Speaker 1: College football season came into to an end last night
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Ohio State is your national champ Our next
Speaker 1: guest was on the ground. I believe I saw him
Speaker 1: send out a picture on social media. He's been one
Speaker 1: of our favorites college football all year long. The writer
Speaker 1: and creator of one of my favorite college football newsletters
Speaker 1: called Extra Points. My buddy Matt Brown on a Tuesday. Matt,
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. Man, you were on the ground in Atlanta
Speaker 1: last time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: I just got back to Chicago about twenty minutes ago.
Speaker 3: It was a little bit of a zoo getting out
Speaker 3: of town, but.
Speaker 2: I was there and it was a truly excellent experience.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: Tell me about that environment.
Speaker 1: What was the percentage of Ohio State fans versus Notred
Speaker 1: Notre Dame fans, and what was it like to kind
Speaker 1: of be on the ground there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was probably her around sixty percent
Speaker 3: Ohio State, maybe fifty five percent Ohio State. Normally, I
Speaker 3: think in these kind of circumstances, the Ohio State fans
Speaker 3: wild and only take over a building, but Notre Dame
Speaker 3: is probably right up there in terms of as large
Speaker 3: and as national of a fan base and one that
Speaker 3: can afford to show the ridiculous amount of money for
Speaker 3: a ticket.
Speaker 2: I mean to get in the building leading up to
Speaker 2: the game.
Speaker 3: The tickets were over three thousand dollars to go just
Speaker 3: get at the at the at the very top row.
Speaker 3: Think easily the most expensive championship game ticket in the
Speaker 3: last last decade or so. And when that kind of
Speaker 3: thing happens, especially when you're playing in a really big
Speaker 3: NFL stadium where you have a really high roof and
Speaker 3: the sound kind of moves around differently, I think there's
Speaker 3: a there's always a legitimate fear that it becomes more
Speaker 3: of a sterile, corporate environment rather than the more passionate,
Speaker 3: collegiate focused event that you would expect. But I really
Speaker 3: found this to be a pretty high energy, high energy game,
Speaker 3: high energy crowd. Things kind of began to low a
Speaker 3: little bit in the middle of the third quarter when
Speaker 3: it looked like Ohio State had already won the game,
Speaker 3: but Notre Dame came back pretty quickly, and it.
Speaker 5: Was it was loud, it was it was, it was intense,
Speaker 5: and the level of relief I would say from Ohio
Speaker 5: States coaches, their players.
Speaker 3: Their staffers was very significant. Once you get on the
Speaker 3: ground here because this is not the typical championship journey,
Speaker 3: the typical championship expectations or pressures.
Speaker 2: It's I think it's a complicated ending for this team, and.
Speaker 4: We'll get there in a moment.
Speaker 1: I have not seen a final number as far as
Speaker 1: the TV ratings go, but as you reference, if it's
Speaker 1: three grand just to get in the building, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that the powers that be in college football, and
Speaker 1: I would imagine when we see the number, the powers
Speaker 1: that be in television are probably going to celebrate this
Speaker 1: twelve team format.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's probably checking all the boxes for
Speaker 1: the people that make the decisions about this stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think unquestionably for anybody on the financial or
Speaker 3: business side of college athletics or this industry, the first
Speaker 3: year of this, called team Playoffs, was a massive, massive success.
Speaker 2: You were able to prove that you could.
Speaker 3: Host a campus site game on short notice and some
Speaker 3: notoriously difficult to UH to reach, UH and and handle environments. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if any of you guys listening have
Speaker 3: ever been to State College, Pennsylvania where Penn State is,
Speaker 3: but there's basically two hotels that it's in the middle
Speaker 3: of nowhere.
Speaker 2: It's a giant camping trip.
Speaker 3: They sent one hundred thousand people on on the ten
Speaker 3: days notice to.
Speaker 2: Pulled off a game. There's not a lot of hotels
Speaker 2: in South Bend, you know, on recruiting visits.
Speaker 3: People typically have to stay in Chicago or Michigan. They
Speaker 3: hosted a playoff game, you had, you had strong attendance,
Speaker 3: strong ratings uh and and improved ratings and and buy
Speaker 3: into the end of the regular season. So there's certainly
Speaker 3: things I.
Speaker 2: Think could be tweaked or improved, and.
Speaker 3: Those are things that the administrators are going to be
Speaker 3: talking about over the next.
