NCAA agrees to $2.8 billion settlement so colleges can pay their players

NCAA agrees to $2.8 billion settlement so colleges can pay their players

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Right now. I want to bringin sports attorney agent Jeff Chillcoat, longtime
buddy of mine and sports attorney agent, Jeff. How are you welcome in
Laser? How you doing, myfriend? Hey man? Do it great?
So you are in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I think right now? Correct?
I am? Yes, you're herefor the US Women's Open this week.

(00:22):
Yeah, I'm hearing like a littlebit of an echo zachy and I
don't know if that's I don't okaythere, it seems like it got okay,
it got better just a little bit. It wanted to make sure we
made that adjustment. Does it soundokay? Do I sound okay to you,
Jeff? I just want to makesure you do. You sound great,
okay, very good. So you'reat Lancaster Country Club. I wanted

(00:43):
to bring this up because you know, Round one is coming up on Thursday,
and it's the US Women's Open thereLancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania, and
you have if it's if it's stilllike it was before and I haven't spoken
to you about this. You've gota lot of the game, or at
least some of them as clients.Correct, you're representing them? I do,

(01:06):
Yeah, Yeah. So the defendingchampion this week is a client of
mine, Alison Corpus, and wejust finished a press conference of hers,
and yeah, so I've got anumber of people in the field this week.
Yeah. One of the gals thatyou used to have was is Jill
McGill, who this was the lasttwo years and the Wendy's Championship year at

(01:29):
Well it was out at Arnold's Placedown at Tartan Fields the last couple of
years. And I'll never forget whenyou called me and asked me about,
you know, jumping on her bagfor that week, because like there had
been this whole thing that happened andbeing out there and that was like Onnica
was still on the tour, NatalieGolbas and Kelly Keeney and all these really

(01:53):
fun people that were around, andI'm telling you that was a blast.
I mean that was so fun.And to watch these girls, I mean
you could throw a small hand towelover the group of balls on the range
that they hit. I mean theyput them right in the same spot every
single time. It is it isjust fantastic. And you know, I
don't know, it's it's an interestingI think it's an interesting thing, and

(02:15):
I think you have a lot,or at least you've got some some pretty
marquee clients there, you know,for the for the women's tour. That's
really I'm very lucky. Yeah,I'm very lucky, And you are right.
These women are so talented. Iwas watching on the range a client
of mine today, Maya Stark isher name. She's she's one, she's

(02:36):
twenty four years old. She's alreadywon six times in Europe and once in
the US. But she was hittingthe screen and I said to her,
I said, I don't think thatball just wavered off the flag by an
inch either way. I think itwas on the flag, and she just
kind of winked at me. Imean, it's it's a game with which
I am not familiar. They hitit in the center of the club every

(02:57):
time. It seems like it's likeit's uncanny. You're but to watch them,
and then you know, Lori Rinkerwas the final one that I did
there. Gosh Man and then herbrothers, Lee and Larry. Of course,
I think one of them did orused to do color for Serious XM
or something, the PGA tow Urchannel or what happened, Larry. Yeah,

(03:17):
man, and say, it isjust a fascinating world that you're involved
in. I can't imagine all ofthe cool stuff that you constantly get to
experience and the very interesting people thatare around all the time. Jeff,
that's really cool. Well, imaginesomeone calls you and says, I need
shoes? Can you order my shoes? That's how exciting it is. Oh,

(03:38):
Okay, you're you're that kind ofan agent. Okay, cool,
you're really going the extra moment.I think a lot of them do that,
though, now that I'm thinking aboutit. We end up doing everything.
Yeah, we end up negotiating contracts, we end up you know,
they they whatever they need, ouroffice is going to take care of it.
So yeah, there's there's definitely somereal cool perks to I've gotten to

(04:00):
do some really neat things. Thisisn't why you called me today, but
I got to ride in an Indycar a couple of weeks ago in Long
Beach with a client. That wasa blast. We almost hit two hundred
miles an hour. It was fantastic. Oh man, that is crazy.
That's called a Saturday night. AndJosh is like now near where Josh lives.
That's a Saturday night for a rocksports attorney. Agent Jeff Choco is

