Speaker 1: Welcome to the solid verbal hull. For me, I'm a man,
Speaker 1: I'm forty.
Speaker 2: I've heard so many players say, well, I want to
Speaker 2: be happy, you want to be happy for a day.
Speaker 2: Edith Steak is that woo woof?
Speaker 1: And them and Ty.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the solid verbal boys, Girls, Monnyme's Ty
Speaker 3: hilde Brandt that fine gentleman over there as always the
Speaker 3: incomparable Dan Rubinstein is always the show here, driven by Geico, Sir,
Speaker 3: how are you this fine day?
Speaker 2: Couldn't be better? Couldn't be better? Took a shower for
Speaker 2: the first time in a couple of days. The sun
Speaker 2: is out. I'm leaving for the West Coast tomorrow as
Speaker 2: we record.
Speaker 1: There, There, it is, There, it is.
Speaker 2: I found some pairs of shorts I haven't worn in
Speaker 2: a long time. I hope that I can find shorts
Speaker 2: for my older son, who I'm taking with me. I
Speaker 2: just I'm in a good place, Tie, and I'm in
Speaker 2: a good place because of today's episode two, because we
Speaker 2: are having a friend of the show and a friend
Speaker 2: in general, and we haven't had him in a few months,
Speaker 2: and I'm just excited to get in the weeds with
Speaker 2: him as well.
Speaker 3: Matt Brown he writes the Extra Points with Matt Brown newsletter.
Speaker 3: He covers pretty much all things college football business related,
Speaker 3: and Matt has seen this universe grow up in a
Speaker 3: really big, really quick way, frankly because of NIL, because
Speaker 3: of the implications with transfer portal, because of the implications
Speaker 3: with coaching movement, because of everything that you always hear
Speaker 3: about conference realignment. We're going to try and dissect the
Speaker 3: small sliver of that on today's show. We want to
Speaker 3: try and get in depth talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about NIL because, frankly, it's the kind of thing Dan
Speaker 3: that we do this every day, even we don't fully
Speaker 3: understand what the ramifications are where it's taking the sport.
Speaker 3: One of the things we hear a lot is is
Speaker 3: college football dying because of NIL. You hear some real
Speaker 3: doom and gloom stuff with respect to NIL. We want
Speaker 3: to try and talk to Matt Brown and get a
Speaker 3: little bit more detail on what exactly is going on
Speaker 3: in the weeds out there.
Speaker 2: It's very rare that you can find somebody who covers
Speaker 2: the sport, who's into the sport, who knows all of
Speaker 2: the rules, who knows all of the repercussions, who knows
Speaker 2: all of the history. Who knows all of the possibilities.
Speaker 2: Matt doesn't. I don't, you don't. Thatt just happens to
Speaker 2: know more than us about this specific topic because this
Speaker 2: is his beat. The business of college sports is his beat,
Speaker 2: and our beat is what could we call Alan Lazard?
Speaker 2: Yea in a funny way? What is a name that
Speaker 2: we could come up with? Good or bad? What could
Speaker 2: we call him? Because we love watching him catch balls
Speaker 2: at names? I exactly, So I appreciate that we can
Speaker 2: bring on somebody like Matt to answer that kind of question,
Speaker 2: because nil, as you reference alluded to whatever. It's one
Speaker 2: of those things where I think, because I am one
Speaker 2: of the average college football fans, where you can say
Speaker 2: what is nil? And you can say, oh, players can
Speaker 2: make money off of their name and image and likeness,
Speaker 2: and you know they have more freedom financially than ever before,
Speaker 2: and like, how does it work?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know who's in charge, I
Speaker 2: don't know who's where's the money coming from? I don't
Speaker 2: know are they taxed? I don't know.
Speaker 3: We joked about it on the show we did on Tuesday.
Speaker 3: If we want to sponsor an Instagram post? Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think technically we could. I don't know how we would.
Speaker 3: Maybe we can ask Matt.
Speaker 2: It's definitely a new layer. If you've ever been to
Speaker 2: like an old diner that has like the fourteen layer cake, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can get through all that.
Speaker 2: It's definitely a new layer in an already difficult sport
Speaker 2: to follow day to day. Ty you know what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about? Those German chocolate cakes.
Speaker 3: I do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if those sing to you or if
Speaker 2: those revolt you. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Fourteen layers is a lot of layers.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of layers. I've seen Lasagnas that are
Speaker 2: like deeply and densely layered. But it's something that we
Speaker 2: talked about, and I want to ask Matt about too,
Speaker 2: about what this does for kind of mainstream fandom, if
Speaker 2: mainstream fandom even matters with college football, And I've made
Speaker 2: the reference to you know, European soccer leagues and how
Speaker 2: difficult they can be to be very into all the time.
Speaker 2: I almost think it's similar to like, are you into
Speaker 2: DC comics? Will you watch a Batman movie and be
Speaker 2: like h There were some inconsistencies based on detective comics.
Speaker 2: Number forty four or like Bain actually doesn't have that
Speaker 2: accent anymore. Like it's like it's a very much all
Speaker 2: in situation that is very difficult to be all in
Speaker 2: on all the time, and some people love, whether it's
Speaker 2: comic books and movies and books and like these like
Speaker 2: micro universes. College football is very much in college sports,
Speaker 2: very much a micro universe that you need to be
Speaker 2: both into, at peace with, and willing to do it
Speaker 2: all the time. Because if you are an Oklahoma State fan,
Speaker 2: if you're a Minnesota fan, if you're a North Carolina fan,
Speaker 2: and you are a diehard, that means you know the
Speaker 2: recruits they're targeting. It means you might know who their
Speaker 2: analysts are. What's an analyst? I kind of know, but
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can fully explain the day
Speaker 2: to day of an analyst as opposed to an assistant coach.
Speaker 2: So I'm just I'm glad we have This is a
Speaker 2: long winded way of saying, I'm glad we have Matt
Speaker 2: who can say here is my thing. And this is
Speaker 2: as best as I can tell in this constantly evolving world.
Speaker 1: How it works.
Speaker 3: Extra points mb dot com is the url if you
Speaker 3: want to go and check out what Matt has to offer.
Speaker 3: I think we just jump in.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Don't forget. If you want to subscribe to the show,
Speaker 3: go on out to our website soliverbal dot com. You
Speaker 3: can find all the links there. We would encourage you
Speaker 3: to rate and review the show if you haven't already.
Speaker 3: For Ballers dot com if you want, you can not
Speaker 3: only get early access to this episode, will drop it
Speaker 3: a day early, but you can also watch the video
Speaker 3: that we'll record with Dan and myself and with Matt Brown.
Speaker 3: And last, but certainly not least, please do follow along
Speaker 3: on social media with an important emphasis on some describing
Speaker 3: to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the
Speaker 3: solid verbal. All right, Dan joining us now from extra
Speaker 3: points with Matt Brown. It's the Matt Brown portion of
Speaker 3: that title. Matt Brown, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Thanks fella. That's always always great to be here.
Speaker 3: How you been so things have taken off for you
Speaker 3: with the newsletter, man.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been joking with my wife that
Speaker 1: if we can just get through this next week, that
Speaker 1: things will slow down and things go back to normal.
Speaker 1: And it's been like that for like eighteen months. But
Speaker 1: if you write about off the field stuff. It's been
Speaker 1: one haymaker after another, and I've been really lucky that
Speaker 1: like being able to write about just the nerdiest stuff
Speaker 1: in college sports has grown enough of an audience to
Speaker 1: really let me do this. It's been wonderful. You know what.
Speaker 2: By the way, you know what I like about Matt
Speaker 2: Brown other than the fact that I just like Matt
Speaker 2: Brown that he's a nice, smart person who works very
Speaker 2: hard to inform people, is he has selected an element
Speaker 2: of college sports and college football, and it's just like,
Speaker 2: this is my corner, this is my thing, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people, I mean, it's not just podcast, so
Speaker 2: it's everybody. We're just like, I'm talking sports with my guys,
Speaker 2: and Matt's like, this is what interests me, this is
Speaker 2: what I'm going to lock in on, and this is
Speaker 2: what I'm going to become as as much of an
Speaker 2: expert as possible in. And so I like that with restaurants,
Speaker 2: I like that with humans, and so I like that
Speaker 2: with of course people who cover sports. So that's that
Speaker 2: to me, ty is what I love about having them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and not just that, I mean we're out here yelling
Speaker 2: about is nil the end of college football? Matt's like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to file a Foyer request. I'll get back
Speaker 2: to you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: No, I had no idea when I got into this
Speaker 1: world that I feel like I was going to end
Speaker 1: up with eighteen credit hours and accounting and learned a
Speaker 1: little a lot more about sports law and all this
Speaker 1: stuff here. And you're right, I think part of that
Speaker 1: just came out of the fact that, you know, my
Speaker 1: blogging early days was Ohio State fan. There's like forty
Speaker 1: five people on that beat. There's nothing interesting that I
Speaker 1: can say, especially outside of Ohio, about Ohio States linebackers.
Speaker 1: But I can talk to you about how states finances
Speaker 1: or their contracts are other things. And then it turns
Speaker 1: out that was interesting to me. And now I've learned
Speaker 1: a lot about that kind of esoteric stuff. So like, listen,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk Patriot League, you want to
Speaker 1: talk Nil, you want to talk some just like nitty stuff,
Speaker 1: like I'm your hunckle Berry. I'm glad, like that's the
Speaker 1: that's the thing I've learned how to do Huckleberry.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, look, why don't we start with Nil.
Speaker 3: I think the last time that we had you on
Speaker 3: it was before the season had kicked up. It was
Speaker 3: before I quit the mysterious day job. So we've all
Speaker 3: kind of been on this journey over the last year together.
Speaker 3: Let me harken back to that kind of exaggerated question
Speaker 3: that I reference at the beginning, is nil the end
Speaker 3: of college football?