Speaker 2: Couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: But I think it would be hard to draw up
Speaker 3: a better bracket, better result, better better finale for any
Speaker 3: of the Bean Counters.
Speaker 2: Don't we had this year?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: Moving over to this wild ride that it's been for
Speaker 1: Ryan Day And look, yeah, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I have an accurate frame of reference for how
Speaker 1: intensely passionate, maybe at times crazy Ohio State fans are.
Speaker 1: And I get losing to Michigan four times in a
Speaker 1: row is a really bad look. And I don't know
Speaker 1: how they lost to Michigan this year with how good
Speaker 1: they are, how deep and I get it, I really do.
Speaker 1: But Ryan Day is a coach that has a better
Speaker 1: winning percentage than Jim Tressel. He has a better SMP
Speaker 1: index than Urban Meyer. He's now one of three current
Speaker 1: coaches that have won a national championship. And it feels
Speaker 1: like if they moved on from him at the age
Speaker 1: of forty five, he could pick his next job. How
Speaker 1: real was the heat around him and what did this
Speaker 1: run say to people that think he should not be
Speaker 1: in charge there?
Speaker 2: The heat was meaningful.
Speaker 3: It was not a situation where I think he was
Speaker 3: in danger of Ohio State actively terminating the contract, and
Speaker 3: a large part of that is just because his buyout
Speaker 3: would be would be absolutely prohibitive.
Speaker 2: But the stresses on.
Speaker 3: Him and his family there were I saw some reports
Speaker 3: leaving the game that there was like extra security around
Speaker 3: his house. After the Michigan game, it gets to that
Speaker 3: point when you realize like it's not worth it, especially
Speaker 3: because Ryan Day spent a lot of time in the
Speaker 3: NFL and and had interest in the NFL positions. Have
Speaker 3: has indicated that they've had interest in him before, and
Speaker 3: so that the kind of mood and thought in a
Speaker 3: lot of the corners of the industry, was if Ohio
Speaker 3: State lost early in this playoff, after the amount of
Speaker 3: money that was allocated for this roster, how senior laden
Speaker 3: and experienced this team was, and those kind of expectations,
Speaker 3: if it blew up in their face, then rather for
Speaker 3: the termination, there would be a kind of you know, mutual,
Speaker 3: amicable parting of waves, and you know, maybe he goes
Speaker 3: to make the cult's job or something right.
Speaker 2: But that's that isn't what happened, And it wasn't just
Speaker 2: that Ohio State had lost to Michigan four times in
Speaker 2: a row.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, I think I think Day's like seventy and ten.
Speaker 3: He has one of the highest winning percentages legitimately in
Speaker 3: like college football history. But it's like every t all
Speaker 3: ten of those losses were especially brutal.
Speaker 2: For Ohio State fans.
Speaker 3: Right, you lose to Michigan four times in a row,
Speaker 3: You lose two games in a row to Oregon, you
Speaker 3: had the one versus two matchup earlier in the year
Speaker 3: in Eugene, and then you had Oregon the year before
Speaker 3: as your premier not out of conference game when they
Speaker 3: really weren't.
Speaker 2: That good, and you had c. J. Stroud and you lose.
Speaker 3: You had the very winnable playoff game against Georgia when
Speaker 3: they won the national championship by roughly eight hundred points,
Speaker 3: and things kind of fell apart in the fourth quarter
Speaker 3: and you missed the fifty yard.
Speaker 2: Field goal and that's the end of it, right.
Speaker 3: There's something I think acutely frustrating about being a team
Speaker 3: that wins almost every single game, often in a way
Speaker 3: that fuels psychologically frustrating to the fan base.
Speaker 2: And then the.
Speaker 3: Last three or four years they've lost most of their
Speaker 3: big games unless they're playing ten State, who has the
Speaker 3: same problem, whose fan base is facing a similar kind
Speaker 3: of neurosis.
Speaker 2: So then to go from all of.
Speaker 3: That and all of the negative energy to not just
Speaker 3: beating four really good teams in a row, but mostly
Speaker 3: beating the absolute snot out of them in a way
Speaker 3: that they really didn't do it to any competent team
Speaker 3: during the regular season changes everything. And if anything, I
Speaker 3: think this actually might be an interesting case study for
Speaker 3: how you have to handle load management in the twelfth
Speaker 3: team playoff era. You're gonna have to play an NFL
Speaker 3: schedule to win a national championship. You're gonna have to
Speaker 3: play sixteen games. You can't empty the.
