What did we just talk about? What did I just say to you about flute? Last segment? We just had a conversation about the flute. And please help me understand whether or not you heard what I actually said to you. Yeah, you said quote, Yeah, you know, Marshall Tucker Band know how to find that balance. No, I said, some flute is fine, but too much flute ruins the whole thing.
Now we're approaching the line of too much flute. So, Marshall Tucker Band, too much flute, You're.
At times look flute moderation. I'm fine with too much flute. Then what are we doing here?
You're not wrong? Last flute song of the day.
We'll see deal, Okay. I bet Matt Brown has a hot take on this. So Matt, I'm not anti flute. I'm just saying, if you're going to implement a flute in a rock band, there has to be a line.
I mean, I completely agree if you if you go too hard in the paint, you're basically ron Burgundy, which is it's fine in very small doses, but that changes the whole paradigm of the song. Well, well said, Yeah, I don't know about you, guys. I'm an absolute soccer for a horn section in a rock song, but a flute is generally not the instrument that I would go for. First.
Yeah, no, I'm with you.
And while we're in the weird space to start an interview off in a strange way, I have a moral dilemma that Porter weighed in on last segment.
I'm gonna ask you, Matt Brown, are you ready? Of course?
This is what people pay me for. Of course.
Indeed.
Okay, So I was fortunate enough to do well at a golf tournament and was rewarded with a five hundred dollars gift card to a online store that offers sheets and betting and such, and Matt, I'll just say, your boy could use some betting, Okay, it's been a while. Betting is one of those guys as a bachelor, you just forget about and then suddenly you need to do sheets.
So here's the deal, five hundred dollars gift card, and in my checkout basket, I have six hundred and ninety dollars worth of sheets and betting.
Do I just buy it.
And view the whole thing as if I paid one hundred and ninety bucks for sheets and bet or do I have to take some off to stay under the five hundred dollars limit.
I think you absolutely buy the whole thing. I mean, this is why companies donate gift cards to be a part of events like legitimately to kind of bring this
full circle. When we were recruiting sponsors to help us with our Bowl game, the extra points bawl a couple of weeks ago, this was part of the sales pitch, like you look, give athletes gift cards, gives fans participatingble to gift cards, knowing that many of them will spend more than the value of the card, and you just you got you move some merch with the lower margin by the sheet that you need if you need six
hundred and ninety dollars worth of sheets. I feel bad for your bed situation, but best to do that now. The then prolong it and the name was staying under the five hundo that's part of the deal.
Okay.
I feel justified, and yes, the bed situation and needs to be rectified, but I think this purchase will will do just that. It's been a minute, Matt, all right, Moving on to things that listeners actually care about as opposed to the weird way to start the interview.
Let's start with some local stuff here.
You know, tonight released the CFP rankings, and Tuesday nights have been exciting for Cougar fans BYU fans up until now, and you know, two losses and it's when they happened. They still have a resume that stacks up with a lot of the teams that are close to the top twelve. But I wonder what you make of BYU kind of faltering down the stretch and losing two of their final three games.
I think it's about to be expected. I don't mean this to be disrespectful to any BYU fans, right I watched this team of fair amount this year dramatically overperformed expectations. Should feel thrilled and over the moon with this season. I think it's difficult to reconcile what we saw with our eyeballs, and also the framing of BYU based on what we thought they were going to be ahead of the season and the idea that this is the top
ten team. And I think part of the thing that works against BYU two, even though they can very credibly say no, we the only thing to be SMU, we have one of the best wins in the entire country. And regardless of whether this is true or not, I think it's very easy for the people on the selection committee to rationalize that, saying, ah, but sm is a
different team now, They've got a different quarterback situation. You know, if you play them now, we'd be laying SMU minus eleven or something and and and you know, whether that's whether that's fair or not, I'm certain that's that's the rationale. I understand how frustrating it can be, because I do think you can make a reasonable stats argument for why b YU should actually be in the conversation instead of Miami,
instead of Oldness. But if you if you told BYU fans back in August you are going to win double digit games and be infuriated that you're going to miss the playoff, I think every single person would sign up for that, because you know I we probably even talked about it on the air, you and me and a lot of smart people in Vegas thought this wasn't even a bold team, let alone one of better teams in recent memory.
