July 11, 2025 • 48 mins
On this episode, Alex Bozich is joined by Zach Osterman of The Indianapolis Star for a mid-summer check-in on a variety of topics.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcast on the
Brink Friday, July eleventh, our first podcast in quite a while.
Not a lot has gone on and Who's Your Nation
the last month and a half, but various things have
gone on, and to help us make sense of some
(00:37):
of those things to talk about it, Zach Osterman, our
good friend of the Indianapolis Star, is back on a
podcast on the Brink. Zach, how are you doing on
this beautiful Friday afternoon in July.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I was panicked when I realized the mute button was
a little bit different. I thought it wasn't gonna find
it in time. It's eighty seventy degrees outside, and when
we're done here, I got to go cut my grass.
So I'm guessing this is going to be a much
more enjoyable, much more enjoyable experience than what comes after.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, there's there's really no good time a day at
this point of the year to cut the grass. I
figured that out the other morning, went out around seven
forty five. I thought I could beat the heat a
little bit. Neighbors maybe didn't like it, but I was
trying to beat the heat. And it was nine thirty
when I was done. It was already steamy and human
out there, so no good time. Definitely been a hot summer.
(01:30):
But Zach, you know, there's there's been a lot obviously
with AU basketball the last well, it's been a busy offseason.
But since we were last had an episode, obviously, Indiana
picks up a commitment from Alexa Reestitch, which the Serbian guard.
They've they've got a commitment now from twenty twenty six
(01:51):
guard Prince Alexander Moody. But I wanted to start with
just a roster for next season right now, Indiana at
twelve players, and my understanding is Anthony Leele going to
be moving on? Obviously his waiver situation was a bit
of a long shot to begin with, but still seems
like Luke Goody's floating around out there as a potential
(02:14):
addition to next season's roster. But as the later we
get into summer with Indiana's tour our trip to Puerto
Rico less than a month away. Now, what have you heard?
Where where do things stand with with Goodie? Is there
any update? Have you heard anything? Do you feel like
there's a timeframe where we may know something in terms
(02:35):
of his status for next season?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
No. I mean, to be honest, I'm I'm surprised that
we've gotten this deep into the summer and not heard anything.
And I know that. You know, Darren DeVries kind of
pointed out when we all huddled with him at Huber
that there are a lot more of these requests this year.
And it's worth pointing out too, there's quite a lot
of turnover at the NCAA right now as we kind
(02:59):
of face. He's in a lot of these new structures
around the nil clearinghouse, and you're seeing a lot of
sort of longtime administrators stepping back and retiring maybe allah
what we've seen with some college coaches frankly in the
last few years that said, I mean for it to
be July eleventh and a player who I think, you know,
there were a lot of players that kind of put
(03:20):
in these waivers just basically seeing if like they could
get them because the NCAA just didn't have an appet
to tell anyone. Know. I think goodies in a different case,
because I think there is at least an argument that
he should get the year back. I mean, I understand
the rules are written the way they are. I think
you can argue, especially in the modern context that those
(03:43):
rules are probably a little bit arbitrary and and what
specifically is holding Goodie back from getting sort of just
automatically getting one of his years back is kind of arbitrary.
And so for it for it to be July eleventh
and him not him, to still be waiting for an
answer is surprising to me. I don't know, you know,
(04:05):
I don't know if that, I don't know if I
don't know if any timetable has been communicated privately. I
will say in general, schools have always kind of treated
these the best practice in these cases to not comment,
to not sort of make a public show of it,
(04:27):
to try and be respectful to process for fear of
maybe influencing the the NCAA to rule against them. And
I think, you know, I think we can all kind
of put two and two together with Anthony Lele. I mean,
he's you know, sort of offering to to sell some
of his IU gear on social media and things like that.
I don't think we need some sort of formal confirmation
(04:49):
that Lele has decided just to move on. But it
does surprise me, not necessarily that the quiet around Goodie
doesn't surprise me. Again, I think that is generally taken
as bat practice in these situations. But to be this
deep into the summer and a player who I think
has a distinct case for an extra year of eligibility
(05:10):
to still be waiting for an answer one way or
the other, that surprises me, and that, you know, I
guess to what extent I will insert my personal opinion,
I'm not sure it sits very well with me, but
not that anybody at NC DOUBA cares very much what
I think.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the good thing for Goodie
and for Indiana at least at this point is from
my understanding. You may have heard different, but my understanding
is is that he can continue to work with the
team this summer. There's nothing preventing that from happening. So
it's not like any grounds being missed or you know,
on account for but you know, for him obviously having
(05:51):
things in a bit of limbo. I mean, if if
he is going to be moving on up to this
season has basketball aspirations, I assume you would want to
be able to figure that situation out sooner rather than later.
If he's going to go overseas or try to latch
on to you know, a G League roster next season.
Not sure exactly what he plans to do beyond basketball,
(06:11):
but beyond that, and you know, I think from a
planning perspective, when when the coaches are putting together the
roster for next season, it would be nice to know
at least before the Puerto Rico trip, what the roster
is going to look like. You know, if there's a
maybe a need to go out and get another player.
I know, we get late, as we get later into
the summer, the likelihood of that happening diminishes. So that's
(06:33):
a situation where I kind of agree with you. You know,
I did understand initially why maybe the timetable for this
was taking a little bit longer with the volume of labors,
but you know, we're we're getting into, you know, later
in the summer now, really and to have this kind
of an outstanding issue, particularly if if he's going to
be denied and wants to do an appeal, it seems
like this could could drag on for a while. The
(06:55):
other thing I wanted to get your thoughts on because
you've done amount of reporting on this, You've covered it extensively.
You quite frankly, I've I've leaned on you as a
resource at times due to my lack of understanding on
this topic. But the House settlement now in effect, we
know that there's been a lot of changes in terms
of revenue sharing in the sport and the NIL deals.
(07:20):
Just a big picture, you know, I know you talked
to Scott Dolson about how Indiana is going to handle
it's revenue sharing. Can you give us kind of a,
you know, a brief overview of how that's going to
work from an Indiana perspective, the revenue sharing piece, and
then what you've heard maybe so far in terms of
how NIL has been impacted you. I saw some reporting
earlier this week from various places in terms of the
(07:43):
new I guess process for getting these NIL deals approved.
It doesn't seem like things are maybe being rubber stamped
and just pushed through, and so there's maybe going to
be some pushback on some of these deals and having
to verify certain things before they do initially you know,
before they do get pushed through. I know, kind of
(08:03):
a loaded question there, but can you just maybe talk
speak to this new system, how Indiana is going to
handle it, and kind of what you've heard so far
in terms of how things are going on that front.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, so it's important to kind of preface this because
I know a lot of people know this, but I
also think, at least anecdotally, I think a lot of
people don't. In IL and revenue sharing are are still
two separate things, but they are now sort of governed
under the same umbrella in a way that NIL, you know,
(08:37):
initially kind of started as this entity completely undo itself,
and then it was kind of slowly brought closer and
closer to the schools and the conferences. What's happened now
is the House settlement, as you said, is in effect,
and that means revenue sharing has begun. You know, athletes
who knows how that stuff structured, Like Indiana pays monthly,
(08:58):
Like I just know this cause my wife works at I.
You I don't know if these kids are getting monthly paychecks.
I don't know if they're getting you know, fifty thousand
now and fifty thousand at the end of the season
or whatever. You know that that stuff can be negotiated.
But the the rev share split for year one, and
when I talked to Scott Dolson about this, you know,
(09:19):
Indiana's Indiana obviously researched this and kind of tried to
figure out the best practice with it. I think it's
probably fair to say Indiana was about as straightforward as
it could be in terms of its rev share approach
in year one. I think they kept it pretty simple.
(09:39):
They followed a lot of industry standards. All the money
is just going into straight revenue sharing. No extra scholarships,
no Alston payments, It's all just direct payment to athletes football.
Dalton wouldn't kind of share exact numbers, and it's worth saying,
like those numbers kind of drift a little bit because
you may not with your Kurtz signette. You may not
(10:01):
spend all your money because you might want a little
bit of a reserve somewhere. Like if you come out
of spring practice and you have a couple needs you
didn't expect. You don't want to have no rev shirt
money because then you can't go get players that are
going to help you feel those holes. So it's it's,
you know, down to the dollars and cents, just like
payrolls in baseball or basketball or something like that. It's
(10:23):
never going to be like an exact thing. Football at
Indiana is I think going to come up just shy
of about seventy five percent of the revenue bucket, which
is over fifteen million dollars. It's a little under fifteen
and a half. I think it's like fifteen point three
something to the point three to four or something like that.
Seventy five is widely seen as kind of the industry
(10:45):
standard for football. I think a few schools will do more,
probably not a ton more. Obviously, there's there's just not
a lot of room beyond if you're doing if you're
going all the way to seventy five percent, there's only
another twenty five percent you can you can throw in there.
