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I CENSI VP, products, VTP service VP discuss. Let's get
out to the hotline. Welcome in my favorite guess. We
got Matt Brown on the line college football inside of
representing extra Points Extra Points MB dot com. Matt, how
the heck are you? Hey?
Speaker 3: I'm always glad to spend some time with you here
this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Matt.
Speaker 2: What's been keeping you busy? What you been doing, what
you been working on? What can we find at Extra
Points right now?
Speaker 3: It has been a very very busy week, so I
can tell you there's a couple of things that were
working on. I got a story we're going to publish
tomorrow morning for free that I think will be pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: It's a story.
Speaker 3: Written by the GM of Howard Basketball and explained how
they were able to shift their approach from being something
that was more of a developmental program where they were
trying to recruit people to stick around for three or
four years.
Speaker 4: Now they've realized, look.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen anywhere in men's college basketball. Now we're
going to have some guys that are only going to
be here for four months. How do we compete in
that world where we don't have any money, which I
think I think will be interesting. And we've got a
story coming up in a couple of days about Oberlin football,
which you folks, if you're a real super nerd like me,
you might remember as the worst team in the country
this season. I spent some time with a couple of
their players, a couple of their coaches to better understand
why they're doing this, because they don't like they they
Oberlin's the school where everybody's a really good student. This
is not the kind of place where you're gonna lay
out of glory.
Speaker 4: I wanted to better understand, you know, what.
Speaker 3: Progress looks like or why you dedicate yourself when you're
the worst team in the country. So you'll have to
think there will be some fun things to read here
at EP. The next couple of days besides just transfer portal.
Speaker 2: Badness, the true love of the game. It still exists.
It's not all corrupted, Matt.
Speaker 3: Now, I mean there, I will tell you, over the
last seventy two hours, it has it has been good
for my brain. So, like, you know what, let's spend
a little bit of time with.
Speaker 1: Division III football.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, we have to talk about what's going
on to Washington, we have to talk about what's going
on in the courthouse.
Speaker 4: But even for.
Speaker 3: Someone who's dedicated his career to writing about legal and
policy and business issues in college sports, I gotta tell you,
I'm not a fan of all this of this much lawyering.
And I don't I don't blame any fan either who's
not as excited I think to be engaged in college
football at the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the metrics are good for TV viewership, and the
metrics are good for the paydays that these players are getting.
But you know, there's a lot of people that are
are feeling like, man, this is this is chaos, Man,
this is crazy, Like this is ruined, this is bad,
this is ugly, And you delve into one of the
things that needs to happen in order for it all
to change, and that's the collective bargaining Agreement. Now, you
did write a piece what I like in dislike about
the first draft of the College Football CBA. First of all,
why do we need this collective bargaining room in order
to fix college sports? And then let's delve into what
you like and dislike about the CBA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean what I would say is you
don't necessarily need a CBA to have more order in
college sports. There's functionally, right now ways two ways to
do it. And when I say order, I'm talking about
having mutually agreed upon rules that can actually be enforced,
about when people can leave schools, about whether their contracts
are actually enforceable like we.
Speaker 4: Have in professional sports.
Speaker 3: One of those ways is what the powerful conferences in
the NCAA have been pushing for for the last four years,
which is a federal bill that would give them antitrust
exemption and allow them to unilaterally enforce their existing rules.
Speaker 1: That may happen someday.
Speaker 3: There were some times in twenty twenty five and I
thought it looked very close to happening, But it hasn't,
and it's probably unlikely to happen in the next six
to nine months because Congress isn't really a thing anymore,
and the bipartisan lawmaking is basically done for the year,
heading into the next exploration cycles.
Speaker 1: The other way you can do it is with the.
Speaker 3: Collective bargaining agreement, which is what all of the major
professional sports leagues do, where labor and management sit together
and negotiate a lot of these rules. We don't have
that in college football or college basketball right now because
the athletes are not employees. They are not legally allowed
to have the union. They have not really meaningfully organized
into a union, and federal law doesn't really allow them
to create that. CBA Athletes dot Org is an athlete
organizing force that's probably the closest thing to a body
that represents athletes right now.
Speaker 4: They don't represent nearly.
Speaker 1: Enough to hold that designation, you know, legally.
Speaker 3: But they represent more than any other organization. And they
put together a rough draft of like.
