Hour 1 - Everchanging landscape of College Sports 2025-7-8

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Exploring the latest headlines and in depth conversations. It's the
Richmond Weavers Show on one oh four nine Fox Sports
up State presented by Ingles Low Prices, love the savings,
now for riches, take on sports. Here's Richmond Weaver ready.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
To roll this Tuesday right here on one o four
nine Fox Sports Upstate.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
This is the Tuesday edition other.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Richmond Weaver Show, presented by Ingles Markets in full force,
Mister Trey Falco behind the board and behind the mic
as always, and we have a full studio mister Darren
Angel from the Weisch Law Firm joining us for Truth
or Darren. And this is the early hour, oh podcast
hour of the Richmond Weaver Show, presented by Ingles Markets.
And your opportunity to listen through the iHeartRadio app or

(00:49):
wherever you get your podcast to any podcasting platform. And
remember just knowing that each weekday at three pm on
one of four nine Fox Sports Upstate we go live,
but right now, extended version, extended opportunity to talk all
types of sports. And if we've got Darren Angel here,
we know it's Truth or Darren. So we're going to

(01:11):
dive into some more of the ever changing landscape of
college athletics. And we were talking before we jumped on
as far as recording here and just how much still chaos.
There is. Not chaos from the fireworks of July fourth,
We're not talking about that.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Right, No, none of that.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
I'm talking about chaos from college athletics and thinking that
the House Settlement was going to be the be.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
All, end all, and that's not the case.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Now we have talked about it, and obviously with your
legal background, Darren, and you diving into it in much
more detail than a lot of lay people, a lot
of college fans, you know, in terms of college football fans,
college basketball fans, because there's so many different layers to
this and it's hard to even keep up with the

(02:05):
House Settlement that was approved with everything going to effect
on July first, and how that's changing as far as
NIL rules, and also universities and colleges being able to
have revenue sharing where athletes in college they're going to
be paid directly, and that is obviously something different. It's

(02:26):
amateurism is no longer a cornerstone of college sports. Right
it's dead, it's over, and that sounds so negative, but
we have moved past that.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
And it is big business.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
And now we're starting to see though this House settlement,
there's some people that are not happy with the final approval.
And so according to various reports, there now has been
seven appeals that have been filed to say that, hey, no,
this is not accurate, this is damaging, and we don't

(03:00):
agree with this. And so I'm trying to understand what
all this means and trying to knowing that, hey, we've
got sports getting ready to start in a few months,
and we know college football is going to be starting
at the end of August, and you know, just past
the midway point of August, we're going to have college football.
I mean, there's going to be teams that are players

(03:22):
are going to be reporting for fall camp and you know,
fall practice whatever you want to describe it now. But
there's still many scenarios right now, and I'm not even
saying scenarios. There's still many things that are so far
from undecided.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
There are, and you know, there's a number of things
that we can point to for reasons of that. But
to kind of just take a quick, high level overview
of kind of the legal process of it, I mean,
it is a it's a Quinn.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Essentially American.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
Thing is part of our legal system in that you know,
you can appeal a ruling that's decision by a court,
whether it's whether it's litigated completely by a jury or
whether it's settled in this case, and so it's not
uncommon that in a situation like this that you're gonna
have an you know, folks at appeal. With this many
people involved in the settlement, there are inevitably going to

(04:17):
be a number of unhappy people. I think the majority
of where you're I think the area that you're gonna see,
the majority of these appeals are gonna frankly, and this
is not calling anybody out. This is just stayed in
the fact is probably gonna gonna fall more on the
side of UH. Three areas. One, female athletes probably you know,

(04:39):
more so in sports that are more recognized for potentially
being revenue generating sports or or athletes that have a
maybe a more notable name in their in their sport,
be it a non revenue sport or not. The second
are student athletes that from a back page perspective, do

(05:01):
not feel as though what they will get out of
this this settlement is meets what they frankly thought they
were worth or what they generated their value, you know,
the their their fair market value, their what their name,
image and likeness is worth, and you know, and and
then the third part really will be those that frankly