But that's, you know, and that's one of those where
the Big ten didn't tell anybody that they you know,
(11:06):
that this is what you have to do, you have
to meet this certain number. But I do think there
was probably some guidance in terms of saying, hey, listen,
football is is the bread winner here and we need
to feed football. Football needs to be you know, kind
of consistent across the board as much as possible in
a conference where it is so directly tied to such large,
(11:30):
you know, annual revenue numbers. And I think also probably
for just competitive purposes. The idea that you're not going
to have like these wild gaps between what one you
know what in Ohio State's putting into football, what are
produced putting in football, et cetera. Basketball is going to
be close to twenty percent, which from my understanding is
kind of the high end of the range. The range
(11:52):
I heard from a couple different places at football schools
was fifteen to twenty percent, with the presumption that more
schools would be more like fifteen to seventeen, fifteen to eighteen,
and it would be the schools that would emphasize basketball
a little bit more than would go to twenty to.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Be to be clear ment, you're talking just.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Men's basketball, Yes, men's basketball, thank you. There are gonna
be some big eat schools that go north of that number,
perhaps well north of it, because while they don't have
the overall revenues anywhere near the overall revenues a Big
ten school for example, would have, or an SEC school,
they don't have football defet So you know Yukon, Marquette, Villanova,
(12:31):
probably Georgetown, you know those places. Yeah, those places are
probably gonna have not everybody like I don't know if
you know I don't know if Seaton Hall is gonna
be able to go crazy, whether or Butler or somebody
like that, but some of those big E schools are
going to have more money than probably any Big ten
or SEC school in men's basketball, simply because they don't
have to feed football. The next two sports in terms
(12:55):
of percentages, will be women's basketball and volleyball. Those are
kind of your next two highest revenue sports if you
think about it, you know, in terms of just like
how much money you're making off of them manually, and
then everything else will be The word that Scott used
to me was sort of sprinkled across the rest of
(13:17):
the athletics programs, I thought. Mike Bobinski said something really
interesting to Nathan Baird where he said, basically, there would
be a reserved fund of a few hundred thousand dollars
that would not be specific to any one sport, but
would be for the recruiting and retention of elite athletes. So,
you know, if Purdue has a chance to get an
Olympic diver, which of course they've had, you know, some
(13:38):
very successful divers in the recent past, you go to
that fund rather than swim dive having you know, just
like a consistent number all the time. I wouldn't be
shocked if Indiana did something like that, And so that's
how they'll break it up in year one. You know,
they're already starting projections for year two. But I think
there's going to be a lot of learn along the way.
I think probably one of the biggest lessons that everyone
(14:00):
took from NIL that we're going to see overlaid onto
revenue sharing is that, you know, whatever we think is
best practice here in months one through eight is going
to seem so outdated by the time we get to
like month eighteen or month twenty four, and there's gonna
be a lot of evolving sort of thinking on how
to marshal all this, never mind the fact that some
(14:20):
of the spending could evolve. You know, there's I think
there are people who believe, for example, that we might
eventually get to a place where schools are released to
add scholarships without that money counting against your revenue sharing cap,
at which point I think a school like Indiana might
at least have some interest in adding scholarships in a
(14:43):
sport like baseball or men's soccer or softball or you know,
men's and women's swimming and diving, where there's probably not
gonna be a lot of money running around those sports
either way, accept at a very small handful of schools,
but where the currency is probably going to be more
scholar larship opportunities. And there are some folks in college
(15:03):
athletics who wonder, if you know right now, if you
want to add scholarships, you have to take that money
out of your revenue sharing pool. That I have heard
very sort of loosely that there are some people who
think that maybe that restriction might get lifted and you
might just be allowed to add scholarships and then the
revenue sharing pool just stays where it is, and that
(15:24):
might be I think the I think the reason for
that is basically because a lot of these bigger schools
are saying we need to be able to serve the
non revenue sports better in this revenue share era. And
we'll see, we'll see how that happens. But you know,
that's that's just kind of one example of like, don't
(15:45):
don't marry yourself to any of this being you know,
written in stone, because we're going to change the way
that all this works. And one of the big things
when you bring up the anile clearing house to kind
of go to number two there, and that is now formally,
as you said, under the roof of the NCAA, the
NIL GO process with Deloitte sort of scrutinizing or auditing
(16:09):
every every NIL deal over six hundred dollars and essentially
coming back and saying, either this reflects in athletes's fair
market value and it's valid and it's approved, or it
doesn't and we're rejecting it and sending it back to
the athlete in question to try and amend it to
you know, fit our process. Like, no one knows really
(16:31):
if that's going to stand up. I mean, I think
almost since the conception of the idea of the clearinghouse,
people have looked at it and thought it was ripe
for legal challenge. Already, you are seeing, as you mentioned,
some complaints, you know, some grievance being aired publicly over
a lack of understanding of you know what what basically
(17:00):
what like what the auditing process is looking for and
how to tailor these deals to satisfy their requirements. You know,
sometimes that there's probably some legitimate compoint there. There's probably
some people that are just you know, politicking to raise noise,
and there are a lot of people that think that
at some point someone will challenge legally the idea that
(17:20):
the NCAA or any apparatus that it creates can can
tell an athlete what is or her fair market value is.
And then we you know, we're back in court. The
lawyers start start the register going again, and we decide
exactly how much we are going to be legally allowed
(17:41):
to govern the NIL space. And I think the reason
everybody's looking at that is because even at the big schools,
a lot of athletics directors are looking at the money
they've had to pour into NIL, which you know, has
reached in some places twenty and thirty million dollars annually
in terms of like overall like collective distribution. And then
(18:02):
they're looking at this twenty point five million dollar hole
for revenue sharing, which is only going to keep expanding.
You know, the revenue share number is going to keep
going up at a time when for all but a
select number of schools, television revenues are probably about to plateau,
or at least certainly you know that we're getting to
the point in the bell curve. I'm doing this, it's
(18:24):
great radio with my hands. The point in the bell
curve where we stop going up exponentially and things start
to flatten out a little bit. And I say this
every time I talk about revenue sharing, because everyone has
forgotten the settlement, part of the House Settlement, that there
is a billion dollar settlement that has to be backfilled
(18:45):
for athletes. I think, going back to like twenty sixteen,
Ye're allowed to claim a portion of it, and it's
going to be through media rights revenues that the NCAA
and the member conferences pay for that primarily. And so
you know, if you're Indiana, big ten distributions aren't just
going to keep spiking up and up and up here
because everybody's gonna have to basically lose some of that
(19:08):
money to the settlement, at least in the in the
near term. So basically, listen, we can have a conversation
about how college athletics allowed itself to get here. And
that's a philosophical sort of discussion slash blame game that
we could do for you know, two hours, you know,
unto itself. But right here and now, athletics directors are
(19:31):
you know, even at the most moneyed schools are just
saying we can't fund twenty million in twenty point five
million in REVS share twenty five to thirty million in
NIL and keep everything else operating as normal. Nobody wants
to cut sports, Nobody wants to to sort of, you know,
pair back college athletics. But the NIL number can't just
(19:54):
keep climbing indefinitely. There has to be some kind of
stabilization in that mark. It Does the clearing house do that?
I'm skeptical, but maybe it at least puts us on
a path to something like that. I'm not sure, but
that's That's probably the thing that's keeping ads up at
night as much as anything else right now. I think
(20:15):
revenue sharing has made you know, tons of sense all
the way through how to structure all this. I think
that you know, it's it's been pretty straightforward in the end,
as people have really kind of dug their hands into it.
It is that question of how deep is this hole
going to continue to grow in terms of like booster
dollars that I have to funnel to these two you know,
(20:38):
ever expanding pots of cash, and will at some point
we hit the nuclear scenario where I have to start
cutting sports to afford it. And that's that's kind of
I think the next big sort of sort of burning
question in college athletics here.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The other same thing just about the clearing house in general.
To me, is it already seems like there's some chaos
in terms of these deals being submitted and we're kind
of we're not really at like a point of the
year where there's a ton of activity going on in
terms of guys committing, So it seems like it's something
where they really need to get this figured out sooner
(21:21):
rather than later, because when the football transfer portal window
opens and the basketball transfer portal window opens next spring,
it needs to be a pretty streamlined, buttoned up process
or you're gonna have complete chaos in terms of because
a lot of guys are gonna want to know like
what deal I can get coming to the school and
(21:41):
all that, and so there has to be at least
some I guess resolution in terms of what's going to
be allowed, what's not gonna be allowed. It seems pretty
open ended still in terms of how that's all gonna work.
And like I said, right now is not even really
the prime time for player movement. But you know, what's
not kid ourselves here. A lot of the player movement
(22:02):
around college sports is based on money, and so guys
are going to want to know how they're going to
be compensated at their new school. So to me, that
seems like another kind of unresolved issue with the whole claim.
I mean, the idea of this clearinghouse was good in theory,
and then you talk about you know, the first word
that people bring up when they hear clearinghouse is lawsuit, right,
and then you also have the idea of just figuring
(22:22):
out the volume of deals that are going to be
flowing into that when we get to the busier points
of year. I think it just seems like a you know,
very much a work in progress and a system that
you know, we could be sitting here a year or
two from now and talking about how it was this
big failed experiment and how it didn't work out. It
could be wrong, but it to me just seems like
a system that may not be sustainable for the long term.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Because there also were just like I mean, I've heard
rumors of schools exploring workarounds like what if you convert.
