Speaker 1: Matt Brown writes the college football well college athletics, but
Speaker 1: football heavy newsletter extra points that we use on the
Speaker 1: show quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Not happy money man.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Hey, I'm doing great. It's sunny, it's
Speaker 3: eighty degrees here in Chicago. There's no way I could
Speaker 3: possibly be upset. Even if it means that I'm going
Speaker 3: to be writing a lot this week about legal stuff.
Speaker 2: I know you will, and we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: I've got to give you my hot Chicago take, though
Speaker 1: it's my favorite summer city in America, and then on
Speaker 1: either side of summer, I'm like, I got to get out,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something else.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've lived here for post for a decade now,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's a hot take. Most people who
Speaker 3: live here think the same thing. From May until September.
Speaker 3: I think it's the best place in the entire country,
Speaker 3: and it's good enough that I still want to live here.
Speaker 3: But in January, and I've lived most of my life
Speaker 3: in the Midwest, I still want to walk in front
Speaker 3: of a truck by the ench. And it's not just
Speaker 3: because it's like six degrees, because it's less of that now.
Speaker 3: Just you don't see the sun. Right, even even every
Speaker 3: time I land in Utah step outside the plane, it's like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, it turns out my body does need vitamin
Speaker 3: D to like not want to die. I understand why
Speaker 3: people are happier here. That's that's, that's part of it.
Speaker 2: Now for sure. When the weather warms up, you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not depressed, I'm just cold. So now
Speaker 2: I feel better. Now I feel better now, all right, Matt,
Speaker 2: I'm just stealed thirty thousand foot viewpoint here. Like, where
Speaker 2: are we at.
Speaker 1: With House b NCAA, Like, what's the timeline and what's
Speaker 1: the latest?
Speaker 2: What should we know as of today on this Monday,
Speaker 2: Well as of.
Speaker 3: Today, there's been a little bit of a wrinkle, right, Like,
Speaker 3: over the last honestly six plus months, almost everybody in
Speaker 3: at the highest levels of college athletics and in the
Speaker 3: power conferences and conference offices have been operating on the
Speaker 3: assumption that this settlement is going to get approved essentially
Speaker 3: as is in early April, and all the revenue sharing
Speaker 3: and IL deals that have gone out to athletes in
Speaker 3: the last recruiting class and a lot of like vendor hires,
Speaker 3: you know, have been pretty explicitly because all of this
Speaker 3: is contingent upon the settlement being approved Evan. Last week,
Speaker 3: Judge Wilkins says, if you guys don't fix this roster
Speaker 3: limit issue that I've pointed out now multiple times, I'm
Speaker 3: going to blow up the settlement. So what we have
Speaker 3: now is that the plaintiffs, the Plaintiffs Council, and the
Speaker 3: NCUBLEA and the power conference folks have to get together
Speaker 3: and have to make a decision. Do we want to
Speaker 3: blow up this settlement and take this thing to trial
Speaker 3: where if we lose, the liability for the NC DOUBLEA
Speaker 3: at major conferences is twelve billion dollars, which I believe
Speaker 3: would essentially liquidate the NC double A if you want
Speaker 3: to roll the dice on court, or do we want
Speaker 3: to grandfather in roster limits and figure out some sort
Speaker 3: of way to make restitution to the athletes that have
Speaker 3: been harmed by our refusal to grandfather in roster limit clauses.
Speaker 3: And on the surface, you would think, well, that's that's
Speaker 3: an easy decision. Of course you should grandfather in the
Speaker 3: roster limits. Why are we going to let the thirty
Speaker 3: first person on a track roster blow this whole thing up?
Speaker 3: But as we wrote, today. It actually gets pretty messy
Speaker 3: because a lot of athletes got cut last year, and
Speaker 3: you might have some people that are on other schools
Speaker 3: now entirely or maybe out of the game, And do
Speaker 3: you let them back in? Do you allow a waiver
Speaker 3: to let some Olympic sport athletes potentially compete for two
Speaker 3: schools in one calendar year. You might have to if
Speaker 3: you're gonna want to comply with this ruling. We're gonna
Speaker 3: find out in a little over a week what they decided.
Speaker 2: To do a little over a week.
Speaker 1: So is that can we finally say we actually have
Speaker 1: like a hard deadline, like a drop dead date.
