5-21-24 - Chad Brendel with Justin Williams

Justin Williams of The Athletic joins Chad to discuss the latest news in College Sports

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
This is mad I get more buttonedass trees the fair one. I get
mine in the fast way scheme,mad Way. Don't want to listen to
this or talk to Justin? Morecomes than roses your choice, I guess
we'll talk to Justin. Justin?Are you there? I'm here? Okay,

(00:32):
Yeah, I thought you. Ithought you were listening to you were
enjoying the music as well. Iwas listening to all Right, can you
hit a baseball harder than eighty sevenpoint eight miles an hour? It would
have to be like where I holdthe bat out and someone throws the ball
hard enough that it ricochetes at that. That is the Reds average exit velocity

(00:56):
justin eighty seven point eight. Itis last in Major League Baseball. All
it makes me think about is theSeinfeld episode where George figured out the maths
and was just hitting bombs at aYankee. Why does everything remind you of
a Seinfeld episode? That's all?That's all I know my only cultural reference.

(01:17):
Look, I spent like five sixyears working with Justin every day pretty
much, and everything reminds him ofa Seinfeld episode. This is this is
true. It does It's real life. What is easier explaining or what is
tougher explaining what is happening in collegesports or watching the Reds play baseball.

(01:45):
I guess people can opt out ofboth if they choose. Sure, for
me, I've I will admit,I've been much more trying to explain the
illegal battles of the NCAA and thanwatching the Reds lately. But I'm sure
they're both just as awful. Weused different adjects, That's okay. Uh,

(02:06):
when you got your degree from OhioUniversity, did you expect to be
a sports law expert when you beatwhen you grew up. No, I'm
not sure what I expected, butI certainly didn't. You know, expect
to be this familiar with case lawand you know briefings and you know court
dockets and all that kind of stuff. But this is you know, you

(02:29):
never know where where the exciting worldof sports journalism is going to take you.
Uh. So Tony and Austin hadyou on earlier. They pretty much
stole my entire show. Uh,not that I'm angry about it. Uh.
They did like a one oh onelike entry level discussion about this.
I decided we were going to dolike a two oh three level discussion about

(02:51):
what's going on in college sports rightnow. Sophomore year, Yeah, sophomore
year. Uh, you know,probably probably first semester, sophomore year.
But if everybody listen, they've gota little bit better understanding of where things
are at now. Essentially, whatis happening is there is a lawsuit against

(03:13):
the NC Double A House versus NCDouble A uh, and it is addressing
the past basically the past president futureof name, image and likeness. Would
would that be a fair representation ofwhat is happening? Yeah, it's I
think you're right in the sense thatpart of the lawsuit is would be like

(03:35):
retroactive pay to former college athletes thatdidn't have a chance to cash in on
nil. And then the future partwould be like revenue sharing basically from the
money that the power conferences get fromthese big TV deals. Right. So
this is just the natural progression,and I don't think this is going to

(03:57):
be the end of it. Icollected argating is coming. These athletes are
going to look and say twenty twopercent. There's fifty percent in the NBA
and the NHL and the NFL andMajor League Baseball. Why why are we
getting twenty two percent. I thinkthat's that's coming down the road. But
essentially the NC double A is workingagainst a very strict clock here because if

(04:19):
they do not settle this case justinthe NC double A is likely uh not
going to be with us for long. Yeah. I think you're right on
both those counts. You know,if people are wondering, like, why
would the NCAA agree to you knowwhat is really a significant change, and
obviously a significant dollar figure. It'sbecause if they go to trial and lose,

(04:40):
which, as you and I havetalked about a lot, all they
do when they go to trial,all they do is lose, lose,
lose, no matter what. That'sthe right if. So if that would
happen, yeah, like the NCAAwould basically it would have to file for
bankruptcy. It would cease to exist. You have to pay as much as
twenty billion dollars instantly, there'd beno nil regulation rule. So, you
know, honestly like the terms ofthis one, as kind of big,

(05:03):
as monumental as they are, it'sa win for the NCAA. But I
also agree with you that it's whileit's a significant kind of half measure stop
gap, it is just a halfmeasure stop gap, Like, this is
not going to be the end ofthe NCAA's legal battles, This is not
going to be the end of kindof the changing of college sports. But
basically, the NCAA was like,we can fight this and risk just kind

(05:26):
of complete destruction, or we cansettle and maybe kind of prolong the inevitable
a little bit. And that feelslike what this is going to do,
which is going to change things alot. It's going to get some money
directly from schools to athletes, whichis what the NCAA had fought against for
decades and decades. But it alsomeans that the NCAA gets to exist a
little bit longer, which might nothappen otherwise. Did you mentioned this more

(05:50):
in your article than yesterday that Ithink just about anybody I've ever seen when
I'm talking about this subject, itseems like people avoid it more often than
not. Collective bargaining is coming right, Like, you can't it's not going
to work. We're already seeing playersdot org and there are places that players

(06:11):
are starting to unionize. I thinkit'll be interesting to see if it ends
up being like a conference by conferencething or however it may work down the
road. But if you're dealing withlarge, large, large amounts of money
and revenue sharing and things like that, the side that's not represented at that

(06:33):
table, at some point in timeis going to say, hey, you
don't get to make the rules.We also are part of this process,
right, So you know you mentionedearlier that in most of the professional leagues
it's basically fifty to fifty. Yeah, you know, the players get fifty
percent of the revenue, most ofwhich comes in for like the TV contracts,