Speaker 1: No? I don't. I don't think so at all. And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. I feel like there's really two
Speaker 1: different nil markets that are happening right now. There's the
Speaker 1: NIL marketplace for primarily top three hundred college football players,
Speaker 1: a top one hundred college basketball players, where that gets
Speaker 1: written a lot through the eyes of college football assistant
Speaker 1: coaches and as one marketplace, right and then you have
Speaker 1: the nil marketplace for literally everybody else, because that marketplace
Speaker 1: does exist for D one softball players and Division two
Speaker 1: football players and D three everybody else's And what we're
Speaker 1: seeing because we actually do have some heart and fast
Speaker 1: data about this. We can look up compliance forms that
Speaker 1: are sent to schools for athletes that do deals. We
Speaker 1: have a general idea about how many athletes at a
Speaker 1: given school have done any kind of deal, and we
Speaker 1: know that at a place like Ohio State or Alabama
Speaker 1: or Tennessee you know, around one out of four college
Speaker 1: athletes across all other sports have done anything with NIL.
Speaker 1: With football players, the percentages a little bit higher, and
Speaker 1: we have to remember that some athletes, like international students,
Speaker 1: can't do nil deals because that way to complicate their visa.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's like maybe it's like a third. If
Speaker 1: we look at eligible athletes at G five or one
Speaker 1: Triple A schools, it might be twelve ten eight percent,
Speaker 1: and it goes down farther from there. So if the
Speaker 1: participations that low, I don't look at that as you know,
Speaker 1: being a catastrophic anything on college football. And most of
Speaker 1: the time, if someone's getting a thousand bucks or two
Speaker 1: thousand bucks to go, you know, shill for candles on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I think that's great, right. I think when we talk
Speaker 1: to assistant coaches, and this is not to be disrespectful,
Speaker 1: but it is in their interest to freak out about
Speaker 1: every tiny little difference perceived or in actuality between their
Speaker 1: program and any other program because they get paid set
Speaker 1: under fifty grand to recruit and if somebody else has
Speaker 1: something a little bit different from them, well that compromises
Speaker 1: their ability, right, So it's in their interest to tell
Speaker 1: reporters that have go outen in public and like this
Speaker 1: is the wild West. This is changing everything. And you know,
Speaker 1: for the kind of athlete that was going to get
Speaker 1: a bagman deal anyway, you know, we're seeing that now.
Speaker 1: It's just a different text classification. But based on just
Speaker 1: what we've seen so far, the impact that this has
Speaker 1: had on roster management and roster construction in college football
Speaker 1: in general, I think it's a little bit overstated. A
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that everyone's freaking out about now
Speaker 1: that was still happening. I mean, I mean, Jimbo said
Speaker 1: that that same thing, right We was always doing nil deals,
Speaker 1: we just weren't always talking about them. That's been the
Speaker 1: big difference right now is that now there's paperwork to
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that's been going on for decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and on top of that, there's the whole transfer rule.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious to hear how you've combatd the question
Speaker 3: of the end of the sport as we know it,
Speaker 3: because there are two things that have been kind of
Speaker 3: rolled into one conflated. You've obviously got nil legislation. More
Speaker 3: guys are eligible to get money off their name, image
Speaker 3: and likeness. That's what that stands for if anyone out
Speaker 3: there is wondering what is nil? But you combine that
Speaker 3: with transfer portal activity, and it feels like, suddenly we've
Speaker 3: got this free agent marketing. College football guys are getting paid.
Speaker 1: It's not what it used to be.
Speaker 3: YadA, YadA, YadA, the end of the sport as we
Speaker 3: know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I do hear that sometimes, and I hear
Speaker 1: that from fans, and sometimes they can hear that from administrators.
Speaker 1: So my first question to be, like, let's interrogate that
Speaker 1: a little bit. What is it about an athlete getting
Speaker 1: paid above the border are boldboard that makes you feel
Speaker 1: like this isn't fun to watch? Like for me, I
Speaker 1: like watching the football game on Saturday. I like making
Speaker 1: jokes on Twitter with my friends. I like eating irresponsible
Speaker 1: things in parking lots and being offered clear liquid in glasses. Right,
Speaker 1: and none of that changes based on the tax situation
Speaker 1: of anybody on the field. I can understand some frustration
Speaker 1: with Hey, rosters are more transient now, and maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know if that freshman that we signed is going
Speaker 1: to be somebody that we see in two or three years.
Speaker 1: That's been true for college sports other than college football.
Speaker 1: For a while. One of the fun things about this
Speaker 1: job has been learning about how recruiting and roster management,
Speaker 1: all these things work in other sports. And to hear
Speaker 1: volleyball coaches saying like, oh my gosh, people have been
Speaker 1: tampering like hell for years, Like the AA volleyball coaches
Speaker 1: are like the bagmen of that community, and people still
Speaker 1: care about volleyball. So I look at that and think, like,
Speaker 1: I get how that might make some people's lives more difficult,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it fundamentally changes the experience of
Speaker 1: what we like, and things evolve and change. I don't
Speaker 1: think the way that roster management and nil and transfers
Speaker 1: are looking now will be what they look like in
Speaker 1: a couple of years. That market is going to reach
Speaker 1: some kind of equilibrium a little bit. But if coach
Speaker 1: is changing this quickly, hasn't ruined the sport for you.
Speaker 1: Are school's changing conferences this quickly, right? I don't think
Speaker 1: it should if a middle linebacker makes that same decision,
Speaker 1: especially because you are probably going to benefit from that
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Fair Enough, what don't we know at this point, because
Speaker 2: as far as I can remember, the NCAA last summer said, Okay,
Speaker 2: you are good to do this. Also, we're not doing
Speaker 2: anything with it. We're not legislating things yet, we are
Speaker 2: not overseeing it. And so there is this element and
Speaker 2: you know, the term wild wild West is used a lot,
Speaker 2: but like there was an articles today I think it
Speaker 2: was David Ubben at the Athletic talking about like the
Speaker 2: Tennessee Fan Collective putting together fifteen twenty twenty five million
Speaker 2: dollars per recruiting class and putting it towards, you know,
Speaker 2: getting star players paid because of their contributions to winning
Speaker 2: and production, productivity, whatever on the field. So what is
Speaker 2: their oversight? What is the oversight? What do contracts look like?
Speaker 2: Who is looking at contracts? Is that person who is
Speaker 2: looking at Hendon Hooker's contract from a car dealership somebody
Speaker 2: who has the best interest of the car dealership, has
Speaker 2: the best interest of this like third party like open
Speaker 2: endorse so we're gonna help you like find endorsements and
Speaker 2: everything like that. Is it an agent who's like, hey,
Speaker 2: Hendon Hooker, I'm looking out for you. This looks out
Speaker 2: for me. This is our deal. Like what is yet
Speaker 2: to be written in terms of all of these new
Speaker 2: business relationships with not amateurs in terms of amateur student athlete,
Speaker 2: but amateurs of the business world.
Speaker 1: This is the biggest question, and it's something I have
Speaker 1: a big trelot board here and like on my computer,
Speaker 1: and there's like eight different stories kind of in process
Speaker 1: of reporting looking through this because this is the big
Speaker 1: question that I have, and I feel very confident that
Speaker 1: we're going to see some stories first and these first
Speaker 1: couple of months this year about athletes are getting some
Speaker 1: unpleasant surprises from the IRS, particularly for the athletes that
Speaker 1: took big expensive cars and not cash and not realizing
Speaker 1: that those are taxable assets, and suddenly they owe, you know,
Speaker 1: the IRS, nine thousand dollars because of that truck that
Speaker 1: they then gave back because they transferred or did something else.
Speaker 1: That's an issue because I can tell you those first
Speaker 1: couple of months when nil deals were first happened July, August, September,
Speaker 1: nobody really knew what they were doing. And by nobody,
Speaker 1: I mean not just the athletes, the compliance officers and
Speaker 1: a lot of the brands. A lot of the companies
Speaker 1: that have been really heavily involved in this world have
Speaker 1: never done influencer marketing before, so they don't really know
Speaker 1: how to evaluate the success of an Instagram campaign. They
Speaker 1: don't know how to price it, they don't know what
Speaker 1: kind of contracts they have to offer. They just know
Speaker 1: I want to help ol state you and which is fine.
Speaker 1: And on one hand, I look at that and think
Speaker 1: there's there's reason to be excited or optimistic because as
Speaker 1: those local businesses learn more, that will mean more opportunities
Speaker 1: for all football and all women's volleyball and soccer players
Speaker 1: and people that that can benefit. But there's going to
Speaker 1: be pickups. I have a lot of questions about these collectives.
Speaker 1: I have a lot I have questions about how the
Speaker 1: collectives themselves make money because some of them are pitching
Speaker 1: themselves as completely nonprofit entities, which we'll see if the
Speaker 1: IRS agrees. You know, that's stay tuned on extra points.
Speaker 2: So as I saw, Heath Shuler is a Heath Shooler
Speaker 2: is a consultant for the Tenet like also they have
Speaker 2: a pain for.
Speaker 1: Former Congressman He's right, yeah, for the tendency on Yeah,
Speaker 1: agents were agents. What they typically do, right, they take five, ten,
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of these kind of deals. And what I've
Speaker 1: talked to from a lot of other agents working independently,
Speaker 1: is I don't really want to be involved in the
Speaker 1: college athlete and IL space because ten percent of a
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty dollars deal is nothing, and I
Speaker 1: have to do an enormous amount of scale to do it.
Speaker 1: And I can't require the athlete that's signing with me
Speaker 1: at nineteen to still sign with me once they turned pro.
Speaker 1: And that's been kind of the issue with the Sneaker universe,
Speaker 1: right with basketball players. So if a lot of those
Speaker 1: other agents aren't getting involved, I didn't realize this until
Speaker 1: this year. Basically, for college, you can just declare yourself
Speaker 1: an agent. Like I've talked to a lot of people
Speaker 1: that were representing an athlete I was thinking of doing
Speaker 1: a deal with I only to learn they were an
Speaker 1: undergrad and that they're representing their dormmat and like they're twenty,
Speaker 1: they haven't even finished Vermont yet, So like, okay, that
Speaker 1: that changes the way that you and I work together.
