Maybe that's where
we go eventually. Like right now, you're right, there's been
an enormous demand of human capital and human ingenuity and

(31:20):
reportings and all these other things for something that, when
you describe it that way, sounds extremely stupid.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, I just I don't understand what the effort, all
of this effort is for if there's no structure to
the sport like it almost to me sounds like if
we're figuring out how to organize the sport so that
we have employees, so that we have you know, everything
is on paper and above board, and there are certain
contracts and buyouts and everything like that. I also now

(31:50):
start to wonder how many people care, how many fans
that are not on Reddit, that are not listening to podcasts,
that are not subscribing to excellent newsletters like Extra Points.
What is the percentage of people who consume college football
that are just Saturday fans that just tune into a
TV game of because they went to Maryland because they

(32:11):
went to UCF, or they go to the games because
they can see their buddies from college and eat brought
worst and corn or whatever. Like, are we all freaking
out in this tiny little echo chamber of like online
college football fans when the majority of people, if it's
the case, just want to go outside with their friends
and eat smoked meat.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
And it brought worst in corn of the state.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
The very weird combo.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, clearly assimilated here. Yeah boy, No. I think about
this a lot, and I may not be the best
person for this prison because half of my audience are
ads and yeah of coaches and people in this world.
This is my theory, and this is somewhat data informed,
but I could be wrong. Is that there was a

(32:54):
lot of a lot of people last summer that were like,
I'm not interested in college sports. If anybody gets any money,
like I want it for ten to everyone is nineteen
twenty eight Yale And when they saw the first run
of nil deals I think, which were commercials and you
got to see the the Kentucky football player do the
funny ad for the dentist, and you look at this
and think, actually, this might not only this is this

(33:14):
not a negative experience. It can be additive. It's funny.
I get a different relationship with the players than I
had before. I think very few people looked at last
football season as like I'm out of this because of NIL.
The one place where I think we honestly could see
this challenge where Saturday fans say this isn't for me
anymore is it reminds me of what happened with Jordan

(33:36):
Adison here at PITT. And I think, on one hand,
you could say, hey, look, Pitt'll your best wide receiver
you guys got from Akron, and like you bring in
people from the portal too, the portal, give it, the portal,
take it away. And as we've all learned here, even
schools like under Dame and LSU and in Oklahoma are
not immune from talent leaving in some way. So the

(33:59):
you know, game organized game, we shouldn't get complain about this.
But I think if a PIT fan says, I know
I'm not going to win a national title, and I
know that I'm coming to the game here to eat
smoke meats with my friends, but I want to root
for us to go nine and three and ruin somebody's day,
because that's what totally, that's what the PIT experience is.
And if I feel that we can't actually develop any

(34:22):
three stars and turn them into NFL players and they
will leave before we ever get anything out of it,
or before we can ever achieve that nine and three,
then it no longer feels worth it for me to
bring in that emotional investment like this is part of
the reason I don't follow baseball anymore. If other people
do great. I grew up in Ohio and I thought, like,
anybody good that's placed for Cleveland is going to get
traded into a big budget team. I get three years

(34:44):
with them, and they might be the team might be
good once I'm thirty five. Now I have other hobbies.
I'm just going to not spend that emotional investment. I
think that's an legitimate possibility for the Boston colleges and
the Purdues and New Oregon states of the world, because
in and international soccer, in other places, there's a transfer fee,
there's draft picks. You can still sell hope.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
I I'm not saying I co signed this agreement, but
I don't want to gaslight somebody pretend it's not a
real thing to hear a fan of a BC say what,
I'm concerned. Now, you can't sell me hope if this
is totally and that's something I think the collective we
have to address.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
You know, And doesn't that fall under the let's organize
the structure of how players go to schools, and let's
structure transferring and let's let's structure, what a what a
player owes a school or what a school is entitled?
Like we have the grad grad transfer thing. We're encouraging education.
Somebody graduates from an institution. Here, here is your your

(35:45):
big uh, you know, your pot of gold at the
end of the academic rainbow. You can transfer without penalty
and play doesn't Shouldn't that sort of idea encourage more
organization and structure for what you know a letter of
ten actually means and actually stands for. Shouldn't we want
shouldn't the people who say, you know, well, coaches pay

(36:05):
a penalty when they you know, up and leave that
the new school has to pay a buyout and thing.
Shouldn't there be I don't know if it's employment structure,
but doesn't aren't we pointing in that direction? If we
want more guard rails that you know that the big
the big term that everybody's using. Shouldn't we want that?