Speaker 2: Chamber in early October.
Speaker 3: And that might mean not that you're hot dogging it
Speaker 3: or anything, but that might mean that you're willing to
Speaker 3: trade some less exciting finishes or some closer margins of
Speaker 3: victory than you might expect to keep your team fresh
Speaker 3: and ready to go in Lake December and January. And
Speaker 3: that's what Ohio State did this year.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's any chance and maybe this is
Speaker 1: just me getting older, because I'm thinking what it would
Speaker 1: be like to win. He's finished in the top ten
Speaker 1: every year he's been the Ohio State head coach.
Speaker 4: As you reference, he's seventy and ten.
Speaker 1: That's third all time winning percentage in college football, one
Speaker 1: of three coaches to win a national championships as I reference.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's any part of him that's like,
Speaker 1: I'm over this and maybe he decides that he would
Speaker 1: like to go do what he does at a top
Speaker 1: the very highest of levels somewhere else. If I don't
Speaker 1: think he'd leave for a college job, but you think,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the pressure regardless of what he
Speaker 1: seems to do, is that something that maybe he says,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in doing this for you people anymore.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's entirely possible if that conversation is going
Speaker 3: to happen, I'm not just going to you know, it'll
Speaker 3: be happening after the championship parade and after something else.
Speaker 3: I think the next month in Columbus.
Speaker 2: Is going to be fascinating.
Speaker 3: Just I wan to see how fans and I include
Speaker 3: myself in this, honestly, how they reconcile their previous sentiments
Speaker 3: with this guy and compartmentalized the frustration over the last
Speaker 3: few years with the final result. I understand that many
Speaker 3: people listening to this and think, how on earth could
Speaker 3: you go seventy and ten and be unhappy like that?
Speaker 3: Sounds insane people Utah and DOAU fans walk across broken
Speaker 3: glass to have some kind of a run of success
Speaker 3: like that. But I think you also have to remember
Speaker 3: that Urban Meyer, when he was the coach at Ohio State,
Speaker 3: had Ohio State in the top ten every single year,
Speaker 3: made the playoffs several times, won a national championship. Had
Speaker 3: there been a twelve team playoff era, I think Ohio
Speaker 3: State would have almost certainly won at least another championship
Speaker 3: during that era, and then Jim Tresso before Urban Meyer
Speaker 3: had Ohio State in the top ten almost every single
Speaker 3: year and won a title. Like you really have to
Speaker 3: go back to the World War Two to find multiple
Speaker 3: years in a row where Ohio State has sucked. It's
Speaker 3: probably the most recession proof program in college football. And
Speaker 3: that isn't me just saying that as a guy that
Speaker 3: was born in Columbus, Like look up sports reference man
Speaker 3: like the that's that they have the highest floor of
Speaker 3: anybody in the sport. So you come in and you're
Speaker 3: just a pretty good coach, You're gonna win nine games there.
Speaker 3: Now you have to really really screw up to bottom out.
Speaker 3: And I think that that, juxtaposed to the results on
Speaker 3: the field, is why you saw this saw some frustration.
Speaker 2: I need if a.
Speaker 3: Day decided in two weeks, I did what I said
Speaker 3: I was gonna do. I'm gonna go coach the Colts.
Speaker 3: I'm wanna go work with grown men.
Speaker 2: Forget this.
Speaker 3: I couldn't blame him, but I don't know enough to
Speaker 3: know if that's if there's an opening right now that
Speaker 3: would be of interest to him. Given you now now
Speaker 3: that now there's a title defense.
Speaker 1: Captain Morona, I wouldn't go seventy and ten in college football, Matt,
Speaker 1: if we're being honest, I mean you said b yu fans,
Speaker 1: you know, walking off, and you're one of the few
Speaker 1: media members I could actually make that reference to. But
Speaker 1: seventy and ten I.
Speaker 2: Think would struggle to recruit in this environment. I remember,
Speaker 2: if it's been a minute, but.
Speaker 3: I remember he rubbed a couple of people the wrong way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very very passionate guy, but not everybody was always thrilled
Speaker 3: with his approach. You have to be a little bit
Speaker 3: more of a team player in this era.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about the chief captain of the need fights.
