Explaining NIL with Matt Brown

small sliver of that on today's show. We want to try and get in depth talk a little bit more about NIL because, frankly, it's the kind of thing Dan that we do this every day, even we don't fully understand what the ramifications are where it's taking the sport. One of the things we hear a lot is is college football dying because of NIL. You hear some real

doom and gloom stuff with respect to NIL. We want to try and talk to Matt Brown and get a little bit more detail on what exactly is going on in the weeds out there.

we could come up with? Good or bad? What could we call him? Because we love watching him catch balls at names? I exactly, So I appreciate that we can bring on somebody like Matt to answer that kind of question, because nil, as you reference alluded to whatever. It's one of those things where I think, because I am one of the average college football fans, where you can say

what is nil? And you can say, oh, players can make money off of their name and image and likeness, and you know they have more freedom financially than ever before, and like, how does it work?

DC comics? Will you watch a Batman movie and be like h There were some inconsistencies based on detective comics. Number forty four or like Bain actually doesn't have that accent anymore. Like it's like it's a very much all in situation that is very difficult to be all in on all the time, and some people love, whether it's comic books and movies and books and like these like

micro universes. College football is very much in college sports, very much a micro universe that you need to be both into, at peace with, and willing to do it all the time. Because if you are an Oklahoma State fan, if you're a Minnesota fan, if you're a North Carolina fan, and you are a diehard, that means you know the recruits they're targeting. It means you might know who their

analysts are. What's an analyst? I kind of know, but I don't know if I can fully explain the day to day of an analyst as opposed to an assistant coach. So I'm just I'm glad we have This is a long winded way of saying, I'm glad we have Matt who can say here is my thing. And this is as best as I can tell in this constantly evolving world.

And last, but certainly not least, please do follow along on social media with an important emphasis on some describing to the YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash the solid verbal. All right, Dan joining us now from extra points with Matt Brown. It's the Matt Brown portion of that title. Matt Brown, welcome back.

it's everybody. We're just like, I'm talking sports with my guys, and Matt's like, this is what interests me, this is what I'm going to lock in on, and this is what I'm going to become as as much of an expert as possible in. And so I like that with restaurants, I like that with humans, and so I like that with of course people who cover sports. So that's that to me, ty is what I love about having them. Yeah, and not just that, I mean we're out here yelling

about is nil the end of college football? Matt's like, I'm going to file a Foyer request. I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks.

But I can talk to you about how states finances or their contracts are other things. And then it turns out that was interesting to me. And now I've learned a lot about that kind of esoteric stuff. So like, listen, if you want to talk Patriot League, you want to talk Nil, you want to talk some just like nitty stuff, like I'm your hunckle Berry. I'm glad, like that's the that's the thing I've learned how to do Huckleberry.

different nil markets that are happening right now. There's the NIL marketplace for primarily top three hundred college football players, a top one hundred college basketball players, where that gets written a lot through the eyes of college football assistant coaches and as one marketplace, right and then you have the nil marketplace for literally everybody else, because that marketplace does exist for D one softball players and Division two

football players and D three everybody else's And what we're seeing because we actually do have some heart and fast data about this. We can look up compliance forms that are sent to schools for athletes that do deals. We have a general idea about how many athletes at a given school have done any kind of deal, and we know that at a place like Ohio State or Alabama or Tennessee you know, around one out of four college athletes across all other sports have done anything with NIL.