Speaker 2: Is that what we're expecting now?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to go double check on my computer
Speaker 3: fit exact date. But when Wilkins letter last week was
Speaker 3: you've got fourteen days figure this out, Yeah, we can
Speaker 3: finally you know, crap or get off the pot. I would.
Speaker 3: I would. I would still be pretty surprised if this
Speaker 3: settlement is not approved. But given the way the NCAA
Speaker 3: and Power Conference attorneys have kind of acted over the
Speaker 3: last couple of months, I can't say at zero percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why I followed up, because you know,
Speaker 1: every day. I mean, you're one of my first stops
Speaker 1: because we utilized a lot of the stuff you ride
Speaker 1: for the show. And then I try to see if
Speaker 1: Ross has anything the usual suspects, and it seems like
Speaker 1: all you guys that are plugged in are doing the
Speaker 1: best you can to nail down a date, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be fluid. Are you Is there any part
Speaker 1: of you that's surprised that we are sitting here now
Speaker 1: looking May right in the face in the next few
Speaker 1: days and we are still dealing with all this ambiguity.
Speaker 3: I'm a little surprised, and I probably shouldn't be. You know,
Speaker 3: one thing that was just reiterated to me by so
Speaker 3: many athletic directors, oh for February and March, whether they
Speaker 3: were at big schools or small schools, was we don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on, right. We are intellectually aware of
Speaker 3: this settlement. Charlie Baker sent ings out a couple of messages,
Speaker 3: but honestly, we hear about it from you or from
Speaker 3: Ross or from the cole often before we do anybody
Speaker 3: in Indianapolis. And that's just because all of this is
Speaker 3: being done by a handful of of attorneys, some of
Speaker 3: whom who don't you know, are outside council. And I
Speaker 3: think it was pretty clear that the folks that were
Speaker 3: doing the negotiating over the house settlement were not plugged
Speaker 3: in and didn't really care all that much about softball
Speaker 3: players or soccer players or how any of this stuff
Speaker 3: might affect Utah Valley University. And it turns out the
Speaker 3: judge has held a little bit differently about that. So,
Speaker 3: if you were going to limit your decision making and
Speaker 3: your inputs to this very small group of people and
Speaker 3: this very small class of athletes, and yeah, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of problems here that I think could have
Speaker 3: been addressed a couple of months ago and are not.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the story of the NCAA though.
Speaker 1: For college football fans college back, I mean fans of
Speaker 1: collegian athletics, but mainly you know, college football fans in
Speaker 1: college basketball too, both of the revenue generators have been
Speaker 1: adversely affected. What would you say as far as what's
Speaker 1: realistic to hope and expect once this is across the line,
Speaker 1: like on the scale of there will still be a
Speaker 1: ton of chaos on one end of the spectrum and
Speaker 1: this will finally bring guidelines and guardrails on the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum that will clean this stuff up.
Speaker 1: What's realistic to expect pretty quickly after this is across
Speaker 1: the line.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I think if and when this is this is settled,
Speaker 3: what I would tell for what I would tell fans
Speaker 3: is now you can have some measure of structure for
Speaker 3: the next academic year. And honestly, that's about all I
Speaker 3: would say. The folks from in at Indianapolis and at
Speaker 3: the Power conferences are really hoping that this settlement would
Speaker 3: create something of a de facto CBA that would provide
Speaker 3: cost certainty and structure over the next over the next decade,
Speaker 3: and protection from additional litigation. At this point, I think
Speaker 3: there's no chance of that happening. As soon as this
Speaker 3: is done and dusted, there will be three other lawsuits
Speaker 3: ready to go to challenge this on titleline consideration to
Speaker 3: challenge this from the athletes that opted out and still
Speaker 3: want another another crack at the ANTITRUSTNATA, and the second
Speaker 3: that Deloitte and or whoever ends up kind of functioning
Speaker 3: as this intermediary clearing house tries to invalidate a Bagman deal.
Speaker 3: They're going to be in federal court two weeks later.
Speaker 3: So there's going there's gonna be some stability just because
Speaker 3: you know, millions of dollars of contracts have been sent
Speaker 3: out that are contingent upon this thing happening in July.