Speaker 1: So I would have some concerns, and I would have
Speaker 1: some concerns. And this isn't This is not a criticism
Speaker 1: of Dave's story or any these other stories. But if
Speaker 1: we're writing about the NIL space and we the only
Speaker 1: people were talking to are people who run collectives that
Speaker 1: are like, Nope, my collective is giving out one hundred
Speaker 1: bajillion dollars. And then we talked to somebody who's industry
Speaker 1: benefits from people using these collectives, like yep, I'm the
Speaker 1: CEO of Big Nil, and I looked at the numbers
Speaker 1: and nils getting real big, and then we publish that
Speaker 1: without maybe digging into can we confirm any of those numbers?
Speaker 1: Are that deal that's being offered to the athlete actually happening?
Speaker 1: How these people are making money? Like I got lots
Speaker 1: of follow up questions, and it reminds me a little
Speaker 1: bit of like crypto or maybe some other basic financial
Speaker 1: instruments where maybe the cart's gotten out ahead of the
Speaker 1: horse a little bit, and we we're not exactly sure
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in a year or two in
Speaker 1: terms of regulations or actually executing on the things that
Speaker 1: we say that we're going.
Speaker 2: To do, you know what I mean totally? And so
Speaker 2: what is where is the messiness coming from?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: From the school's perspective, right, so you have the schools
Speaker 2: who have students who are making money from outside entities,
Speaker 2: and they themselves have nothing to do with things. But
Speaker 2: also you're talking about schools who are with these athletes
Speaker 2: all day, schools who could be seeing bad things happen
Speaker 2: if a deal goes wrong, if it affects eligibility all,
Speaker 2: Like what are the school's roles at this point? Like
Speaker 2: they can say they're educating, but like there is this
Speaker 2: like weird lack of accountability from the schools perspective. Do
Speaker 2: you see that changing or adjusting? Like it's just very
Speaker 2: strange that. And I am somebody who likes that players
Speaker 2: are making money from their name, image and likeness, but
Speaker 2: it's very strange that, like college football is a major
Speaker 2: sport and yet the schools have nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the income of their best players.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as the.
Speaker 2: NHL like all these like we have governing bodies that
Speaker 2: oversee everything, and schools are like, you know, whatever happens happens.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the worst case scenario, I think in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways, right, And I've talked to
Speaker 1: some bigger schools that say, you know, even if we
Speaker 1: change state law that allows us to like actually proactively
Speaker 1: go after and try to book some of these deals,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna want to do it because we don't
Speaker 1: want that liability, especially because maybe not every company that
Speaker 1: wants to aggressively get involved in this space is on
Speaker 1: the level. Right. So if you're Ohio State and you
Speaker 1: book a deal with Jerry's you know, truck company dealership,
Speaker 1: and that dealership goes belly up or get sued or
Speaker 1: something bad happens as some oh issue is liable, then
Speaker 1: don't want that. But you're kind of still doing that
Speaker 1: right now without you're right at that level of oversight.
Speaker 1: I can tell you here's here's another major thing that
Speaker 1: I hear a lot, because so much of the people
Speaker 1: that I talk to are mid majors or maybe D
Speaker 1: one schools that don't have football programs. Like let's say
Speaker 1: if we're you know, a Patriot legue team. Let's say
Speaker 1: let's say we're Lafayette, and they might sit down there
Speaker 1: and talk to their athletes, and you're gonna have athletes
Speaker 1: at Lafayette who could make nil money, probably not one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars unless there's somebody who's really good at twitch,
Speaker 1: but people who generates the value. But Lafayette, and this
Speaker 1: is just an example. You know, don't if you don't,
Speaker 1: don't yell at me or if those specifics are wrong.
Speaker 1: But Lafia, it's probably got like one and a half
Speaker 1: compliance people, a couple of grad assistants helping them in
Speaker 1: that department. They're gonna have two or three sports information
Speaker 1: people and some grad assistants, so they're gonna I mean
Speaker 1: like people at those kind of schools will tell me
Speaker 1: I literally don't have the capacity to do more about
Speaker 1: nil than say, we did this deal with influencer open doors,
Speaker 1: so we have the compliance stuff. Here's a couple of
Speaker 1: videos you can watch about Instagram. Please don't do a
Speaker 1: deal with the porn company. Please don't deal a deal
Speaker 1: that's going to embarrass me. And you're on your own,
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be a couple of very entrepreneurial minded
Speaker 1: people that will jump into that, and other people are like,
Speaker 1: I have no idea even where to start, and so
Speaker 1: they don't. And I look at that and think, well,
Speaker 1: that's too bad, not just because you're missing out on money,
Speaker 1: but you're missing out on building a professional network and
Speaker 1: learning about industries. That's really hard to do when you're
Speaker 1: a college athlete, which I think people forget sometimes because
Speaker 1: it's not like you can if you're playing d one
Speaker 1: basketball that you can just say, all right, hey, i'm
Speaker 1: studying abroad, I'm going to go to Italy, I'll see
Speaker 1: you in four months, or I'm doing this internship now
Speaker 1: with Goldman because you got to lift weights and do
Speaker 1: stuff for twin tenty five hours a week, so you
Speaker 1: don't get that same college experience. Going in doing nil
Speaker 1: deals gives you an opportunity to be exposed to some
Speaker 1: of that and the lack of resources for smaller schools
Speaker 1: is one of the big pain points for the bigger schools.
Speaker 1: That's the pain point Dan, for exactly what I think
Speaker 1: you're explaining, and then they hear their regents and their
Speaker 1: boosters and their fans say, listen, I looked on the
Speaker 1: message boards here and sliced bread says that somebody in
Speaker 1: other school has given that ten million dollars. What are
Speaker 1: we doing and we can't and there's incentives to maybe
Speaker 1: do stuff outside the lines. It's a difficult position to
Speaker 1: be and if you have that kind of booster community.
Speaker 2: How universal is state law at this point, because we
Speaker 2: recently saw a story about Florida State feeling like they're
Speaker 2: falling behind because of what they're unable to do within
Speaker 2: the state of Florida. So how universal is state law
Speaker 2: in terms of paying influencers, you know, using name, image
Speaker 2: and likeness among students, whatever. And how universal is the
Speaker 2: willingness or I don't know what my like my English
Speaker 2: is here, but how universal is the willingness of schools
Speaker 2: to part with trademarks? So an Alabama logo a us
Speaker 2: C logo. I had seen that that was sort of
Speaker 2: a hang up with Caleb Williams as he was trying
Speaker 2: to figure out where he wanted to go. That USC
Speaker 2: isn't especially fond of parting with its own trademarks for
Speaker 2: other people to use unless they are Nike or what,
Speaker 2: you know what, unless it's a deal like that. So
Speaker 2: how universal is the willingness on the state level and
Speaker 2: the universe and the willingness on the university level from
Speaker 2: a trademark perspective.
Speaker 1: This is a great question and it's a really important one,
Speaker 1: and the answer is not even close to at all? Right,
Speaker 1: I figured, yeah, so not I don't want to be
Speaker 1: like explicitly partisan here or anything, but I can tell
Speaker 1: you that most of the state lawmakers last year that
Speaker 1: were most involved in crafting NIL bills had no idea
Speaker 1: what they were doing do not follow college athletics are
Speaker 1: not aware of any of the issues in that world.
Speaker 1: They were doing it because they're boosters and their voters
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, state US going to fall behind,
Speaker 1: so we have to do this really quickly. And then
Speaker 1: they realized in six months that maybe they made some mistakes,
Speaker 1: and that's so you're seeing one. Not every state did
Speaker 1: one of these at all. Indiana, Utah, I want to say,
Speaker 1: Wisconsin had none, and some commentators have argued that actually
Speaker 1: put them at an advantage. It's not an accident that
Speaker 1: BYU was one of the first schools to do wide,
Speaker 1: you know, broad based deals for not just all of
Speaker 1: their walk ons, but I think all of their women
Speaker 1: athletes have something so like and their law let them
Speaker 1: do that. So you have some places where you have
Speaker 1: more restrictive laws, and there's a push to change that,
Speaker 1: particularly in the South, with Florida, with Mississippi, with Georgia.
Speaker 1: You have some places where the law is hilariously you know,
Speaker 1: poorly written, and that has nothing to do with enforcement
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of there. You have some places
Speaker 1: where states the state legislator only meets like once every
Speaker 1: other year or it meets for six weeks and they
Speaker 1: have other things going on, as you man I'd expect,
Speaker 1: and so nothing's really happening there. So there's there is
Speaker 1: not even close to certainty. And this is why the
Speaker 1: nc double A and why are one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the NCUBA are many ads are saying we need
Speaker 1: a federal law, and that's that's you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of a different conversation. And then with the trademark thing,
Speaker 1: you're right too, there are smaller schools that don't care,
Speaker 1: and even a couple of big schools that don't care.
Speaker 1: Mi Alma Mater Ohio State probably employs more trademark lawyers
Speaker 1: who are like aggressively going after this. Then a lot
Speaker 1: of other schools have like athletic trainers, right like if I,
Speaker 1: if I uh pronounce the incorrectly on this podcast, I
Speaker 1: might get a letter to Mike my po box. So
Speaker 1: that's that's a big issue for many schools. Licensing and
Speaker 1: sponsorship is a big revenue source and if they don't
Speaker 1: aggressively protect that IP if Texas A and M doesn't
Speaker 1: suit anybody that thinks about the number twelve, then they
Speaker 1: lose that. And we'll see if that becomes an issue
Speaker 1: in recruiting. My guess is probably not that much, but
Speaker 1: it is an issue, and what kind of nil deals
Speaker 1: you can do. The last thing I think I would
Speaker 1: say is, despite hesitancy about copyrights, we haven't seen anybody
Speaker 1: yet any school actually try to take punitive action on
Speaker 1: an athlete because the deal that they did. I could tell,
Speaker 1: you know, beginning in the beginning of this process, a
Speaker 1: lot of compliance teams and honestly still now expressed a
Speaker 1: lot of apprehension about their athletes becoming barstool athletes or
Speaker 1: doing gilts at barstool because it's because of their connection
Speaker 1: with gambling, and many state laws said don't do that.