I think the way it was explained to me and
I think it was some of our friends down south
that were that were floating ideas like this because where
I'm from, rules exist to be worked around wherever possible
(23:06):
in college athletics, particularly college football, and I think the
way it was explained to me is like, what if
you convert a collective into a marketing agency and then
hire an athlete on its talent, which is kind of
how you know that works for a lot of people
at the professional level. You know, you sign on with
like creative artists or something like that, and then they
(23:30):
go represent your you know, they go negotiate as your representation,
you know, commercial deals, and essentially what in effect they
are doing is representing you as talent that some sort
of business would want to hire, or if you want
to think about it a different way, And these aren't
perfect comparisons by any means, but the way that like
(23:54):
a movie studio would hire a popular actor or actress,
they would go to their agency and say, we want
talent in this movie. We think that's what's gonna make
it really sing at the box office. What do we
have to do, what will it take? How do we
how do we make that match? Well, if you're trying
a collective into a marketing agency, and again you sign
(24:14):
athletes as talent, then you're those aren't nil deals. You know,
those are business arrangements. And I don't see how the
NCAA comes close to governing that. And you know, you
certainly can't tell a marketing agency what a player is.
(24:34):
Is a you know, is allowed to be paid or
not paid like that that you know, I don't know
if that is possible in the end, But the point
is it's it's there are so many This is why
I say, whatever seems like common knowledge now or or
conventional wisdom or best practice, just like in il, we're
(24:56):
going to look back in twelve months, we're gonna be like,
why did we ever think that was the right thing
to do? Boy? Do we look stupid? You know, because
it just it's going to keep evolving that way or
at least the next probably twenty four to thirty six months.
And you know, maybe this pushes us to full employment
status and collective bargaining. I don't know. It probably further
(25:19):
fractures the college athletics landscape, you know, just just by
its very nature. But it's it's going to be between
entities or individuals that challenge some of these rules and
then ones that just try to create workarounds.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It's going to be you know, I mean, do you
think that's where we're headed? Is that the whole employment
piece is that?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I mean? I my argument would be that it will
come with a lot of headache for twelve to twenty
four months because the scale of it is incredibly difficult.
It's not like it is not apples to apple with
like you know, the NFLPA or the NBA Players Association.
(26:05):
Because the needs of a big ten football player are
different vertically than the needs of a you know, a
Colonial Athletic Association football player, and they're all so different
horizontally to the needs of a big ten volleyball player.
So how do you create the structure that allows all
(26:26):
these people to be treated as employees while also recognizing
that they need to be able to organize and bargain collectively,
but in different ways and for different things. And I
think that probably a lot of people would have to
wear that on the chin, and some people would probably
(26:46):
wind up looking silly, and some would probably lose their jobs.
But I think that when we get to the other side,
the very bad metaphor that I have reached for is
It's like when you know your car's breaking down and
you can pay five thousand to get it fixed fully
and it'll run like new and everything will be fine.
Or the mechanic keeps telling you they can do patch
(27:07):
jobs for seven or eight hundred bucks and you don't
want to go for the full five thousand, but you
know you're just going to keep pouring money into a
car that's going to keep breaking down, and eventually you'll
probably have to pay the big price. Anyway, I think
that's a little bit where it feels like college athletics is.
There's you know, we have two hundred years of labor
(27:27):
law in this country that can guide us in terms
of how to structure you know, athletes as employees, and
then we can collectively bargain things like multi year contracts
with buyouts, medical care insurance. You know, we can collectively
bargain things as basic as like when the when portal
windows will be open, what athletes are allowed to do
and not to do when they move between schools, unlimited
(27:51):
transfer exceptions or maybe one time transfer exceptions. These are
all things that you can collectively bargain. It. You could say, well,
if we give you this, then you need to give
us that. You know, all politics are short term, so
nobody wants to wear it on the chin. And and
that's why I think we're going to keep seeing these
sort of incremental steps towards something like that, and I
think in the end we're probably gonna wind up there anyway.
(28:14):
The one philosophical difficulty I struggle to kind of reconcile
in that future is that one of the few legal
arguments the nca has actually had some success with in
the last few years, and one that I do even
as someone who is kind of skeptical of a lot
of the old arguments the NCAA makes in these cases,
(28:35):
this is when I do have some some some time
for is that college athletics can't become just a fully
professional model because nobody watches minor league sports. You know that.
I mean that that is essentially kind of in the
NCAA's argument in a couple of cases. And it's not
(28:58):
totally unfair if you turn college athletics into if in
the eyes of consumers, viewers, fans, students, alumni, et cetera,
you basically just turn college athletics into a less skilled
version of professional sports. It loses its appeal. Everyone knows
(29:20):
when they tune in to Ohio State Penn State on
a Saturday night in October that they are not watching
a game that will be played maybe even coached as
well as you know, Jaguars cults the next day. Because
the NFL is just going to have better players, and
(29:40):
it's probably going to have better coaches, and things are
going to be more advanced and more defined and polished.
A big part of what gives college athletics its appeal
is the idea that it's something different and that play
you know, that athletes are amateurs, and that there is
this tangible connection to your alma mater or to you know,
(30:02):
the you know, the the school that culturally represents where
you're from or whatever like that is a big part
of college sports underlying appeal. And if you if you
take that away, then you do run the risk of
college sports just becoming something a lot less sort of
(30:23):
marketable and appealing and therefore successful. I mean, like, you know,
you think about the academy system in European sports, you know,
playing sports for your university is not a thing there,
Like there's you know, there's like there are some small
exam like some very isolated examples like Cambridge and Oxford rowing,
(30:44):
but like nobody wants to watch Cambridge and Oxford, I
assume they both have like soccer teams in some form.
Nobody nobody watched that. That's it's all professional, right, That's
a philosophical and I rambled on a tangent here, but
it is I think the one, you know, sort of
(31:05):
specter looming over this conversation that is less technical, is
less details and dollars and cents, And why don't we
just sit down and hash this out and make it work?
And a little bit more philosophical, how do we move
college athletics to a place where all this stuff is
(31:26):
better controlled and fairer and more even, and without either
a just basically burning college athletics out from the inside
by cutting all the sports. Because of college athletics behaved
purely like a business, it would run two sports because
it only two sports make money. How do we not
(31:48):
allow that to happen but also retain as we move
towards some sort of employment model, the the amateuristic, the
amateur characteristics that do set historically college sports apart from
professional sports. I don't know the answer to that, And
that's that's a question that I think is difficult to.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Wrangle with a few other things I want to get
your your take on. Just in terms of I mentioned
earlier the commitment of Restitch for next season's roster. What
did you what did you make of that edition for
next season? Does it seem like he's going to be
more of a long term development piece, someone that could
(32:31):
come in next season and make an impact. Really hard
to tell. Based on the fact that you know, none
of us have ever seen him play in person. There's
probably four or five minutes of video out there that
we can watch in terms of seeing him playing some
excuse me, some of the FOBA overseas events. But I
thought it was an interesting pickup, kind of came out
(32:51):
of nowhere, but looks like a player that long term
fits with what Indiana and Darren Derieze are trying to do.
Just in terms of his make up as a shooter
and someone a little bit older, obviously going to be
coming into college, I think, a little bit older than
your your average freshman, has played some professional basketball, and
you know, Serbian basketball obviously strong known for producing some
(33:16):
really high level players. So it seems like it seemed
like a savvy addition and someone that could maybe not
step in right away and play a ton of minutes,
but someone long term that that could maybe develop into
a contributor down the line for the program.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, what's what's Steph Kreshnik's excuse, Where's where's his basketball ability?
I mean, I'm still I'm still waiting for him to
show his hoop. I mean, I'm fascinated by just the
expansion of like college recruiting into Europe, which has exploded
in the last year. I think my assumption would be
primarily because these kids can make money now that basically,
(33:52):
you know, before you could play professionally over there. And
you know, I don't think people realize, like quite how
robust basketball leagues are over there. There are thousands of
basketball players in Europe across all the different leagues in Serbia,
in Italy, in Spain and Germany. You know. I mean,
(34:13):
like I think I think Al Durham played in Scotland
for a while, Like you know, it's I mean, there
is so much basketball being played in Europe, obviously not
always at the college level, and I think what appeals
to kids who come over from Europe about playing in
college is it probably gives them a more It gives
them more direct access to NBA scouts, both because scouts
(34:33):
there's just a greater scouting apparatus around college games and
there is European games for the NBA, and also because
that allows them, i think, to compete more directly with
the other players scouts are evaluating, rather than you know,
the sort of the question of you know our good
friend Fran for Scillik and Fran give us some sense
of what this players like. Fran, you know, for those
(34:54):
who don't know, friend knows the European game very well.
But you don't necessarily need that. If Alexa Restitch has
played two years in the Big Ten, and you know
what he looks like against I'm just pulling players from
recent past, Terrence Shannon, you know what he looks like
against Io Desum or against Braden Smith or whoever, and
so you have a better frame of reference.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
But the flip side was I think a lot of
these kids didn't want to come over because they could
make money playing over there, and because I think in
a lot of these cases, I don't know as much
about basketball as they do soccer, but I know that
the structure is somewhat similar, and a lot of these cases,
these teams would still help pay for their education.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
The flip side is and this is not I'm not
trying to sound like, you know, American exceptionalism, you know,
sort of cheerleader. American universities like Big ten universities would
be considered among the best in Europe, you know, research
universities with so many different degree opportunities and things like
that like an IU degree, an Illinois degree, a Michigan degree,
(35:59):
that is, you know, the schools that we're talking about
that sometimes we say, oh, Indiana's top thirty, but Michigan's
top fifteen, like they both be you know, top one
hundred internationally. And so the educational opportunity is great. The
NBA access or NBA you know, exposure opportunity is substantial.