Speaker 1: He'd ad just you know that?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, definitely definitely team schematic mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, ok, moving on before we start getting emails. I
Speaker 1: just knew you were the one that I could ask
Speaker 1: that question too, for obvious reasons. All Right, we had
Speaker 1: a lot of good college football guests on yesterday. We
Speaker 1: also had the game on our station at five thirty,
Speaker 1: and I asked them all the same question, Matt, because
Speaker 1: I just felt like, in my opinion on paper, that
Speaker 1: was a mismatch last night, and so I said, can
Speaker 1: Notre Dame make this a fair fight.
Speaker 4: Do you think they did.
Speaker 2: Oh, unquestionably. I mean the first ten minutes of the game.
Speaker 3: I think laid out exactly the script that Notre Dame needed,
Speaker 3: which was running a lot of qv power and hold
Speaker 3: the ball for eight minutes and just paper cut Ohio
Speaker 3: State to death and limit the number of possessions. There
Speaker 3: times that Ohio State could score buck guys scored touchdown
Speaker 3: their first four drives, but because Notre Dame was soh
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the game, the margin never really
Speaker 3: got out of hands. I think that the only real
Speaker 3: mismatch on that game Washio the Notre Dame's ability to
Speaker 3: throw the ball downfield versus Ohio State's secondary. If Nelson
Speaker 3: has to throw in the ball thirty two times in
Speaker 3: a game, Notre Dame's gonna lose. That's not a team
Speaker 3: that's really built to come back.
Speaker 2: And they almost did.
Speaker 3: There was a there was a pathway for them to win.
Speaker 3: It would have looked a lot like the Michigan game,
Speaker 3: where you just dragged the drag o'house stayed into the
Speaker 3: mud and make them fight in.
Speaker 2: A phone booth.
Speaker 3: They just weren't able to do it for four quarters.
Speaker 3: They're really only able to do it for about fourteen minutes.
Speaker 1: So equal time here for coaches, because I've been wildly
Speaker 1: impressed with Marcus Freeman. Didn't start out well with that
Speaker 1: home loss to Marshall, and obviously Week two wasn't Northern
Speaker 1: Illinois this year, But what would it be like at
Speaker 1: the age of thirty five, your first head coaching job
Speaker 1: is you're the head coach of Notre Dame, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's that's a wild thing. And as I've listened
Speaker 1: to him more throughout this run and studied him more
Speaker 1: throughout the Notre Dames you know, march to the National
Speaker 1: championship game, I've been wildly impressed with his communication, wildly
Speaker 1: impressed with the way his players respond to him. He
Speaker 1: kind of just feels like this rising star in the
Speaker 1: ranks to college football. So what stands out most to
Speaker 1: you about this kind of wonderkins rise we've seen from
Speaker 1: from Notre Dames head coach Marcus Freeman.
Speaker 3: Sure, and maybe this market doesn't know about this or
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was, you know, mentioned on
Speaker 3: the broadcast four hundred times, but Marcus Freeman of course
Speaker 3: played at Ohio State. He's from Ohio, and as Ohio
Speaker 3: State fans went to the message boards over the last
Speaker 3: two years contemplating ejecting Ryan Day in the space. One
Speaker 3: of the two people that everybody said we should go bring,
Speaker 3: we should go bring home would be Marcus Freeman. I
Speaker 3: think you're exactly right. The most impressive thing that I
Speaker 3: think he's managed to do this season was take what
Speaker 3: is normally the most unlikable brand in college football and
Speaker 3: make them likable and make them fun. It was fun
Speaker 3: to root for Notre Dame this year. They're They're running
Speaker 3: an inspired triple option kind of offense. They're one of
Speaker 3: the only major teams where or the quarterback run game
Speaker 3: is an integral part of what they're doing. They had
Speaker 3: two really exciting offensive skill position players. And this team,
Speaker 3: you know, they had like five starters in missing multiple
Speaker 3: NFL guys due to injury, and they were counted out
Speaker 3: nationally after that. Northern Illinois lost, you know, by like
Speaker 3: week four, You right, part of that's just because they
Speaker 3: got a little bit unlucky with with the schedule this year.
Speaker 3: We in our lifetime, we have had so many Notre
Speaker 3: Dame coaches who are so deeply, deeply unlikable. I don't
Speaker 3: know if there are blood relatives that enjoyed watching and
Speaker 3: rooting for Charlie White's and Brian Kelly is not somebody
Speaker 3: that's going to be on the Mister Congeniality Award list
Speaker 3: for anybody that works in the college sports industry. That's
Speaker 3: not what Freeman is, and he's not the stereotype of
Speaker 3: what a domer or.