With football players, the percentages a little bit higher, and we have to remember that some athletes, like international students, can't do nil deals because that way to complicate their visa. So maybe it's like maybe it's like a third. If we look at eligible athletes at G five or one Triple A schools, it might be twelve ten eight percent, and it goes down farther from there. So if the participations that low, I don't look at that as you know,

being a catastrophic anything on college football. And most of the time, if someone's getting a thousand bucks or two thousand bucks to go, you know, shill for candles on Instagram,

I think that's great, right. I think when we talk to assistant coaches, and this is not to be disrespectful, but it is in their interest to freak out about every tiny little difference perceived or in actuality between their program and any other program because they get paid set under fifty grand to recruit and if somebody else has something a little bit different from them, well that compromises their ability, right, So it's in their interest to tell

reporters that have go outen in public and like this is the wild West. This is changing everything. And you know, for the kind of athlete that was going to get a bagman deal anyway, you know, we're seeing that now. It's just a different text classification. But based on just what we've seen so far, the impact that this has had on roster management and roster construction in college football

in general, I think it's a little bit overstated. A lot of the stuff that everyone's freaking out about now that was still happening. I mean, I mean, Jimbo said that that same thing, right We was always doing nil deals, we just weren't always talking about them. That's been the big difference right now is that now there's paperwork to some of the stuff that's been going on for decades.

there is wondering what is nil? But you combine that with transfer portal activity, and it feels like, suddenly we've got this free agent marketing. College football guys are getting paid.

things in parking lots and being offered clear liquid in glasses. Right, and none of that changes based on the tax situation of anybody on the field. I can understand some frustration with Hey, rosters are more transient now, and maybe I don't know if that freshman that we signed is going to be somebody that we see in two or three years. That's been true for college sports other than college football.

For a while. One of the fun things about this job has been learning about how recruiting and roster management, all these things work in other sports. And to hear volleyball coaches saying like, oh my gosh, people have been tampering like hell for years, Like the AA volleyball coaches are like the bagmen of that community, and people still

care about volleyball. So I look at that and think, like, I get how that might make some people's lives more difficult, but I don't think it fundamentally changes the experience of what we like, and things evolve and change. I don't think the way that roster management and nil and transfers are looking now will be what they look like in a couple of years. That market is going to reach some kind of equilibrium a little bit. But if coach is changing this quickly, hasn't ruined the sport for you.

Are school's changing conferences this quickly, right? I don't think it should if a middle linebacker makes that same decision, especially because you are probably going to benefit from that as well.

not overseeing it. And so there is this element and you know, the term wild wild West is used a lot, but like there was an articles today I think it was David Ubben at the Athletic talking about like the Tennessee Fan Collective putting together fifteen twenty twenty five million dollars per recruiting class and putting it towards, you know, getting star players paid because of their contributions to winning and production, productivity, whatever on the field. So what is

their oversight? What is the oversight? What do contracts look like? Who is looking at contracts? Is that person who is looking at Hendon Hooker's contract from a car dealership somebody who has the best interest of the car dealership, has the best interest of this like third party like open endorse so we're gonna help you like find endorsements and everything like that. Is it an agent who's like, hey, Hendon Hooker, I'm looking out for you. This looks out

for me. This is our deal. Like what is yet to be written in terms of all of these new business relationships with not amateurs in terms of amateur student athlete, but amateurs of the business world.

took big expensive cars and not cash and not realizing that those are taxable assets, and suddenly they owe, you know, the IRS, nine thousand dollars because of that truck that they then gave back because they transferred or did something else. That's an issue because I can tell you those first couple of months when nil deals were first happened July, August, September, nobody really knew what they were doing. And by nobody, I mean not just the athletes, the compliance officers and

a lot of the brands. A lot of the companies that have been really heavily involved in this world have never done influencer marketing before, so they don't really know how to evaluate the success of an Instagram campaign. They don't know how to price it, they don't know what kind of contracts they have to offer. They just know I want to help ol state you and which is fine.

And on one hand, I look at that and think there's there's reason to be excited or optimistic because as those local businesses learn more, that will mean more opportunities for all football and all women's volleyball and soccer players and people that that can benefit. But there's going to be pickups. I have a lot of questions about these collectives.

I have a lot I have questions about how the collectives themselves make money because some of them are pitching themselves as completely nonprofit entities, which we'll see if the IRS agrees. You know, that's stay tuned on extra points.