Now they can come make money playing and I don't
(36:23):
I don't fully understand the mechanisms in revenue sharing because
you know, like there was all the stuff around if
you're if you're on a certain visas, you can't make
money off nil. I mean, too many of these kids
are coming over for me to think that they're all
just like being sold a wing and a you know,
being sold on a dream. So I think again, the
(36:44):
you know, the the presumption is these kids can now
make money playing in America the same way they could
play them back home, and they get you know, greater
exposure to the professional level, they get a you know,
a really high class education. And I'm just fascinated in
general to see how this unfolds, because I think, you know,
(37:06):
I think you've already seen obviously there have been the
jokes about, you know, just how sort of europe bending
Illinois roster is going to be. Of course, last year,
you know, Casparas Yakachonas was was kind of a revelation
for the ALIGNI he's now, for the record, a wonderful
second line point guard for the Atlanta Hawks. In one
(37:27):
of my NBA two K sims. It's remarkable how easily
he gets to the rim. But this does feel a
little bit like one of those sort of things that
if you don't have a plan for the next like
three to five years for recruiting in Europe, then you
are already behind the eight ball. And I mean, Indiana,
you know, kicked the tires on some other European recruits,
(37:49):
and I think wound up maybe passing on a couple
of opportunities because they already had guys in other positions.
But you know, I think whether one individual player is
successful or not, it does feel like this is kind
of a This is a widening recruiting pipeline that you,
(38:12):
as a high major college basketball program, need to be
prepared for this. You can't just be one of those like, oh,
if we have an assistant that knows the European game
a little bit, we'll go over there every once in
a while for a player. I would not be shocked
if in five years, you know, every Big ten roster's
got at least one European born player on it. And
(38:32):
I think that's that's at least I think I suspect
a future that programs and coaching staffs with a plan
for how to attack this new talent pool, this newly
available talent pool, are going to be the ones that
benefit from it. The most last thing.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And it's a story that I keep hoping will go away,
But I keep seeing updates periodically on my social various
social media ounce NCAA tournament expansion. Where are you at
on this is it? You know, I've I didn't like
to move to sixty eight, to be honest with you,
but it seems like there was probably people back in
(39:14):
the day whenever the tournament expanded to sixty four didn't
like it, And now we're talking about adding more teams.
It seems almost inevitable based on, you know, maybe some
of the reasons you talked about earlier, you know, the
money aspect of it. The more inventory that they can
give for this flagship event for college basketball, the more
(39:35):
money is going to eventually end up in the hands
of the school. So I understand it from that standpoint.
But every year we go through a tournament selection process
where we look at these schools that barely missed the
tournament and say, you know, the X, Y and Z
school didn't necessarily deserve to make it, and now we're
(39:56):
talking about adding even more teams to the phrase, is
this just is this just inevitable for college basketball that
the expansion is going to happen. It seems like it's
being slow played a little bit, but you know, just
based on the tone and some of the things that
I've read, and it seems like it's maybe not this year,
(40:18):
but in future years, it's something that it's certainly going
to happen.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, I mean, and I'm doing some googling and I
can't find an answer to how many Division one teams
there were in college basketball in nineteen eighty six, which
was I think the I think eighty was eighty five,
the first year that they expanded to sixty four teams, easy,
either eighty five or eighty six.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah, I think somewhere around there.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, So I certainly don't think there were three hundred
and sixty four or anything approaching that.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I think we're three sixty five now.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Are well. The thing is that I think you are
going to see a number of schools that drop Division
one sports and go back to like Division three or
even like at Naia level, because they just don't they
know they're not going to be able to compete financially,
and so they are just trying to pull back to
something that looks more like what it was thirty forty
years ago. And I think that's going to be down
at the BOTO. I mean, that's gonna be like schools
(41:11):
in like the you know, the the the MAAC or
like the the NEEC that are going to contract in
that way or not contract, but just like level down
basically and not try to compete at a level they're
not going to be able to afford. But the point is,
(41:33):
you know, the last time we meaningfully expanded the NCAA tournament,
and I understand we went from sixty four to sixty eight
a few years, you know what, like probably about twenty
years ago, but like the last time we went to
a bigger round number, you know, I wish I could
find this, but I'm guessing it was a lot fewer
than three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty Division
one programs. And the argument for expanding the tournament, which
(41:56):
is you know, very often made by coaches who I
think wanted to be easier for them to keep their jobs,
is not completely It's not totally unfair. I remember Bo
Ryan making this argument years ago that, you know, because
of the bowl system, more than half of college football
gets access to the postseason at the Division IE level.
(42:18):
But with the with basketball, because there are so many
more teams, it's only a fraction. It's like twenty percent.
You know, it's like maybe not even that. If you
know what, I don't know what sixty eight times five is,
it's probably it's probably right around there. It's probably right
around twenty percent as opposed to fifty five fifty eight
percent you know in football, And I don't you know,
(42:39):
Bo wasn't suggesting we expand to one hundred and sixty
four teams. He was just saying. And honestly, like when
I think now, even just as I'm speaking out loud,
when I think now about nca tournament expansion and how
long these different entities have been lobbying for it, I'm
kind of surprised it hasn't happened already. To be honest
(43:00):
with you, it doesn't. It is not something consumers are
asking for. I do think. You know, my good friend
Greg Doyle, our columnist, wrote a column where he basically said,
I bet you'll still watch, and he's right, we all will.
That's not necessarily, you know, a reason for this. Listen
it just because the consumer will consume doesn't mean that
(43:23):
something needs to be done. But while I don't like
the idea of expansion and in general, I think it
will start to water down meaningfully and to its detriment,
the popularity of the NCAA tournament in the same way
that we're probably heading for a negative return in football
(43:45):
somewhere in the not terribly distant future. I do kind
of understand some of the arguments for it. It does
feel like an answer searching for a problem, if you
know what I'm saying. But as you said, it's what
it really is is it's money, it's inventory. It creates
more NCA tournament games, which again people will watch, which
(44:07):
means that Turner or somebody else when the contract runs
up in twenty thirty two or whatever it is, twenty
thirty one, whatever it is, we'll pay more money to
the schools. Of course, more of that will go to
the power conferences. Yes, it might create some access, you know,
for smaller schools. I've seen some small school conference commissioners
(44:29):
express support for it. I'm sure there will be a
little bit of expanded access for small schools, but it's
gonna favor the major conferences. We all know that. You know,
it's a little bit like England enacting the Magna Carta
and then pretending that those rights barely existed for four
hundred years. You know, it's not it's I would be
shocked if it's much more than like a token gesture. Again, like,
(44:54):
on the one hand, it does feel inevitable, on the
other hand, and I say this just from a completely neutral,
you know sort of position. The other hand, I'm kind
of surprised it hasn't happened already because prominent figures in
the sport have been pushing for it for ten years,
(45:16):
fifteen years, and some of their arguments are valid. Number One,
if there's more money to be made, what's the worst
you know, what's the harm in going to make it?
Number two, you are still talking about a postseason that
is dramatically more what is the word, substantially more selective
(45:40):
than its football counterpart. I know people don't care about
six and six bowl games between a MAC team and
a you know, a Sun Belt team, but like enough
people do or else, that bowl game wouldn't exist, right,
you know it. I don't like it, and I don't
(46:03):
it all fits on the same sort of self destructive track.
It feels like college football has set itself on here
for a while. But on the other hand, what I
will say is I do understand kind of some of
the arguments for it, even if I don't necessarily agree
with all of them, and more than anything else as
(46:23):
a set a minute ago, I'm mostly just surprised it
hasn't happened yet, because it seems like we do this
every two or three years, and it always seems inevitable
because it always seems like, well, this is all just
driven by money and opportunity, and the big conferences want more,
so we got to give them more or else, and
then you know it. I mean, I think ESPN reported
(46:49):
yesterday that the Division I Basketball Committee basically came away
without a consensus decision on what to do about expansions. So,
I mean, it's it's it's uh. I keep assuming it's
gonna happen at some point. I don't necessarily think it's
gonna be great for the sport. I also don't think
it's gonna be cataclysmic for the sport either. I think,
(47:12):
you know, four years down the line, whatever number they
settle on, seventy six or seventy eight or whatever, we'll
be like, well, yeah, that's the size of the tournament.
That why wouldn't that be how many teams make it?
You know, right, and then and then we'll start talking
about expanding in ninety six or one hundred and twenty eight,
you know, and we'll and we'll just we will just
(47:32):
restart the dance, because that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I guess I've kind of accepted the fact that it's
it's coming, but still like to complain until it's actually not.
Maybe it's one of those things that they're gonna just
slide into the news cycle on a Saturday three or
four weeks into college football season and hope that it
doesn't grab as many headlines as it would right now.
(47:58):
So we'll see how it all goes down. Zach, stay
cool going out there to to cut your grass. I
know we've got the what the Puerto Rico trips? What
about a month away coming up for I know you're
going down there. That'll be an interesting experience to get
(48:19):
a chance to watch this new India team. So looking
forward to bring your observations for that. But thanks for
carving out the time for us on this Friday in July.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
No, thanks for inviting me. It's always always enjoyed me
on podcast on the Brink. Everyone should listen and subscribe.
Probably should have send the top of the show, but
you know they made it this far, they already.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Subscribe, h for sure. Yeah, as Zach said, if you
do enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and
a review over on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Leave us a five star rating over on Spotify, and
we'll be back soon with another episode of Podcast on
the Brink.
