Speaker 2: Should we go nickel back?
Speaker 1: Here? Is that?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is that what we're doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, old Ken Palmer, I shout out to Ken Palm.
Speaker 1: Our music bumps on the show today are simply songs
Speaker 1: that we think are bad, but millions of other people
Speaker 1: seem to love. We did a little train earlier, came
Speaker 1: back a little nickelback, which one am I missing?
Speaker 2: We did one other. I did imagine dragons.
Speaker 1: You did imagine dragons, which is perfect our next guest.
Speaker 1: As soon as the US Department of Education handed down
Speaker 1: the ruling on the title nine, I guess I'll call
Speaker 1: it guidance. I thought of Amy Donaldson, who joins us
Speaker 1: on a Thursday. Amy, give me one song that a
Speaker 1: lot of people seem to like and you just think
Speaker 1: is horrible.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Oh yeah, I'm not prepared for this. My
Speaker 3: musical taste is just not in alignment with anybody I know.
Speaker 3: I grew up listening to classical music and country old
Speaker 3: country music, you know, like Hank william Senior. So I
Speaker 3: don't know things that everybody. I mean, anything by you.
Speaker 2: Too, Okay, all right, okay, fair enough obsession.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying Bono isn't a great human being. I'm
Speaker 3: saying I don't understand the love on the music side.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, fair enough. He that's a great thing
Speaker 1: about Oh, that's a great thing about music. What is
Speaker 1: for some may not be for others.
Speaker 2: All right, how you been? What are you working on?
Speaker 2: What's the latest in the world of Amy Donaldson.
Speaker 3: I'm working on too many things. Some high school investigations.
Speaker 3: I think I've talked about it before, the international students
Speaker 3: coming to the US to play, So still working on that,
Speaker 3: working on a podcast and some stories. It's also probably
Speaker 3: going to be reviving my column in the next little bit,
Speaker 3: so look for that. And working on a lot of
Speaker 3: really cool stuff in women's sports. So and I have
Speaker 3: two fosters who are looking for home. If anybody needs.
Speaker 2: A laugh, Okay, okay, there you go.
Speaker 1: Hey, Before we get to the ruling or I guess
Speaker 1: I'll just say the memo from the US Department of
Speaker 1: Education about this new title nine understanding. I did want
Speaker 1: to get your take on the fact that after setting
Speaker 1: a single season record for points and setting a single
Speaker 1: season record for goals scored, and finishing third in the
Speaker 1: West and making the playoffs, although losing in the first round,
Speaker 1: we will not recognize this RSL team that takes the
Speaker 1: pitch in a few weeks. What do you make of
Speaker 1: them really getting rid of most of their attacking players
Speaker 1: and one of their keepers and this new RSL team
Speaker 1: that is going to have a ton of new faces
Speaker 1: coming up in just a few weeks.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love it. I mean you're still going to
Speaker 3: have Diego Luna. I mean, and if he didn't endear
Speaker 3: himself to this fan base with his performance, was it
Speaker 3: yesterday against Costa Rica? I mean, that was amazing. If
Speaker 3: you weren't a fan before, you have to be a
Speaker 3: fan now playing with it. I guess it's a broken nose.
Speaker 3: He had surgery, I guess afterwards, but in getting an
Speaker 3: assist after the injury, it was crazy. So we still
Speaker 3: have him, We still have justin Glad. I mean, there's
Speaker 3: enough familiar faces. I think I loved Mika. I thought
Speaker 3: he was one of the more dynamic players. I really
Speaker 3: loved him. I like the idea of the new Australian
Speaker 3: kid coming in. I don't know. I mean, I there
Speaker 3: was clearly something off last year. I don't know what
Speaker 3: it was. I wasn't in the locker room, I wasn't
Speaker 3: in any meetings. I think it's I'm excited about it,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: I guess we'll see.