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I get that argument. I when I talk to administrators,
they come back and say, we're just lowly limited to
what we're allowed to do legally, right right, See if
the NBA wants to do this, and they sit down, like, listen,
we think it's in the best interest of professional basketball
for fans in Indianapolis and Memphis and Cleveland and Sacramento
to believe they have a chance of retaining hometown stars. Therefore,
we're going to negotiate with the union and make it,

(36:46):
you know, create rule changes to make it easier for
those teams to do that. You negotiate with the union
like you can't latterly do it. So I don't want
to say it's impossible to build more of a structure.
And it sounds like we're heading towards a world where
there'll be a transfer window, whether the recruiting calendar will
be simplified, and I think that should make things easier.

(37:06):
But some of the other structures you're talking about, I
think would be difficult to do without a union, without
collective bargaining about employment, without the chance to have more
of those conversations.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Fair enough, Yeah, I don't I see that as being
And I think I'm with you with being the one
true complaint where everybody's on the table to be poached
at all times. And I understand that, you know, kids
have an opportunity, and in Jordan Adison's case, of course,
new quarterback, his offensive coordinator gets his salary doubled by

(37:40):
Nebraska and leaves, which is an insane thing. That's a
different story. I understand from Jordan Addison's perspective that he
has the opportunity and look as if he's showing out
at Pitt, he's going to get drafted wherever he should
be drafted because there's tape on him everybody. Pit is
a big place. But this sort of unofficial free age
and see tour that's happening with him, I understand why

(38:03):
that rubs pitfans the wrong way and can turn them off.
I just I don't see a way to combat that reality.
Even with a transfer window. We what do we see
with NBA free agency where there are strict guidelines. I
think the Bulls just lost a draft pick right because
they tampered and signed a player, as they all do
the moment free agency open. Somehow they're able to negotiate

(38:26):
a complicated contract with all sorts of clauses and bonuses
in eleven seconds.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
So it's pretty amazing, right, which you, yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
It's the sport, But like we're what we're doing is
we're saying that things need to be fixed, and at
this point, I almost think we just need to lean
into and accept the chaos, and you're either in or
you're out.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
That is possible. I mean, that's part of the reason
why I have so much to write about. Even candidly,
sometimes I'd like to do something besides nil, Yeah, besides
FCS conference realignment, just because like, these kind of things
keep happening, the challenge, and you're right, maybe the answer
is this is just the way things are. I can't
think of any other league anywhere, at any level that

(39:09):
does constant free agency all the time, like in European soccer,
which I think is in many ways the closest similarity
to how a lot of college football works. It is
there are contracts, but everybody kind of understands that don't
really mean anything. But if you are a smaller team,
you make a living off transfer fees, and like that
can be that's what you sell to fans. We're gonna
find the Portuguese fourteen year old before anybody else does.

(39:32):
We're going to get one and a half good years
out of them, and we're gonna go sell them to
Chelsea for six million dollars. And I mean, I'm sure
it's a higher number of that I'm watch I'm bad Brasilient.
You know what I mean, right, And you can't do
that if you are a fan of Fresno State, because
you don't, you don't get anything. Maybe the answer is
deal with it. Like Fresno State. Your lot in life
is to come here and get and get drunk in
Fresno and maybe win the Mountain West once every couple

(39:55):
of years. I mean, but I get what people are
angry about it. I want what a topic I can
I can talk to people, I can write down what
they say, I can look at the legal analysis here. Guys,
if I could, if I know how to fix the sport,
and I love you both, I wouldn't be doing this, right,
I would be fixing the sport.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
You'd be paid all over Luck money. That's exactly where you.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'd be one of those six
guys that is contractually obligated to be mentioned every time
a job opens up. Right, Like if if a job
opens up and you don't put Condoleeza Rice or or
all over Luck or like the one guy at ESPN,
like you lose your walk license, right, yeah, I would.
That's what I would be if I knew how to
fix these things.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
But it's first of all, I think the NBA is
heading there. I don't know if you've heard the term
pre agency. That's real. That's a real term where players
at All Star weekend are talking like, Okay, here's what
we're gonna do. Where Anthony Davis says I'm just going
to stop playing until you trade me. That's yes, and
so I aged weird.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
I heard that in Sunday School growing up. I haven't
heard that in sports yet. Like that's the distent thing. Okay,
where yeah? Cool?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Why Leonard says these are the two players I'm going
it does matter where there's just that or like force
a trade out, like I'm done playing here. I don't
like them, So we are heading in that direction. To me,
it almost seems like the frontier is something novel, like
make somebody want to stay run a program so well,
have such a good culture, and educate your players so