Speaker 4: This is what a CBA could look like. Let's get
some stuff on paper, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they they're they're they're moving in that direction,
but there's I mean, how far away are we from
a CBA? How far or how far away are we
from maybe federal legislation ever being effectuated. Do you think.
Speaker 3: I don't think either of these things are very close
right now. And and this is the dirty little secret
that I think a lot of CDA advocates, especially on
social media, don't really want to engage with, which is
that even a CBA probably requires some kind of federal
law change too. If you want to be able to
have a collective bargaining organization that represents non.
Speaker 4: Employees, you need you need to change in the law.
Speaker 3: If you want college athletes to be or at least
some of them to be designated as employees and then
can enter into these kind of cbas, you need some
changes in the law. And that isn't really happening right now.
Speaker 1: And it's difficult.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'll try not to be too cynical about it,
but it is difficult for me to see.
Speaker 1: A world in the next year or any.
Speaker 3: Kind of federal college sports legislation passes, whether it's bipartisan
or unilaterally and uniformly only supported by Republicans, nobody has
a large enough governing coalition, and quite frankly, this isn't
an issue that is a high priority for most lawmakers,
and we you, and I think we would probably agree,
and maybe many of the listeners here do too, that
that's probably for the best if it's giving everything else
happening in the world right now, as frustrating as the
chaos and college sports might be, I think I would
probably want to have my lawmakers focused on foreign policy
or or affordability instead of the transfer portal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, why don't these universities just employ all the
student athletes. Why can't they just w two them and
just figure it out from there.
Speaker 3: Well, they could, but nobody wants to do that, or
almost nobody wants some of There's a few reasons, right Like,
let's say, in the in the great state of Utah,
or in many states in the Southeast, for example, they said,
screw it, we're going to.
Speaker 4: W too our football.
Speaker 1: Basketball, and baseball players.
Speaker 3: Well, one, now you have to pay workers compensation, you
have to pay payroll taxes, you have to pay in
the Social Security and your expenses are now significantly higher,
and those obligations are higher than they were when everybody was.
Speaker 4: An independent contractor.
Speaker 3: But then you also can't meaningfully negotiate with those guys
because if they're employees of the school, that makes them public,
you know, state state employees, and state law in many
places forbids those people from engaging in collective bargaining. The
parts of this country that tend to have be a
little bit more friendly to organize labor in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: And Northeast permit those things.
Speaker 3: In the Southeast and in you know my understanding, in
Utah as well, and many other places, it's not permitted.
You get around that in professional sports by making by
having the CBA negotiations be with the league rather than
with the individual teams. I think that would make a
lot of things much easier if the Ohio states, in
Indiana's in Texas of the world just said screw it,
we're gonna do it ourselves. But no university president wants
to do that unless.
Speaker 4: Uncle Sam literally makes them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can't just w two these employees. Why
do you need a collective barteying agreement just just a
W two student athlete to make them employees.
Speaker 3: Well, you could w two student athletes right BYU could
could theoretically decide you guys are all employees, and let's
say have enough other schools decided to do that, the
NCAA wouldn't kick them out.
Speaker 1: But there's a difference between being.
Speaker 3: An employee and then being able to have collective bargaining,
and you wanted, ideally, you'd want the same kind of
collective bargaining rules from state to state. I think what
what would really frustrate college sports is if, Okay, your
employees and the working conditions and the rules are going
to be different for Utah than they are for Idaho
than they are for Colorado, and you're all in the
same league and you're competing for the same thing. Like
that can kind of work in some nonsports industries where
you're not competing in exactly the same way, But that
would make coaches and administrators freak out. They're already really
upset that state ANDIL rules are different from state to state,
although you know, functionally if that doesn't matter because nobody
enforces those.
Speaker 1: If you want uniform rules like.
Speaker 4: We have in the NFL or the NBA or.
Speaker 3: Minor league baseball for that matter, you can't do it
with a bunch of state individual employment agreements.
Speaker 2: Crazy times, no doubt about it, and very intrigued by
the CBA. And if that could actually ever come about,
if that could act, if that's going to be the
way or or which way do you lean more? Do
you think it'll it'll end up being the kind of
a CBA type of deal, or do you think it's
just going to be like federal legislation's going to step in.
Is one maybe more likely than the other?
Speaker 3: You know this this is this isn't great sports radio
that I don't feel that either of these.
Speaker 1: Two things is inevitable. What is more likely, I.