Speaker 1: But nobody really, you know, made an athlete, to the
Speaker 1: best of my knowledge, terminate that deal or actually remove
Speaker 1: their eligibility. They may have educated them, they may have
Speaker 1: said please don't do this, they may have talked about it,
Speaker 1: but I don't think anyone's been willing to actually put
Speaker 1: the hammer down. And that's going to be true. I
Speaker 1: think as other athletes kind of push the envelope as
Speaker 1: to what is permitted. I mean, if you were somebody
Speaker 1: that did a deal with the sportsbook, right now and
Speaker 1: your school said no, if you're good enough, I don't
Speaker 1: know anyone's going to tell you not to write like
Speaker 1: you have to do something absolutely outlandish to really get
Speaker 1: I think in trouble right now, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: One of the things that Dan and I have been
Speaker 3: thinking about a lot is perhaps this other I almost
Speaker 3: want to call it a don't look up moment where
Speaker 3: we know that EA Sports wants to make the video game.
Speaker 3: We know that pretty much every college wants to be
Speaker 3: part of that video game. We also know that now
Speaker 3: because of new rules, players can benefit in some regard
Speaker 3: from that. The don't look up moment, though, is how.
Speaker 2: Do they benefit from that?
Speaker 3: And who coordinates the benefits that they receive from that
Speaker 3: purported video game. Where I'm going with this is where
Speaker 3: are we at with regard to a player's association, some
Speaker 3: sort of player union? Is it the kind of thing
Speaker 3: Matt where players can buy in when they start playing
Speaker 3: at the collegiate level and then they're just part of
Speaker 3: this thing? Do you foresee any sort of group with
Speaker 3: oversight applying to specific benefits, specific circumstances and not the
Speaker 3: whole sha? Where are we at with that movement?
Speaker 1: So? This is a really good question. Let me answer
Speaker 1: the video game part first, and then we can talk
Speaker 1: about because you actually hit on something that's a gigantic deal.
Speaker 1: I was actually just talking to somebody at a sports
Speaker 1: like literally before we recorded today. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of optimism on their side
Speaker 1: that when the game is released next year, it will
Speaker 1: include player likenesses. And the reason for that is over
Speaker 1: the last several months, many schools, mostly P five schools,
Speaker 1: but some G five schools too, have begun to set
Speaker 1: up group licensing programs. I think a lot of them
Speaker 1: are working with a company called the Brander Group brand
Speaker 1: our group, which does group licensing, I want to say
Speaker 1: for like the WNBAPA and some other professional associations. And
Speaker 1: the way that's set up now is an athlete voluntarily
Speaker 1: opts in. It's not required. You can do it as
Speaker 1: soon as you enroll, and that gives the school permission
Speaker 1: to make jerseys with your name on them or do
Speaker 1: other digital products with your name on them, and then
Speaker 1: you get a percentage of of that revenue. It's not
Speaker 1: like a union where maybe you could collectively bargain and
Speaker 1: argue over that particular percentage. So it's not the same thing,
Speaker 1: but now you have an end where you can do that.
Speaker 1: And now we are getting to the point where so
Speaker 1: many schools are opting into those deals with this one
Speaker 1: company that theoretically Brandar could then go to EA and say,
Speaker 1: I have the NILS for football players at eighty schools.
Speaker 1: Let's do a deal where that EA Sports would then
Speaker 1: pay every one of those athletes. I would I would
Speaker 1: say probably the in the mid to high four figures
Speaker 1: to appear in this game, and then potentially a percentage
Speaker 1: for future DLCs if you're involved, and I think every
Speaker 1: college football player be thrilled to do that. And then
Speaker 1: once that happens, then you would be a system where
Speaker 1: athletes could opt in at their individual school and I
Speaker 1: would honestly expect some kind of announcement on that front
Speaker 1: by this summer. Wow, that's that's where the wheels are
Speaker 1: turning on there. So there's a lot of optimism on
Speaker 1: the video game, but that's going to happen. And also
Speaker 1: if that doesn't happen, notre name is not going to
Speaker 1: be in the game, like Northwestern is not going to
Speaker 1: be in the game. I think probably ten schools won't
Speaker 1: be in the game, but it's going to happen. The
Speaker 1: other question, though, is a much much bigger, really existential
Speaker 1: question about are we're going to have a union. And
Speaker 1: right now there can't be an athlete union because legally
Speaker 1: college athletes are not employees. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to be an employee before you can unionize, and that
Speaker 1: may change. That may change because the NLRB, the organization
Speaker 1: that ruled in favor of Northwestern, has based like the
Speaker 1: head of that is basically put out an all points
Speaker 1: bulletin saying that would be a great time for an
Speaker 1: athlete to say to file a complaint, and athletes right
Speaker 1: now haven't. But two athletes rights organizations, one in California
Speaker 1: and what one I believe in Minnesota have filed those complaints.
Speaker 1: So that takes eighteen months basically for that to happen,
Speaker 1: but it could. The federal court system is looking at
Speaker 1: a case right now, it's called the Johnson case dealing
Speaker 1: with Villanova of all places that are saying that we
Speaker 1: deserve to be classified as AES and so the federal courts,
Speaker 1: whether that's the Supreme Court or district court might rule that.
Speaker 1: So once that happens, then we could see another union drive,
Speaker 1: and then down the road we could have a player's
Speaker 1: union who that could collectively bargain not just about the
Speaker 1: video game or about jerseys, but also about health insurance
Speaker 1: or base salaries or COVID or any of those other things.
Speaker 1: I think there's some level of wish casting among certain
Speaker 1: elements in both college sports media and college sports academia
Speaker 1: that are like, this is going to happen tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: regardless whether you think it's a good idea or not,
Speaker 1: like I can tell you it's not happening tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: I would put my money on the next union drive
Speaker 1: in college football failing before it is successful. But there's
Speaker 1: a good chance eventually this will happen and we'll have
Speaker 1: that set up like we do in the pros.
Speaker 3: My other question with regard to that, Matt, where does
Speaker 3: this go next? So we know about the video game,
Speaker 3: you mentioned, jersey sales, things of that nature, but my hunches,
Speaker 3: and maybe this is wish casting as well, that the
Speaker 3: longer we go on in a world with NIL, the
Speaker 3: more that sphere of influence will grow or will test
Speaker 3: the boundaries to see what it can get its hands on.
Speaker 3: Where do you see NIL going next? With respect to
Speaker 3: players getting benefits financial otherwise from things like jersey sales
Speaker 3: or other products that maybe weren't even in the equation
Speaker 3: when we started talking about this thing a year plus ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's two places where it can still
Speaker 1: grow a ton. Right now, we talk about nil, we're
Speaker 1: usually talking about social media endorsements. You know, if somebody
Speaker 1: throwing something on Instagram or TikTok, or maybe going to
Speaker 1: the local fireworks store and like signing autographs, which is cool,
Speaker 1: but you do need to have a certain size social
Speaker 1: media account to really be able to do that profitably.
Speaker 1: It's a probably five figures. Not everybody has that, but
Speaker 1: every single college athlete, whether you start or you're on
Speaker 1: the bench, or you at a big school or a
Speaker 1: small school, you're an expert in that sport in one place.
Speaker 1: That's just been kind of like in its baby steps,
Speaker 1: But I really do think we'll grow in the next
Speaker 1: year or two. Are athletes making money running summer camps
Speaker 1: and giving lessons and being involved with high schools and
Speaker 1: club sports and AAU and going back to their hometowns.
Speaker 1: It's already a huge deal in a lot of Olympic sports,
Speaker 1: particularly swimming. College swim coaches generally get paid like crap,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them, especially assistants, basically make enough
Speaker 1: money off the summer camp circuit to allow them to
Speaker 1: continue to stay in college. I think players are going
Speaker 1: to get involved in that space right now too. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of market places to make finding an Instagram
Speaker 1: deal pretty quick and easy, and that doesn't exist right
Speaker 1: now for doing camp clinics. But that is a place
Speaker 1: I think could really grow a lot. Maybe a running
Speaker 1: back brings this whole running back room to the local
Speaker 1: high school and participates in two a days with them
Speaker 1: and makes a thousand bucks for it. Like that's I
Speaker 1: think that will continue to grow. The other place here
Speaker 1: is in the group licensing world. You're right, Ti, I
Speaker 1: think companies are trying to figure out what else makes
Speaker 1: sense eide jerseys or besides a peril for athletes to
Speaker 1: be involved in. And if you look at my PR box,
Speaker 1: well it's n ft s right, it's going to be
Speaker 1: digital goods. And I think I'm much more skeptical of that.
Speaker 1: But I could definitely see before, maybe before we get
Speaker 1: EA sports college basketball or college baseball, I could see
Speaker 1: a college football like mobile simulator game that has player
Speaker 1: likenesses or something that's not a Triple A sports title
Speaker 1: that goes directly to iPhone or Android, or maybe just
Speaker 1: to Steam that uses player likenesses. And I think that
Speaker 1: that once it becomes less expensive to kind of experiment
Speaker 1: with those kind of products, that is a world where
Speaker 1: you might see as well, not so much NFT, but
Speaker 1: maybe gamings or more traditional collectibles that athletes can be
Speaker 1: involved in.
Speaker 2: Where does this go with regard to governing bodies, because,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, with the group licensing, you're negotiating with
Speaker 2: EA Sports, you're negotiating with a different company, and that's
Speaker 2: an acceptable company. We've seen obvious schools and conferences partner
Speaker 2: with the A Sports. Everybody seems to be happy with
Speaker 2: that type of association. But if you look at Olympic sports,
Speaker 2: there are specific governing bodies for specific sports. You know,
Speaker 2: there's United States Track and Field, there's United States Swimming.
Speaker 2: There's then of course the United States Olympic Committee. Whatever
Speaker 2: they're associations, it's by sport, it's by governing body. It's
Speaker 2: specific to the sport and the needs and the types
Speaker 2: of athletes that play that sport. We don't have that.