(41:20):
well across a broad spectrum that you're impressing parents and
your parents want you to stay right that you have,
Like there's there's this certain amount of agency that just
seems much more human. Hold on, Dan hold On, Yeah, sorry,
are we not.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Referring to the plan that was insinuated, hinted at by
visionaries like Dabo Sweeney, innovators like Dabo Sweeney, who you know,
takes a lot of crap for it, admittedly out there,
but has put an emphasis on, Okay, we want we
need to build our own culture here. We're going to
recruit our own roster. We're going to go above and

(41:55):
beyond to try and do that. He too, has suggested
the sport needs to be blown up. What does that
look like? I'm sure he doesn't have a plan. We
don't either, but I'm curious, Matt, like, what does that
look like if we blow this up big bang style
and we try to put it back together in some
way that actually has order and rules and whatnot. Are

(42:16):
we talking about a European style system where we've got
promotion and relegation. Are we talking about some sort of
minor league system where, look, the schools don't want to
give up the cash cow that is billion dollars worth
of network TV rights where they are now sponsoring a
minor league football program, Like in a perfect world, if
this thing goes boom by the end of the decade, Like,

(42:40):
do we have any sense for what it could look
like or should look like.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Should I don't know if I had the best answer yet,
and I might buy this summer. I'm legitimate like that.
That's a future out, a future story, right.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
I can talk a little bit about what it could
because I talked to people about this, and you know what,
Swarbrook has mentioned a couple of times about this idea
of maybe I don't know, fifty institutions decide to license
their IP and their stadium and their colors and their
history to create a U twenty two football team that's

(43:14):
like Oregon Ducks, Inc. Right right, you know Learfield or
JMI or the Rock Runs that are whoever and have
that just be college football with contracts that's played on colleges,
but it's professional. That is one thing that could really happen.
And I think I think Notre Dame's athletic director is
correct in that there are going to be universities, even
Power five institutions, that are going to look at that

(43:35):
and say, that's not us, that doesn't align with our
ecclesiastical or academic mission. The bishops on our board aren't
going to be okay with it, and we actually will
do the thing that Jim Delaney threatened to do and
we all made fun of him, which is dropped down
to Division three like that, I think. I don't know
if that's likely, I think, but that's been in kind
of academic reformy circles for a decade and that idea

(43:55):
is getting renewed currency among current leaders.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Like it's an in or out proposition, Yeah right. It's
a very binary approach to do you want to be
involved in the major business of college football? Do you
want to spend the money that it takes. Do you
want to do what it takes? Do you want to
associate with the program but not have the program be
a part of your school that at least feels honest
on a sea level.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
I think I think that would be more honest. Another
thing that I think could legitimately happen is the NCUBA
as we know it really does get blown up and
a lot of their duties are then replaced with individual
sport federations. So instead of having a college NCUBA college
wrestling Championship, USA Wrestling takes control of that and says,
all right, we're going to have a U twenty two

(44:36):
championship and that's going to be operated out of colleges,
and then we're going to operate, you know that have
the Olympic Trials, We're going to do these other things.
And USA Wrestling sets eligibility, and we have a lot
of these organizations for other things. Maybe we fold men's
college basketball into USA Basketball, and that's just how a
lot of other sports do it. One thing that I
think is unlikely but could honestly happen, is have like

(44:59):
a literal federal government Minister of Sport and somebody that
takes in some of the Olympic trial stuff and college
sports and folds it into the state.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
I think it was last week and Sportico you saw
a suggestion from a large defense contractor saying maybe the
military should just offer full scholarships to every Olympic sport
athlete in exchange for joining the reserves for a couple
of months afterwards. I know, I know, like a lot
of people on Twitter freaked out about that. Sure, that's
how they do it in Germany, Like that's that's how

(45:30):
other developed countries, you know, do these kind of things.
So I don't want to dismiss that completely out of hand.
I do think the status quo where we have a
centralized organization in Indianapolis clinging to amateurism plus and trying
to bring three hundred and sixty institutions together to do that.
I don't think that's likely to survive the next five years.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
What also would prevent I know he's controversial, but let's
use Elon Musk. Somebody with a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Spends it so wisely.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Yeah, from going out to every high school in America
and saying I will take all of your best college
football athletes. We're gonna build a league. We'll pay you.
You don't need to go to college. You don't need
to do any of this, but you can still go
to the NFL after a couple of years. Right, that's
still the rule, per my understanding, Like, is that not
also a possibility that somebody who is ever so inclined