(05:23):
are just from sports that really don't necessarily have a
voice in this, and in that, hey, you know, we're
going to be losing a lot of opportunities here where
we were not in agreement with with how this is
playing out. Do I think, you know, Crystal Ball, Do
I think that these appeals will be successful? I don't,

(05:45):
And frankly, one of the main reasons for that is
is that I just think that our best path forward
to trying to rectify the vast majority of what these complaints,
these remaining complaints are is frankly through conference commissioners, some
of the higher ranking ads in the country that are

(06:05):
kind of in leadership positions at their institutions and the NCAA,
and potentially maybe some folks in Washington getting together and
working through this process, hopefully with some student athletes that
can take on a leadership role and working it out
that way. I'm not fully convinced, and I don't think

(06:27):
that this is an appeals process is going to be
the quickest way to try to maybe get additional positives
out of this for the folks that have appealed. The
caveat to that I'll say is that the student athletes
that would appeal this because they believe that their value
is worth more than they're getting. There is a chance

(06:48):
that in some of those scenarios, I think they could
they could get they could see some success. But I
think the higher profile ones those are going to be
probably brought in separatelaw suits, like what we saw with
the Chris Jenkins Yeah lost where somebody really feel like, no,
I'm owed a whole heck, and I'd have some real

(07:11):
legitimate evidence here that.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Would justify that.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, what he was able to do at Villanova helped
them win a national championship and the value that was
created from that national championship for Villanova, and he didn't
get to partake in some of that. So, according to
Steve Berkwitz of USA Today, a seventh notice of appeal
regarding the House n CAA settlement has been filed, and
this one is on behalf of former men's basketball player

(07:36):
Brayden Anderson, who objected to settlement in several ways along
with Charles O'Bannon junior, and now he appears on appeal
with Florida state quarterback Thomas Castellanos, who also has a
separate appeal of his own. So there's this such many
great areas that are happening, And that's why I'm just

(07:58):
coming back to the sensibility of getting to a point
where we can have collective bargaining. We can have one
entity and not have to worry about Congress being involved
and politics being involved and the politicians and them trying
to banter and try to you know, for their particular state.

(08:19):
And that's why we're even seeing now lawsuits that are
coming about in terms of like in New Jersey, a
law was just passed by their state legislature that basically
says that if a school in the state of New
Jersey violates an NC double A rule that is aligned

(08:43):
with NIL, that they can't be punished for it. If
they break the rule, the NC DOUBLEA has no power.
And I'm blown away by this type of and I
guess where I'm going with this. Let me make sure
as economy of words I struggle with at times, and

(09:03):
especially when I'm trying to really get a point across
because but it's mind boggling that we're at this point.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
And this just shows you again.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
The power of sports and how we want to win
and how we want to win championships, and we'll look
for any opportunity to have a better position than somebody else.
And it's playing out right now here in college athletics

(09:37):
on a state by state level. We've already seen certain
states are now trying to push legislation through right in
their particular state that there's no taxes on nil earnings.
So yes, it'd be more beneficial that you played at
a school in a state where there was no tax

(09:58):
on anil And we know, oh that there's already states
here in the United States that don't have state income tax,
and we've seen some professional athletes yes, okay, I'm going
to go to Florida, I'm going to go to Texas
because there's no state income tax.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
But guess what, that's been that way for years.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
This is now manipulating the system just to benefit schools
within your state.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
And hey, and I totally understand that, but it's showing.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
You just how far people will be willing to go
to get that championship. And that's why people talk about, oh, well,
these you know, nil deals, they're they're not going to
last forever because these boosters, you know, they want a
return on investment at some point. They're not going to
keep spending money with hopes of winning a championship. I'm like,

(10:52):
have you been living under a rock for the past
seventy five years? They do it every single year, right,
It doesn't slow down. It's actually in creasing now, even
more so because there's this this hope that it's legal.
And you know, even though we know there's gonna be
some gray areas, there's gonna be some shady deals because
as much as oh, you got to report it, and