Speaker 2: We have conferences that oversee scheduling in TV rights. That's
Speaker 2: an oversimplification, but it's a major part of what they do.
Speaker 2: We have the NCAA, which enforces eligibility and sets the
Speaker 2: rules of eligibility, which seems to be growing more and
Speaker 2: more like a dinosaur by the day. What is the
Speaker 2: future of sports specific governing bodies, the way conferences operate
Speaker 2: and the way the sport as a whole. If we
Speaker 2: are negotiating national TV deals, is there going to be
Speaker 2: more and more of a national governing body specific to
Speaker 2: Because this is a foot ball show football, what is
Speaker 2: the status of the organization of the sport and sports?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is probably the single biggest story
Speaker 1: outside of maybe nil that I'm writing about on extra points,
Speaker 1: I think this summer. Your listeners may be aware that
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago at the NCAA convention in Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: member schools approved the new constitution right where a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff was written about that. But the new constitution
Speaker 1: itself doesn't change a whole lot other than delegate a
Speaker 1: lot of authority to specific divisions. So all of the
Speaker 1: NCAA bylaws that you might be familiar with from this
Speaker 1: is what it takes to be a conference to this
Speaker 1: is the amount of cream cheese you can put on
Speaker 1: your bagel and all of those different things. That's all
Speaker 1: being nuked. And they're saying, D one, make your own.
Speaker 1: And many of the Power five schools are saying, we
Speaker 1: want more autonomy, which means money, and we want more
Speaker 1: championship access which means money in the current system too.
Speaker 1: And I am someone that still really thinks a formal
Speaker 1: P five split is unlikely based on the conversations I've had,
Speaker 1: and if it did, it wouldn't be a straight P
Speaker 1: five G five thing. There's going to be P fives
Speaker 1: that wouldn't want to do it, in G fives that would.
Speaker 1: But that does at the table. It does give the
Speaker 1: Division one a ton more flexibility to blow up how
Speaker 1: they've organized their sports in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1: So we could very much see a world where a
Speaker 1: college track and field is more regulated by US Track
Speaker 1: than it is the NCAA or Division one. We could
Speaker 1: have different conferences have different scholarship rules for different Olympic sports.
Speaker 1: The SEC in particular would love this because they want
Speaker 1: to give every single softball player the scholarship. They have
Speaker 1: the money, they don't want that to be a partial
Speaker 1: thing anymore. There are PAC twelve schools that want that
Speaker 1: same thing. There's a lot of division. One that says
Speaker 1: that literally defeats the point of us having a softball program.
Speaker 1: We're only doing this for tuition. There's no chance we
Speaker 1: would want to be able to do that even if
Speaker 1: we had the money. This is what's happening with the
Speaker 1: team specific stuff. Is fascinating because you get it now
Speaker 1: that I've been writing about this a lot. I think
Speaker 1: you get an idea for which one of those those
Speaker 1: team specific organizations are invested in college athletics, like I
Speaker 1: think US wrestling is an example where they really are
Speaker 1: because they recognize that that's my Olympic pipeline and these
Speaker 1: are the sports that are threatened, so we want to
Speaker 1: be heavily involved. And then there's US soccer, which historically
Speaker 1: is not very involved to the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: in the college world. So those things are going to evolve,
Speaker 1: and I think how football is governed is going to change.
Speaker 1: It's going to change a lot from more rules being
Speaker 1: given to conferences. We could see a system I think
Speaker 1: where the college football Playoff has a lot more like
Speaker 1: regulatory influence over schools are rather mean that just gets
Speaker 1: moved out of the NS.
Speaker 2: How many employees does the college Football Playoff have?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, that's a great ques. Do you
Speaker 1: know six?
Speaker 2: I don't know. My assumption is it's not more than
Speaker 2: probably twelve.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it's very much many. EGI this
Speaker 1: is a source of frustration with so many schools, Like, look,
Speaker 1: college football Playoff gets all the money, but when we
Speaker 1: got to investigate somebody's eligibility, and that's Indianapolis, Like, that's
Speaker 1: all that stuff is paid for by a different pool.
Speaker 1: So that is all going to change. And the best
Speaker 1: I can tell you right now is nobody knows the
Speaker 1: answer yet, including ads and people that you would expect
Speaker 1: you know the answer. And if we went up and
Speaker 1: grabbed grabbed Greg Sank and grabbed you know, Julie from
Speaker 1: Ohio University, the two chairs of the Transformation Committee, I
Speaker 1: don't think they know yet either, which is both exciting
Speaker 1: and probably scary because because there's some gigantic questions, really
Speaker 1: acrimonious questions. Sure that nobody knows yet, they can have
Speaker 1: some educated guesses, and I have a couple of educated guesses.
Speaker 1: I think what it'll look like, but nobody really knows for.
Speaker 2: Certain yet how standardized And I assume your answer is
Speaker 2: going to be not very but how standardized is the
Speaker 2: P five level the G five level? Financially in pro sports,
Speaker 2: we have there's an understanding and then there are explicitly
Speaker 2: written rules. Hi, your salary floor is sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2: You need to pay your players at least sixty million
Speaker 2: dollars per season. You need to have a practice facility,
Speaker 2: Like there are certain things where if you are the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Clippers, if you are the Calgary Flames, whatever,
Speaker 2: there are standardized elements to how you run your organization.
Speaker 2: As we look across college football, and this is a
Speaker 2: conversation Tyan I have, it's like, this is a program
Speaker 2: that's unserious about winning. They're unserious about becoming that about
Speaker 2: winning in the Big ten, they're unserious about winning in
Speaker 2: the acc that they're to collect a check. They're there
Speaker 2: because they're big enough, but like they're not spending on coaches,
Speaker 2: they're not spending on facilities, they're not spending on recruiting,
Speaker 2: and it just seems like there are certain programs that
Speaker 2: are just financial doormats, like they're there to make money
Speaker 2: and they're not there to compete where it seems that
Speaker 2: for the most part, and I know tanking is now
Speaker 2: a thing in professional sports and whatever. Are we going
Speaker 2: to get to a standardized financial level where we're going
Speaker 2: to say, you know what school A school B, you're
Speaker 2: not investing in your program, you are not trying to
Speaker 2: compete on a level in which and it's hard for
Speaker 2: a lot of these places. Is there are we going
Speaker 2: down a standardization path as the sport reorganizes.
Speaker 1: This is something I think many schools would like to
Speaker 1: answer your first question. For Division one, there are supposed
Speaker 1: to be some very basic benchmarks that a school has
Speaker 1: to be in compliance to be a D one school.
Speaker 1: And like for football, it's like you're supposed to have
Speaker 1: a stadium that's xcis you need to have attendance of
Speaker 1: a certain number over a couple of years, and nobody
Speaker 1: follows that rule. Like if we win to by the
Speaker 1: letter of the rule, the MAC as a conference would
Speaker 1: not be like FBS anymore. That everyone gets waivers and
Speaker 1: they make up their attendance stuff right, And there's some
Speaker 1: frustration about that, but there's also we can't necessarily pick
Speaker 1: and choose what schools will be in the highest level
Speaker 1: without risking being sued. So one thing you could see
Speaker 1: as a standardization tool A couple of ads that have
Speaker 1: floated this would be, if you want to be FBS
Speaker 1: or you want to be like the highest level of
Speaker 1: college football, you have to sponsor twenty three sports or
Speaker 1: twenty two sports and use that as a proxy for
Speaker 1: your athletic department must be doing X, Y or C,
Speaker 1: and you would have to have X number of paid
Speaker 1: staff and you can voluntarily jump in and not You're
Speaker 1: You're right there. The biggest gap, honestly, I think it
Speaker 1: might really be between the very bottom of Division one
Speaker 1: and like a high level mid major, like a what
Speaker 1: a Missouri Valley basketball team is doing versus a bottom
Speaker 1: level WHACK or Big South or HBCU right now financially
Speaker 1: is enormous. There are some college facilities that are probably
Speaker 1: worse than where either of you went to high school,
Speaker 1: and and and like that. Then you have the gap
Speaker 1: between a Houston and an ECU, and like Ohio State
Speaker 1: and Alabama, and even within the P five, like I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree, you're right, there are some
Speaker 1: schools that are willing to make different financial commitments. And
Speaker 1: then there are schools that you're right, are riding on inertia,
Speaker 1: like what Rutgers is able to do financially despite being
Speaker 1: in the Big Ten. It's not the same sport. And
Speaker 1: you're right like that, that is a question at all
Speaker 1: levels of college football is being asked. Why does it
Speaker 1: make sense if we're clearly not on the same page
Speaker 1: here of resource wise or a wise, for us to
Speaker 1: be in the same boat, And like that's figuring out
Speaker 1: the best way to draw that line will be one
Speaker 1: of those contentious issues for sure.
Speaker 2: So what is your your twenty thirty college sports utopia
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Is it an organizational thing? Is it a financial thing?
Speaker 2: Like in your mind if if we're sitting and having
Speaker 2: this conversation in eight years and ties in his early fifties,
Speaker 2: I don't know how, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how old we're all going to be. But if we're
Speaker 2: having this conversation eight ten, twelve, yes, yeah, and you're
Speaker 2: on this show. The hologram of Matt Brown is on
Speaker 2: this show saying, Man, they nailed A, B, C, D
Speaker 2: and E. What are those things?
Speaker 1: Man? That's that's a great question, and part of that
Speaker 1: I have to recognize I'm coming at this from a
Speaker 1: different perspective, right, So one of the things that would
Speaker 1: be important to me would be that athletic spending becomes
Speaker 1: more aligned with an institutional goal. So by that, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: we don't see this a ton at the P five,
Speaker 1: but we have schools in one that are commuter schools
Speaker 1: that are serving mostly non traditional students. So a fry
Speaker 1: school like Portland State, right, you know, that's go Vikings,
Speaker 1: Go Vikings. Cool history of a program one, they're facing
Speaker 1: some struggles right now. But I want to say the
Speaker 1: average age of Portland State students like twenty six or
Speaker 1: twenty seven. And so if you're supposed to be serving
Speaker 1: minority students, non traditional students tradition to students that that
Speaker 1: don't have fifty thousand dollars to get takeout loans, should
Speaker 1: you saddle them with student fetes or expenses for a
Speaker 1: football program they're not going to enjoy or for an
Speaker 1: experience that's not the same thing as a residential campus.