(46:20):
could just set up a separate infrastructure altogether separate from college.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Structurally, there's nothing stopping. That's what's stopping. And I think
for football is just that it costs so much money.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
And we've seen so many startup football leagues start up
and fail. And I don't want to want to be
a Debbie downer, but I think anybody playing in the
spring right now is unlikely to still be there in
two years, no matter how charming and handsome the Rock
is like that. That's just the economy is a scale
of the sport. We're seeing this in basketball right. This
is what Overtime Lead is trying to do. And that's

(46:54):
a very well capitalized group that has a teeny tiny
market share of that world. And the G League has
been trying to do this, and they're prepped up by
the NBA and there They've been doing this for what
a decade, and it's only just now I think starting
to really realistically get it's it's it's baby Lakes been
taking baby steps here. So I think for football, you
would you would honestly need somebody with Elon money. And

(47:14):
nobody else has Elon money but Elon and and and
there's only a handful of people that have that much
cash and be willing to say like, not only am
I going to try to do this, I'm gonna be
cool losing money for twenty I'm going.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
To burn it.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, I'm going to just set it on fire. To
get people to suddenly care about the Omaha Firehawks or whatever.
You know, we have to put a team in Birmingham
and Memphis and every other d list football city to
start something like this up. People don't have that kind
of money, but sure you you could do it. I mean,
the real, honest, the real risk would be the NFL
deciding to do it right and and and using some

(47:47):
of that money, because I think people forget this. Up
until I want to say, the late sixties or seventies,
the NFL had like farm system teams. There was like
the Eastern League where like the Patriots or the Bears
might call people up and then they decided they didn't
want to spend the money on it anymore. Like that
will be more likely to me, I think than Elon.
But of course the right now the NFL is like,
we've got a pretty good gig because right now to

(48:08):
State Alabama have to spend all that money.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
The other thing too is obviously Ohio State Alabama have
built in fan bases. You're not starting from scratch there,
whereas if you throw the Elon money at it, you're
kind of back to square one with respect to like USFL, XFL,
these other startup leagues that haven't really gotten much traction.
The other thing that I wanted to mention here quickly
We've talked a lot about all in or all out

(48:32):
as it relates to players being effectively employees, being able
to earn money, get contracts, things of that.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Ilk.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
What's getting awfully big in the window is the NCUBA
video game. And I wonder, from your perspective, Matt, if
the NCUBA video game is not some sort of conduit
to get us from A to B, because presumably everybody
in that game stands to make some cut from it.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
What have you heard?

Speaker 3 (48:58):
What are people saying behind the scenes about how the
video game, just as it did with NIL, could perhaps
usher in the next chapter of wherever we stand here
with amateurism.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
That's a great question, Tay. Here here's what I know. Yeah,
here's what I Here's what I know about the game
right now. I know that last year when EA Sports
and CLC, that the major licensing agency that works with
most of these institutions, reached out to all the schools
and asked for the participation of the game. What they
told them was, Hey, what EA wants to do is

(49:29):
use current athletes in this game. They want to cut
them a check and put them in and we are
that is our goal. We are working towards a group
licensing solution. In the event that we are unable to
do that, we are going to still make the game.
We're going to randomize the players, and we are not
going to include any team builder modes, and we're not
going to let users edit the rosters. So we will

(49:49):
be a much more restrictive video game than you have before,
because otherwise, as we all know, somebody in Operation Sports
is going to get get the right rosters ready in
like two hours, and.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
We all still do it to this day.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Sure, I I literally bought a three sixty during the pandemic.
Like this was for business reasons, It was because I
wanted to keep playing. Right What I can tell you
then is like right now, EA Sports expects every FBS
team to be in the game, including the new ones.
The James Madison and Jacksonville State Sam Houston have indicated
they want to participate. They're going to have their stadiums

(50:20):
in the game. But the hold up is with that
group licensing piece. And there actually are a couple of
companies that are working in this world right now, so
some of you guys may have heard of them. There
was the brand Our group, which has worked with a
bunch of schools to set up group licensing for jersey sales.
So if you are at Michigan or a North Carolina
or Ahiose State fan, now you really can buy jersey

(50:42):
with the player's name on it, and the player gets
a check. It would surprise fans to learn that very
few athletes are getting checks with commas in them over
jersey sales. It's not a very developed marketplace, but that's happening.
What people have told me in this industry, both at
the licensing companies there's two of them and with EA,
is that once a licensing company has acquired a critical

(51:03):
mass of athletes under their purview, that YEA will kind
of check to that company and say like, all right,
you're going to be the licensing agent for us. Let's
figure then people will opt into that deal and we'll
cut them a check for you know, low four figures
I think for the participation. And we're close to that happening,
like I expect that to happen in July sometime in