Speaker 2: Has typically been.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's going to end up staying
Speaker 3: there for thirty years. Nobody really does in this industry
Speaker 3: other than winningham. But if I was an Notre Dame fan,
Speaker 3: which I'm not, but if I was, I would be
Speaker 3: very heartened by this year and feel very good about
Speaker 3: where your coaching staff is today and moving forward.
Speaker 1: Heard a lot of college football media members complain about
Speaker 1: the length of time, the fact that it's January twentieth
Speaker 1: in this Monday night game. I get it, but you
Speaker 1: can't go head to head against the NFL. You're a
Speaker 1: smart guy. What do you think the solution is here?
Speaker 2: I don't really know if there is one.
Speaker 3: I understand the frustration too. I think in a perfect world,
Speaker 3: maybe this is a game that's played in the Central
Speaker 3: time zone and you go a little bit earlier and
Speaker 3: try to.
Speaker 2: Alleviate some of those things.
Speaker 3: You already kind of got beat up on some of
Speaker 3: these early early playoff games by going against the NFL.
Speaker 3: The only thing I could possibly think of is potentially
Speaker 3: starting the season.
Speaker 2: A week earlier.
Speaker 3: But then you're looking at a lot of lost revenue
Speaker 3: from having maybe multiple games four class actually starts. It's
Speaker 3: one of the issues that the college baseball schedule has
Speaker 3: with the postseason goes well past graduation for many teams.
Speaker 2: The Final Four has the.
Speaker 3: Same issue too. The championship games is usually on a Monday,
Speaker 3: It's usually in the Eastern time zone.
Speaker 2: It usually goes way past everyone else's bedtime.
Speaker 3: It thinks when I'm president, the day will the day
Speaker 3: after the championship game will be a day off, just
Speaker 3: like the Super Bowl. But that's we're not there yet.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: What do you make of I think Joel Klat's the
Speaker 1: one that's been pushing this narrative of college football, making
Speaker 1: the Rose Bowl their answer to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3: I understand it from the perspective of tradition, and you know, look,
Speaker 3: even if you're a completely cynical person, when the sunsets
Speaker 3: over the mountains around the third quarter, it does look beautiful.
Speaker 2: The most cynical reporters.
Speaker 3: I know, I haven't covered a game there yet, but
Speaker 3: you know, tell me, like, no, when you touch the grass, you.
Speaker 2: Recognize that it's perfect.
Speaker 3: The very selfish state response for me, and this is
Speaker 3: not something that other people are going to.
Speaker 2: Care about, but you and I might care a little bit,
Speaker 2: is that the.
Speaker 3: Roadbush is hard to get to, and when you host
Speaker 3: gigantic events in Los Angeles, because traffic is so bad
Speaker 3: and everything is so sprawled out, it's difficult to get hotels,
Speaker 3: it's difficult to do media availability.
Speaker 2: You just you're just stuck there.
Speaker 3: And there's there's really three cities where you can have
Speaker 3: a great stadium experience and fans and everybody involved in
Speaker 3: the event can can be relatively close by and you
Speaker 3: can have all the programming within walking distance. I think
Speaker 3: that's Atlanta, It's New Orleans, and it's Indianapolis. I know
Speaker 3: everybody makes fun of Indianapolis that you've covered a major
Speaker 3: event there.
Speaker 2: You get it.
Speaker 3: You're not there to go move or to go you know,
Speaker 3: look check out the art scene. You're you're there for
Speaker 3: for this this major football game. It'd be cool for television,
Speaker 3: but having covered events in other places. I think if
Speaker 3: I had to go to the Rose Bowl every year,
Speaker 3: I would complain a little bit about being stuck in
Speaker 3: my car.
Speaker 4: And there it is. There, it is, yes, the final
Speaker 4: the final point there.
Speaker 2: Hey. You know.
Speaker 1: The the narrative matter, as you know, is that Ohio
Speaker 1: State bought a championship, paid a grip of money for
Speaker 1: a group you know, twenty to twenty five mil. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the number is, but you know what's interesting,
Speaker 1: the majority of that revenue went to like returning players,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way Ryan Day built this thing
Speaker 1: over a long game type play, and I think the
Speaker 1: narrative is like they just went and bought a bunch
Speaker 1: of dudes in the transfer port. They brought in some
Speaker 1: And we've been debating here because Utah football is bringing
Speaker 1: in forty one new players. It's a fifty three percent
Speaker 1: roster turnover, and you get it because they really struggled
Speaker 1: a year ago. But coach witz Mo has always been recruit, developed, retain, win,
Speaker 1: and the best Utah teams have always been teams that
Speaker 1: have had third four fifth year guys, so four eight
Speaker 1: you know, Rose Bowl Pac twelve champs as well, and
Speaker 1: is that a model for success in college football.
