Thursday: How Enforceable are NIL Contracts?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I touched on this a little bit yesterday, but it
bears repeating because it's still bothering me. And I don't
really care about Washington, and I don't know Desmond Williams so.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
But the problem with.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I think I've prefaced this for a long time that
in the as far as the NIL is concerned, I've
always been on the side of the athlete. I think
they've been exploited for way too long. And obviously the
numbers are astronomical now as compared to what they were
in the eighties when I you know grandstead In my

(00:33):
teacher in college, I told you that story, right, Oh yeah,
that's one of my favorite Yea, yeah, sin a seventy
six thousand people show up that debate team can get
paid to and he didn't like to take too kindly
to that.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
But I've always been on the side of the athletes.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
But the athletes are taking advantage of a broken system
that we need to figure out a way to do this.
And I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat,
you know, left or right or in the middle, or
don't care. It's up to Congress to do this. And
like everything else that they have to agree on. There's
people that of the five hundred and thirty five that
would vote on anti trust exemption, there's probably three hundred

(01:11):
and fifty of them that don't even know what we're
talking about and don't care and haven't watched a football
game in their life. You really in the sports world
really think that football is We wrap our world around that,
and we're dreading, you know, the tenth of February when
the basket, when the football season ends, and we can't
wait till preseason begins with the Hall of Fame game
in August. But that six month drought is a depressed

(01:35):
time for a lot of football fans. I can recall
another experience that I had when I was in college
at OU, and we had a guy that worked in
our newsroom at the campus radio station, and he was
going to be like, can you want to be the
next day and rather basically or I don't know whatever
happened to him, but.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
He said something like got.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
A big weekend plan, and I'm like, yeah, I got
the game tomorrow, and he goes what game?

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And I went the Ou game? And I go what
o you game?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
And I said, oh, you're playing the Braska tomorrow for
the Big A Championship. What time two thirty one? I said,
did you not know there was a game today? Ar tomorrow? Goes,
I don't know that they ever play. I've never been
to a game, don't care to go a game. I
don't even like football. And I'm like, what planet of
you come from?

Speaker 3 (02:19):
We're surrounded by them. It's hard to sometimes it's hard
to remember.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
But again, I bet you there's three hundred people in
Congress that haven't watched college football game in their life
and don't care. But they've got to get to this
because this brings us to the Desmond Williams story again.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
And for those of you that need it rehashed.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
On January second, he signed a four million dollar deal
to play football for another year at Washington, and the
next day or Monday the sixth, I guess Tuesday the sixth,
he walked into the coach's office and said, I'm going
into the transfer portal and they're like, what, you just
sign a contract that said you were going to be
our quarterback next year and we're working out the ways

(02:56):
that we're going to get you the four million dollars.
He goes, yeah, but I got to look out for myself.
If as long as I didn't pay the guy, I'm like, leave,
hit the road, get your shine box.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
I don't want any part of you.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
The quarterback is one of the most important parts of
any organization. If the quarterback isn't right, you're not going
to win, especially in this age, if you do not
have a marquee quarterback, it doesn't matter if the rest
of your team is good. Battery difference. Sometimes you can
get by with smoking mirrors. If you're really good defensively
and you've got a good offensive line, you can control
the game. But the quarterback has the ball in his

(03:30):
hands all the time, and every offense at pretty much
every level is quarterback centric, and the teams that have
quarterbacks win, and the teams that don't have quarterbacks generally don't.
I mentioned Trent Dilpher in a previous show Who I
Think the World of and he won a championship with
Carolina back in the day.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
But the Trent Dilfer the days are pretty much over.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I don't think you can build a team around a
quarterback that's really good are kind of in the middle
of the pack.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I don't know that Trent Dilfer is it's.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Going to be the He was good enough to play
in the NFL for a long time, and it meets
working at sears and he made a ton of money,
but you got to have somebody that's a dynamic player
at that position. And he was better than people give
him credit for. But he wasn't Paton Mahomes and he
wasn't Josh Allen and those guys. So Desmond Williams is
their pick. And now he's not going to be their
quarterback anymore. After they agreed and he signed a contract

(04:19):
and said, I will not go in the portal and
here's I'm getting four million dollars to play. And I
think if you're anybody in life, whether you're a college
football player or not, when you give somebody a promise,
that's something that you should live up to. Now, there
are circumstances where those things change, but not in four days,
and not because somebody got in your ear and said, hey,

(04:40):
there may be five million out there, or they may
be four million, one hundred and twenty five thousand next
year instead of four million.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's when you make a deal. When you agree to
a deal, you.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Live up to that deal until you have to make
another deal that both sides agree on is the appropriate
way to make the changes that you need to with
your life. And if you can't, if you can't trust
your quarterback to live up to a contract that's four
days old and the ink on his signature is barely dry,
how can you trust him to really run your offense efficiently?