Speaker 3: But I can't tell you what's going to happen in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven. Your athletic director and your football coach
Speaker 3: can't tell you, and I think anybody that says they
Speaker 3: absolutely can is selling you something.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's move over here because I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Matt, maybe you've been coming on the
Speaker 1: show for four or five years, and after nil and
Speaker 1: transferportal became a reality, and it was clear that administrators
Speaker 1: and leaders had failed everybody because there there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: that was prepared as far as okay, now now we
Speaker 1: know that this is the reality, but here's how it's
Speaker 1: going to work. Here are the mechanisms, okay, And none
Speaker 1: of that was in place, which has led to a
Speaker 1: ton of chaos and sports that we all love. And
Speaker 1: I've asked you at different stops whether or not we
Speaker 1: are at some point going to move into a reality
Speaker 1: of college athletics looking very much like professional athletics and
Speaker 1: the players will be able to unionize and they will
Speaker 1: be able to collectively bargain with whatever the governing body
Speaker 1: looks like. And where will there be a commissioner? Will
Speaker 1: college football look like the NFL? Will college basketball look
Speaker 1: like the NBA? And you know, a smart guy like
Speaker 1: you has been able to help us understand based off
Speaker 1: of you know, the Trump administration and changes they're going
Speaker 1: to make. How you know things have changed in that direction.
Speaker 1: Where where are we at now as far as your
Speaker 1: belief of what I know?
Speaker 2: You just said, you don't know what twenty twenty seven
Speaker 2: is going to look like.
Speaker 1: But my opinion, Matt, is the only thing that will
Speaker 1: settle most of the issues that are causing the chaos
Speaker 1: is a pro model. I still believe that to be true.
Speaker 1: Do you think at some point we are going to
Speaker 1: see that whenever?
Speaker 3: That is my opinion on this. I think is pretty
Speaker 3: different from most of my national reporter colleagues, and they
Speaker 3: may very well be right. Maybe this is me being
Speaker 3: you know, too much of a chicken little or something,
Speaker 3: but I legitimately think there is a better than fifty
Speaker 3: percent chance that this Congress passes some sort of college
Speaker 3: sports bill. Now, that bill may be something that every
Speaker 3: single economist and agent and lawyer on Twitter absolutely hates.
Speaker 3: It might be a bill that I really don't like,
Speaker 3: but I think there is more momentum and a political
Speaker 3: coalition that's that's more equipped to make that happen than
Speaker 3: there has been over the past couple of years. In
Speaker 3: my professional opinion, like the dry Little Secret is no
Speaker 3: matter whether you want a clusive bargaining agreement and and
Speaker 3: and athletes as employees and a union and that kind
Speaker 3: of structure, or whether you want to try to roll
Speaker 3: this thing back to nineteen ninety seven and give the
Speaker 3: schools a lot more empowerments to enforce amateurism rules. Either
Speaker 3: of those solutions is going to require Congress, because right
Speaker 3: now the NC double A is not empowered to make
Speaker 3: or enforce virtually any kind of rule without the sports
Speaker 3: system ruling and shipping away at it. So I don't
Speaker 3: look at that and necessarily think that was lack of
Speaker 3: administrator leadership. The lack of administrator leadership was probably more
Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven than in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: But you could come up with the best plan in
Speaker 3: the world. I can sit out here and I can
Speaker 3: write a three thousand word compromise that a lot of
Speaker 3: people would agree with tomorrow, and a second it's enforced,
Speaker 3: it's going to get smacked down on anti trust grounds.
Speaker 3: I personally think that there are in there are sixty
Speaker 3: votes in the US Senate to pass something that says, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to give the NC DOUBLEA a limited and
Speaker 3: conditional anti trust exemption to enforce some of these rules,
Speaker 3: and we're going to say that college football players cannot
Speaker 3: be employees and that designation only is true if the
Speaker 3: NC DOUBLEA commits to XYZ and we can reassess it
Speaker 3: every two or three years, and it's gonna make it's
Speaker 3: gonna make a lot of trial. War is pretty angry,
Speaker 3: but that might be the most reasonably the easiest path here,
Speaker 3: because I mean, you know this even better than I do. Locally, Right,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of states that don't allow or don't
Speaker 3: want collective bargaining for public employees. And if you're in
Speaker 3: a place you're not gonna let the firefighters and the
Speaker 3: cops and the teachers do it. You're not gonna let
Speaker 3: middle linebackers do it either.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's operate off the hypothetical that what you
Speaker 1: just outlined will be the direction. Do you agree with
Speaker 1: the direction? Is that what you would like to see
Speaker 1: happen for the sport? Do you think that's the right move,
Speaker 1: because I maintain mad that I and I will stay on.