Speaker 4: So how would you articulate the.
Speaker 1: Way Ryan Day and the Ohio State administration went about
Speaker 1: building this roster and allocating their funds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is something I'm going to be
Speaker 3: writing about some more this week because I've seen that
Speaker 3: narrative too, and I do think it's missing the point
Speaker 3: a little bit. So, Yes, the total for Ohio States
Speaker 3: football roster was about twenty million dollars down on the field.
Speaker 3: Talk to the athletic director roster or. He confirmed that
Speaker 3: Ryan Day alluded to it in the in the final
Speaker 3: press conference. Both people also said, and I'm inclined to
Speaker 3: believe this, that that wasn't the highest payroll in college
Speaker 3: football this year. And it's hard to get hard and
Speaker 3: fast data about this depending on who you talk to. Oregon, Texas, Miami.
Speaker 3: We're all in that conversation as well. That they didn't
Speaker 3: make it to where Ohio State did.
Speaker 2: What I believe you're.
Speaker 3: Seeing at this point now we have a couple of
Speaker 3: years of data. It's enough evidence to suggest that you
Speaker 3: can and should plug particular holes in your roster via
Speaker 3: the transfer portal. And there's some position groups where it's
Speaker 3: easier to do this than others, but that it's very
Speaker 3: difficult to build the bulk of your roster that way.
Speaker 2: Simply because you need continuity.
Speaker 3: So one thing I think i'd point to you here
Speaker 3: is that every single starter in that championship game on
Speaker 3: Ohio States offensive and defensive lines was a Heights will commit.
Speaker 2: To Ohio State.
Speaker 3: Seth Blacklin, the center, you know, came from Alabama. You
Speaker 3: might have remembered that he had a truly horrific game
Speaker 3: in the College Football Playoff, had a couple of fumbles.
Speaker 2: That's why he was off. He was injured. I did
Speaker 2: not play through the through the playoff run. But most
Speaker 2: of those guys.
Speaker 3: Were seniors or or redyerd juniors, or people that turned
Speaker 3: down going to the NFL for the third or fourth round, uh,
Speaker 3: delaying their their their second contract to come back and
Speaker 3: win a title. I think there's enough evidence to suggest
Speaker 3: you can definitely get a quarterback and the and the
Speaker 3: transfer portal. And in fact, I think that's going to
Speaker 3: be pretty common because no one's gonna sit on the
Speaker 3: bench for more than one year, so there's gonna be
Speaker 3: a lot of good guys. You know, Will Will Howard
Speaker 3: as a as a mid three star who got you know,
Speaker 3: bench for Adrian Martinez. It wasn't exactly like picking up KYLEB.
Speaker 3: Williams in the portal, but like those guys exist, Ohio
Speaker 3: State had picked up maybe the best safety in the country. Uh,
Speaker 3: it was only available because Nick Stapan retires and picked
Speaker 3: up a really good running back.
Speaker 2: That the side. It was okay taking a substantially lesser.
Speaker 3: Role to split carries with a five star high school
Speaker 3: Ohio State commit The place where I think you run
Speaker 3: into the most trouble is trying to build the line
Speaker 3: of scriptage that way. And it's just because there generally
Speaker 3: are not enough good offensive linemen that hit the portal,
Speaker 3: and you really generally need a lot of experience and
Speaker 3: time and reps to build chemistry specifically within that unit.
Speaker 3: We're going to see a couple of teams win championships
Speaker 3: in different ways, right. I don't think everyone has to
Speaker 3: do things exactly like Ohio State. You don't have to
Speaker 3: spend exactly that much money, And to be fair, a
Speaker 3: non trivial amount of that money was not donor money. Well,
Speaker 3: I was actual, honest to goodness, legitimate corporate marketing deals,
Speaker 3: and Ohio State will probably.
Speaker 2: You know, then in Texas will.
Speaker 3: Probably always have the most legitimate corporate marketing deals, maybe
Speaker 3: Michigan in some years. But I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be easier to build the team where the majority of
Speaker 3: your players are people that signed with you as high
Speaker 3: schoolers or if they were transfers, stay with your program
Speaker 3: for multiple years, and then you go when you try
Speaker 3: to fill three or four holes in your roster each year.