And I can't require the athlete that's signing with me at nineteen to still sign with me once they turned pro. And that's been kind of the issue with the Sneaker universe, right with basketball players. So if a lot of those other agents aren't getting involved, I didn't realize this until this year. Basically, for college, you can just declare yourself

an agent. Like I've talked to a lot of people that were representing an athlete I was thinking of doing a deal with I only to learn they were an undergrad and that they're representing their dormmat and like they're twenty, they haven't even finished Vermont yet, So like, okay, that that changes the way that you and I work together. So I would have some concerns, and I would have some concerns. And this isn't This is not a criticism

of Dave's story or any these other stories. But if we're writing about the NIL space and we the only people were talking to are people who run collectives that are like, Nope, my collective is giving out one hundred

bajillion dollars. And then we talked to somebody who's industry benefits from people using these collectives, like yep, I'm the CEO of Big Nil, and I looked at the numbers and nils getting real big, and then we publish that without maybe digging into can we confirm any of those numbers? Are that deal that's being offered to the athlete actually happening?

How these people are making money? Like I got lots of follow up questions, and it reminds me a little bit of like crypto or maybe some other basic financial instruments where maybe the cart's gotten out ahead of the horse a little bit, and we we're not exactly sure what's going to happen in a year or two in terms of regulations or actually executing on the things that we say that we're going.

like weird lack of accountability from the schools perspective. Do you see that changing or adjusting? Like it's just very strange that. And I am somebody who likes that players are making money from their name, image and likeness, but it's very strange that, like college football is a major sport and yet the schools have nothing to do with the income of their best players.

the level. Right. So if you're Ohio State and you book a deal with Jerry's you know, truck company dealership, and that dealership goes belly up or get sued or something bad happens as some oh issue is liable, then don't want that. But you're kind of still doing that right now without you're right at that level of oversight. I can tell you here's here's another major thing that I hear a lot, because so much of the people that I talk to are mid majors or maybe D

one schools that don't have football programs. Like let's say if we're you know, a Patriot legue team. Let's say let's say we're Lafayette, and they might sit down there and talk to their athletes, and you're gonna have athletes at Lafayette who could make nil money, probably not one hundred thousand dollars unless there's somebody who's really good at twitch, but people who generates the value. But Lafayette, and this

is just an example. You know, don't if you don't, don't yell at me or if those specifics are wrong. But Lafia, it's probably got like one and a half compliance people, a couple of grad assistants helping them in that department. They're gonna have two or three sports information people and some grad assistants, so they're gonna I mean like people at those kind of schools will tell me I literally don't have the capacity to do more about nil than say, we did this deal with influencer open doors,

so we have the compliance stuff. Here's a couple of videos you can watch about Instagram. Please don't do a deal with the porn company. Please don't deal a deal that's going to embarrass me. And you're on your own, and there's gonna be a couple of very entrepreneurial minded people that will jump into that, and other people are like, I have no idea even where to start, and so

they don't. And I look at that and think, well, that's too bad, not just because you're missing out on money, but you're missing out on building a professional network and

learning about industries. That's really hard to do when you're a college athlete, which I think people forget sometimes because it's not like you can if you're playing d one basketball that you can just say, all right, hey, i'm studying abroad, I'm going to go to Italy, I'll see you in four months, or I'm doing this internship now with Goldman because you got to lift weights and do stuff for twin tenty five hours a week, so you

don't get that same college experience. Going in doing nil deals gives you an opportunity to be exposed to some of that and the lack of resources for smaller schools is one of the big pain points for the bigger schools. That's the pain point Dan, for exactly what I think you're explaining, and then they hear their regents and their boosters and their fans say, listen, I looked on the message boards here and sliced bread says that somebody in

other school has given that ten million dollars. What are we doing and we can't and there's incentives to maybe do stuff outside the lines. It's a difficult position to be and if you have that kind of booster community.

to part with trademarks? So an Alabama logo a us C logo. I had seen that that was sort of a hang up with Caleb Williams as he was trying to figure out where he wanted to go. That USC isn't especially fond of parting with its own trademarks for other people to use unless they are Nike or what, you know what, unless it's a deal like that. So how universal is the willingness on the state level and the universe and the willingness on the university level from a trademark perspective.