Speaker 2: The hill where I do think the right move is
Speaker 2: the pro model.
Speaker 1: I mean, if players sign contracts at least they're on
Speaker 1: campus for a couple of years, if there is a
Speaker 1: salary cap, and I'm using professional terms, then maybe it
Speaker 1: does even the playing field a little bit. And of
Speaker 1: course there's always money paid into various ways, but that's
Speaker 1: not new, that's been going on forever. Uh So, if
Speaker 1: if there is a salary structure, a salary cap, and
Speaker 1: contracts where players are on campus for a couple.
Speaker 2: Of years, I believe that to be the right route.
Speaker 1: If the congressional bill that you're talking about is the route,
Speaker 1: do you think that will go a long way to alleviate.
Speaker 2: Some of the issues that we always talk about.
Speaker 3: I think the bill that's coming is something that's going
Speaker 3: to be written by Ted Cruz, and I admit I
Speaker 3: am generally not the kind of person who's going to
Speaker 3: go and say with my full chest, I love this
Speaker 3: bill that Ted Cruz wrote or that that Senator Lee
Speaker 3: is also going to support that. I'm sure we agree
Speaker 3: on something. It's a it's probably a smaller rist and
Speaker 3: my understanding because i've I've I've heard about drafts of
Speaker 3: this of this bill is kind of circulated around and
Speaker 3: is not it's not really a secret anymore. It wouldn't
Speaker 3: look like that very much like it wouldn't move to
Speaker 3: that professional model like now in my opinion, which I
Speaker 3: know makes for lousy sports radio. Is I think it
Speaker 3: depends on the kind of athlete you're talking about. Like,
Speaker 3: do I do I think that professionalization and employment status
Speaker 3: and contracts of track athletes and Division one college athletics
Speaker 3: makes sense? I'd say probably not. It's very rare that
Speaker 3: I run into somebody who wants that and and that
Speaker 3: model will probably lead to worse outcomes than what we
Speaker 3: have right now. Do I think that big twelve football
Speaker 3: players and Big twelve basketball players should be employees and
Speaker 3: have a union and head collectively bargain. I do, But
Speaker 3: I also am am I can't. I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: say that with like deep authoritative absolutely, because I I
Speaker 3: it's one thing to say we want collective bargaining. When
Speaker 3: a union doesn't exist, it's another thing to have somebody
Speaker 3: on the other side of that table to do that negotiating.
Speaker 3: And that doesn't exist right now. And if it's created
Speaker 3: by management by Congress, by Jim Kabayle at athletes dot
Speaker 3: Org out of kind of fiat, I think it's gonna
Speaker 3: get its butt kicked for the first several years, which
Speaker 3: is often what happened to athlete unions. So then it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I do I well this do? I want something that
Speaker 3: will make my life easier as a reporter, my life
Speaker 3: easier as a fan, and will probably benefit my personal fandom.
Speaker 3: I went to Ohio State, I root for the bluest
Speaker 3: of the blue blood football programs, like it would probably
Speaker 3: benefit me, and hope that it would benefit athletes in
Speaker 3: twelve years, even if it sucks for people in the
Speaker 3: short term. That's harder as not a copount honest to
Speaker 3: guys like I don't think there's a I just don't
Speaker 3: think there's an easy answer out there. If there is,
Speaker 3: we probably would have done it by now.
Speaker 1: So for college football and college basketball fans that cannot
Speaker 1: stand the fact that we no longer get to know
Speaker 1: these kids we no longer get to. You know, the
Speaker 1: great Rick mcjari's teams always had the Keith van Horns
Speaker 1: and the Andre Millers and the Britton Johnson's that stayed
Speaker 1: until they were juniors and seniors. And you and I
Speaker 1: have talked about the dynamic of the best Utah football
Speaker 1: teams were comprised of kids a coach with recruited that
Speaker 1: maybe weren't all that highly thought of and then developed
Speaker 1: into juniors and seniors and NFL players and those who
Speaker 1: have been the best Utah foot ball and basketball rosters.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty much the same thing with Breagham Young.