For sure.
I wonder you know, if you spent some time out here, did a really fun story on your trip out here to provo, and you know you're one of the guys I lean on in the newsletter that you write. I read to kind of get educated on the NIL space and the business of college football and things that happened off the field. And there's this conversation that takes place out here about the BYU football model and whether or not it can work and be sustainable in the modern
day and age of college football. And we know that the basketball team is receiving a lot of NIL assistants from Ryan Smith and Danny Ainge and others, and I.
Honestly don't know. I straight up asked Kalani had.
Big twelve media days if he's getting the same type of financial support that the basketball team is getting. He did not like the question. I'll just leave it at Dad gave me a nice Kialani answer. But were you able to uncover, like, when you hear the BYU football model, what sort of NIL initiatives does that include? And are they getting support to make sure that this season of results isn't something that's just a moment in time, but actually sustainable.
Well, I think there's a couple of things we have to think about here. I think it's fair to say about nil from this season of results. Right, there is a minimum payroll level that you probably need to retain power for caliber talent or high level Mountain West caliber talent, and that number is much smaller than coaches and people that work for ON three and people that work in the NIL recruiting. You know, make a complex. I think would want you to believe the high number purportedly this year.
It's a little frustrating. We can't get great information on this, but I think this is in the ballpark. So Ohio State at around twenty million, whether it's eighteen, nineteen, twenty million, and they are barely going to make the playoffs. They did not win the Big Ten, they did not beat Michigan, they did not do any of their immediate goals. Coming into this season and spending at jillion dollars, Florist Day had a payroll of over ten They're one of the
worst teams in the country. They would have been a betting underdog against multiple SCS teams this year. There are lots of teams that went all in financially and you know, spending over ten million dollars and are not going to make the playoffs, are not going to come close to their goals. I don't know what the number is for BYU. I would feel comfortable assuming it's under ten and probably
on the on the lower end. And from my understanding, part of the bet that this team made was we are going to get better on the football field by retaining as much of our previous roster as possible, where you had a lot more attrition and hope that continuity and experience and more time under our coaches will lead to natural improvement where we don't need to turn over twenty six percent of our roster. And this year that worked. Part of that worked because you got some improvement that
statistically unlikely from some skilled position guys. Part of that worked because I don't want to say lucky, but the ball bounce fortuitously in a few ways, which is that's football that happens sometimes. It's not something I think you can necessarily plan on happening every single year, but it certainly can work. And to a lesser extent, I think that's a little bit of the model that has to work for Utah or almost everybody else in the Big Twelve.
There's nobody in this conference, nobody that can recruit out of high school at the level necessary to win a national championship. Nobody is signing more than you know, thirteen
twelve four star guys. Everybody is recruiting developmental football players and shopping at the scratch and dent sale in the transfer market to see if they can go get you know, turn a second chance for star guy and having him blossom if he comes over there, and you can win ten games, and I think you'll be able to win some playoff games and have great seasons that way, and
some years are going to go four and eight. If you want to win ten games every year, you've got to recruit like Ohio State test but in this league where nobody is in Ohio State. Yeah, I think if you're BYU and you don't, you don't have to spend twelve million dollars necessarily. If you're recruiting people that can be successful at YU, can stay in roles ineligible at YU, and are willing to stay at that school for multiple years.
If you identify the right people, yeah, you can. You can be in conversation for a league title every couple every couple of years a decade. That's just like Iowa State's doing.
But in order to make a ten win season sustainable, if I'm understanding you correctly, there will need to be some sort of financial infusion, some economic confusion into the football program to be who they were this year consistently.
Correct. I mean, they can't rely on smoke.