They were doing it because they're boosters and their voters were saying, you know, state US going to fall behind, so we have to do this really quickly. And then they realized in six months that maybe they made some mistakes, and that's so you're seeing one. Not every state did one of these at all. Indiana, Utah, I want to say, Wisconsin had none, and some commentators have argued that actually

put them at an advantage. It's not an accident that BYU was one of the first schools to do wide, you know, broad based deals for not just all of their walk ons, but I think all of their women athletes have something so like and their law let them do that. So you have some places where you have more restrictive laws, and there's a push to change that, particularly in the South, with Florida, with Mississippi, with Georgia.

You have some places where the law is hilariously you know, poorly written, and that has nothing to do with enforcement and it's just kind of there. You have some places where states the state legislator only meets like once every other year or it meets for six weeks and they have other things going on, as you man I'd expect, and so nothing's really happening there. So there's there is

not even close to certainty. And this is why the nc double A and why are one of the reasons why the NCUBA are many ads are saying we need a federal law, and that's that's you know, that's that's kind of a different conversation. And then with the trademark thing, you're right too, there are smaller schools that don't care, and even a couple of big schools that don't care. Mi Alma Mater Ohio State probably employs more trademark lawyers

who are like aggressively going after this. Then a lot of other schools have like athletic trainers, right like if I, if I uh pronounce the incorrectly on this podcast, I might get a letter to Mike my po box. So that's that's a big issue for many schools. Licensing and sponsorship is a big revenue source and if they don't aggressively protect that IP if Texas A and M doesn't suit anybody that thinks about the number twelve, then they lose that. And we'll see if that becomes an issue

in recruiting. My guess is probably not that much, but it is an issue, and what kind of nil deals you can do. The last thing I think I would say is, despite hesitancy about copyrights, we haven't seen anybody yet any school actually try to take punitive action on

an athlete because the deal that they did. I could tell, you know, beginning in the beginning of this process, a lot of compliance teams and honestly still now expressed a lot of apprehension about their athletes becoming barstool athletes or doing gilts at barstool because it's because of their connection with gambling, and many state laws said don't do that. But nobody really, you know, made an athlete, to the best of my knowledge, terminate that deal or actually remove

their eligibility. They may have educated them, they may have said please don't do this, they may have talked about it, but I don't think anyone's been willing to actually put the hammer down. And that's going to be true. I think as other athletes kind of push the envelope as

to what is permitted. I mean, if you were somebody that did a deal with the sportsbook, right now and your school said no, if you're good enough, I don't know anyone's going to tell you not to write like you have to do something absolutely outlandish to really get I think in trouble right now, you know what I mean.

include player likenesses. And the reason for that is over the last several months, many schools, mostly P five schools, but some G five schools too, have begun to set up group licensing programs. I think a lot of them are working with a company called the Brander Group brand our group, which does group licensing, I want to say for like the WNBAPA and some other professional associations. And the way that's set up now is an athlete voluntarily

opts in. It's not required. You can do it as soon as you enroll, and that gives the school permission to make jerseys with your name on them or do other digital products with your name on them, and then you get a percentage of of that revenue. It's not like a union where maybe you could collectively bargain and argue over that particular percentage. So it's not the same thing, but now you have an end where you can do that.

And now we are getting to the point where so many schools are opting into those deals with this one company that theoretically Brandar could then go to EA and say, I have the NILS for football players at eighty schools. Let's do a deal where that EA Sports would then pay every one of those athletes. I would I would say probably the in the mid to high four figures to appear in this game, and then potentially a percentage for future DLCs if you're involved, and I think every

college football player be thrilled to do that. And then once that happens, then you would be a system where athletes could opt in at their individual school and I would honestly expect some kind of announcement on that front by this summer. Wow, that's that's where the wheels are turning on there. So there's a lot of optimism on the video game, but that's going to happen. And also if that doesn't happen, notre name is not going to be in the game, like Northwestern is not going to