Speaker 1: So fans that cannot stand the fact that they're losing
Speaker 1: their favorite players every year, would you just say that
Speaker 1: you better get used to it, because that's how it's
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 3: Probably unless the Byus and Utah's of the world begin
Speaker 3: to recruit a very different kind of person and begin
Speaker 3: to really go out of their way to offer value
Speaker 3: independent of just money. And a lot of programs like
Speaker 3: to talk about, hey, we want to be transformational, we
Speaker 3: don't want to be transactional and like and I believe
Speaker 3: in their heart they mean that, but it's hard to
Speaker 3: get a twenty year old to buy into it when
Speaker 3: you don't under a twenty year ol. Like if we
Speaker 3: go back at time and talk to our twenty year
Speaker 3: old selves and look at various schools, I mean like, hey, well,
Speaker 3: because of this school, look how much money their forty
Speaker 3: year old alumni make. And look how this is connected
Speaker 3: to US world and news report, and look at it.
Speaker 3: All these things that will pay off in your thirties.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't care, would care about the amount of money
Speaker 3: that's available right now, playing time, maybe availability of cute girls,
Speaker 3: and maybe proximity to mom and dad, right And I
Speaker 3: know that schools try to do this. I know that
Speaker 3: both BYU and Utah don't recruit every single five star
Speaker 3: guy because you need somebody who's going to be comfortable
Speaker 3: in Utah, somebody who's going to be successful in this
Speaker 3: kind of environment. Probably not somebody who wants to be
Speaker 3: on every single commercial. But I think it will be
Speaker 3: very difficult in the foreseeable future to keep eighty five
Speaker 3: percent of the kids that you sign as high schoolers,
Speaker 3: or eighty percent of them on your team moving forward.
Speaker 3: It's it's difficult to look somebody in the eye and
Speaker 3: say no, you shouldn't go accept that eight hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars check at Arkansas.
Speaker 2: That's hard, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know one more thing here than I do
Speaker 1: have a BYU question, because we were talking about this
Speaker 1: earlier in the show, Like the dynamic of NI, I
Speaker 1: don't think is a bad I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: bad thing. I don't think in theory. I think it's
Speaker 1: a positive thing. Nil itself, to me, isn't the problem, right,
Speaker 1: It's the way it's administered.
Speaker 2: It's the lack of guidelines and guardrails.
Speaker 1: So you know, ultimately to your point, I would never
Speaker 1: have the nerve to tell anybody to turn out a
Speaker 1: bag like we're all trying to make our way through
Speaker 1: the world, and if you could parlay your newsletter into
Speaker 1: ten times what you're making right now, then go do it.
Speaker 2: Whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1: If I had a different offer to do the show
Speaker 1: in a different market for five times my salary, I
Speaker 1: want to go be able to do that. So I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily begrudge any young athlete for going to get
Speaker 1: their money at all. But is there any sort of
Speaker 1: way that we haven't necessarily discussed to make sure that
Speaker 1: those decisions and I know they've tried to close the
Speaker 1: portal here and the calendar is not as wide open
Speaker 1: as it used to be.
Speaker 2: But outside of signing a contract, I.
Speaker 1: Just don't see any other way of keeping these kids
Speaker 1: on campus if they can. I mean, we've had a
Speaker 1: couple of transfer portal losses for the Utes just over
Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: You know, Zach William's going to USC and there's.
Speaker 1: All this debate online about you know, there's the incestuous
Speaker 1: nature between the Utah and BYU coaching staff.
Speaker 2: Right, and so are you poaching?
Speaker 3: I've seen this on Twitter, right right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're poaching our player and like you can't call
Speaker 1: it poaching because it's allowed.
Speaker 2: It's not against the rules. Like nobody is doing anything
Speaker 2: to fary us here.
Speaker 1: So is there a way to you know, because again
Speaker 1: to your point, go get your back, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't. But is there a way to
Speaker 1: at least keep these kids on campus for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. That's a good situation for them and the institution.
Speaker 3: So I think there's there's a couple of things. If
Speaker 3: I can wave a magic wand right, because we actually
Speaker 3: we do have contracts, right Like I in addition to
Speaker 3: running a newsletter, I have a software product that that
Speaker 3: collects coach and administrator and vendor contracts and I sell
Speaker 3: that to news rooms and agencies and other people. And
Speaker 3: there are contracts between schools and athletes that are in there.