(05:11):
Because he's only there to get paid. He doesn't care
if he performs or not. He doesn't care if he
wins or not. All he's caring about is I'm getting paid. Oh,
somebody else canna pay me more. Let me think about that.
I'm taking my word back.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
And.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
You know, I will I hope that the Washington Collective
is able to get money out of him that they
never paid him. You know, basically, he broke the contract,
so we're suing you for damages and then whatever you
get at the other schools coming to us. So you're
going to be playing for free wherever you go. This
is something that we have got to fix. There's got
to be binding our some kind of binding deal with
these contracts. And this is not what the nil or

(05:51):
even the revenue sharing should be about.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Well, and that I mean that last part is the
is the exact problem here. It's not what NIL was
about the but it has morphed into NIL now means
pay to play. Yes, because NIL originally and all these
collectives originally it was will pay you for your name,
image and likeness to make an appearance at our car dealership,

(06:18):
to make an appearance at you know, our restaurant, whatever
it is.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
It's it's Vince Young walking in the bookstore and seeing
two hundred number ten shirts get sold for fifty bucks apiece,
and he not get a piece of that past.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
One thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
So you get a piece of your jersey sales, your
merch cells, you get a piece of appearances now, and
you get a piece of the video game cells because
they're using your likeness. Yes, But the problem is these collectives,
along with the universities, have turned the NIL payments into
contracts to pay the players to play for the university.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
And contracts that are really not valid if the player
wants to change the language of the contract.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
And I think that that's why they will lose if this,
if this does end up in a courtroom, I think
they lose because he's not being paid to be a
player on the team. He was being paid for his name, image,
and life.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
That depends on who's on the jury now.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
And I guarantee you the player doesn't want a jury.
He wants a judge to tell me what the legal
law is and go with that.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I was about to say, I don't think this would
be a jury trial if you're if.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
You're the one getting sued, you're gonna beg for another
lawyer to set up there and say, sorry, this violates
an I trust exemption contract void a thousand percent. But
if you're you know, a Washington football fan that's pissed
off that you've left him, I don't care what the
law says, guilty, pay the guy that and then. And
that's I don't I don't know how many juries have
been swayed by emotion over the years, but that if

(07:47):
you're a Washington Husky football fan and you get on
the jury that's against Desmond Williams, you're you've already made
up your mind walking in there. Whatever he has to
pay us to recover damages. That's what I'm voting on.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, you'd be looking to move that that trial outside
of the greater Seattle area.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
You want that to be in another You want an
Oregon fan on that roster, or you want a fan
of wherever he ends up to be on that roster,
on that drive.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
And this is this one specifically, I think is the
great example that shows how you know one the players
want it both ways. They want to be paid, but
they also want to still be able to transfer as much,
move around as much as possible, and not be enforced,
not have these contracts enforced. But at the same time,
the universities along with these collectives are trying to enforce

(08:38):
these contracts as if they are labor contracts when they're
really just appearance and likeness payment. So you can't have
it both both parties. Cannot have it both ways, which
is why you need a third party to step in
and create some kind of guardrails and regulations, because right
now the collectives and the universities are saying, no, no, no, no,

(09:00):
this this money that we're paying you is for you
to be a football player on our football team. Oh okay,
well then now that's a labor contract. Now you're paying
me to be an employee. Oh no, no, no, no, not
an employee, employee, an employee, but you are required to
be here at a certain time for a certain length
of time on certain day.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
But you can't even do that to a contractor because
the contractor can do the work whenever he feels like, oh,
I want to play it for sorry, I'm not going
to be here Exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's the difference between contract labor and employee. So you
can't have it both ways, which is where right now
we're we're caught in this.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
It's basically whatever Alete wants to do, that's what's going
to happen.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Exactly because the universities and the collectives know they don't
have the legal don't have the legal side on their side,
let's exemption unless they but then to do that, then
you're basically you're not Basically you are admitting that these kids,
these these grown adults, these early twenties adults, are employees