Speaker 1: As Kurt Schmidt has said on the show, I'm either
Speaker 1: the dumbest guy alive or the smartest guy alive, So
Speaker 1: we'll have to see kind of everything settles in, all right, Amy,
Speaker 1: It is a new world of college athletics. And I
Speaker 1: continue to use the line that on this show I
Speaker 1: prefer to diagnose and not prognostic aid because trying to
Speaker 1: predict any of this is really really tough. And we
Speaker 1: are awaiting a number of different pieces of guidance and
Speaker 1: legislation to come down that have not come down yet.
Speaker 2: But there were some significant news that came.
Speaker 1: Down last week from the US Department of Education, and
Speaker 1: I'll just simplify it. Essentially, classes future revenue distributions from
Speaker 1: a school to an athlete for his or her nil
Speaker 1: rights is what's called quote financial assistance, which must be
Speaker 1: made proportionally available to both male and female athletes are
Speaker 1: risk violating Title nine. And the simplest way to explain
Speaker 1: this is if you're at a school where fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the athletes are men and fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: athletes are women, half of the revenue has to go
Speaker 1: to both and now this could change. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a minute. But what do you make of
Speaker 1: the ruling that came down last week?
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't think I thought it was a negotiation
Speaker 3: a settlement. Was it like actually a ruling?
Speaker 2: This was a memo.
Speaker 1: A memo, it's the guidance from the US Department of Education.
Speaker 3: So what happened is they I don't know, because there's
Speaker 3: also been an executive order in the interim that's repealing
Speaker 3: some of the Title nine guidance that was put into
Speaker 3: place recently. So it's very confusing. And I didn't like
Speaker 3: what the NFA did, so they these power conferences is
Speaker 3: part of a lawsuit antitrust lawsuit. They had, you know,
Speaker 3: basically negotiated a settlement, but they didn't tell the plaintiffs
Speaker 3: in the case, the people who were suing, exactly how
Speaker 3: it would work. So I don't know that all the
Speaker 3: administrative code that's going to oversee this has been written.
Speaker 3: I obviously think that you should make the dollars the
Speaker 3: same NIL dollars that are available to men should be
Speaker 3: available to female athletes. The question I have is a
Speaker 3: lot of these NIL deals are funded by private collectives
Speaker 3: and they are they subject now to Title nind are
Speaker 3: they subject to Department of Education rules? And does the
Speaker 3: Trump administration rescinding that titleline guidance that was put into
Speaker 3: place a few months ago, does that change this settlement.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just an absolute gray mess right now.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody can tell you how it works.
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody can tell you how things are
Speaker 3: funded or you know, if I want to sponsor a player,
Speaker 3: I have the right to work with the player that
Speaker 3: I want to sponsor, right So it's they've already talked
Speaker 3: about how this is kind of a freedom of expression issue,
Speaker 3: but I don't know how it's going to work. I
Speaker 3: am really stunned that they came to this agreement without
Speaker 3: some concrete plan in place of how it will actually work.
Speaker 3: Are you just going to guarantee that if a business
Speaker 3: wants to sponsor a men's team, they also have to
Speaker 3: sponsor a women's team Like this has always been the issue.
Speaker 3: This is We've talked about this even when the very
Speaker 3: first deals came in. This is going to get out
Speaker 3: of control. And again, I think we can talk about
Speaker 3: this a couple of weeks ago if you take football
Speaker 3: out of the equation, it's better. But more women play
Speaker 3: college sports than men. So unless you've eliminated some teams
Speaker 3: to in there at some schools, which has happened, you're
Speaker 3: going to have women are going to require more than
Speaker 3: fifty percent of the money in most cases.
Speaker 2: So a couple things here.
Speaker 1: As we have talked about, the NCAA and the Power
Speaker 1: Conferences have agreed to allow each school to share up
Speaker 1: to twenty point five million in direct payments to athletes,
Speaker 1: that is via name, image and likeness.
Speaker 2: So that's going to become a reality. I believe that
Speaker 2: is July.