(04:28):
joining us now. So yeah,Jeff, this was a big story late
last week and I thought, man, you would be perfect to talk to.
I feel like about this. TheNCAA agreeing to two point eight billion
dollar settlement that's going to allow schoolsto pay players. The deal will allow
schools of the power five to payathletes directly. And this is one of
those things where you know, wewe've spoken a couple of different times throughout

(04:53):
the course of NIL so far,and then something like this popping up.
This is this is different from NIL, is it not? It is correct?
Yeah, this is completely different thanNIL. It's going to have to,
you know, operate with NIL,but this will be direct payment from
the universities where NIL, in mostinstances, is operated by someone like myself

(05:18):
that's helping an individual athlete maximize theirname, image and likeness off the field
or off the course or off thecourt, whatever the case may be.
And but this is going to bethis is going to be interesting. This
completely changes the course of college athletics. Yeah, it's a revenue sharing plan

(05:39):
going to allow each school to sharetwenty million per year with athletes, and
there'll be some schools that that'll that'llget ate up quickly, right, I
mean, it just depends on thesize of the school. Yet it looks
like they're all going to be it'sgoing to be equal as far as the
money divided. Yeah, well it'sit's it's they're estimating that initially it's going

(06:01):
to be around twenty million, soit's twenty two percent of the revenue,
and so that number will change overtime, and you assume that that's just
going to get bigger over time.And I have to think too, with
that number being so low in comparisonto other sports leagues, where you know,
typically you're gonna have something around thesixty percentage, you know, sixty

(06:25):
percent rather than twenty two percent,I have to believe that percentage will probably
grow over time. But yeah,so that that settlement, the two point
eight billion that you mentioned, that'sgoing to pay some of the athletes,
some of the current athletes, butalso go back words to around twenty sixteen.
So boy, you feel bad forthe person that graduated in twenty fifteen

(06:47):
that doesn't get anything, but theychose some sort of arbitrary date, but
this is not signed yet. There'sa lot of details still to work out.
And but this was the nc doubleattempt to stop the bleeding because there
were three well there are actually fourcases, but this was the settlement of
three of them. And there's anotherone that is going on in Colorado,

(07:10):
the font No case that if ifthat is not thrown into this settlement,
this may not happen. This Maybethis could fall apart because the NCAA is
going to need that font No casesettled along with these. But this is
their attempt to make sure that theythat they survive because this was looking like

(07:30):
they with all these cases that theexposure could have been substantial. I've read
anywhere from nine to twenty billion dollarsinstead of the two point eighth that they
settled on. Yeah, geez I, that's very very interesting the way you're
kind of drilling down on this,because I didn't realize that, you know,
the the nuances if you will,it just basically here reads Jeff that

(07:51):
it's you know, it'll need tobe approved by the plaintiffs and a federal
judge in order it's you know,the deal along with the NCAA Board of
Governors that has you know, approved, so on and so forth. But
you're right, it's there's just alot to it, and it's probably I'm
guessing it's still going to be alittle while, but yeah, you know,
you mentioned also they go back totwenty sixteen, so people are are

(08:15):
going to be compensated between you obviouslyfrom now on and going back and where
that And I think you use theterm arbitrary. I mean, it was
just like what what like why thetwenty sixteen I guess there's really no rhyme
or reason. They got to picksome sort of date though with it.
I think, yeah, I don'tI don't really know, other than you
could make an argument that it wasabout a decade, because this isn't implemented

(08:37):
until twenty five, so it's notI can't quite figure out how they did
that. But nonetheless they they had. You know, there's nothing altruistic about
this. It makes it sound like, oh, this is great, the
university is going to pay the players. There's nothing altruistic that the universities are
the nc double of NCAA is doing. If they didn't do this, if

(08:58):
they didn't settle this, the currentsystem as we have, it would potentially
be gone, and so this isthe NCAA's way of surviving the name,
image likeness. Yeah. I wantedto get your take on this because you
know, we talked kind of whenit was all starting and then you know,