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcast on the
Brink Friday, July eleventh, our first podcast in quite a while.
Not a lot has gone on and Who's Your Nation
the last month and a half, but various things have
gone on, and to help us make sense of some
(00:37):
of those things to talk about it, Zach Osterman, our
good friend of the Indianapolis Star, is back on a
podcast on the Brink. Zach, how are you doing on
this beautiful Friday afternoon in July.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I was panicked when I realized the mute button was
a little bit different. I thought it wasn't gonna find
it in time. It's eighty seventy degrees outside, and when
we're done here, I got to go cut my grass.
So I'm guessing this is going to be a much
more enjoyable, much more enjoyable experience than what comes after.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, there's there's really no good time a day at
this point of the year to cut the grass. I
figured that out the other morning, went out around seven
forty five. I thought I could beat the heat a
little bit. Neighbors maybe didn't like it, but I was
trying to beat the heat. And it was nine thirty
when I was done. It was already steamy and human
out there, so no good time. Definitely been a hot summer.
(01:30):
But Zach, you know, there's there's been a lot obviously
with AU basketball the last well, it's been a busy offseason.
But since we were last had an episode, obviously, Indiana
picks up a commitment from Alexa Reestitch, which the Serbian guard.
They've they've got a commitment now from twenty twenty six
(01:51):
guard Prince Alexander Moody. But I wanted to start with
just a roster for next season right now, Indiana at
twelve players, and my understanding is Anthony Leele going to
be moving on? Obviously his waiver situation was a bit
of a long shot to begin with, but still seems
like Luke Goody's floating around out there as a potential
(02:14):
addition to next season's roster. But as the later we
get into summer with Indiana's tour our trip to Puerto
Rico less than a month away. Now, what have you heard?
Where where do things stand with with Goodie? Is there
any update? Have you heard anything? Do you feel like
there's a timeframe where we may know something in terms
(02:35):
of his status for next season?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
No. I mean, to be honest, I'm I'm surprised that
we've gotten this deep into the summer and not heard anything.
And I know that. You know, Darren DeVries kind of
pointed out when we all huddled with him at Huber
that there are a lot more of these requests this year.
And it's worth pointing out too, there's quite a lot
of turnover at the NCAA right now as we kind
(02:59):
of face. He's in a lot of these new structures
around the nil clearinghouse, and you're seeing a lot of
sort of longtime administrators stepping back and retiring maybe allah
what we've seen with some college coaches frankly in the
last few years that said, I mean for it to
be July eleventh and a player who I think, you know,
there were a lot of players that kind of put
(03:20):
in these waivers just basically seeing if like they could
get them because the NCAA just didn't have an appet
to tell anyone. Know. I think goodies in a different case,
because I think there is at least an argument that
he should get the year back. I mean, I understand
the rules are written the way they are. I think
you can argue, especially in the modern context that those
(03:43):
rules are probably a little bit arbitrary and and what
specifically is holding Goodie back from getting sort of just
automatically getting one of his years back is kind of arbitrary.
And so for it for it to be July eleventh
and him not him, to still be waiting for an
answer is surprising to me. I don't know, you know,
(04:05):
I don't know if that, I don't know if I
don't know if any timetable has been communicated privately. I
will say in general, schools have always kind of treated
these the best practice in these cases to not comment,
to not sort of make a public show of it,
(04:27):
to try and be respectful to process for fear of
maybe influencing the the NCAA to rule against them. And
I think, you know, I think we can all kind
of put two and two together with Anthony Lele. I mean,
he's you know, sort of offering to to sell some
of his IU gear on social media and things like that.
I don't think we need some sort of formal confirmation
(04:49):
that Lele has decided just to move on. But it
does surprise me, not necessarily that the quiet around Goodie
doesn't surprise me. Again, I think that is generally taken
as bat practice in these situations. But to be this
deep into the summer and a player who I think
has a distinct case for an extra year of eligibility
(05:10):
to still be waiting for an answer one way or
the other, that surprises me, and that, you know, I
guess to what extent I will insert my personal opinion,
I'm not sure it sits very well with me, but
not that anybody at NC DOUBA cares very much what
I think.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the good thing for Goodie
and for Indiana at least at this point is from
my understanding. You may have heard different, but my understanding
is is that he can continue to work with the
team this summer. There's nothing preventing that from happening. So
it's not like any grounds being missed or you know,
on account for but you know, for him obviously having
(05:51):
things in a bit of limbo. I mean, if if
he is going to be moving on up to this
season has basketball aspirations, I assume you would want to
be able to figure that situation out sooner rather than later.
If he's going to go overseas or try to latch
on to you know, a G League roster next season.
Not sure exactly what he plans to do beyond basketball,
(06:11):
but beyond that, and you know, I think from a
planning perspective, when when the coaches are putting together the
roster for next season, it would be nice to know
at least before the Puerto Rico trip, what the roster
is going to look like. You know, if there's a
maybe a need to go out and get another player.
I know, we get late, as we get later into
the summer, the likelihood of that happening diminishes. So that's
(06:33):
a situation where I kind of agree with you. You know,
I did understand initially why maybe the timetable for this
was taking a little bit longer with the volume of labors,
but you know, we're we're getting into, you know, later
in the summer now, really and to have this kind
of an outstanding issue, particularly if if he's going to
be denied and wants to do an appeal, it seems
like this could could drag on for a while. The
(06:55):
other thing I wanted to get your thoughts on because
you've done amount of reporting on this, You've covered it extensively.
You quite frankly, I've I've leaned on you as a
resource at times due to my lack of understanding on
this topic. But the House settlement now in effect, we
know that there's been a lot of changes in terms
of revenue sharing in the sport and the NIL deals.
(07:20):
Just a big picture, you know, I know you talked
to Scott Dolson about how Indiana is going to handle
it's revenue sharing. Can you give us kind of a,
you know, a brief overview of how that's going to
work from an Indiana perspective, the revenue sharing piece, and
then what you've heard maybe so far in terms of
how NIL has been impacted you. I saw some reporting
earlier this week from various places in terms of the
(07:43):
new I guess process for getting these NIL deals approved.
It doesn't seem like things are maybe being rubber stamped
and just pushed through, and so there's maybe going to
be some pushback on some of these deals and having
to verify certain things before they do initially you know,
before they do get pushed through. I know, kind of
(08:03):
a loaded question there, but can you just maybe talk
speak to this new system, how Indiana is going to
handle it, and kind of what you've heard so far
in terms of how things are going on that front.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, so it's important to kind of preface this because
I know a lot of people know this, but I
also think, at least anecdotally, I think a lot of
people don't. In IL and revenue sharing are are still
two separate things, but they are now sort of governed
under the same umbrella in a way that NIL, you know,
(08:37):
initially kind of started as this entity completely undo itself,
and then it was kind of slowly brought closer and
closer to the schools and the conferences. What's happened now
is the House settlement, as you said, is in effect,
and that means revenue sharing has begun. You know, athletes
who knows how that stuff structured, Like Indiana pays monthly,
(08:58):
Like I just know this cause my wife works at I.
You I don't know if these kids are getting monthly paychecks.
I don't know if they're getting you know, fifty thousand
now and fifty thousand at the end of the season
or whatever. You know that that stuff can be negotiated.
But the the rev share split for year one, and
when I talked to Scott Dolson about this, you know,
(09:19):
Indiana's Indiana obviously researched this and kind of tried to
figure out the best practice with it. I think it's
probably fair to say Indiana was about as straightforward as
it could be in terms of its rev share approach
in year one. I think they kept it pretty simple.
(09:39):
They followed a lot of industry standards. All the money
is just going into straight revenue sharing. No extra scholarships,
no Alston payments, It's all just direct payment to athletes football.
Dalton wouldn't kind of share exact numbers, and it's worth saying,
like those numbers kind of drift a little bit because
you may not with your Kurtz signette. You may not
(10:01):
spend all your money because you might want a little
bit of a reserve somewhere. Like if you come out
of spring practice and you have a couple needs you
didn't expect. You don't want to have no rev shirt
money because then you can't go get players that are
going to help you feel those holes. So it's it's,
you know, down to the dollars and cents, just like
payrolls in baseball or basketball or something like that. It's
(10:23):
never going to be like an exact thing. Football at
Indiana is I think going to come up just shy
of about seventy five percent of the revenue bucket, which
is over fifteen million dollars. It's a little under fifteen
and a half. I think it's like fifteen point three
something to the point three to four or something like that.
Seventy five is widely seen as kind of the industry
(10:45):
standard for football. I think a few schools will do more,
probably not a ton more. Obviously, there's there's just not
a lot of room beyond if you're doing if you're
going all the way to seventy five percent, there's only
another twenty five percent you can you can throw in there.