I hate to say smoking mirrors because I think they're good, and I think they're better than I anybody thought that they would be. But this did feel like more of like a moment in time. If they want to be this every year, checks have to be written. Is that fair to say?
I mean, I think if you want to be like this every year, you need a different caliber roster. I would say the same thing to Iowa State. I would say the same thing to Houston. I would say the same thing to Arizona State. Which is what Dillingham is I think is also kind of staying here too. You're not going to identify every single eighty six rated recruit perfectly every single time. You're not going to get the
right jucode development guy every single time. The way that that you can win ten games consistently is by having a really good staff, a really good head coach, a really good culture, and then getting the guys that you need and for people it was just different because your recruiting pool is so different. You can't go after the same kind of guys that other peers in this league can. For uh, you know, the same reasons you and I talk about all the time. I think you do need
a minimum baseline. But if that minimum baseline for team Perol is like three and a half million, I think you're fine. Or three million across across an entire team. You that's what the high end of the Mountain West is spending. I think I think you'll be okay because the whole when doople I use recruiting a football player, just like when they're recruiting students for that matter, if money is the single most important thing, they're probably not
going to get that guy. If money is it's important, but they care about four or five other things, they're more likely to get that guy. And and and that works for some people in a dozen for others. And that's okay.
Is NI l tithed?
It should be right? Well, it's it's income, it's an increase. UH can consult? I would, I would, I would encourage listeners to consult your relevant ecclesiastical authorities whether you should pay net or gross on ni L earnings. But my my reading of the handbook would indicate that it should be tithed.
You are literally you're the only college football media member I can.
Ask that question too. Then understands what I say.
Take that. Take that, McMurphy. Yeah, you haven't done the reading like I have.
How long, Matt, are we going to because it if I'm understanding this correctly, this is all still left under the jurisdiction of the institutions, and so like the details if you're going to have a player sign a contract, because we were debating this earlier, you know, if Utah football try to acquire talent via the transfer portal and if the Utah model and I'm not saying that it is because honestly don't know, so let me be clear
about that. Yeah, but if the Utah model has a contractual arrangement with a player that limits the ability to transfer or whatever, they're just going to go find a different contract from a different institution that satisfies what they're looking for. How long are we going to deal with this? Like, at what point are we just going to have uniformity? So there isn't Ohio State at twenty million and BYU at three or whatever it is.
How long are how long are we going to deal with this chaos?
I mean, I mean, if you're looking for uniformity, I think the answer is forever. The way you get uniformity is with a collective bargaining agreement and a salary cap and an an enforcement mechanism to go after that cap. And you know, if you guys follow the NBA, people in this market care even with a really strict salary cap and people having to pay real penalties for getting
around that cap. You and I and God all know that Miami and the Lakers and the Knicks do things that you can't do in put A, that you can't do in Cleveland, that you can't do in Indianapolis to kind of to get over that number. And that's going to be true in college football too. If this house settlement is actually certified, which is still a little bit of an open question, then there's going to be some level of uniformity and what power for schools can offer.
But that money also has to get split up amongst basketball. That's money may need to be split up against other sports as well, and to the extent that other boosters can raise money above that twenty point eight million or whatever it ends up being. It's still very much an open question. And what I would tell, you know, any fans or parents and anyone wh says listening to this, like for this first year, there really are no rules.
The NCAA can't meaningfully enforce any of this stuff. The plaintiffs, attorneys and the judges are kind of making it up as they go along. They'll probably be some more standard standardization after this coming year, but I think it would be very, very difficult to be a coach of any sport trying to figure out recruiting. You've got National Signing Day here in a couple of days, and you might not even know how many people you are allowed to have in a roster next year. It's it's it's a
it's a it's a very difficult thing. But if if your hope is to have the same resources as the Ohio state or Texas or Alabama, think we're gonna need to be waiting a lot longer.
And I guess there's a conversation we had that it's always kind of been that way, and now it's just right in front of our face, right, Uh, I wonder, Matt, in your opinion, because I have your Twitter pulled up and I'm seeing the tweet about I think it's Cooper Legatt and Miles Jackson who claimed that they are you know, they were promised nil money that they did not receive.