(51:24):
the next sixty days. There are enough schools are working
with US, and then it's going to take six to
nine months for more athletes to kind of opt in
and be a part of it, But it would surprise
me if we have this video game next summer that
doesn't include likenesses of the specific athletes in it.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
And is that the expectation, Matt, that we're going to
see this next summer.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yes, the proposal that was sent out, and I believe, actually,
I think the CLC has confirmed this that the targeted
date was I think July of twenty twenty three. Wow.
And I can tell you, like the reason it took
so long, because I know a lot of people are like,
just just re skim twenty fourteen and give it to
us now, baby, Like one, all the design team's gone.
It's been two video game consoles since the last game

(52:04):
was so the entire infrastructure architecture has to get blown up.
One thing that I didn't realize until I started reporting this,
it's apparently really difficult to render a college football stadium.
It takes months and thousands of photographs and a lot
of computing time. And like they told me, we literally
couldn't get that done in a year, even if the
game was ready, And so that process has taken a while.

(52:25):
The other thing is kind of depressing is it's still
hard to get a PlayStation five it's like we've had
so many chip shortages and so many supply shortages. I
don't think this game is actually going to be on
the previous generation of systems, and so there's also an
incentive to wait a little bit so more people can
actually get their hands on this, which wouldn't have been
the case before. But yeah, I would. I would look

(52:47):
for it next summer, and I am hoping to be
able to share more information about what I know about
the game soon. There's a couple other things that I've
been asked to keep embargoed for a little bit, and
I don't want to get anybody in trouble, like that's
not earth chattering. But more information I think, either through
me or other reporters will start to come out later
this summer.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
My final question is this, It's an impossible one to answer,
and so I like that tie, and I have you
on every so often, not to yell at you, but
to yell within you in your range, and you're just
always like I hear you. That sounds right.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
This is you would be shocked at how much of
my job this has become, because it's the same thing like,
all right, I'm just going to smile and listen and
let you athletic director at to Power five school just
scream for a little bit, like I'm a reporter and
a therapist in that way, So please go on.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
The interesting thing just popped into my brain with athletic
directors is on one hand, you think, oh man, a collective,
that's so cool that like, we don't have to deal
with certain financial realities of attracting recruits. But on the
other hand, a major part of an athletic director and
administrator's jobs is raising money. And if you're a booster

(53:58):
and say I got three million dollars and I normally
would donate to building a new indoor facility, but I'm
just giving it to a collective, is there like weird
tension now between collectives and athletic departments.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
It's not weird, it's explicit.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
I'm telling you a lot of these ads hate the
people that are running the collectives. Sure, and I'll tell
you what I want. What you just described is exactly
a real thing, okay. And I think a smart development
person would say you're giving them money for something different.
The three million dollars for a quarterback back on my
transfer in nine months you put your name on a building,
it's there forever right, cut me to check. Here's the

(54:33):
other thing, though, and I think we've seen this at
places like Texas, and that's.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
By the way, that's the selling hope, the collective. Yeah,
that's where the hope comes in the sport. Yeah yeah, Well.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Well here's the issue. If you are a school that
needs to spend aggressively to be competitive in a bunch
of different sports, and suddenly you have this group that's
consolidated your fifteen biggest boosters, that booster group. They're the
athletic director now, like because if that booster group has
to give me that money, turns off the spigot until
you fire a coach. The athletic director doesn't get to

(55:03):
make that call anymore. Now it's the boosters or they
might fire the AD or change anything.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Which has sort of been by the way. Boosters have
had that power and that threat before, but now it's
much more explicit.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
And now it's much more explicit, it's more institutionalized. And
then there's the challenge, right, because if you're the AD
at Auburn, your job one has some level of public
taxpayer accountability. It's your job to make multiple sports function.
It's your job defending with university. And if you are
a guy that made a kajillion dollar selling pressurized lumber,
you don't care about any of those things. You just
care about recruits. And this also is an issue for coaches.