Speaker 3: And we're seeing this right now with Arkansas about Arkansas's
Speaker 3: ability to recoup some of that buyout money from you know,
Speaker 3: from from Nico's little brother. And and there's there's a
Speaker 3: good legal case to be had that those those posits
Speaker 3: are not enforceable. So then even a contract doesn't necessarily help,
Speaker 3: Like it kind of depends on what some judges and
Speaker 3: lawyers end up saying. One policy that does not get
Speaker 3: discussed very much federally that I think would meaningfully help,
Speaker 3: and this is something that I think lawmakers could do,
Speaker 3: even in Utah, is to have actual aggressive and meaningful
Speaker 3: agent licensing metrics and a law enforcement body or some
Speaker 3: kind of enforcement body. Maybe it's the Utah State Bar,
Speaker 3: maybe it's the FTC maybe I don't know, and anybody
Speaker 3: short of the Highway Police that basically requires you if
Speaker 3: you're going to represent an athlete in these kind of deals,
Speaker 3: to pass some kind of baseline competence and ethics exam,
Speaker 3: just like we do for lawyers. If I want to
Speaker 3: practice law on the state of Utah, I have to
Speaker 3: be barred in this. In the state, I'm on a registry,
Speaker 3: and if I act on ethically, I can lose my
Speaker 3: license and not continue to practice law.
Speaker 4: There's and and and For professional.
Speaker 3: Athletes in the NBA, in the NFL and NHL, their
Speaker 3: agencies have created these kind of benchmarks. To the extent
Speaker 3: that state laws or federal laws exist governing sports agents,
Speaker 3: they're almost uniformly not enforced. And I think a lot
Speaker 3: of the problems legitimately in college athletics roster management come
Speaker 3: from unqualified, unscrupulous, and you know, an agent with poor ethics.
Speaker 4: And if there were meaningful professional consequences to the guys
Speaker 4: that are trying to, you know, push people into the
Speaker 4: portal who aren't in there right now so they could
Speaker 4: collect twenty percent, I think that's going to drop some
Speaker 4: of this stuff down, because.
Speaker 3: It's it's not the people at c AA and and
Speaker 3: Rock Nation and Wassermen that are are escalating what we're
Speaker 3: seeing so much, particularly in college basketball.
Speaker 2: All right, before I say you lose.
Speaker 1: You know, there's continues to be I think it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating story.
Speaker 2: You know, for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: As soon as the ability to pay players became a
Speaker 1: reality and we kind of understood what NIL was. I
Speaker 1: did a show the next ask said, this is great
Speaker 1: news for BYU.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: If they want to get in the game, if they
Speaker 1: want to get involved, if they want to start really
Speaker 1: opening up their checkbooks. And I've got to be careful
Speaker 1: here because people get mad. I'm not saying the church.
Speaker 1: I'm saying a lot of the alums that have gone
Speaker 1: on to start MLMs, whether they're legal or not, they
Speaker 1: make a lot of money. And you know these CEOs
Speaker 1: of companies, Silicon Slopes and such. And the number I've
Speaker 1: been told Matt is BYU currently has nine seven figure donors.
Speaker 1: And the irony is a lot a lot of the
Speaker 1: a lot of the money spent, a lot of the
Speaker 1: resources spent is being spent on the basketball program.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how this lands with Collate.
Speaker 1: But since you and I last spoke, the reports are
Speaker 1: aj the bans is being paid seven million dollars for
Speaker 1: five months in basketball.
Speaker 2: You reference that we do have contracts well.
Speaker 1: According to Jeff Goodman, Robert Wright, the Baylor freshman signed
Speaker 1: a contract with Baylor for a million, BYU offered three
Speaker 1: and he said, okay, I'm gone. Richie Saunders is coming back.
Speaker 1: Reported seven figure deal for Richie. When you do the
Speaker 1: math based off the reporting, BYU basketball has a roster
Speaker 1: that's going to cost whoever's writing checks for the Royal
Speaker 1: Blue Collective about thirteen to fifteen million dollars. I wonder
Speaker 1: what you make of You know, Travis Hanson who played
Speaker 1: at BYU and others. Here's what Travis had to say said, quote,
Speaker 1: there's this narrative that we outbid people.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 1: We outlove them, We outdeveloped them, and we outpurposed them.
Speaker 1: And it just makes me want to throw up in
Speaker 1: my mouth because don't tell me I'm not seeing what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing. I just wonder why they can't, because look,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should run from it like you
Speaker 1: should be doing victory laps. That you have enough donors
Speaker 1: and you have enough economic power to attract players and
Speaker 1: give Kevin Young a roster the most people believe is
Speaker 1: a top five roster in college basketball next year. Why
Speaker 1: don't they just say the thing that's actually happening.