(09:18):
I maybe once since then or eventwice, but you know, so
far the way that this has playedout, are you seeing is it kind
of in your mind? Have youbeen saying, yeah, I kind of
envisioned some of these things the waythey're playing out, or has anything kind
of jumped up and you go,oh boy, I didn't have that on
my Bengo card, which seems tobe the popular way to say that right

(09:39):
now, like because well, yeah, go ahead. Well I was gonna
say you and I talked about inthe past, and I use the term
it's the wild West, and itreally wasn't thought through very well on the
NIL. I still believe that tobe the case. I still think it's
the wild West. I still thinkit's almost, for lack of a better
term, illegal way of cheating,but it it is. It hasn't been

(10:05):
refined yet. I'm waiting for Congressto step in and maybe this, maybe
this new Settlement will be Congress's wayof coming in and refining this a little
bit on both the how the universitiesare going to pay players and how the
NIL is going to work for players, because it still feels a little loose.
Now. The one observation that Ihave is everything that we read,

(10:30):
you know, we read these crazynumbers about a certain a player being paid
some exorbitant sum, I believe thatthat player is probably only getting ten to
twenty percent of what we're reading aboutevery deal that we've looked at is never
what people are saying in the mediathat they're getting. Now, I'm not
saying that's the media blowing it outof proportion. I think sometimes it's the

(10:50):
athletes wanting to maybe look better thanthey really are. So that and because
I was getting ready to ask you, like, well, then why why
only ten to twenty percent? Iguess that is that standard. Then in
this particular situation, it's just myexperience that I, you know, I
had a client say something to meone day about an athlete getting a certain

(11:13):
number, and I said, thatdoesn't sound right to me. Let me
make a phone call. So Icalled the other person. So the one
athlete that said to another athlete,this is the amount I'm getting from this
company, And I called the agent. I said, is this true?
They said, no, it's lessthan ten percent. So I've done that
a number of times because the expectationlevel gets is off the charts, you

(11:37):
know, where you're talking with anathlete and they say, well, you
know what, I all my teammatesare getting X and you're like, well,
they're really not. They're getting Xtimes ten percent, you know.
And then do they look at youlike are they like? I mean,
they're probably looking at you like you'relying, right, I mean, especially
if they're trying to tell you,hey, I'm worth more than you know,

(11:58):
whatever film, because you get intothat whole thing. And and man,
at the college level, you mighthave some people who can back that
up with some stats, but man, that that gets really that's a tough
putt. You know, it istough, and it's uh, you know,
it probably means that you're gonna havesome people go, you know,
decide to work with an agent that'sgoing to tell them what they want to

(12:18):
hear, but then later on bedisappointed. I'd rather approach things up front
and have realistic expectation and and andhope we can get through things that way.
But yeah, maybe not making methe most popular person at the beginning
of a potential relationship. I alsolike to say something about like that,
Jeff, the way you're putting that, And I've said this to I hope

(12:39):
my wife's not listening, but yeah, because we're coming up on twenty years,
but there was I was a datingman once upon a time, and
I said all that to say.I used to tell them, you can
call me anything but a liar.I'm gonna tell you the truth. So
maybe that's kind of where you're atwith that. You go, Hey,
I'm just realistic. I'm gonna betransparent and we'll let the chips fall where
they may instead of kind of deceivingthem into a relationship, if you will,

(13:01):
right, Yeah, I think that'saccurate. Yeah, there's no reason
to start a relationship on the wrongfoot. So the draft, by the
way, in your twenty years,that's outstanding. Oh yeah, thank you
man. Yeah. Next month,June twenty fourth, we're celebrating twenty years.
It's a big one for us.So I gotta come up with something
special here for sure. Sports attorneyagent Jeff Choco, Jeff, thanks for

(13:22):
taking a couple of minutes. Iknow you're there working with your girls and
stuff at the US Women's Open,but thank you for jumping on with us.
Appreciate it man, great catching up. Thanks Blazer, have a great
day. Always good to talk toyou YouTube brother. Thank you so much.