But that's, you know, and that's one of those where
the Big ten didn't tell anybody that they you know,
(11:06):
that this is what you have to do, you have
to meet this certain number. But I do think there
was probably some guidance in terms of saying, hey, listen,
football is is the bread winner here and we need
to feed football. Football needs to be you know, kind
of consistent across the board as much as possible in
a conference where it is so directly tied to such large,
(11:30):
you know, annual revenue numbers. And I think also probably
for just competitive purposes. The idea that you're not going
to have like these wild gaps between what one you
know what in Ohio State's putting into football, what are
produced putting in football, et cetera. Basketball is going to
be close to twenty percent, which from my understanding is
kind of the high end of the range. The range
(11:52):
I heard from a couple different places at football schools
was fifteen to twenty percent, with the presumption that more
schools would be more like fifteen to seventeen, fifteen to eighteen,
and it would be the schools that would emphasize basketball
a little bit more than would go to twenty to.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Be to be clear ment, you're talking just.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Men's basketball, Yes, men's basketball, thank you. There are gonna
be some big eat schools that go north of that number,
perhaps well north of it, because while they don't have
the overall revenues anywhere near the overall revenues a Big
ten school for example, would have, or an SEC school,
they don't have football defet So you know Yukon, Marquette, Villanova,
(12:31):
probably Georgetown, you know those places. Yeah, those places are
probably gonna have not everybody like I don't know if
you know I don't know if Seaton Hall is gonna
be able to go crazy, whether or Butler or somebody
like that, but some of those big E schools are
going to have more money than probably any Big ten
or SEC school in men's basketball, simply because they don't
have to feed football. The next two sports in terms
(12:55):
of percentages, will be women's basketball and volleyball. Those are
kind of your next two highest revenue sports if you
think about it, you know, in terms of just like
how much money you're making off of them manually, and
then everything else will be The word that Scott used
to me was sort of sprinkled across the rest of
(13:17):
the athletics programs, I thought. Mike Bobinski said something really
interesting to Nathan Baird where he said, basically, there would
be a reserved fund of a few hundred thousand dollars
that would not be specific to any one sport, but
would be for the recruiting and retention of elite athletes. So,
you know, if Purdue has a chance to get an
Olympic diver, which of course they've had, you know, some
(13:38):
very successful divers in the recent past, you go to
that fund rather than swim dive having you know, just
like a consistent number all the time. I wouldn't be
shocked if Indiana did something like that, And so that's
how they'll break it up in year one. You know,
they're already starting projections for year two. But I think
there's going to be a lot of learn along the way.
I think probably one of the biggest lessons that everyone
(14:00):
took from NIL that we're going to see overlaid onto
revenue sharing is that, you know, whatever we think is
best practice here in months one through eight is going
to seem so outdated by the time we get to
like month eighteen or month twenty four, and there's gonna
be a lot of evolving sort of thinking on how
to marshal all this, never mind the fact that some
(14:20):
of the spending could evolve. You know, there's I think
there are people who believe, for example, that we might
eventually get to a place where schools are released to
add scholarships without that money counting against your revenue sharing cap,
at which point I think a school like Indiana might
at least have some interest in adding scholarships in a
(14:43):
sport like baseball or men's soccer or softball or you know,
men's and women's swimming and diving, where there's probably not
gonna be a lot of money running around those sports
either way, accept at a very small handful of schools,
but where the currency is probably going to be more
scholar larship opportunities. And there are some folks in college
(15:03):
athletics who wonder, if you know right now, if you
want to add scholarships, you have to take that money
out of your revenue sharing pool. That I have heard
very sort of loosely that there are some people who
think that maybe that restriction might get lifted and you
might just be allowed to add scholarships and then the
revenue sharing pool just stays where it is, and that
(15:24):
might be I think the I think the reason for
that is basically because a lot of these bigger schools
are saying we need to be able to serve the
non revenue sports better in this revenue share era. And
we'll see, we'll see how that happens. But you know,
that's that's just kind of one example of like, don't
(15:45):
don't marry yourself to any of this being you know,
written in stone, because we're going to change the way
that all this works. And one of the big things
when you bring up the anile clearing house to kind
of go to number two there, and that is now formally,
as you said, under the roof of the NCAA, the
NIL GO process with Deloitte sort of scrutinizing or auditing
(16:09):
every every NIL deal over six hundred dollars and essentially
coming back and saying, either this reflects in athletes's fair
market value and it's valid and it's approved, or it
doesn't and we're rejecting it and sending it back to
the athlete in question to try and amend it to
you know, fit our process. Like, no one knows really
(16:31):
if that's going to stand up. I mean, I think
almost since the conception of the idea of the clearinghouse,
people have looked at it and thought it was ripe
for legal challenge. Already, you are seeing, as you mentioned,
some complaints, you know, some grievance being aired publicly over
a lack of understanding of you know what what basically
(17:00):
what like what the auditing process is looking for and
how to tailor these deals to satisfy their requirements. You know,
sometimes that there's probably some legitimate compoint there. There's probably
some people that are just you know, politicking to raise noise,
and there are a lot of people that think that
at some point someone will challenge legally the idea that
(17:20):
the NCAA or any apparatus that it creates can can
tell an athlete what is or her fair market value is.
And then we you know, we're back in court. The
lawyers start start the register going again, and we decide
exactly how much we are going to be legally allowed
(17:41):
to govern the NIL space. And I think the reason
everybody's looking at that is because even at the big schools,
a lot of athletics directors are looking at the money
they've had to pour into NIL, which you know, has
reached in some places twenty and thirty million dollars annually
in terms of like overall like collective distribution. And then
(18:02):
they're looking at this twenty point five million dollar hole
for revenue sharing, which is only going to keep expanding.
You know, the revenue share number is going to keep
going up at a time when for all but a
select number of schools, television revenues are probably about to plateau,
or at least certainly you know that we're getting to
the point in the bell curve. I'm doing this, it's
(18:24):
great radio with my hands. The point in the bell
curve where we stop going up exponentially and things start
to flatten out a little bit. And I say this
every time I talk about revenue sharing, because everyone has
forgotten the settlement, part of the House Settlement, that there
is a billion dollar settlement that has to be backfilled
(18:45):
for athletes. I think, going back to like twenty sixteen,
Ye're allowed to claim a portion of it, and it's
going to be through media rights revenues that the NCAA
and the member conferences pay for that primarily. And so
you know, if you're Indiana, big ten distributions aren't just
going to keep spiking up and up and up here
because everybody's gonna have to basically lose some of that
(19:08):
money to the settlement, at least in the in the
near term. So basically, listen, we can have a conversation
about how college athletics allowed itself to get here. And
that's a philosophical sort of discussion slash blame game that
we could do for you know, two hours, you know,
unto itself. But right here and now, athletics directors are
(19:31):
you know, even at the most moneyed schools are just
saying we can't fund twenty million in twenty point five
million in REVS share twenty five to thirty million in
NIL and keep everything else operating as normal. Nobody wants
to cut sports, Nobody wants to to sort of, you know,
pair back college athletics. But the NIL number can't just
(19:54):
keep climbing indefinitely. There has to be some kind of
stabilization in that mark. It Does the clearing house do that?
I'm skeptical, but maybe it at least puts us on
a path to something like that. I'm not sure, but
that's That's probably the thing that's keeping ads up at
night as much as anything else right now. I think
(20:15):
revenue sharing has made you know, tons of sense all
the way through how to structure all this. I think
that you know, it's it's been pretty straightforward in the end,
as people have really kind of dug their hands into it.
It is that question of how deep is this hole
going to continue to grow in terms of like booster
dollars that I have to funnel to these two you know,
(20:38):
ever expanding pots of cash, and will at some point
we hit the nuclear scenario where I have to start
cutting sports to afford it. And that's that's kind of
I think the next big sort of sort of burning
question in college athletics here.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
The other same thing just about the clearing house in general.
To me, is it already seems like there's some chaos
in terms of these deals being submitted and we're kind
of we're not really at like a point of the
year where there's a ton of activity going on in
terms of guys committing, So it seems like it's something
where they really need to get this figured out sooner
(21:21):
rather than later, because when the football transfer portal window
opens and the basketball transfer portal window opens next spring,
it needs to be a pretty streamlined, buttoned up process
or you're gonna have complete chaos in terms of because
a lot of guys are gonna want to know like
what deal I can get coming to the school and
(21:41):
all that, and so there has to be at least
some I guess resolution in terms of what's going to
be allowed, what's not gonna be allowed. It seems pretty
open ended still in terms of how that's all gonna work.
And like I said, right now is not even really
the prime time for player movement. But you know, what's
not kid ourselves here. A lot of the player movement
(22:02):
around college sports is based on money, and so guys
are going to want to know how they're going to
be compensated at their new school. So to me, that
seems like another kind of unresolved issue with the whole claim.
I mean, the idea of this clearinghouse was good in theory,
and then you talk about you know, the first word
that people bring up when they hear clearinghouse is lawsuit, right,
and then you also have the idea of just figuring
(22:22):
out the volume of deals that are going to be
flowing into that when we get to the busier points
of year. I think it just seems like a you know,
very much a work in progress and a system that
you know, we could be sitting here a year or
two from now and talking about how it was this
big failed experiment and how it didn't work out. It
could be wrong, but it to me just seems like
a system that may not be sustainable for the long term.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Because there also were just like I mean, I've heard
rumors of schools exploring workarounds like what if you convert.