Speaker 1: And in most cases athletic directors have already come out
Speaker 1: publicly and said they intend to provide about seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of that money to the football players.
Speaker 2: So back to the whole, like, is this a ruling,
Speaker 2: is this just a memo?
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, the Department of Education is in charge of,
Speaker 1: you know, enforcing Title nine guidelines. So this is them
Speaker 1: saying this is what we believe you have to do
Speaker 1: to stay in the space where you're properly handling Title nine,
Speaker 1: and they are in charge of making sure that this
Speaker 1: does come down. Trump's nominee to lead the Department of
Speaker 1: Education is Linda McMahon, who is the estranged wife of
Speaker 1: WWE founder Vince McMahon. Because nothing is real, So what
Speaker 1: are some of the next steps here? Do you believe
Speaker 1: that once you know, Trump has now been sworn in,
Speaker 1: he's now the president again, once Linda McMahon takes over
Speaker 1: the Department of Education, are you aware of what those
Speaker 1: next steps could be to maybe roll this thing back.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not Linda that's going to have to write
Speaker 3: the you know, the administrative rules. I mean, she'll have
Speaker 3: to oversee it, is it?
Speaker 2: Richly clare?
Speaker 3: I hope that we can only hope because, like I said,
Speaker 3: I do like that nothing's real. But I think the
Speaker 3: other thing is that they just rescinded that executive order
Speaker 3: that over basically, the Biden administration had overhauled and created
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of new guidances for Title NIND and
Speaker 3: all of those have been rescinded with a new executive order.
Speaker 3: And so I don't know if here's the thing, So
Speaker 3: say the Department the schools try to abide by this
Speaker 3: agreement right and start writing administrative rules that will would
Speaker 3: oversee it. If you sus and say they give seventy
Speaker 3: five percent of the money to football and then the
Speaker 3: twenty five percent is split between the other sports. And
Speaker 3: the women find this problem, it's not fair and they
Speaker 3: want to challenge it. They normally the route they would
Speaker 3: go to challenge it, their website doesn't exist anymore. So
Speaker 3: the EEOC Equal Opportunity whatever whatever that stands for. They're
Speaker 3: the ones that determine if the rules have been violated.
Speaker 3: If there is a case there, you cannot sue without
Speaker 3: permission from them. So I have no idea. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: if nothing is real, I don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if they don't abide by these rules,
Speaker 3: if they don't abide by the settlement, I don't know
Speaker 3: who's going to enforce it. Because what normally would happen
Speaker 3: if you and I agree to a legal settlement and
Speaker 3: you don't abide by it, is that I would go
Speaker 3: back to the judge or back to the court, or
Speaker 3: back to the organization that negotiated is the NCAAA or
Speaker 3: the Department of Education, say he's not playing by the
Speaker 3: rules that he agreed to play by. But if that
Speaker 3: no longer allows you to enforce equity rules that are
Speaker 3: gender based. How do you enforce it?
Speaker 1: Good question and one that I clearly do not have
Speaker 1: the answer to, or else I probably just would have
Speaker 1: said it out loud. So you reference the payments that
Speaker 1: come from booster collectives that are from essentially donors or
Speaker 1: businesses around the market. So the memo it's not as clear.
Speaker 1: And again it is a memo. So here's what it
Speaker 1: says about that. It says the Department does not consider
Speaker 1: money provided by a third party in an NIL deal
Speaker 1: as quote athletic financial assistance. The athletic financial assistance, according
Speaker 1: to the memo, is what has to be split equally,
Speaker 1: so for instance, future revenue sharing payments scholarship dollars. But
Speaker 1: if money from private sources, this is the memo. It's
Speaker 1: directly from the memo. If money from private sources end
Speaker 1: up creating a disparity in an athletic program, it is
Speaker 1: possible that NILE agreements quote quote trigger a school's Title
Speaker 1: nine obligations. But your point, if there's no enforcement, is
Speaker 1: this just all hot air that essentially means nothing.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, so say that that happens. So and
Speaker 3: I can see this happening. So the school is going
Speaker 3: to put the money where the money where it brings
Speaker 3: them money, right, so they're going to promote I mean,
Speaker 3: I just read an ESPN. They just analyzed how the
Speaker 3: Power five conferences promoted men's and women's sports in a
Speaker 3: calendar year, and no surprise, they tweeted and you know,
Speaker 3: talked more about their men's programs than they did their
Speaker 3: women's in eighty five percent of the cases. So my
Speaker 3: issue is if they say, you know, we're just not
Speaker 3: going to do it, We're just you know, we're not
Speaker 3: going to do it, and nobody does anything unless they
Speaker 3: have to. This is really just the way human beings are.