(55:35):
There are coaches that don't like these guys either, because
now you're basically creating a shadow general manager. What if
you don't want to get somebody, but the booster wants
to get the make the rivals class go up and
impress people at the country club, so they're going to
go throw money at guys you don't even want's coach,
you don't really want that. And then they're saying that
I want to commit. Or what if a guy wants
to transfer because he's not going to play, but he's
signed a three year contract with the collective and now

(55:57):
he's stuck here. That sucks with the coach too. Lot
of those tensions aren't just about money and philosophy. It's
literally about control, right, who are you empowering and to
run things? And I'll just say, like in my experience,
when you look at the programs that have so many
resources and still suck or have not been able to

(56:18):
achieve the way they wanted to. Yeah, this is almost
always the reason. Nick Saban's true genius isn't just on
a chalkboard. It's said he's been able to unify this
entire army of sharks in Alabama to go the exact
same way. And that hasn't happened at Texas or Tennessee
or Auburn or usc until like maybe like two weeks ago.
In a long time.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
The funny thing is your language, and this is not
your intention. Your language is not unlike how people talk
about dictators, how they are able to unify various factions
from warring within the country. And it's like you'll hear
things like these are not my words, to be clear,
but you'll hear people say things not to say good

(56:59):
things about Mussolini or not to say good things of
Saddam Hussein. But everybody fell in line.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Dude, I have so crazy, but it's true, literally that
exact thing. On an extra point, so I said, like,
these guys are like Joseph Tito, like the old the
former dictator of Yugoslavia bringing together these warring like ethnic groups,
and the whole thing kind of film part after he left,
and it's like am I saying that Nick Saban needs
to be like an eighties dictator. No, am I saying
that there are similarities, yes, like, and that that is

(57:29):
that is true.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
It's so here's here's my actual final question before talking
about like sleep pods no longer happening because boosters are
donating all their money to a collective. As a legendary procrastinator,
I feel especially qualified to weigh in here. The easiest
thing to do here is nothing right. The easiest thing

(57:52):
to do with all of everybody's complaints is say it'll
work itself out, the market will correct itself, etc. Etc.
That seems like the likeliest thing to happen because anybody's
ideas are not going to resonate with everybody. So the
hardest thing to do here here will And this is

(58:12):
the same kind of like dictatorial language that we're just
talking about. The hardest thing to do here is to
get everybody on the same page. And so if the
SEC commissioner is not on the same page as the
Big ten commissioner, is not on the same page as
the you know, Mountain West commissioner, how does any effective
change actually happen in the next five, ten, fifteen, years

(58:33):
without some sort of specific event that awakens everybody in
some way.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
You know, well, that's not an impossible question. And generally
with the NCAA, it's been an external event that is
forced change, whether that's been about cost of attendance, scholarship reform.
Sometimes it's a recession or COVID or the law forcing
people to change. You're right, and there are definitely people
who say, let's let the market work itself out. And like,

(59:00):
from my perspective, and maybe this is just because I'm
just a nerdy do gooder, but my concern when we
hear that is like whenever there's we hear the words
market correction in this context, that means somebody had to
be corrected, and that generally means someone lost money or
or was hurt, and that created a change here in
the marketplace that people who are most likely to be

(59:21):
disadvantaged when there's a market correction are going to be athletes.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
It's not going to be boosters, and it's probably not
going to be schools. And that also may take a
long time because this isn't the same kind of marketplace
that you learned about in econ one to ten, where
buyers and sellers have equal access to information and people
make rational decisions. There's nothing rational about SEC boosters, Guys,
there's nothing rational about the people who have lifetime subscriptions
on Bucknuts. And I say this as a son of Columbus, like,

(59:47):
that's not what they're doing with their money here, right,
So that might take a long time, and that might
be easiest, but then people are going to get hurt
in that way.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
That was say, yeah, yeah, well, I was gonna say,
just in terms of like that single event, it does
seem like it's only one thing, and that's TV ratings
nose diving. Like in order to affect change, you got
to find where the money is and where it's coming from.
And then having CBS or ESPN or Fox saying, you know,
yesterday's offer is not today's offer, and being able to

(01:00:17):
correlate it specifically to fan apathy and disinterest and disapproval
with how the sport has evolved.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
And even then, even then, even then, that takes a
long time. And then we're operating on the assumption that
even that, like has major League Baseball reformed itself in
the face of declining fan interest and other economic headwinds.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
They made the bases bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
They made them. Okay, they made the bases bigger, but
you can see like that that wasn't a turnkey fix.
Hockey wasn't able to make some of those turnkey fixes.
And these are you know, medium to long term television contracts.
We've seen football attendance in decline for a decade, and
the best idea most people in power seem to be
is fix the Wi Fi. Not maybe don't schedule games