I think the way it was explained to me and
I think it was some of our friends down south
that were that were floating ideas like this because where
I'm from, rules exist to be worked around wherever possible
(23:06):
in college athletics, particularly college football, and I think the
way it was explained to me is like, what if
you convert a collective into a marketing agency and then
hire an athlete on its talent, which is kind of
how you know that works for a lot of people
at the professional level. You know, you sign on with
like creative artists or something like that, and then they
(23:30):
go represent your you know, they go negotiate as your representation,
you know, commercial deals, and essentially what in effect they
are doing is representing you as talent that some sort
of business would want to hire, or if you want
to think about it a different way, And these aren't
perfect comparisons by any means, but the way that like
(23:54):
a movie studio would hire a popular actor or actress,
they would go to their agency and say, we want
talent in this movie. We think that's what's gonna make
it really sing at the box office. What do we
have to do, what will it take? How do we
how do we make that match? Well, if you're trying
a collective into a marketing agency, and again you sign
(24:14):
athletes as talent, then you're those aren't nil deals. You know,
those are business arrangements. And I don't see how the
NCAA comes close to governing that. And you know, you
certainly can't tell a marketing agency what a player is.
(24:34):
Is a you know, is allowed to be paid or
not paid like that that you know, I don't know
if that is possible in the end, But the point
is it's it's there are so many This is why
I say, whatever seems like common knowledge now or or
conventional wisdom or best practice, just like in il, we're
(24:56):
going to look back in twelve months, we're gonna be like,
why did we ever think that was the right thing
to do? Boy? Do we look stupid? You know, because
it just it's going to keep evolving that way or
at least the next probably twenty four to thirty six months.
And you know, maybe this pushes us to full employment
status and collective bargaining. I don't know. It probably further
(25:19):
fractures the college athletics landscape, you know, just just by
its very nature. But it's it's going to be between
entities or individuals that challenge some of these rules and
then ones that just try to create workarounds.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It's going to be you know, I mean, do you
think that's where we're headed? Is that the whole employment
piece is that?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I mean? I my argument would be that it will
come with a lot of headache for twelve to twenty
four months because the scale of it is incredibly difficult.
It's not like it is not apples to apple with
like you know, the NFLPA or the NBA Players Association.
(26:05):
Because the needs of a big ten football player are
different vertically than the needs of a you know, a
Colonial Athletic Association football player, and they're all so different
horizontally to the needs of a big ten volleyball player.
So how do you create the structure that allows all
(26:26):
these people to be treated as employees while also recognizing
that they need to be able to organize and bargain collectively,
but in different ways and for different things. And I
think that probably a lot of people would have to
wear that on the chin, and some people would probably
(26:46):
wind up looking silly, and some would probably lose their jobs.
But I think that when we get to the other side,
the very bad metaphor that I have reached for is
It's like when you know your car's breaking down and
you can pay five thousand to get it fixed fully
and it'll run like new and everything will be fine.
Or the mechanic keeps telling you they can do patch
(27:07):
jobs for seven or eight hundred bucks and you don't
want to go for the full five thousand, but you
know you're just going to keep pouring money into a
car that's going to keep breaking down, and eventually you'll
probably have to pay the big price. Anyway, I think
that's a little bit where it feels like college athletics is.
There's you know, we have two hundred years of labor
(27:27):
law in this country that can guide us in terms
of how to structure you know, athletes as employees, and
then we can collectively bargain things like multi year contracts
with buyouts, medical care insurance. You know, we can collectively
bargain things as basic as like when the when portal
windows will be open, what athletes are allowed to do
and not to do when they move between schools, unlimited
(27:51):
transfer exceptions or maybe one time transfer exceptions. These are
all things that you can collectively bargain. It. You could say, well,
if we give you this, then you need to give
us that. You know, all politics are short term, so
nobody wants to wear it on the chin. And and
that's why I think we're going to keep seeing these
sort of incremental steps towards something like that, and I
think in the end we're probably gonna wind up there anyway.
(28:14):
The one philosophical difficulty I struggle to kind of reconcile
in that future is that one of the few legal
arguments the nca has actually had some success with in
the last few years, and one that I do even
as someone who is kind of skeptical of a lot
of the old arguments the NCAA makes in these cases,
(28:35):
this is when I do have some some some time
for is that college athletics can't become just a fully
professional model because nobody watches minor league sports. You know that.
I mean that that is essentially kind of in the
NCAA's argument in a couple of cases. And it's not
(28:58):
totally unfair if you turn college athletics into if in
the eyes of consumers, viewers, fans, students, alumni, et cetera,
you basically just turn college athletics into a less skilled
version of professional sports. It loses its appeal. Everyone knows
(29:20):
when they tune in to Ohio State Penn State on
a Saturday night in October that they are not watching
a game that will be played maybe even coached as
well as you know, Jaguars cults the next day. Because
the NFL is just going to have better players, and
(29:40):
it's probably going to have better coaches, and things are
going to be more advanced and more defined and polished.
A big part of what gives college athletics its appeal
is the idea that it's something different and that play
you know, that athletes are amateurs, and that there is
this tangible connection to your alma mater or to you know,
(30:02):
the you know, the the school that culturally represents where
you're from or whatever like that is a big part
of college sports underlying appeal. And if you if you
take that away, then you do run the risk of
college sports just becoming something a lot less sort of
(30:23):
marketable and appealing and therefore successful. I mean, like, you know,
you think about the academy system in European sports, you know,
playing sports for your university is not a thing there,
Like there's you know, there's like there are some small
exam like some very isolated examples like Cambridge and Oxford rowing,
(30:44):
but like nobody wants to watch Cambridge and Oxford, I
assume they both have like soccer teams in some form.
Nobody nobody watched that. That's it's all professional, right, That's
a philosophical and I rambled on a tangent here, but
it is I think the one, you know, sort of
(31:05):
specter looming over this conversation that is less technical, is
less details and dollars and cents, And why don't we
just sit down and hash this out and make it work?
And a little bit more philosophical, how do we move
college athletics to a place where all this stuff is
(31:26):
better controlled and fairer and more even, and without either
a just basically burning college athletics out from the inside
by cutting all the sports. Because of college athletics behaved
purely like a business, it would run two sports because
it only two sports make money. How do we not
(31:48):
allow that to happen but also retain as we move
towards some sort of employment model, the the amateuristic, the
amateur characteristics that do set historically college sports apart from
professional sports. I don't know the answer to that, And
that's that's a question that I think is difficult to.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Wrangle with a few other things I want to get
your your take on. Just in terms of I mentioned
earlier the commitment of Restitch for next season's roster. What
did you what did you make of that edition for
next season? Does it seem like he's going to be
more of a long term development piece, someone that could
(32:31):
come in next season and make an impact. Really hard
to tell. Based on the fact that you know, none
of us have ever seen him play in person. There's
probably four or five minutes of video out there that
we can watch in terms of seeing him playing some
excuse me, some of the FOBA overseas events. But I
thought it was an interesting pickup, kind of came out
(32:51):
of nowhere, but looks like a player that long term
fits with what Indiana and Darren Derieze are trying to do.
Just in terms of his make up as a shooter
and someone a little bit older, obviously going to be
coming into college, I think, a little bit older than
your your average freshman, has played some professional basketball, and
you know, Serbian basketball obviously strong known for producing some
(33:16):
really high level players. So it seems like it seemed
like a savvy addition and someone that could maybe not
step in right away and play a ton of minutes,
but someone long term that that could maybe develop into
a contributor down the line for the program.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, what's what's Steph Kreshnik's excuse, Where's where's his basketball ability?
I mean, I'm still I'm still waiting for him to
show his hoop. I mean, I'm fascinated by just the
expansion of like college recruiting into Europe, which has exploded
in the last year. I think my assumption would be
primarily because these kids can make money now that basically,
(33:52):
you know, before you could play professionally over there. And
you know, I don't think people realize, like quite how
robust basketball leagues are over there. There are thousands of
basketball players in Europe across all the different leagues in Serbia,
in Italy, in Spain and Germany. You know. I mean,
(34:13):
like I think I think Al Durham played in Scotland
for a while, Like you know, it's I mean, there
is so much basketball being played in Europe, obviously not
always at the college level, and I think what appeals
to kids who come over from Europe about playing in
college is it probably gives them a more It gives
them more direct access to NBA scouts, both because scouts
(34:33):
there's just a greater scouting apparatus around college games and
there is European games for the NBA, and also because
that allows them, i think, to compete more directly with
the other players scouts are evaluating, rather than you know,
the sort of the question of you know our good
friend Fran for Scillik and Fran give us some sense
of what this players like. Fran, you know, for those
(34:54):
who don't know, friend knows the European game very well.
But you don't necessarily need that. If Alexa Restitch has
played two years in the Big Ten, and you know
what he looks like against I'm just pulling players from
recent past, Terrence Shannon, you know what he looks like
against Io Desum or against Braden Smith or whoever, and
so you have a better frame of reference.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
But the flip side was I think a lot of
these kids didn't want to come over because they could
make money playing over there, and because I think in
a lot of these cases, I don't know as much
about basketball as they do soccer, but I know that
the structure is somewhat similar, and a lot of these cases,
these teams would still help pay for their education.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
The flip side is and this is not I'm not
trying to sound like, you know, American exceptionalism, you know,
sort of cheerleader. American universities like Big ten universities would
be considered among the best in Europe, you know, research
universities with so many different degree opportunities and things like
that like an IU degree, an Illinois degree, a Michigan degree,
(35:59):
that is, you know, the schools that we're talking about
that sometimes we say, oh, Indiana's top thirty, but Michigan's
top fifteen, like they both be you know, top one
hundred internationally. And so the educational opportunity is great. The
NBA access or NBA you know, exposure opportunity is substantial.