(11:14):
people are not going to report everything because it's that
greed of winning, it's that greed of being number one, yep.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
And we're seeing it. And that's why.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Until we get to a model much more like the NFL,
much more like the NBA or Major League Baseball. And
I'm not saying people aren't pushing the envelope there. We've
seen some scenarios, early conversations with free agents, you know,
all of that, but not to.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
The level like this.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
We don't have, you know, the Atlanta Falcons, you know,
petitioning their local politicians to do away with state income
tax just so they can attract better free agents.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
That's not happening, No, Like it'd.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Be like it'd be like the Atlanta Falcons petitioning the
state of Georgia to say, look, we want you to
institute a state law that actually increases the salary cap
just for us so we can go out and sign
a couple more players. I mean, that's right, in a
weird way kind of an analogy.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Right, or even saying, hey, we're going to pass this
law here in the state of Georgia that if an
Atlanta Falcon gets in trouble, hey, Roger Goodell, you can't
punish him.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
Yeah, right, you know, yeah, that's probably a better analogy.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
That's where we're looking.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
And I'm like, how are we at this point where
we're not seen through the haze of all of this
and coming to an understanding that we've got to move
on and stop holding on to history right and the
way it was, and we're going to have to move

(12:50):
forward in a different direction because we're just going to
sit here in illegal spin, yeah, for years and years
as that revolving circus goes around, right.

Speaker 5 (13:01):
Well, and that's the big difference I see between your
professional sports and your college athletics. One, it's in that
gray area. So there's room to tamper if you're a politician,
whatever it is. But also you look at your senator
or whoever it is that's trying to pass these laws.
These law makers, they didn't play for the Atlanta Falcons,
but I guarantee they went to Georgia. They went to
Georgia Tech, and that to them their skin in the game.

(13:23):
They want their alma mater to win. They went there,
maybe they played on the field, maybe they were linebacker,
whatever it is. And so it's so much different for
college athletics than it is for professional sports. They may
not care to push the envelope a little bit for
the Falcons, but for Georgia. Oh you better bet it
because that's my album mater.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
No doubt. Yes. And there's something about the it's.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
A a state institution, right exactly. So they want state
institutions to do better. Yeah, you know there is, so
there is. It's good for them, yeah exactly. So there's
something inherent that you know, they could benefit, you know
from something of that nature. And that's where we're We're

(14:02):
just getting caught in the cross hairs of greed, money
and the desire to win and not thinking about the
unintended consequences.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
No, I completely agree with you, and I think I
think there are two things that stand out as part
of what you were just talking about. I think first
and foremost, and this is a conversation that we can
get into at a different time, but I do think
it relates. I do think ultimately we need to get
to a point, and frankly, if I were predicting, I
do think we are going to get to this point

(14:34):
where at a minimum, football and men's basketball have to
break off. And that's not to say that they're not
going to have anything to do with the NCAA, but
they have to be treated differently. They do because they
are different, and in some circumstances throw women's basketball in
there as well, because they are kind of in a
different There may be a notch below where football and
men's basketball are, but they're also, you know, a notch

(14:56):
or significantly higher than a lot of other sports. So
I do think it at a minimum we have to
have those conversations, which I do think. I do think
that is going to happen. The second thing is is
the politics and off this because we couldn't get control.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Of this early.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Frankly, we being the NCAA, we've allowed politics to creep
so far into this that we are now at a
point where we've got the law that you mentioned in
New Jersey, which is the only one, which is not
the only one. And frankly, we talked about this about
a month ago. The College Sports Commission came out and

(15:34):
said that they were floating ideas about membership agreements for
the Power five institutions to basically say, look, you're going
to sign this, and it's it's an agreement to follow
the rules and follow the process that anil GO is
going to institute. And I'm dumbing it down a little bit,
but you get the point.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, we like it dumb down.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
The second piece of that, though, is that we still
have state laws on the books that contradict what the
House settlements that's right, or frankly, even what contradict what
was going on in the Anisle space prior.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
So we just have so.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Many moving parts that are not in agreement. And this thing,
you know, again, I agree with you. I want to
be positive and we are about the positive here of
trying to find the solution to it. But we are
so far off the rails that the more we see
this this plane in the gray area, the more I
am concerned about, Man, can are we gonna be able

(16:35):
to get this back on track quick enough? Like we
have to get to a point where we can get
everybody on the same page and just say, look like, yes,
we've all been in this long enough. We know that
there's gonna be there's gonna there's gonna be some dirty
hands every every now and then. That's just it's whether
we like it or not, it's the nature of it.
But we have to get on the same page, and