Speaker 4: Think depends on who controls the federal government.
Speaker 1: Right if if.
Speaker 3: Republicans somehow expand their House majority in their Senate majority
in the next midterms, it will be much easier to
pass a more restrictive federal law that doesn't empower unions
or organized labor, and it would be something closer to
what we had in the eighties and nineties. If there's
we get to a point where there's more unified government,
where there's more split government, or a Democrat becomes president,
or somebody that is not openly hostile to organize labor
at any capacity than a CBA, I think could look
more likely. That there are federal judges and Democratic lawmakers
who have specifically proposed that as a solution.
Speaker 1: Right now, there's not really a.
Speaker 4: Mechanism for that to happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, we might not even have a National Labor
Relations Board in two years.
Speaker 4: Like this, This is not really the I'm to be.
Speaker 1: Engaged into many organizing campaigns.
Speaker 3: It really kind of depends on who's in charge, which
is which you kind of bring this full circle.
Speaker 4: Is what I know is so frustrating is you're.
Speaker 3: An ad or a coach because everyone kind of recognizes
even as TV ratings are strong and ticket sales are
often strong.
Speaker 1: Hey, this current system where.
Speaker 3: I could sign a GUYE to a contract and he
could slip to a different school in eight hours. It's
not a good system.
Speaker 4: It's not a sensible system. It's not an efficient system.
Speaker 3: But the college athletic leaders don't functionally.
Speaker 1: Have control of it anymore.
Speaker 4: They're not the ones that get to pick the rules.
Speaker 2: Crazy man, it's it sounds like the colleg football landscape's
gonna stay what it is right now. It seems like,
you know, between REV share collectives with with a certain
I kind of separate like traditional nil as well, Like
I think there's like three funnels. I look at the
REV share that's coming from the school. I look at
the collectives, right which is a bunch of corporations like
giving a W nine salary with or without deliverables, you
know what I mean. And then you have kind of
true nil where these ICs are going off and like
finding work wherever they can and aligning with brands product
services around the country or locally. Those are their three
funnels of cash, and the players are I mean, they're
making a lot of money right now. I don't know
how much demand's going to make. They're the University of
Washington transfer. But things are pretty crazy right now as
it pertains to you know, the ic work of a
student athlete.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, on one hand, for as frustrating as
the instability might be to a coach and sometimes to
people like us that need to figure out who's actually
going to be on a roster so we could talk
about a game or anything, or who has to sell
a jersey. There's never been a better time to be
a top three hundred football player or a high force
are you know, experienced college basketball player, even in this
cycle with the hypothetical salary cap that's not a real
salary cap because.
Speaker 4: Nobody's enforcing it. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of.
Speaker 3: Powerfour starters, not just quarterbacks, but power four.
Speaker 4: Starters who will make over a million bucks.
Speaker 1: And if you are a.
Speaker 3: Really good transfer quarterback or a really good transfer edge rusher,
you can make five maybe six million dollars, which is.
Speaker 1: A ton of money.
Speaker 4: That is more of an you might make in the
NFL for for some of these guys.
Speaker 3: If you are not one of those people, I think
you could argue in many ways, your college experience has
become worse, especial because it's never been easier for you
to get processed and and you know, sent to Utah
Tech or something because of something one agent did, or
the roster mant doesn't work out anywhere else. Maybe that
mirrors other American businesses in some ways.
Speaker 4: But yeah, a lot of people are.
Speaker 3: Going to make a lot of money and a lot
of rosters are going to look very different.
Speaker 4: Sometimes that's good. Sometimes I can see why it would
be less good.
Speaker 2: Matt Brown, Ladies and gentlemen, Extra Points MB best way
to support you. What you do, how you do it, Matt.
For all of our listeners, you.
Speaker 3: Bet you can find all of our work at extra
points MB dot com. We have multiple games you can
play on this website for free, a daily trivia game
for college football, a confession stand simulator. We have our
our Athletic Director game. I have been in the lab
over over a holiday break when I was free for
having to write every day to work on raking a
new game which I hope to be able to share
with you guys, maybe an MVP early next month. And
the newsletter so you can go find all that stuff
at Extra Points MB dot com.
Speaker 2: Matt we solution. We appreciate you man, thanks for ropping
on as always.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you bet brother faculator.
Speaker 2: There you go, that's Matt Brown, Extra Points MB. Great
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I'm coming up next. This is Cougar Sports on one
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