And you and I have talked about this.
Get it in writing, get it in writing, and do everything you have to do to make them write it down and sign the document. But my question is what is the biggest or a couple of pieces of collateral damage that are in play now as a result of, as you say, really no rules in figuring it out as we go along. What are the pieces of collateral damage that come about as a result of this chaos?
I think I think we just identified a perfect case. And so the event that we're both discussing here is a new story out of Tulsa where multiple multiple players on the team said, Hey, we came down here under the expectation we would be paid X, Y or Z. Kevin Wilson just got fired. Nobody's taking our calls with our collective and we were out of the money. And yes,
of course you should get this stuff in writing. And I say this to somebody who has been burned by this in his career, you know, both as being a reporter and before being a reporter. And I think that's that happens to a lot of twenty somethings. Is you the job that our recruiter offers, or that you that you the terms that you thought you agreed upon aren't the same ones when you show up with the first
day at work or when that first paycheck comes. I think it really sucks in college that so many athletes, particularly at the mid major and low major level, are advised by people who are not competent advisors, are are advised by by agents who are not attorneys, who are not licensed in their various states, who are not certified by the NFLPA or the Basketball Players Association. They're just guys,
and they're guys that don't know what they're doing. And that's that's part of what creates situations like the Sweven Services at UNLV with their with their last quarterback, and that was with an agent at a grown up agency, like of actual professionals screwed up in a deeply amateur hour way. I think if fans really realize the kind of the caliber of professional that is giving advice and trying to manage the recruitment of a lot of people
who play locally. They would be shocked and that is going to hurt and has hurt the earning potential for a lot of athletes.
I have a simple question with a very complex, nuanced answer. I'm sure because you referenced this earlier, and I totally agree with you. You know, and maybe the term uniformity is the wrong one to use here, but yeah, you know, some semblance of the dust has settled, and we have at least a blueprint of what this thing could look
like moving forward. Probably will not come about until these players unionize and there is a collective bargaining agreement with whatever the powers that be look like, you know, the governing body that now is in charge of college football.
If they break away, what's stopping that?
Like, to me, it's the It is the only solution, and it is the direction it feels like it's going. And I don't know when, and I know there's a lot of red tape, and it's a complex issue, but I do feel like that is the only legitimate solution that would solve the majority of the issues that is causing chaos or a sport that we all love. What what are the roadblocks between here and there?
There's a lot if that's where you want to go. Roadblock number one is that while many many coaches would agree with you, at a surprising number of athletic directors will agree with you, especially if you turn off the microphone and you know, get one cocktail in them at at the conference bar University presidents overwhelmingly hate that idea. They don't want that because they don't want to enter
into a formal employee employer relationship. They don't want that because that would be governed by state level labor law, which differs enormously across the country, which will make conference wide deals much harder to do, and it opens up some legal challenges about which athletes are employees. It's one thing to say, yeah, Ohio State football players should probably be under some kind of CBA. They're obviously professionals. They make more of an any of us will and a
year at any of our careers. It's another thing if that, okay, does that include Utah gymnasts. I mean, that's a revenue positive sport and then they're controlled at the same level that a football player does. What about UVU volleyball players, well that they don't generate revenue, but the controls the same way, and you can see how that gets complicated. So we have the University of Presidents of one bucket.
You need to think.
About unions and about having a CBA. You need a union, and management can't make a union for you. I can't post a union into existence, or at least a very good one. Labor has to do that, and a college athlete union, even one with a really small bargaining unit of just athletes in a certain sport, would be It's not the among the youngest and most transient unions in the entire world. I've done labor organizing before. I helped organize a union when I was at Box. I've done
this earlier in my career. It's extremely hard, and it's even harder when you're dealing with people that don't come from union backgrounds and might not have a lot of things in common, which is the way that college athletics is. We've had lots of efforts now to organize those athletes and they've all mostly failed. That could change in the future, but right now it doesn't look good. In the last
couple of chances have not done very well. The last thing, you know, forgive me for bringing this up here in this market, but we're about to have a substantially less friendly to labor federal government. We might not have a National Labor Relations Board in two or three years. You're gonna have an NLRB while it still exists. That's going to be way more hostile to unionization efforts on college campuses, not just for athletes, but for graduate students and and thas.