Speaker 1: I would argue no, Like, I am not going to
Speaker 1: get all mad online about Stanford or Duke or even
Speaker 1: American wasting money and they're an athoughtic department for some reason,
Speaker 1: because you know those are if we can indulge share
Speaker 1: in hostereotype, those are mostly students of means I would
Speaker 1: get I do get upset when I see schools that
Speaker 1: are targeting less affluent students then being saddled but with
Speaker 1: some of those things. So I think for me, aligning
Speaker 1: those two incentives would be an important thing for schools
Speaker 1: to do, and then every school to be able to say,
Speaker 1: I am spending this money on my athletic department to
Speaker 1: achieve X, y and Z, and here's how I can
Speaker 1: measure it, and here's how that aligns with what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. I also think it's a bad product
Speaker 1: for fans and honestly for athletes to pretend that schools
Speaker 1: that are not playing the same sport are playing the
Speaker 1: same sport. I don't think it's great for Kent State.
Speaker 1: But they got to play three body bag games and
Speaker 1: they might win one out of forty of them, but
Speaker 1: most of the time they're going to lose by forty.
Speaker 1: And it's cool that you got to play in Ohio Stadium.
Speaker 1: It's probably not as cool that you lost forty nine
Speaker 1: to three. Right a world where that happens less, and
Speaker 1: those schools have an opportunity to compete at a level
Speaker 1: that makes sense for them, I think would be a positive.
Speaker 1: The last thing that I think is so important here
Speaker 1: is that the voice of athletes are meaningfully taken into
Speaker 1: account we make decisions. And this is something I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about here too in my own work. Because it's
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to call up an ad and
Speaker 1: it's easy for a lot of other reporters to call
Speaker 1: up a coach. It's harder for me to build those
Speaker 1: relationships with athletes either because I have to go through
Speaker 1: an SID, I have to hope they check their Twitter, DMS,
Speaker 1: I have to use a social network I'm not familiar with,
Speaker 1: which makes me feel extremely old. Yeah, but ultimately like
Speaker 1: it's their lives, like it don't ask me to TikTok man,
Speaker 1: like I'm too old to learning this thing. But whenever,
Speaker 1: whether it's expanding the playoff or changing the amount of
Speaker 1: time that athletes have to do or to spend on
Speaker 1: their sport, I would want a new system to meaningfully
Speaker 1: take their preferences into account, whether that's giving them money,
Speaker 1: giving them healthcare, giving them the opportunity to major in
Speaker 1: whatever they want and then being centered. I don't want
Speaker 1: to spend as much time thinking about what will make
Speaker 1: Jimbo Fisher's life more complicated, because, as Don Draper said, like,
Speaker 1: that's what the money's for, Like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cry for you, I but the other it's the people
Speaker 1: under you an NFL job, and then yeah, exactly that.
Speaker 1: As I think what we would like and how that
Speaker 1: ends up looking, that could be one of ten different things,
Speaker 1: and I don't have a super strong opinion aout any
Speaker 1: of them right now. But if we're not gouging regular
Speaker 1: students with money with expenses for stuff they won't watch,
Speaker 1: and we're not taking advantage of athletes as much, I'm
Speaker 1: probably gonna be cool with whatever al I'm going to
Speaker 1: watch whatever it is that comes out from there. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that Dan and I talked about
Speaker 3: and we brought it up specifically around Jim Harbaugh with
Speaker 3: his song and dance, Well he won't he with the NFL,
Speaker 3: but the game is changing, and there's probably a percentage
Speaker 3: of coaches out there. Maybe Gary Patterson kind of falls
Speaker 3: into this category. He definitely does see Yeah, yeah, guys
Speaker 3: who are just sort of like I'm getting too old
Speaker 3: for this crap. It's changed so much.
Speaker 1: How many of the people that you talk.
Speaker 3: To on the administrative level will be out there publicly saying,
Speaker 3: we're all for this, we want to support it, we
Speaker 3: support the voice of the student athlete. But behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: conversations they have with you or among their peers are like, man,
Speaker 3: I don't I don't want to deal with this.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. Those people typically don't talk to me
Speaker 1: as much anymore because of course, right, of course they know,
Speaker 1: like Matt's gonna say that if I tell them right.
Speaker 1: What we saw was some coaches. Gary Patterson's a great example. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think Urban Meyer is a good example. There's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of coach that was only really able to
Speaker 1: lead by having a certain kind of power, which you
Speaker 1: definitely can't have that on the left. And we saw this,
Speaker 1: I think in the seventies two, when many black athletes said, actually,
Speaker 1: you have to treat me like a human being. You
Speaker 1: can't tell me I have to have this kind of haircut.
Speaker 1: You can't. And then you know, we saw the at
Speaker 1: Wyoming in Iowa and Oregon State. Some of those coaches
Speaker 1: like the de Lloyd eatons of the world. They had
Speaker 1: to get out. We also saw that on the administrative level,
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of AD that's been doing this
Speaker 1: for thirty five years and can't imagine a different way.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if maybe Barry Alvarez specifically falls
Speaker 1: under this camp, but I think people like him like
Speaker 1: this is a good time for me to leave. We
Speaker 1: also saw I think a chunk of administrators, many of
Speaker 1: them I think were really pretty bright, that are much younger,
Speaker 1: that looked at this and thought things can't change as
Speaker 1: quickly as we'd like them to. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to kind of go through the thirties of that song
Speaker 1: and dance. I want to get out now. So we
Speaker 1: saw the Commissioner of the America Yeast, who was somebody
Speaker 1: that I think could have, you know, led the ACC
Speaker 1: in ten years. We saw ads at Portland State and
Speaker 1: you see Davis and a couple of other places. People
Speaker 1: that were I think under fifty left and so you
Speaker 1: are seeing a change now. When I talk to a
Speaker 1: lot of ads now, I think there's a generational shift
Speaker 1: between are you like over sixty and are not? And
Speaker 1: how you think about athlete empowerment or nil and you
Speaker 1: have to be comfortable with some of these changes if
Speaker 1: you want to you want to stay in this business
Speaker 1: because it's it's a different world for good or frail.
Speaker 3: I feel like Brian Kelly is sort of the poster
Speaker 3: boy for this movement. On one hand, the ten million
Speaker 3: dollar bag of cash. On the other, player empowerment, the
Speaker 3: game changing, having to stay and on the weird three
Speaker 3: sixty platform do that the gritty yeah, yeah, the gritty yeah,
Speaker 3: like it is changing. I'm curious to see how it
Speaker 3: goes for him. I suspect it will go well. He's
Speaker 3: got bottomless resources.
Speaker 1: But I can't wait. I can't wait.
Speaker 3: The coaching world has been forced to respond to this
Speaker 3: in a way that you know, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: really foresaw no, No, I.
Speaker 1: Think I think you're right. It's one that I know
Speaker 1: a lot of coaches are really uncomfortable with on the
Speaker 1: football side, and they're hesitant to say that in public,
Speaker 1: but it's true. And it's not just about what you
Speaker 1: have to do. It's recruiting. They one. The idea of
Speaker 1: constantly having to recruit your own roster is different because
Speaker 1: I think a common thing to do right is to
Speaker 1: gas somebody up when they're eighteen, and they kind of
Speaker 1: deprogram them a little bit right when they get on campus.
Speaker 1: And now you realize that if you lead by fear
Speaker 1: or if you don't build those kind of relationships across
Speaker 1: your whole roster, everyone's gonna leave. You're gonna have a
Speaker 1: whole why situation, and like that doesn't work anymore. That's
Speaker 1: also true with how you might have talked about politics
Speaker 1: or or race. Uh. And you know, this was an
Speaker 1: issue for Orizaron right and one of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of led to things falling apart at LSU. And
Speaker 1: building those kind of competencies is hard for a lot
Speaker 1: of big time college football coaches. And this is this
Speaker 1: is not a value judgment here. It's just that that
Speaker 1: is a system that's tended to reward folks who have
Speaker 1: an almost sociopathic narrow mindedness into one like into one world, right,
Speaker 1: and they're they're not There's not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: people that are reading uh. You know what, we don't
Speaker 1: have my Gundy's watching and reading right, But there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of other people that are like are as
Speaker 1: we are as connected to to politics or to to
Speaker 1: to race, or to finance these other things that maybe
Speaker 1: they're going to have to to connect with their athletes.
Speaker 1: And so it's going to be fun to see who's
Speaker 1: comfortable making some of those changes, who will attempt and
Speaker 1: do it clumsily and we'll get those jokes off, but
Speaker 1: I think athletes will forgive them and who is completle,
Speaker 1: incapable of changing for anything. The Mike Leeches of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, like, come Heller high Water. This is exactly
Speaker 1: what I am and you know what I'm getting and
Speaker 1: I'm not changing. I don't know how it's going to
Speaker 1: work out, but it'll be fun for us all to watch,
Speaker 1: right Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I ask you this as somebody who has probably like
Speaker 2: seven different hands and seven different cookie jars in that
Speaker 2: you're invested in Ohio State football, you're invested in the
Speaker 2: sport of football. You're invested in the business of football.
Speaker 2: You're invested in the business of college sports, but specific
Speaker 2: to football. And everybody has a different answer for this.
Speaker 2: How do you quantify the health of the sports? Some
Speaker 2: people will say TV ratings, Some people will say, you know,
Speaker 2: conference money payouts. Some people will say, you know, the
Speaker 2: ability of America to fall in love with a quarterback
Speaker 2: who's going to be taking number one overall, so right now,
Speaker 2: and my own answer is do I enjoy watching it
Speaker 2: as a TV show in that like, yes, hell yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to watch West Virginia, Texas Tech because those
Speaker 2: programs are entertaining, and this is a a sport driven
Speaker 2: by TV money. So it's just a matter of, well,
Speaker 2: I go out of my way to watch this game
Speaker 2: or as many games as I can. So to you,
Speaker 2: how do you quantify a very strange sport, a very
Speaker 2: disparate sport in terms of overall health.