Speaker 1: So the Big Ten now has back to back national champs.
Speaker 1: They have Oregon with Uncle Phil's money. They have Ohio
Speaker 1: State and Michigan. They have LA Chicago, New York. If
Speaker 1: you can't Rutgers, I suppose, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of Penn State fans in Philly. They have some of
Speaker 1: the biggest markets in the country. They have some of
Speaker 1: the best teams in the country. Is it time to
Speaker 1: say the Big Ten is not just a pre emitive
Speaker 1: conference in college football?
Speaker 3: But it might not be close, don't I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'm willing to say that it's overwhelmingly the best
Speaker 3: conference in college football. I think I think pound for
Speaker 3: pound is probably still the SEC, but that gap as
Speaker 3: as small as it's ever been, and there's a reason
Speaker 3: to believe that that friend could change. And it's interesting
Speaker 3: because this is also true when you look.
Speaker 2: At the history of college football.
Speaker 3: The main entities that were opposed to giving athletic scholarships
Speaker 3: were Big ten teams. Because those Big ten schools were
Speaker 3: in more industrialized and large, larger metropolitan areas, it was
Speaker 3: much easier to give those athletes.
Speaker 2: Make work jobs.
Speaker 3: And schools in the South, which were often in smaller
Speaker 3: areas and less wealthy states and had less wealthy fan bases,
Speaker 3: wanted to give scholarships so they could be an equal
Speaker 3: footing because they knew that Michigan and Ohio State and
Speaker 3: Minnesota and Wisconsin kind of outbid death. And then you
Speaker 3: went to the athletic scholarship model, there was some more parody.
Speaker 3: He had the under the table Bagman era where the
Speaker 3: I think the Southeast really had a major advantage. And
Speaker 3: there's an argument to be made as a move into
Speaker 3: revenue sharing and move into a world where money above
Speaker 3: the cap that has to be tied to marketing deals
Speaker 3: and it's going to be more strictly like monitored via
Speaker 3: the court system, is going to give another big advantage
Speaker 3: to schools in law, not just larger markets but that
Speaker 3: have richer fans and are tied to larger industries.
Speaker 2: And you can say what you will, but there's a
Speaker 2: lot of great schools in the SEC.
Speaker 3: But the higher end institutions in the Big ten has
Speaker 3: fifty thousand students, you know, student student bodies, alumni networks
Speaker 3: of two hundred, three hundred and four hundred thousand people,
Speaker 3: and law schools and medical schools and a deeper tradition
Speaker 3: of professional education and.
Speaker 2: Richer alumni than most schools in the SEC. So it's
Speaker 2: entirely possible that the.
Speaker 3: Pendulum was flewing back. You know, Auburn has pressurized lumber money,
Speaker 3: Georgia has alcohol money. Texas and Texas A and m have
Speaker 3: oil money, which is a different level of rich and
Speaker 3: mean the Michigans of the world have fast money, tech money.
Speaker 2: Larry Ellison's girlfriend.
Speaker 3: You know, besides she's in Michigan sand So Larry Ellison
Speaker 3: touts a three million dollar check for Bryce Hunderwood. There's
Speaker 3: things at Ohio State and Michigan and to some extent,
Speaker 3: you know, Wisconsin and Nebraska can do that. A lot
Speaker 3: of schools in the SEC, and that's going to be
Speaker 3: I think an uncomfortable cultural reevaluation compared to how people
Speaker 3: in the South look at their football programs over the
Speaker 3: last fifteen years.
Speaker 4: Final thing mad will set you loose.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I saw that you're on the rundown,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about this because you'll be
Speaker 1: good with it. The US Department of Education, we've been
Speaker 1: waiting for a little Title nine guidance. We got it,
Speaker 1: so future revenue distributions from a school to an athlete
Speaker 1: or his or her NL rights are now what's called
Speaker 1: financial assistance, which must be made proportionally available to male
Speaker 1: and female athletes.
Speaker 4: I was not aware of this, but my news alerts
Speaker 4: tell me we have a.
Speaker 1: New president that has been installed, so potentially this could
Speaker 1: change things. But what's your take on where we're at
Speaker 1: now after the Department what the Department of Education released
Speaker 1: and moving forward with a new president in the White
Speaker 1: House and a new administration, what effect could that have
Speaker 1: on this ruling?