(01:00:59):
to twenty sixty or don't charge three hundred dollars for
a hot dog or any of these. But you know,
all this, I think just assumption that things work itself
out assumes that people are able to quickly make decisions
based on that data, right, And I don't want to
be like a college sports nihilist, but like, I don't
think that's the reality in the lifetimes that we're talking
about here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Yeah, that's fair, all right again, his boy baby, Yeah,
gome on goat ducks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
We could do like a part eight series on this stuff,
for sure. We'll have you back sometime soon, Matt Brown.
Matt Brown runs Extra Points with Matt Brown. Talk to
us very quickly, Matt Brown about how people can find
you and what you bring to the college football universe.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
You bet you can find me on Twitter at Matt
Brown ep. I promise not everything I do is an
existential bummer. Like my entire beat is to try and
dig into the stuff that determines who's going to be
good on Saturdays. So, whether that's SCS conference realignment, whether
that's explaining how television right, media rights contracts, how your
alma mater gets money, how they spend money, how they

(01:02:03):
decide what sports to sponsor, and how they're able to
be successful. These are the kind of things I dig
into so everybody else can go to the press conference
and talk about who's going to play quarterback next week.
I try to get into the nerd stuff so to
free everything else up there. Your athletic director probably reads it,
your conference commissioner probably reads it. Other people in this
world do, and maybe something that you would find interesting

(01:02:24):
as well. You can find it at extra POINTSMB dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Extra points MB dot com. Keep doing the hard work,
keep helping idiots like Dan and I be smarter when
we talk to other folks about it. We as always
appreciate your time here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
This is great, fellas anytime. It's always my pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
All righty Dan, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Whoa, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Matt Brown always extremely well read, always the smartest guy
in the room as it relates to these really complex
issues that I think many of us, I'll just include
myself here we do not have the benefit of living
in that world, understanding the nuances, the complexities, and really

(01:03:09):
seeing how all of these things kind of fit together.
We see a passing headline on Twitter, we read an
article from Ross Dellinger, which again I promise to link
up in the show notes here. And it's tough to
make heads or tails of how all of this comes
together within the sport. To be fair, I'm not sure
Matt knows any more than anybody else, but he at

(01:03:30):
least can provide context to an extent that you or
I can't. He knows a lot more of the context.
He knows a lot more of the inner workings and
the pulleys and levers that are happening or trying to
be pulled and whatever, and in all sorts of different
directions behind the scenes. So he's an invaluable resource and
a terrific guest because he could be very dry. We
have spoken to people on and off the show, who

(01:03:51):
are very dry about the subject matter, but Matt happens
to be a talented broadcaster and guest at the same time. No,
my mind, obviously, if you listen to the Totality interview,
my mind goes to a number of very strange places
in thinking about this subject live. But man, it so
much makes so little sense that I'm almost coming around

(01:04:12):
to that's the appeal. The appeal is that this is
the most nonsensical sport and we're always trying to fix
something that is unfixable, that should never be fixed, and
there's always going to be something that is going to
destroy the sport, and it doesn't because I think fundamentally

(01:04:33):
people understand that college football stands alone in its lack
of sense. It's sim City, It's sim City twenty twenty two.
There's always the Tornado or the god Zilatron or god
Zilatron whatever. No, that's cool, that's going to stop buy
and destroy your archology.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Yeah. Do you, by the way, do you play wordle
Is that a thing that you participate in? Yeah? Every day?
Just because you said a do when we started, and
that's a five letter word, that's a very popular opening word.
Do you have an opening word or set of opening
words for your word. And I know there's like a
college football word, and I don't do any of the

(01:05:13):
offshoot wordles. I'm just a purest No, I am as well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
I go with tears. Tears RS pretty good because I
want to get the T, I want to get the E.
I want to get the R and the S in there.
The problem that I have, though is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Actually figured when you said the word, they're two up
those letters, correct, that's correct assumption.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
The problem that I have actually is with my second word,
and what's the strategy around that? Because if you get
three letters in your opening word, you're inclined to keep
guessing to get it in two tries. Oftentimes you don't,
or oftentimes you get two of the three letters in
the right spot, they turn green and then you keep guessing.
Before you know it, you're on tries six. So where

(01:05:55):
I've tried to perhaps tweak my own algorithm here is
figure out what do I do in word two to
put myself in the optimal position to get total three.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
It's you know what it is, it's success right, it's
sp plus. How do you stay ahead of the chains? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
I believe that is correct assumption.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Yeah, this wordle is vocabulary advanced grammar metrics. That's all
it is. It's who's efficient as staying ahead of the chains,
who has that strategy. I'll start with It's funny. I
consider myself to be of average intellect, but I'm pretty
good with words. And I was on a game show
called Lingo that was wordle, so like, I have just