Speaker 1: That is a really man, I'm sorry if.
Speaker 2: That's just a very involved unanswer, this is a good one.
Speaker 1: I think my initial answer would be I would I
Speaker 1: think I think it it's not extremely healthy, that there
Speaker 1: are some things about it that are still going strong,
Speaker 1: Like I think this as a pockets of this country
Speaker 1: are going to unconditionally low football totally forever. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in one of one of those places.
Speaker 1: I know both of you have spent time in some
Speaker 1: of those places there too. But there's some warning signs, right.
Speaker 1: One of those is with just pure participation in football,
Speaker 1: which has been in decline almost everywhere in the country.
Speaker 1: It has been most pronounced in the PAC twelve footprint
Speaker 1: and in the Northeast in some places. Here here in Chicago,
Speaker 1: I wrote a big story about you know, this used
Speaker 1: to be one of you know, the Cook County was
Speaker 1: like Miami Dade for finding football recruits right a couple
Speaker 1: of decades ago. And whether that's population shift, whether that's
Speaker 1: a lack of adults to help run some of those
Speaker 1: youth leagues, whether that's concern about the health and safety
Speaker 1: of playing youth football, and and just pure cost. A
Speaker 1: lot of families aren't participating anymore. And I think for
Speaker 1: particularly for a lot of young men, you fall in
Speaker 1: love with football in part because you played it in
Speaker 1: seventh or eighth grade and you learned the kind of
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of it. So that would be a
Speaker 1: concern not just for finding enough talent, but but for
Speaker 1: finding fans. I think the fact that students by and
Speaker 1: large are going to these games far less than they
Speaker 1: did a decade ago, and in most places in general,
Speaker 1: are facing declining attendance. I think I think that is
Speaker 1: an issue, and I think the governance of this sport
Speaker 1: is an issue. And by that I mean not just
Speaker 1: with the NCAA, and not just with Congress, but we've
Speaker 1: had a bunch of commissioner and ad changes over the
Speaker 1: last ten years, and the trust level within the people
Speaker 1: that have to govern this sport is maybe at an
Speaker 1: all time low, even with people in Delaney was somebody
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of administrators would happily dogcuss
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. But they also knew that you know
Speaker 1: how to work with him and knew and were able
Speaker 1: to work through some of those things, and that really
Speaker 1: isn't happening right now. I think a lot to what
Speaker 1: we saw with the conversations about expanding the playoff, which
Speaker 1: is something that every Conference commissioner wants to do, and
Speaker 1: they weren't able to figure out a way around a
Speaker 1: couple of these important but not massive sticking points. And
Speaker 1: I think part of that is because right now they
Speaker 1: don't like each other. A lot of them straight up
Speaker 1: don't like each other. So if they're unable to come
Speaker 1: to a good agreement on something they all want to do,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen when they got to come to
Speaker 1: agreements and stuff they don't all want to do, which
Speaker 1: is what the next six months are. So I look
Speaker 1: at all of those things and think there's some big
Speaker 1: problems to say nothing of Congress, or to say nothing
Speaker 1: of the courts, or we know about CTE. There's there's
Speaker 1: there's things to be excited about. Like I, honest to God,
Speaker 1: look at NIL and think this might make me like
Speaker 1: college football more. Think of all the the great memes
Speaker 1: we're gonna get right, think think of Think of of
Speaker 1: of how this is going to improve the lives of athletes,
Speaker 1: Think about how this is going to help me get
Speaker 1: to know people in a deeper way than before. But
Speaker 1: I have some concerns and and I'm not necessarily sure
Speaker 1: that the people who are responsible for finding solutions to
Speaker 1: those problems are best equipped to do that right now.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things about the sport, and Ty
Speaker 2: and I talked about this in Bowl season with opt
Speaker 2: out specifically, but I think it goes deeper than opt
Speaker 2: outs is college football is a really hard sport to
Speaker 2: get into.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The barrier to entry for college football and it's not unique.
Speaker 2: I compared it to like the EPL and transfer windows,
Speaker 2: and you can buy players, but you have to return them,
Speaker 2: and there's there's a separate league you play in if
Speaker 2: you're also good Like it's it's just complicated. Some sports
Speaker 2: are just complicated and difficult to get into. College football
Speaker 2: has positioned itself as a national sport. It wants to
Speaker 2: compete with the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, the NHL,
Speaker 2: the MLS, whatever, which are easier sports to follow, because
Speaker 2: inherently they have athletes who can play for fifteen years.
Speaker 2: The best athletes can become famous in household names. And
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't care what team Lebron James plays for.
Speaker 2: I love rooting against Lebron. I'm gonna watch Lebron games
Speaker 2: to hate on him or whatever. You can't do that
Speaker 2: in college football. And now we have a sport in
Speaker 2: which I'm speaking on behalf of the sport. We want
Speaker 2: mainstream eyeballs, but we're making it extremely difficult via recruiting,
Speaker 2: via transfers, via coaches leaving, via nil rules, via opt
Speaker 2: outs ahead of huge games like Pitt had a Heisman
Speaker 2: caliber quarterback who decided not to play in the biggest
Speaker 2: game of pit season. Like, that's just a reality, and
Speaker 2: whether you like it or not, that's a reality of
Speaker 2: the sport. Is the difficulty of being a national or
Speaker 2: regional or local college football fan sure or a bug
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like as into the weeds as almost
Speaker 1: anybody as you're going to find. But like this, it's
Speaker 1: funny because this is a thought experiment I do all
Speaker 1: the time because like, my wife is not a college
Speaker 1: football fan, her family are not college football fans, and
Speaker 1: most of the people like in my world and here
Speaker 1: in Chicago are not that way. So what like I
Speaker 1: try to think here one This is why I think
Speaker 1: about this all the time when I'm writing, because even
Speaker 1: I'm really getting in the weeds about stuff like is
Speaker 1: this something I can explain to my father in law
Speaker 1: and have his eyes not glaze over in the first
Speaker 1: forty five seconds? And if I can't, then great, Like
Speaker 1: then I've got an actual story.
Speaker 3: That's how we used to That's how we used to
Speaker 3: approach podcasting, trying and explain to people what is it?
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, so and that is an issue, and that
Speaker 1: is something I would think about if my job was
Speaker 1: to sell college football. I think there are some schools
Speaker 1: that are getting better at this and trying to find, well,
Speaker 1: what are ways we can do to make all of
Speaker 1: this ecosystem more accessible? You know, Like it's funny like this,
Speaker 1: this might be like a superficial thing. I think. I
Speaker 1: think Lafayette was a school. When I first started doing
Speaker 1: extra points, I did this, Well, this is the Louisiana Lafayette.
Speaker 1: And they're telling me, like one of our goals is,
Speaker 1: and this is a culture that understands football is we
Speaker 1: want to be the cheapest restaurant in Lafayette on game days.
Speaker 1: So we're going to offer dollar tall boys and we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're going to price our concessions cheaper than local
Speaker 1: high schools, and we're going to fly at every community
Speaker 1: center and every school and get people to come here
Speaker 1: and like, you know, you know the post I was
Speaker 1: talking like, listen, South Louisiana. We are professional drinkers, so
Speaker 1: we can give dollar tall boys and it's not going
Speaker 1: to be an issue. But our thing here is let's
Speaker 1: get everybody we possibly can to see this, to see
Speaker 1: the marching band, to see students, to to to see
Speaker 1: the wonderful South Louisiana tailgate experience, and we can get
Speaker 1: them to fall in love with it later and at
Speaker 1: what once once they see that. I've talked to people
Speaker 1: at Nevada or you know, Reno is a city that's
Speaker 1: changing an awful lot right now, and they're like, what
Speaker 1: we're doing is we are We're calling up every realtor
Speaker 1: we know and we're get giving them two free tickets
Speaker 1: to every new home that's sold in Reno to get
Speaker 1: the new people to come in and hope you fall
Speaker 1: in love with that. And I think that might be
Speaker 1: part of what you have to do because for as
Speaker 1: much as the in person experience, we can talk about
Speaker 1: how TV makes that more challenging and maybe it's not
Speaker 1: the same as it used to be, but the most
Speaker 1: compelling way to get people to see beyond recruiting rankings
Speaker 1: and transfer windows and rivalry trophies that we invented in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen and their bronze monopoly pieces or whatever, I
Speaker 1: think you just got to get people in the building.
Speaker 1: Because if you get people in the building and you
Speaker 1: see the brick and on the campus and you hear
Speaker 1: the marching band, it's cool and that helps you work
Speaker 1: through some of those things. So that is an issue
Speaker 1: you have to solve. The fact that this is so
Speaker 1: unique is a selling point that it's so provincial and
Speaker 1: that's local. Yeah, I think that's the very best part
Speaker 1: about college football, and it's finding ways to overcome that
Speaker 1: barrier to make it accessible is is a challenge. But
Speaker 1: it's that way with other things too. Like I feel
Speaker 1: like I've been saying I could really get into hockey
Speaker 1: like every year the last like five years. I think
Speaker 1: that's a place that has a high barriered jury right totally,
Speaker 1: and I've been scared off a little bit. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: eventually it'll make it, it'll make it happen, But like that,
Speaker 1: that's something that people have to do with for sure.
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's minor league baseball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's minor league baseball. But
Speaker 1: also with like one hundred and ten years of lore, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll never have the same emotional connection to a minor
Speaker 1: league team as they will to a place they've got
Speaker 1: hanging up in their in their room, you know.