Speaker 3: The reason these rules have existed is because nobody wanted
Speaker 3: women to producipay. We didn't care if they got the
Speaker 3: same amount of money. We didn't care if they got
Speaker 3: an educational opportunity. The rules are here because they wouldn't
Speaker 3: just play nice from the beginning. So now you have
Speaker 3: these rules they're talking about. You know, if these private
Speaker 3: investors create inequity, I guarantee you I can tell you
Speaker 3: that that's how already happening at BUYU. It is already
Speaker 3: creating an inequity the trips you can take, the scholarships
Speaker 3: you can offer, the players you can attract are different.
Speaker 3: For men's women's teams with no mi OL money, with
Speaker 3: no collectives involved. They're absolutely disproportionately in favor of men. Now,
Speaker 3: But who is going to enforce it? Because if I can't,
Speaker 3: if there's nowhere for me to complain, or if they
Speaker 3: are no longer rules that can be enforced that allow
Speaker 3: me to say, Hey, I'm being discriminated on the basis
Speaker 3: of my gender. What is the basis of my discrimination suit?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I don't know that there is one, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm They're shuddering all the DEI offices, all the offices
Speaker 3: that have anything to do with promoting and helping people
Speaker 3: make sure they're getting fairness from their educational opportunities and
Speaker 3: their athletic opportunities. And so I think that in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, people are just not even going to
Speaker 3: know what the options are. They're not even going to know.
Speaker 3: It's just like working in a building and you know
Speaker 3: you're the lowest paid person because you're a woman. But
Speaker 3: what do you do about it? Because if you go
Speaker 3: to your boss and say you're not paying me as
Speaker 3: much as you pay them, he's gonna say, fine, go
Speaker 3: get a new job. Go get a job somewhere else. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: the reason the rules are there is because if everyone
Speaker 3: was fair minded, we wouldn't have these issues in the
Speaker 3: first place.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm gonna ask the question Amy to set
Speaker 1: you up that I'm just going to dock shouldn't shouldn't
Speaker 1: the bulk of the money go to the sports to
Speaker 1: generate the revenue.
Speaker 3: No, because we tax payers. Public money is being used
Speaker 3: to fund every aspect of those buildings up there. The
Speaker 3: programs were built on the backs of taxpayers of both genders,
Speaker 3: and they you use tax money. I mean, I have
Speaker 3: this beef with all of public investment into money. It
Speaker 3: has to be there has to be a benefit for everyone.
Speaker 3: And if you're going to purposely say we're going to
Speaker 3: just invest in football and not, why am i as?
Speaker 3: Why am I? I mean? I know of athletic programs
Speaker 3: that don't even make money, and they're built on the
Speaker 3: backs of the students that go there to get an education.