And if that gets clawed back, it doesn't really matter what labor does, because the law is the law. So I think if you what you if what you want is what the NFL has, there's so much inertia and legal momentum against that. I'm way more skeptical of it happening in the short term than I was nine months ago. If you want a CBA, the closest thing you're going to get in the short term is the House settlement. And there's a whole bunch of questions with that.
Wow, Okay, last thing.
Now, having said all of that, Matt, do you still think at the end of the day that that will be what college football looks like when the dust actually settles, even if it's in ten years, do you still think that's where we're headed at some point?
At some point, at some point, maybe, but I'm less certain of that than I was last year. I think the only thing that I feel pretty confident about is that we are moving in a direction, probably not in twenty twenty five, but maybe soon after that, where big time college football is a is even further separates itself from the NCUBA. I wouldn't be shocked us in two or three years, we don't have an NCUBA. We have a basketball tournament that's governed by USA Basketball in conjunction
with some event management companies. We have the College Football Playoff as a separate organization. We have USA Baseball, we have USA Wrestling, and we have different sports specific federations in the NCAA is a debating society for the Oberlins
and Westminsters of the world. But what that means for employment and what that means for organized labor or a CBA, those are fundamentally they are about things that are above the pay grade of you and I. And if I was good at predicting what's gonna happen with the Trump White House, what the Supreme court is going to do. I wouldn't be making my money talking here about flutes and rock bands with you.
Guys, fair enough, but it might be only above my pay grade, Matt, because I am not sponsoring a bowl game, but you are.
Let's hear.
Let's let's hear the details about the Extra Points Bowl that you guys are are sponsoring over at your spot.
Yeah. We So this game actually wrapped up, so I think it was.
It was.
It was two weeks ago. I played in the Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. It featured the Marietta College Pioneers and the Westminster Titans, two Division three schools, one in southern Ohio, one just outside Pittsburgh. Westminster won the game, and uh and it was among the highlights of my professional career. It is an amazing venue to have to have a high level football game. All the players got to do a tour of the NFL Hall of Fame beforehand visit. Canton did a great job and
I think one of the really cool things. Even though it wasn't a massive crowd or anything, but at the Division three level, where no one's joally talking about nil, no one's really talking about trying to transfer and maybe get a spot on the Ohio Bobcat's roster next year
or something. The biggest thing for all these guys who missed the playoffs is they just wanted one more game with their brothers, one more bus ride, one more team dinner, one more chance to compete and participate in something that's been such an integral part of their lives. And that's what we were able to do here. We've learned a lot. I think we're going to have a much better and
more expansive event next year. But this was absolutely money well spent, and I've learned a lot and have a different level of appreciation for the folks that help make postseason and NTE events work now across the country very cool.
Now, where can people go find all your work?
You can find what we're cranking we're working on here at extra points mb dot com. We published a newsletter four days a week covering business policy and off the field stories in college sports. Some of that's free, some of that's behind the paywall, so I could buy lunch
of bulls for my kids. And you can find me on Twitter at Matt Brown EP and on Blue Sky at Matt Brown have some other reporting coming up soon, and I know we'll think we're out of time here, but the legitimately the Bowl Game did give me an idea for what a similar event could look like in Utah. Because I have a basketball idea that it's going to take some talking folks into but if it could be pulled off, we can get the right people to say
it's okay. I think would be really really exciting and very true to this market.
You have me intrigued. You also have my support. If we can help. Let us know, always illuminating my friend be well.
Okay, okay, you bet take care guys, all right
Matt Brown at Matt Brown EP on Social let