(16:56):
we have to we have to advance this thing further
than take tiny baby steps and the potentially taking another
step back in that process.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
We are so fragmented correct in college athletics right now
and so many different areas and yes, this is a
big one. And everything was thrust upon college athletics and
I say college athletics and NC double A based on
you had COVID hit, then you had the transfer portal

(17:26):
being approved, and you had NIL being approved and it
was all at one time, and people were like.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
Oh wow, what in the world.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And NC double A just said, Hey, we're putting our
we're washing our hands clean.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
We're done, we're out.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
We're we can't continue to have to try to go
through the legal system with the legal fees. We're spending
hundreds of millions of dollars. We can't. The burn rate
on that is not sustainable. So we're just going to turn,
you know, our our cheek and and then see where

(17:59):
thes fall and let everybody else figure out how you're
going to resolve this. And that's why we're so fragmented
right now, because then it was all right, well, let's
get Congress involved the federal government that.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Solve our issues.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
How's that going.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Hey, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
This is not to disparage anybody that works for the
federal government. Sure, And I mean there's obviously been some
really good people, and there's some really good people in government,
and they do keep our I guess society going here
in the United States to a certain degree. But my goodness,
trying to rely on what we've seen from the US

(18:37):
government and inefficiencies. And this is not just about the
US government. This is not a political rant because there's
in other countries. Their governments are not any more efficient either.
I mean, this is just the reality of it. But
that's why you have to privatize this and you have
to get it back to a point where like professional
sports and not say there hasn't been some legislation that

(19:00):
has affected professional sports, like the NFL and the broadcasting
rights back in the nineteen sixties that basically said the
NFL would only broadcast TV games on Sunday because they
didn't want to interrupt high school football on Fridays, you know,
and then college football on Saturdays, so you almost had
you know, these it was the anti trust exceptions that

(19:23):
were going into place, So there has been some similance
of that. But now we're at a point where we're
just wanting everything to be solved by the government and
it's just going to be, like we said, it's just
going to be in this this.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Legal loophole, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
But we can't even get together, just from a college
athletics standpoint, with the conferences. We can't even agree with
the conferences because everybody's having their own propaganda which conference
is the best, which is the greater, and it's a
land grab. We want these schools over here because they

(20:00):
know that means more revenue. You know all of that,
and then you even break it down to hell, we
can't even figure out how we want the college football
playoff to be. Now, you know, how many teams should
get in and out of the twelve or if it
goes to sixteen, you know, should it be four from
this conference, four from this conference with automatic bids or
a five and eleven you know, type of model where

(20:23):
we have five conference champions in eleven at large. We
can't even come to agreement on that. So how are
we supposed to solve all this being this fragmented? You know?

Speaker 4 (20:31):
One of the funny things that you bring up too,
is like I get, we can do more than one
thing at one time, we can multitask, but we can't
even agree on a college football playoff. And we're talking
about increasing the size of the NCAA men's basketball turn Exactly,
don't we have bigger fish to fry right now? We
we really should be focusing on. I mean, frankly, my
opinion and someone who has coached prior to this and

(20:55):
during this era is I think the bigger conversation is
we have to figure out I think has has a
direct impact on NIL and potentially helping in some respects.
Is this transfer portal because it's out of control right now,
especially for men's basketball, when you can just go to
a school for eight months, leave, go to another one,

(21:15):
and you end up going to the highest bidder because
someone throws money at you. I think that could help
rein in some of our NIL issues right now. And
also I mean different kind of different topic, but also
could affect an impact the stability of at least for

(21:35):
sure men's and women's basketball and football programs. But I
really think that it could have an impact on kind
of helping helping bring ANIL back to earth a little bit.
If you don't just allow someone to leave after eight
months because someone offers them more money.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, And that's what's going to be interesting as far
as how some of these NIL contracts are going to
be written, Yeah, and then enforced. And that's why I
think it's much more. It's not about the enforcement that
the school should be enforcing it or the NCAA should
be enforcing it. When I'm talking specifically in IL. And

(22:12):
this is where I go back to, why can't we
just have normal endorsements?