Speaker 3: You know, boy, that is a really good question, and
Speaker 3: I would love to have that conversation, even if it
Speaker 3: has to be off the record with some folks that
Speaker 3: have BYU dot edu email addresses. And I say this
Speaker 3: not to point a finger at BYU. I think some
Speaker 3: of that approach is almost universal everywhere in college athletics.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was at the National Championship game
Speaker 3: in football and Ohio State one and the castetti had fallen,
Speaker 3: and I'm standing next to Ross new York, who's Ohio
Speaker 3: State athletic director, and I wrote a story about this.
Speaker 3: One of the first things he told me was we
Speaker 3: did not have the highest payroll in college football, which
Speaker 3: I actually believe, and I would as I would talk
Speaker 3: to agents on the football side, they would say, like,
Speaker 3: Ohio State was very competitive, but they're usually not the
Speaker 3: highest bidder. And I don't know anybody that says, hell yeah,
Speaker 3: where the highest bidder. Absolutely, we're going to go drop
Speaker 3: the most money other than Texas, A and M. And
Speaker 3: we kind of know they kind of know how that happens.
Speaker 3: I think personally part of the issue. And when I'm
Speaker 3: about to say here is not me being critical this
Speaker 3: is just my what what I have perceived and seen through,
Speaker 3: you know, having lived most of my life as the
Speaker 3: latter day saying the BYU and the church as an
Speaker 3: extension of that, do not really drop the bag on anybody.
Speaker 3: If you're going to go if you're being a professor,
Speaker 3: if you're going to be a professor of Uyu or
Speaker 3: a software developer or somebody else, you're usually not paid
Speaker 3: top of market. And part of that is because like, well,
Speaker 3: don't you want to come work here and be in
Speaker 3: provo and be in the heart of everything, And for
Speaker 3: some people they absolutely do, and that drops you know,
Speaker 3: that that drops the labor price down a little bit.
Speaker 3: The you know, we all know that the folks that
Speaker 3: are doing a ton of work at the ecclesiastical level
Speaker 3: are unpaid. Like there is a huge culture of I'm
Speaker 3: not doing this for the money, I think anywhere at
Speaker 3: a church affiliated institution. And I am not criticizing that.
Speaker 3: In many ways, I think that's very noble. But if
Speaker 3: that is true, and you're anybody working within an LDS enterprise,
Speaker 3: and then you look out and then you see a donor,
Speaker 3: you know, not an LDS employee, but you know, a
Speaker 3: donor you suddenly paying top dollar for basketball I and
Speaker 3: and that, and that's kind of what's going out there
Speaker 3: in the marketplace. I can see how that might rev
Speaker 3: you the wrong way. I again, not a criticism, but
Speaker 3: I feel like I get mixed messages from listening to
Speaker 3: people at CEES or or are really close to the
Speaker 3: program about like, we don't want to be the high bitter.
Speaker 3: We want to be a value centered program. We want
Speaker 3: to do X, Y or Z versus the numbers that
Speaker 3: can get reported by secular basketball media. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if there is a way you can square the
Speaker 3: circle with we want to do things the b YU way,
Speaker 3: however you define that, and on what's happening now, I
Speaker 3: don't I don't blame anybody for going I don't know
Speaker 3: if this makes sense, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 1: For sure, it's an interesting time out this way, and
Speaker 1: that's a good team. Kevin has done a good job.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, like I said, I have no yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, and I have no issues with you doing
Speaker 1: what you have to do within the landscape of what's
Speaker 1: allowed to acquire talent. Just don't tell me I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing what I'm seeing it's very flood the zone, muddy
Speaker 1: the water Steve Bannon like. But anyway, I've kept you
Speaker 1: too long, Matt. Where can people go get the work?
Speaker 3: You bet? You can find my work which covers off
Speaker 3: the field stories in the college athletics industry at extra
Speaker 3: Points mb dot com. Working on some other original reporting
Speaker 3: and some stuff related to video games, which I know
Speaker 3: is the most consumers would rather hear me talk about
Speaker 3: than antitrust law, as you can find all of that
Speaker 3: at extra Points MBE dot com.
Speaker 2: Enjoy that Chicago Sunshine Man. Thanks for the time, Okay.
Speaker 3: No, okay, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you all right.
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