(01:06:34):
the tinsiest not a word background in this kind of thing,
and I will let's say I start with the word
crane or stern. Is that your word is your word?
Now it's a rotation. If if I'm feeling heavy vowel
in a morning, I'll go with a DO or audio.
By the way, stay on brand tie. You get the
AU and I and O just d's not incredible. But

(01:06:57):
I'm feeling if it's a Tuesday that I'm feeling vowels,
I'll go there. Crane is pretty consistent. That gets you know,
the R in the end, the ay whatever. But the
second word thing is very real, not when you have
three letters. If I put in crane and they're like, hey,
there's an E in this word and that's all you know,
my first reaction will be, where do I even start, yeah,

(01:07:21):
how do what five letter word has an E? And
you get to feel very dumb right away, which is
pretty regular.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
For what I've been doing with friends. And actually you
gave me this idea. You mentioned that some folks are
treating it like golf with a par four. And so
now every morning on a text thread with friends, I
have to send in my score. We keep track of
eighteen whole rounds. We're on round number three now. We've
been doing this for you know, whatever the math is,

(01:07:48):
however many days and there is a real expectation that
if I get a five or above, this is the
end of the world. I'm going to lose shots.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
One of my favorite things with wordle, which I just
adore wordle. I saw a clip of a podcast Bert Kreischer, comedian,
was talking about a strategy somebody told him with wordle.
And the strategy is you start with three words, and
you don't pay attention to what is or is not
in those words. But the three words cover basically every

(01:08:22):
potential common letter. And so he starts with audio, crest
and nymph, and by your fourth guest, no matter what's
in that first word, that audio word, you will have
four of the five basically every single time by your
fourth guest, right Audio Crest and nim Nymph Nymph. And

(01:08:42):
I saw that there was a think piece or there
was some sort of like response video saying is this ethical?

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Is this?

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Does this land within the spirit with which wordle was
originally intended? And I love that we now have think
pieces on wordle something that's just so in and beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
Yeah? Is that an ethical strategy to blindly shoot letters
for three of your first guesses? I'm gonna start doing that.
I say it's not, but I understand why somebody would
do that. You just because it takes the sort of
strategy out of it. It takes the like it takes
your brain out of it, and it's supposed to be

(01:09:23):
a brain teaser of you. You could still fumble, right,
But it's just the idea of like some for some people.
This was not my strategy. However, briefly I was on
those dating apps for some people. They just swipe yes
for everybody and see what. You know, It's like throwing

(01:09:43):
dynamite into the lake and see what fish pop up.
You know, by the way, humans are not fish, to
be clear, but that's that, you know, you're not actually
paying attention and you're not actually thinking through the swipe
right or swipe left or what your second guest or
third guess is going to be. It's just the scorched
earth and see what see what comes up when it does.

(01:10:06):
I'm glad we had this conversation. Sona, you're gonna try
it tomorrow and you're gonna see how you feel about it.
I'm gonna try it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Yeah, I want to see how I feel about I
want to see how it makes me feel as I
go through by day.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Yeah, the ethics of just throwing letters against.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
The wall solid verbal At gmail dot com as always
is the email address. Don't forget to go on out
to soliverbal dot com if you want to find our
old episodes. We are also on Apple and Spotify and
anywhere you can find a podcast. If you've made it
this far, why not hit the subscribe button, why not
hit the foule button. You're a ready in for a
diamond for a dollar, no brainer. We would definitely love

(01:10:43):
to have you as part of our forballer hood.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
If nothing more. Going out to Spotify and.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
Give us five star rating and we'll said review that helps.
It really does don't forget the follow along on YouTube.
Dan and I have been posting clips from all of
our shows out there. We've been trying to do a
little bit of a better job here through our all
season figure out what works and what does it work
forballers dot Solid verbal right, the solid yeah yeah, the
SOB yeah, or you can find us it's mister beasts

(01:11:10):
beast well yeah yeah. Going out to YouTube. We're posting
stuff out there on a pre recurring basis. Verballers dot
com is the aforementioned Patreon where you can find some
of the bonus stuff and join up with our community
of superverballers. And last, not least solid giveaway dot com.
When that signed mini helmet from Frank Beemer a legend.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Oh absolutely yeah, Dan Rubenstein, fun show and with that,
I bid you a Fonda you ad IU.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
My name is ty Hilda Brandt. That fine gentleman, that
that fine gentleman over there is Dan Rubinstein. We will
be back next week in meantimes, Stay solid peace.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Also a five mont of work two eas

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The State of NIL and the NCAA with Matt Brown + College Football Podcast for 5/12

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

All Episodes

The State of NIL and the NCAA with Matt Brown + College Football Podcast for 5/12

Dateline NBC