Speaker 3: They're built on the backs of the community that houses them,
Speaker 3: that that pays higher property taxes so they can have
Speaker 3: a system of a higher education nearby and in their
Speaker 3: in their neighborhood or their town, or their state. Because
Speaker 3: an educated workforce is a more it is better. It's
Speaker 3: better for everybody. Better education system raises the level of
Speaker 3: everyone's lives. It makes everything better, makes a society much
Speaker 3: more efficient and innovative and success and just in every
Speaker 3: way it's better. But I mean, I was just talking
Speaker 3: to somebody else about this. If you look at the
Speaker 3: most the lowest studies of like rex sports through professional sports,
Speaker 3: every study says people who participate in athletics, even at
Speaker 3: a rec level or just a very you know, non
Speaker 3: competitive way, their lives are better. They're healthier, they have
Speaker 3: lower incidents of suicide, lower incidents of mental health problems,
Speaker 3: they have lower dropout rates, they have higher grades, they
Speaker 3: are much more likely to have to go on and
Speaker 3: get higher education. It's just stunning to me that we're
Speaker 3: even contemplating not being as equitable as we should. If
Speaker 3: you just look at the MCA men and women's basketball
Speaker 3: situation that happened in twenty twenty one, and what has
Speaker 3: changed in mended women's basketball college basketball in just through years.
Speaker 3: I don't see that there is a better anecdotal you know,
Speaker 3: view of why we should strive for some measure of
Speaker 3: equality for women.
Speaker 1: All right, before I set you loose, I m seed
Speaker 1: an event last week with a lot of very powerful
Speaker 1: rich people in the private equity world, and they all
Speaker 1: are looking as venture capitalists to invest in sports properties.
Speaker 1: And one of the topics is what you just brought up,
Speaker 1: and the money that's been invested in women's sports over
Speaker 1: the past couple of years.
Speaker 2: And there's the Caitlin Clark effect.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these uh, some of these w
Speaker 1: NBA teams, their valuations are sky high and a lot
Speaker 1: of money is going into women's sports. Do you think
Speaker 1: this uh, this this you know, the momentum that's been
Speaker 1: created by Caitlin and others, but Caitlin's at a big
Speaker 1: part of it. Do you think it continues? Are we
Speaker 1: approaching what some might believe is a bubble?
Speaker 3: No? I think it continues, And I would I would
Speaker 3: argue that Caitlin Clark was made possible by that investigation
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, because what we discovered in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one was the NCAA was absolutely strangling women's basketball.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't let them use March madness. They didn't invest
Speaker 3: in them separately. They didn't sell their television contract independently.
Speaker 3: That's why we couldn't do bracket challenges on women's basketball.
Speaker 3: The list goes on the NCAA. In my if I
Speaker 3: hate one thing in my life, it's the NTAA. And
Speaker 3: they nearly killed women's basketball on their own. They thank
Speaker 3: God for the social media posts of one athlete that
Speaker 3: showed the disparity, and everybody was outraged at the reality.
Speaker 3: I just think people don't know how bad some of
Speaker 3: the inequities are. I know there are conversations here. You've
Speaker 3: helped us have these conversations about turning Smith's Ballfield into
Speaker 3: a place where, you know, a headquarters of women's sports
Speaker 3: and community access. That's still I mean, not overwhelmingly won
Speaker 3: a vote amongst public people, people who live in the city,
Speaker 3: and yet we're still dragging our feet about it. We're
Speaker 3: still wondering if it's a good investment. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't get it. If we think vegetables are good for boys,
Speaker 3: why are they not good for girls. If we want
Speaker 3: to spend a billion dollars making downtown a great place
Speaker 3: for men's hockey and men's basketball, why can't we make
Speaker 3: you know thirteen South and Maine a great place for
Speaker 3: women's athletics. Why is there the single biggest investment into
Speaker 3: just women's sports. What a women's sports facility is six
Speaker 3: million dollars and that's Kansas City's And without Patrick Mahomes
Speaker 3: and his wife, that doesn't exist. I mean, at some
Speaker 3: point we have to ask ourselves. You're pouring billions of
Speaker 3: dollars public money, our money, taxpayer money into facilities for men.
Speaker 3: When do we spend a few thousand or million on women?
Speaker 2: Amy?
Speaker 1: I knew you'd be good with this today, so I
Speaker 1: appreciate your time. Let's get you in the studio soon. Okay, absolutely,
Speaker 1: all right, maybe Donaldson