Speaker 3: Final question, perhaps the most important question. On our last episode,
Speaker 3: Dan and I were theorizing how we could sponsor an
Speaker 3: Instagram post for Zach Calzada Zach Calzada transfer quarterback. He's
Speaker 3: got thirty five thousand Instagram followers. What exactly is the
Speaker 3: process by which a small business, which is what we are,
Speaker 3: a very small business, would go about trying to find
Speaker 3: an endorsement social media or otherwise in the current climate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this was why I did these deals for
Speaker 1: extra points, and I hope to do much bigger deals
Speaker 1: for extra points. I think later this spring or summer. Right,
Speaker 1: I did a bunch of deals for like two hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty bucks plus commissions for athletes, and
Speaker 1: now I'm like, maybe it makes more sense to find
Speaker 1: the right athlete and do like two or three grand.
Speaker 1: But what you would do if you're a business, The
Speaker 1: easiest way, besides trying to brokerage straight on Twitter, would
Speaker 1: be to set up an account on a marketplace. And
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of them open doors, market price, mogul,
Speaker 1: no cap, I can even you know, I can DM you.
Speaker 1: I have a list of all of these right and
Speaker 1: for most of the Bronxton time for brands, it's free
Speaker 1: to sign up and it works kind of like Facebook Marketplace.
Speaker 1: You would you would give some information about your company.
Speaker 1: You would explain this is what I'm looking for for
Speaker 1: my campaign. Maybe two Instagram posts and maybe a podcast
Speaker 1: appearance or two Instagram posts, and could you take a
Speaker 1: picture of you wearing a solid verbal T shirt or
Speaker 1: something right, and you would list all of your information
Speaker 1: and your budget, and you can make that budget a
Speaker 1: flat rate. You can tie it to conversions, you could
Speaker 1: tie it to a couple other things, and I'd usually
Speaker 1: give a range, and then you could make it public.
Speaker 1: And you could either make it public and invite people
Speaker 1: to come pitch you, or other athletes will come and
Speaker 1: pitch you, which is what I did on a few
Speaker 1: of these marketplaces, or then you could you could say, hey,
Speaker 1: show me all of the athletes in this database who
Speaker 1: play this sport, who have followings in this range, who
Speaker 1: have like a budget specified by this I think. I
Speaker 1: think the best marketplaces will also let you sort by
Speaker 1: maybe major or hometown or more granular with what their
Speaker 1: what their audience looks like, and then they'll match you
Speaker 1: with people and you can directly reach out to them
Speaker 1: as well, just like you would if you are trying
Speaker 1: to hire somebody on a resume database or selling something
Speaker 1: on Craigslist. And then the way it typically works is
Speaker 1: you would begin the conversation on that platform, you might
Speaker 1: exchange phone numbers and then talk otherwise like you might
Speaker 1: tender I think, or I mean I can't confirm, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got married before all that became big. And then
Speaker 1: the way it typically works is then like the marketplace
Speaker 1: takes a commission off the value of the deal. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to pay an athlete one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, you might put one hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: bucks in escrow. The marketplace takes the twenty five dollars fee.
Speaker 1: The one hundred and fifty then goes to the athlete
Speaker 1: once you approve it. It really is pretty simple. And I
Speaker 1: would say for a company that's trying to drive awareness
Speaker 1: that is a college football show or a college show
Speaker 1: that talks about college athletes, I think it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: It becomes a little bit more complicated if you are
Speaker 1: like a beat writer, and I wouldn't recommend you pay
Speaker 1: for an interview that way, but for a podcast, I
Speaker 1: mean like that it would make sense. Many many others
Speaker 1: are doing that, and that is how you the best
Speaker 1: way I think you'd go about trying to find the
Speaker 1: right athlete.
Speaker 3: Good stuff, Good stuff, Matt, You've been doing your homework.
Speaker 3: I got to say, we always feel a little bit
Speaker 3: smarter when we have a chance to talk with you.
Speaker 3: So we've come a long way here in the last
Speaker 3: years since we last had this conversation. We will definitely
Speaker 3: have to do it more frequently as we get into
Speaker 3: the summer, get closer to the new season.
Speaker 1: But how can.
Speaker 3: Folks find your content? How can folks help support what
Speaker 3: you're doing at extra Points?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, thanks so much. Like I love this stuff.
Speaker 1: I know that not everybody else does. But if like
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that you're interested in
Speaker 1: reading or hearing more about. I publish a daily newsletter
Speaker 1: called extra Points. You can find it at extra points
Speaker 1: mb dot com. Two of those newsletters are free, three
Speaker 1: of them are behind a paywall. Cost typically cost eight
Speaker 1: bucks a month. But I'll set up a special solid
Speaker 1: verbal specific discount, right, Yeah, well I'll do this orry
Speaker 1: we're done recording here, right if you use say promo
Speaker 1: code solid verbal not twenty five percent off, so you
Speaker 1: can get it.
Speaker 2: From the boom.
Speaker 1: Thanks man, that's cool. But sure, yeah, so we'll get
Speaker 1: that for six bucks. You can put that in the notes.
Speaker 1: I also do a podcast with Brian Fisher called Going
Speaker 1: for Two, which is the same kind of stories that
Speaker 1: you might find it in a newsletter that's twice a week.
Speaker 1: You can find that wherever people get podcasts and I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Matt Brown. Awesome.
Speaker 3: He came prepared, prepared as always, Matt Brown, a pleasure.
Speaker 3: We will have you on again sometime soon in the meantime,
Speaker 3: As we say here on the show, Stay solid.
Speaker 1: Thanks Pella, stay solid. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, sir, there we go. Matt Brown generously setting
Speaker 3: up a discount for any of the ballers who are
Speaker 3: interested at extra points mb dot com Solid Verbal if
Speaker 3: you want to get your discounted rate on Matt's content.
Speaker 3: I don't even know where to start, man Like, he
Speaker 3: pretty much covered so much ground in an hour and
Speaker 3: answered so many of the questions that I had with
Speaker 3: how this whole thing works. As you know, any new
Speaker 3: thing in life, if you don't understand it, people tend
Speaker 3: to be afraid of it. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 3: any less afraid of nil.
Speaker 2: Now I've spent the majority of the last two minutes
Speaker 2: of my life google options for Zach Calzado. Should he
Speaker 2: win the starting job at Auburn and sort of look
Speaker 2: like he did against Alabama and is a star quarterback?
Speaker 2: Is turning And we just had justin Ferguson on and receivers.
Speaker 2: The receiver group is an issue right now at Auburn.
Speaker 2: But if he's turning soso receivers or underrated receivers into
Speaker 2: stars and is making plays and winning big games, and
Speaker 2: it's just like a bona fide next great thing at Auburn.
Speaker 2: Don't know if it'll happen. I kind of think it
Speaker 2: might not, but you can never be too prepared. All Right,
Speaker 2: I have three options, and I'm not going to promote.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to promote for free a business in Auburn, Alabama.
Speaker 2: But you can get all of these things there. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm saying, what if he does a Zach pack. Okay,
Speaker 2: a Zach pack at some sort of local fast food
Speaker 2: place because you've seen like KFC or the other day,
Speaker 2: Like these lunch deals are like popcorn, chicken, tater tots
Speaker 2: and a drink and a biscuit. So we have a
Speaker 2: Zach pack of his choosing. That makes sense. That's a
Speaker 2: fun thing to say, Zach.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: And then the other two are just more uh punny
Speaker 2: and stupid, but they are options that you can get
Speaker 2: in Auburn, Alabama. I'm talking about Calzada's enchiladas. That is
Speaker 2: a special combination. Maybe it's a red and green sauce,
Speaker 2: like a combination thing. Maybe it's an extra it's like
Speaker 2: a spicy shrimp that isn't normally offered at a place. Right,
Speaker 2: it's Calzadas Enchiladas, and you know he promotes it on
Speaker 2: a local commercial Instagram or whatever. And my final offering
Speaker 2: for Zach Calzada should he really pop in Auburn, Alabama,
Speaker 2: is Calzada's Calzona's and those are I apologize why at
Speaker 2: the local boat.
Speaker 3: Store for Calzada's Armada.
Speaker 2: Well, that's many boats, and I don't know how many
Speaker 2: people are.
Speaker 3: Joinda Armada buy a boat from Bob's Boats.
Speaker 2: That's true, but Armada is not as immediately recognizable a
Speaker 2: word as enchilada to me or Calzona, which is how
Speaker 2: I would shift it. And so he obviously gets to
Speaker 2: pick the filling of this specialty item. And maybe it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's seven dollars and however many points Auburn
Speaker 2: scores that week, you know, something like that. But I
Speaker 2: just I think you got to get creative. I think
Speaker 2: you got to get into it. And Auburn is a
Speaker 2: community and fan base that is all in on football.
Speaker 2: So Cal's ota is Calzona's. I'm ready to make it
Speaker 2: a thing and be a creative director for the commercial
Speaker 2: if it comes to pass.
Speaker 3: I think we're positioning ourselves maybe not so much as
Speaker 3: the sponsor, right, but as the agent, as Matt described
Speaker 3: as the as the creative body.
Speaker 2: He's got a great name. He's at a huge place.
Speaker 2: Cals OTAs Enchilada's cal's OTA's Calzona's.
Speaker 3: All right, get justin on the horn again. We got
Speaker 3: to find out the state of Mexican food in Auburn, Alabama.
Speaker 3: That's true, that's where we're.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are options. There have to be options
Speaker 2: everybody else Mexican food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Well again, please do go on out
Speaker 3: to Extra Points mb slash Solid Verbal if you're interested
Speaker 3: in more of Matt's well researched and thoughtful content, which
Speaker 3: he puts out on a regular continuing basis. We so
Speaker 3: very much appreciate the time that he gave us here
Speaker 3: today to help make us a little bit smarter with
Speaker 3: respect to all things nil and just college business at large.
Speaker 3: Don't forget if you are ever so inclined going out
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Speaker 2: Yep.
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Speaker 2: And wait, by the way, we have a UH off
Speaker 2: topic show too, right, that's part of the UH the
Speaker 2: Verbalers dot Com exclusive. We're working monthly off topic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're working on it.
Speaker 1: We get weird.
Speaker 3: That's great for that guy over there, Dan Rubinsteine, for myself,
Speaker 3: Tie Hilda Brandt.
Speaker 1: We will talk to you all very very soon. Beat
Speaker 1: bays on peace. Yeah,