Speaker 4: And where do you ultimately do you think we land?
Speaker 3: It's a great question, And what I can tell you,
Speaker 3: guys is I've been tracking this for over a year
Speaker 3: and talking to a lot of experienced litigators and attorneys
Speaker 3: that work in the Title nine space. And what I
Speaker 3: heard pretty consistently over the last nine ten months was
Speaker 3: that based on the letter of the law and based
Speaker 3: on court precedent and administrative precedent, and not just from
Speaker 3: like the Biden and Obama administrations, but you're going further back,
Speaker 3: you're based on on on the law. The Doees guidance
Speaker 3: here makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: There was, there was.
Speaker 3: That's part of the reason why you saw a lot
Speaker 3: of universities try to really hedge their bets with how
Speaker 3: with with with revenue sharing a needle with some of
Speaker 3: their work with NIL because they're very worried about that
Speaker 3: potential liability. So that's true on one component. So I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not shocked that the advice came at all.
Speaker 3: I am shocked that it came, you know, three days
Speaker 3: before the Biden administration's out the door.
Speaker 2: The other kind of challenging thing though about Title nine.
Speaker 3: Is that there's no Title nine cops.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education will
Speaker 3: go after you.
Speaker 2: When somebody sues you, when there's a complaint, and that
Speaker 2: process takes forever. Right.
Speaker 3: We have we have a case still pending right now
Speaker 3: with Oregon, and we're one of the components are are
Speaker 3: women athletes suing over disproportionate publicity and and side benefits
Speaker 3: and and administrative support around nil, to say nothing of
Speaker 3: revenue sharing. And we're not close to that case being finished.
Speaker 3: So what a lot of a lot of universities in
Speaker 3: this market, in my market, across the country have decided
Speaker 3: to do is say, look, we're all speeding. They can't
Speaker 3: arrest all of us, and and we don't see enough
Speaker 3: state troopers out here. So I'm not going to adjust
Speaker 3: my speed. I'm just going to hope that I'm not
Speaker 3: the red lambeau that you know that draws the Fed detentions. First, like,
Speaker 3: if the Feds can't stiffing in almost everybody in Division
Speaker 3: one is out of compliance, and in Title nine and
Speaker 3: in some capacity it's just not it's just not regular,
Speaker 3: it's not enforced very often. So so this is the
Speaker 3: major question, is what this administration decides to do with
Speaker 3: this particular component of Title nine.
Speaker 2: And honest to god, I think.
Speaker 3: That's that's not an easy political question to answer, right
Speaker 3: because you've had a lot of conservative activists points to
Speaker 3: Title nine as part of the justification for fighting back
Speaker 3: really hard against trans.
Speaker 2: Participation in athletics.
Speaker 3: You're going to have a lot of other conservative activists
Speaker 3: who are not willing to go to the mattresses to
Speaker 3: fight over equal distribution of financial payments for women's basketball players.
Speaker 3: To take money from football players and give it to
Speaker 3: women's basketball or women's volleyball. You're going to have some
Speaker 3: conservative activists you don't think we should have Title nine
Speaker 3: at all. And I think there may be a real
Speaker 3: bipartisan conversation about revisiting.
Speaker 2: That law because it wasn't written for sports, and it.
Speaker 3: Wasn't really written for a world where collegiate athletics becomes
Speaker 3: more explicitly professionalized. And that's a conversation worth having. So
Speaker 3: all of this is to say, I'm I actually, I'm
Speaker 3: really frustrated that the Biden administration is tided to do
Speaker 3: this because I think that just injects more chaos and
Speaker 3: uncertainty without a meaningful solution.
Speaker 2: And uh, there's not a good time to go be
Speaker 2: have a dot evu.
Speaker 3: Email address of working in this stuff here, because you're
Speaker 3: gonna get you're probably gonna get sued either way.
Speaker 4: Where can people go get all your work?
Speaker 3: Matt You can find my stuff at extra points mb
Speaker 3: dot com or Matt Brown EP on Twitter and Blue Sky.
Speaker 4: Thank you, my friend. Have you a great week and
Speaker 4: we'll chat too.
Speaker 2: Oh it's always my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: I the great Matt Brown.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you it's one of the best college football
Speaker 1: newsletters around. A lot of it is the business of
Speaker 1: college football things off the field, just called extra points.
Speaker 1: Find it on extra points mb dot com or his
Speaker 1: Twitter pages at Matt brown EP. All right, got to
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