(10:01):
of the universe.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
That they're they're they're they're kind of like the adjunct
professor that shows up they give a class, but he
comes when he feels like it, not when you wanted to.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's one thousand percent what it is.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
But that adjunct employee is still technically an employee. And
that's where I think the next step in this.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
But according to according to all the experts. If you
make every if you make six hundred athletes at at
Tulane employees, you're going to bankrupt the school.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
I tend to believe that, but I think there's also
a lot of hyperbole from the universities because, uh, I mean,
right now, you know, the money that Colorado spent on
Dion in that football program two years ago has paid
off tenfold in the amount of new students, new tuition,
higher enrollment numbers.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Football always says that exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
So I mean, if you want to tell me it's
going to bank bankrupt Tulane, okay, maybe, but it's not
going to bankrupt the top forty program.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
And I think that's what we're getting to.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I think college football wants to have forty teams that
play for the national championship every year and the rest
go form your own league and just play for whatever
you can get.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
And I kind of think, I mean, there is a
part of me that feels like, if you're the big schools,
the big conferences have been run as professional leagues for
decades now. Ever since ever since your Oklahoma Sooner sued
to get their own to have control over their own
TV rights, that was kind of the beginning of the break.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Let let me ask you this.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
If we pick the best forty teams to play the
programs that Purdue in Syracuse and Maryland, for example, would
not be amongst the forty teams that you would ever
put into a football league. Basically, you'd have about eight
or ten teams from the SEC, about eight or ten
teams from the from the.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
A Big Ten, in.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
The Big Twelve, you'd have about you'd have about eight
teams from five conferences. Maybe ten teams from four conferences
would get in. So if we were to do this
two years prior, Indiana would not.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Have been let in.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Indiana would have been on the outside looking in. You
go play in the other league with the Conference USA teams,
maybe you can beat them. So what if I win
the lottery and I want to give a school in
my choice that's not amongst the top forty enough money
to be able to compete with the top forty, We're
gonna have relegation and kick teams out and put other
teams back in like they do in European soccer.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
I mean, that's why I don't ever want to see that,
you know, creation of a pseudo super league of the
top forty because then you would be yet, I mean,
if you're having promotion relegation, it doesn't feel like we're
even talking about college football anymore.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
We're talking.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
But again, if Indiana hadn't ponied up thirty million dollars
for its team, those players that are playing for Indiana,
including Fernando Mendoza and the coach Kurt Signetti, would be
somewhere else, right, And so the school decided, through its
booster club, through its fundraising efforts, through its collectives, we
want to be good in football.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
How do we be good in football?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
We triple the athletic budget from twenty million to sixty
million for football. Uh, and we go get the best
players and we pay him, and we have a thirty
three million dollar roster. And if you're it's not likely
that South Forida, Memphis, two lane UTSA, North Texas can
raise that money. But if an alum from that school
or someone that's that's partial that school wakes up one

(13:28):
morning and realizes he won a one point five billion
dollar lottery ticket, Hey, I think I'm gonna give my
school thirty forty million dollars. See what they can do
if they've got a coach worthy Salt, they're going to
be a pretty good team the next.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Year because he's going to go by a roster.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
And so I think you've got if you're going to
be in the in the in the free enterprise, capitalistic
world that we live in, we got to give everybody
the opportunity. The opportunity is there for everyone. If you
can't do it, then you're not going to win. But
if you you should not be denied the opportunity to
do it. If that's how you choose to spend the
money that you ran, and maybe that's how it gets handled.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Is you know, talking about a hypothetical where Tulane would
get bankrupted.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Okay, well then don't do it.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
But if you have it, if you have that donor,
or you have the financial means that you want, maybe
you're submitting your application to join the Super League and
you have it's like an expansion fee, you have the
money up front. Again, we're not talking about college football anymore. Now,
we're talking about a professional football league.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
You're talking about a business. It's kind of a a
it's the minor. It's it's still the Triple A for
the NFL, but it's a little bit higher. Version of
the Triple A.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Well, Triple A teams don't get paid a billion dollars
for their TV rights like the Big tenactly well seven
billion to be honest, right.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
But I had this conversation with people before when I
talk about UTSA and it's attendance, and they flat out
tell me if UTSA and it's those who don't go
to games will watch college football. I say, why don't
you go to more UTSA games? They're in your city?
And I said, because I really don't care if they
play Florida Atlantic or Charlotte or Old Dominion or Marshall
the teams from the Conference USA. If they played Baylor

(15:07):
in Texas Tech and occasionally Texas and maybe Oklahoma State
and teams that I've heard of, I'd go more often.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
How about that Houston season opener a couple of years ago.
That place was packed exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Texas State does it because both teams draw to whichever
stadium they're in. But in order to play that schedule
and not lose every game by forty points, you better
have a roster that's as good as theirs is. And
those rosters are paying players anywhere from ten to the
thirty million dollars, and so that's the It's a different
but it comes down to it. At some point in time,

(15:40):
UTSA is not going to be a school that's sixty
years old with a fifteen year football program. And maybe
you know, Boca Ratone's one of the richest zip codes
in the world, and someday somebody decides I want to
invest in Florida Atlantic football. Maybe they'll be good, but
I don't think you can take that opportunity away from
them to elevate themselves if that opportunity, no matter how
unlikely it is, ever comes to fruition. All right, let's

(16:03):
talk about the semifinal matchup with Miami and Ole miss
It's next five, seventeen on the ticket.