Now they can come make money playing and I don't
(36:23):
I don't fully understand the mechanisms in revenue sharing because
you know, like there was all the stuff around if
you're if you're on a certain visas, you can't make
money off nil. I mean, too many of these kids
are coming over for me to think that they're all
just like being sold a wing and a you know,
being sold on a dream. So I think again, the
(36:44):
you know, the the presumption is these kids can now
make money playing in America the same way they could
play them back home, and they get you know, greater
exposure to the professional level, they get a you know,
a really high class education. And I'm just fascinated in
general to see how this unfolds, because I think, you know,
(37:06):
I think you've already seen obviously there have been the
jokes about, you know, just how sort of europe bending
Illinois roster is going to be. Of course, last year,
you know, Casparas Yakachonas was was kind of a revelation
for the ALIGNI he's now, for the record, a wonderful
second line point guard for the Atlanta Hawks. In one
(37:27):
of my NBA two K sims. It's remarkable how easily
he gets to the rim. But this does feel a
little bit like one of those sort of things that
if you don't have a plan for the next like
three to five years for recruiting in Europe, then you
are already behind the eight ball. And I mean, Indiana,
you know, kicked the tires on some other European recruits,
(37:49):
and I think wound up maybe passing on a couple
of opportunities because they already had guys in other positions.
But you know, I think whether one individual player is
successful or not, it does feel like this is kind
of a This is a widening recruiting pipeline that you,
(38:12):
as a high major college basketball program, need to be
prepared for this. You can't just be one of those like, oh,
if we have an assistant that knows the European game
a little bit, we'll go over there every once in
a while for a player. I would not be shocked
if in five years, you know, every Big ten roster's
got at least one European born player on it. And
(38:32):
I think that's that's at least I think I suspect
a future that programs and coaching staffs with a plan
for how to attack this new talent pool, this newly
available talent pool, are going to be the ones that
benefit from it. The most last thing.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And it's a story that I keep hoping will go away,
But I keep seeing updates periodically on my social various
social media ounce NCAA tournament expansion. Where are you at
on this is it? You know, I've I didn't like
to move to sixty eight, to be honest with you,
but it seems like there was probably people back in
(39:14):
the day whenever the tournament expanded to sixty four didn't
like it, And now we're talking about adding more teams.
It seems almost inevitable based on, you know, maybe some
of the reasons you talked about earlier, you know, the
money aspect of it. The more inventory that they can
give for this flagship event for college basketball, the more
(39:35):
money is going to eventually end up in the hands
of the school. So I understand it from that standpoint.
But every year we go through a tournament selection process
where we look at these schools that barely missed the
tournament and say, you know, the X, Y and Z
school didn't necessarily deserve to make it, and now we're
(39:56):
talking about adding even more teams to the phrase, is
this just is this just inevitable for college basketball that
the expansion is going to happen. It seems like it's
being slow played a little bit, but you know, just
based on the tone and some of the things that
I've read, and it seems like it's maybe not this year,
(40:18):
but in future years, it's something that it's certainly going
to happen.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, I mean, and I'm doing some googling and I
can't find an answer to how many Division one teams
there were in college basketball in nineteen eighty six, which
was I think the I think eighty was eighty five,
the first year that they expanded to sixty four teams, easy,
either eighty five or eighty six.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah, I think somewhere around there.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, So I certainly don't think there were three hundred
and sixty four or anything approaching that.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
I think we're three sixty five now.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Are well. The thing is that I think you are
going to see a number of schools that drop Division
one sports and go back to like Division three or
even like at Naia level, because they just don't they
know they're not going to be able to compete financially,
and so they are just trying to pull back to
something that looks more like what it was thirty forty
years ago. And I think that's going to be down
at the BOTO. I mean, that's gonna be like schools
(41:11):
in like the you know, the the the MAAC or
like the the NEEC that are going to contract in
that way or not contract, but just like level down
basically and not try to compete at a level they're
not going to be able to afford. But the point is,
(41:33):
you know, the last time we meaningfully expanded the NCAA tournament,
and I understand we went from sixty four to sixty eight
a few years, you know what, like probably about twenty
years ago, but like the last time we went to
a bigger round number, you know, I wish I could
find this, but I'm guessing it was a lot fewer
than three hundred and fifty three hundred and sixty Division
one programs. And the argument for expanding the tournament, which
(41:56):
is you know, very often made by coaches who I
think wanted to be easier for them to keep their jobs,
is not completely It's not totally unfair. I remember Bo
Ryan making this argument years ago that, you know, because
of the bowl system, more than half of college football
gets access to the postseason at the Division IE level.
(42:18):
But with the with basketball, because there are so many
more teams, it's only a fraction. It's like twenty percent.
You know, it's like maybe not even that. If you
know what, I don't know what sixty eight times five is,
it's probably it's probably right around there. It's probably right
around twenty percent as opposed to fifty five fifty eight
percent you know in football, And I don't you know,
(42:39):
Bo wasn't suggesting we expand to one hundred and sixty
four teams. He was just saying. And honestly, like when
I think now, even just as I'm speaking out loud,
when I think now about nca tournament expansion and how
long these different entities have been lobbying for it, I'm
kind of surprised it hasn't happened already. To be honest
(43:00):
with you, it doesn't. It is not something consumers are
asking for. I do think. You know, my good friend
Greg Doyle, our columnist, wrote a column where he basically said,
I bet you'll still watch, and he's right, we all will.
That's not necessarily, you know, a reason for this. Listen
it just because the consumer will consume doesn't mean that
(43:23):
something needs to be done. But while I don't like
the idea of expansion and in general, I think it
will start to water down meaningfully and to its detriment,
the popularity of the NCAA tournament in the same way
that we're probably heading for a negative return in football
(43:45):
somewhere in the not terribly distant future. I do kind
of understand some of the arguments for it. It does
feel like an answer searching for a problem, if you
know what I'm saying. But as you said, it's what
it really is is it's money, it's inventory. It creates
more NCA tournament games, which again people will watch, which
(44:07):
means that Turner or somebody else when the contract runs
up in twenty thirty two or whatever it is, twenty
thirty one, whatever it is, we'll pay more money to
the schools. Of course, more of that will go to
the power conferences. Yes, it might create some access, you know,
for smaller schools. I've seen some small school conference commissioners
(44:29):
express support for it. I'm sure there will be a
little bit of expanded access for small schools, but it's
gonna favor the major conferences. We all know that. You know,
it's a little bit like England enacting the Magna Carta
and then pretending that those rights barely existed for four
hundred years. You know, it's not it's I would be
shocked if it's much more than like a token gesture. Again, like,
(44:54):
on the one hand, it does feel inevitable, on the
other hand, and I say this just from a completely neutral,
you know sort of position. The other hand, I'm kind
of surprised it hasn't happened already because prominent figures in
the sport have been pushing for it for ten years,
(45:16):
fifteen years, and some of their arguments are valid. Number One,
if there's more money to be made, what's the worst
you know, what's the harm in going to make it?
Number two, you are still talking about a postseason that
is dramatically more what is the word, substantially more selective
(45:40):
than its football counterpart. I know people don't care about
six and six bowl games between a MAC team and
a you know, a Sun Belt team, but like enough
people do or else, that bowl game wouldn't exist, right,
you know it. I don't like it, and I don't
(46:03):
it all fits on the same sort of self destructive track.
It feels like college football has set itself on here
for a while. But on the other hand, what I
will say is I do understand kind of some of
the arguments for it, even if I don't necessarily agree
with all of them, and more than anything else as
(46:23):
a set a minute ago, I'm mostly just surprised it
hasn't happened yet, because it seems like we do this
every two or three years, and it always seems inevitable
because it always seems like, well, this is all just
driven by money and opportunity, and the big conferences want more,
so we got to give them more or else, and
then you know it. I mean, I think ESPN reported
(46:49):
yesterday that the Division I Basketball Committee basically came away
without a consensus decision on what to do about expansions. So,
I mean, it's it's it's uh. I keep assuming it's
gonna happen at some point. I don't necessarily think it's
gonna be great for the sport. I also don't think
it's gonna be cataclysmic for the sport either. I think,
(47:12):
you know, four years down the line, whatever number they
settle on, seventy six or seventy eight or whatever, we'll
be like, well, yeah, that's the size of the tournament.
That why wouldn't that be how many teams make it?
You know, right, and then and then we'll start talking
about expanding in ninety six or one hundred and twenty eight,
you know, and we'll and we'll just we will just
(47:32):
restart the dance, because that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I guess I've kind of accepted the fact that it's
it's coming, but still like to complain until it's actually not.
Maybe it's one of those things that they're gonna just
slide into the news cycle on a Saturday three or
four weeks into college football season and hope that it
doesn't grab as many headlines as it would right now.
(47:58):
So we'll see how it all goes down. Zach, stay
cool going out there to to cut your grass. I
know we've got the what the Puerto Rico trips? What
about a month away coming up for I know you're
going down there. That'll be an interesting experience to get
(48:19):
a chance to watch this new India team. So looking
forward to bring your observations for that. But thanks for
carving out the time for us on this Friday in July.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
No, thanks for inviting me. It's always always enjoyed me
on podcast on the Brink. Everyone should listen and subscribe.
Probably should have send the top of the show, but
you know they made it this far, they already.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Subscribe, h for sure. Yeah, as Zach said, if you
do enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and
a review over on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
Leave us a five star rating over on Spotify, and
we'll be back soon with another episode of Podcast on
the Brink.
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