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:18):
How it works where we see in other professional sports
or organizations or just in other walks of life, where
you sign a contract and that brand they hold you
responsible to.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Fulfill your duties of that contract.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
So if you don't, you know, do your endorsements, if
you don't do X number of commercials or whatever it
is now with social media, if you don't do X
number of posts or video, whatever it might be, then
guess what, they don't have to pay you, or at
least I would imagine most of the contracts are written
that way. The brands are going to write a contract

(23:04):
that is going to protect them at any situation. Not
to say you can't negotiate that, but I promise you
they're going to have the upper hand in contracts. You've
probably seen a lot of contracts, Darren.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
They're going to get what they want and they're and
their ultimate trump card is, hey, do you want you
want to get paid exactly? If you want to get
paid anything, yes, generally speaking, you're going to agree to
our term.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, So why couldn't I mean, so that's my point
in say a player leaves after eight months and a
brand signed a contract with that player based on them
being a player at that particular school, right, Why wouldn't
it just be written in the contract say hey, you leave,
you lose any the dollars there and maybe there you

(23:52):
have to pay us back a certain amount if you
don't fulfill the entire term of the contract. So there's
so many nuances, is there. And that's why you know,
I see even that like open doors and there's a
link you there's these organizations now that they're third party
entities that are handling all of the nil payments to

(24:17):
these players that are getting to prove through nil go.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
And again I'm looking at it and I'm like, see
this just shows you right now.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
I mean, we're have the universities are not really set
up the way they should be. But why couldn't the
university or why is it these payments are not going
through the brands that are doing the endorsements.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
But it's this.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Quote unquote quasi nil deal that's somehow through a collective,
through a booster and it just is.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Too muddied of water in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
And I know I'm ranting way long on this, but
this is why I do love this podcast version.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
We can go right as long as we want to, because.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I feel that there's just I don't know what the
right word is other than it's just going to mount
and mount to more frustration. And I know I'm the
optimistic person here that Hey, don't get caught up with
all of the minutia that and the narrative, oh that

(25:27):
college athletics is dead. We're not going to watch college
sports anymore because that's a false narrative.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
We're still going to watch it. We're still going to cheer.
We can.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
But you can be frustrated how the players are getting
to the field and getting to the court. But that
doesn't mean that you're still not going to be entertained
and be excited.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
And want your team to win.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Absolutely, because it's inherent that back to your point, Tray,
these politicians, hey they're alma mater, right, you got to
skin in the game. We all have our allegiances to
different colleges and universities, and obviously we see it in
pro sports. We have this allegiance and the NFL if

(26:11):
they go to eighteen games, well, okay, that's.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
What we're doing. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's not exactly what I wanted, But okay, that eighteenth
game that the Dallas Cowboys are going to play. I'm
going to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys exactly. It's not
going to be like, oh, I'm not watching the eighteenth game.
Oh hell no, right, well I know it exactly because
I promise you I've been watching that seventeenth game of
the regular season where it was just sixteen games.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah. So we I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
I'm just I'm searching for an answer, and we just
don't have one answer other than the fact that at
some point it's got to be able to move forward
and use a model that we're already familiar with, and
that's the professional model, where you have a commissioner, where.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
You have a board, where you have.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Structure, you have stability, you have governing rules for that organization.
And then the key, you have collective bargaining. And that's
what will protect you from the lawsuits.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
Yeah, I mean you're going to get you know, you
have that anti trust exemption if you are if you
are pure put bargaining.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
That's like the NBA or the NFL.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
And you know, like you said, it doesn't have to
be completely aligned like one of those two leagues I
just mentioned, but there has to be some sort of
structure to it where whereby you know what you're getting
yourself into. You know that each side is going to
have a voice, and that there are certain guidelines and

(27:49):
rules that are negotiated between the two sides that are
going to stand and they're going to stand firm as it.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Relates to.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Those things that need to be on to make this
run as smoothly and as efficiently as possible.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, that's right, all right, mister Falco. I think you
will will disappoint you to lead the charge.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Oh that's.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
I'll keep good time exactly. You will be able to
keep good time, and that's right. As we'll continue our
two of the Richmond Weavers Show presented by Engles Markets
right after this