(06:54):
and yeah, the terms of thissettlement are believed to be basically a
twenty two percent average of all ofthe Power Conference revenue. So you're exactly
right that, you know, Ithink there's this sense among certain people in
the industry that athletes will be happy, like, hey, I'm getting whatever,
you know, a certain amount ofmoney I am from this revenue sharing,
and I'm sure there will be adegree of that. But when you

(07:15):
just look, you know, somuch of the changes that are happening are
based around the financials of college sportsand how they've grown, and then how
they don't really match up with therest of the American free market economy and
it's gonna be the same thing.Someone's gonna, you know, organize and
say why are NFL and NBA andNHL and MLB athletes getting fifty percent of

(07:36):
the money they bring in while collegeathletes are getting twenty two percent when other
than the NFL, college football isthe kind of most watch most popular sport
from a TV perspective in America,and these you know, TV deals keep
going up and up, and soyeah, I think you're right that that's
that's kind of the big next stepthat the next legal fight that I think
the NCAA is going to have.And I also, you know, I

(07:58):
understand why fans of college sports fora long time see all this and maybe
it makes them kind of like rolltheir eyes or sick to their stomach.
I get it's a huge change,but I think what people need to remember
is twenty thirty years ago, youknow, they weren't getting billions of dollars
to put these games on TV.And that's kind of, you know,
been a change. And so farthe players have not really seen any of

(08:18):
this. So the the interesting thingthat I think, and another thing I
haven't seen mentioned. You can includethis in your next article if you'd like,
well do when you start doing themath and you start breaking it down,
take take a look at NCAA footballand the amount of money that that
game is going to bring in.Okay, the players got like eight dollars

(08:41):
and forty three cents for giving theirname, image, and likeness to that
game. When you start breaking thisdown, like, that's where the problem
is going to come in. Ithink where players are going to look at
this and say I want more moneyis I don't think they're going to get
a lot because you have hundreds andhundreds and hundreds of schools and that money

(09:01):
has got to be divided between hundredsand hundreds of athletes. Of course,
that doesn't get us to the pointwhere the Olympic sport's probably in trouble as
this continues to evolve. But it'snot I know when we look at it
and say, oh, well,you know twenty two percent, Well that
that's going to get thin real fastwhen you're talking about the number of athletes

(09:24):
we are. Yeah, and that'swhy they're gonna have to figure out,
you know, does is this somethingwhere Title nine comes into play? Because
there's going to be some schools thatwant to say well, we want to
give fifteen million dollars to this hotshot quarterback to bring them in. And
then there's going to be some schoolsthat say, you know, hey,
we have a really good baseball team, or we have a really good golf

(09:45):
team or a really good volleyball team, and we want to give some money
there, or some are going tomake it equitable. There's still a lot
of things that need to be sortedout, you know, in addition to
the unionizing and employment debates. You'reright that they're gonna have to figure out
where do these dollars go. Ifyou talk to the lawyers in the league
experts, they would point to,well, in a free market economy,
the athletes, which in the kidswould be football, that you know,

(10:07):
drive the most revenue, are theones that make the most money. And
that's certainly true. But it's justa complete overhaul and removal from you know,
this whole infrastructure that has been builtup around college sports, which is
why then you hear about well shouldfootball separate? And you know, how
do we handle Olympic sports? Sothere's just a lot that needs to be
figured out. And I think thebiggest problem is, you know, so

(10:30):
many people are still trying to fitit within this NCAA box that has existed
for a long time. And thetruth is, it just doesn't really if
you were to look at it now, it doesn't make sense to put Division
one, you know, cross countryin the same box as Alabama Michigan football
and things like that. And soI think whatever changes end up coming is

(10:50):
the you know, people kind offinally realizing that we probably need to take
these things a little bit differently thanwe have over the past thirty forty years.
To make a duke lacrosse joke,but I decided against it. It's
probably smart, probably smart on mypart. That's just heard silence on the
other. What if I can getmyself in trouble? Yeah, Like you're

(11:13):
in a different position now than thanyou used to be. You can get
yourself in a lot of trouble now. Before you know, nobody cared.
When is all this going to be? When? Wen we have answers on
what this round of everything looks likethis week. If everything goes to plan
as people expected, I think we'llhave basically, you know, an agreement

(11:35):
of settlement terms by the end ofthis week between the two parties, meaning
the NCAA and power conferences and thenyou know the plaintiffs in the in the
House case. But the legal processin terms of like the settlement officially being
you know, put in the law, that that's going to take a few
months. I do think again,if everything goes to plan, we're talking,
we're looking at next year, thetwenty five twenty six you know season

(12:00):
for football and basketball and all that. I think that's when you can start
seeing revenue that soon, revenue sharingthat soon. All right, man,
I appreciate it. Hopefully that continuedthe education of folks after your appearance,
your stellar appearance with Austin and Tonyearlier this afternoon. Yeah, maybe we
can circle back and do like asenior capstone or doctorate. Yeah, you

(12:20):
know, less and less this weekor something like that. Yeah, we're
gonna have to We're gonna have tosummarize everything when it's all over. That's
right. How can I find you? I met Williams Underscore justin on Twitter
and if you haven't subscribed to theAthletic, we got a bunch of bunch
of coverage and details there. Allright, you should give me a call
some time. I miss hearing fromyou. I love you, buddy,

(12:43):
love you too. We'll talk soon. Thanks Justin. All Right, there
you go, Justin Williams from theAthletic. Let's take a break more after
this since nat He's ESPN fifteen thirtyneat inspiration shot Kroger