be in the game. I think probably ten schools won't be in the game, but it's going to happen. The other question, though, is a much much bigger, really existential question about are we're going to have a union. And right now there can't be an athlete union because legally college athletes are not employees. You have to you have to be an employee before you can unionize, and that

may change. That may change because the NLRB, the organization that ruled in favor of Northwestern, has based like the head of that is basically put out an all points bulletin saying that would be a great time for an athlete to say to file a complaint, and athletes right now haven't. But two athletes rights organizations, one in California and what one I believe in Minnesota have filed those complaints. So that takes eighteen months basically for that to happen,

but it could. The federal court system is looking at a case right now, it's called the Johnson case dealing with Villanova of all places that are saying that we deserve to be classified as AES and so the federal courts, whether that's the Supreme Court or district court might rule that.

So once that happens, then we could see another union drive, and then down the road we could have a player's union who that could collectively bargain not just about the video game or about jerseys, but also about health insurance or base salaries or COVID or any of those other things.

I think there's some level of wish casting among certain elements in both college sports media and college sports academia that are like, this is going to happen tomorrow, and regardless whether you think it's a good idea or not, like I can tell you it's not happening tomorrow, and I would put my money on the next union drive in college football failing before it is successful. But there's a good chance eventually this will happen and we'll have that set up like we do in the pros.

Where do you see NIL going next? With respect to players getting benefits financial otherwise from things like jersey sales or other products that maybe weren't even in the equation when we started talking about this thing a year plus ago.

It's a probably five figures. Not everybody has that, but every single college athlete, whether you start or you're on the bench, or you at a big school or a small school, you're an expert in that sport in one place. That's just been kind of like in its baby steps, But I really do think we'll grow in the next year or two. Are athletes making money running summer camps and giving lessons and being involved with high schools and club sports and AAU and going back to their hometowns.

It's already a huge deal in a lot of Olympic sports, particularly swimming. College swim coaches generally get paid like crap, and a lot of them, especially assistants, basically make enough money off the summer camp circuit to allow them to continue to stay in college. I think players are going to get involved in that space right now too. There's a lot of market places to make finding an Instagram deal pretty quick and easy, and that doesn't exist right

now for doing camp clinics. But that is a place I think could really grow a lot. Maybe a running back brings this whole running back room to the local high school and participates in two a days with them and makes a thousand bucks for it. Like that's I think that will continue to grow. The other place here is in the group licensing world. You're right, Ti, I think companies are trying to figure out what else makes sense eide jerseys or besides a peril for athletes to

be involved in. And if you look at my PR box, well it's n ft s right, it's going to be digital goods. And I think I'm much more skeptical of that. But I could definitely see before, maybe before we get EA sports college basketball or college baseball, I could see a college football like mobile simulator game that has player likenesses or something that's not a Triple A sports title that goes directly to iPhone or Android, or maybe just

to Steam that uses player likenesses. And I think that that once it becomes less expensive to kind of experiment with those kind of products, that is a world where you might see as well, not so much NFT, but maybe gamings or more traditional collectibles that athletes can be involved in.

there are specific governing bodies for specific sports. You know, there's United States Track and Field, there's United States Swimming. There's then of course the United States Olympic Committee. Whatever they're associations, it's by sport, it's by governing body. It's specific to the sport and the needs and the types of athletes that play that sport. We don't have that.

We have conferences that oversee scheduling in TV rights. That's an oversimplification, but it's a major part of what they do. We have the NCAA, which enforces eligibility and sets the rules of eligibility, which seems to be growing more and more like a dinosaur by the day. What is the future of sports specific governing bodies, the way conferences operate

and the way the sport as a whole. If we are negotiating national TV deals, is there going to be more and more of a national governing body specific to Because this is a foot ball show football, what is the status of the organization of the sport and sports?

lot of authority to specific divisions. So all of the NCAA bylaws that you might be familiar with from this is what it takes to be a conference to this is the amount of cream cheese you can put on your bagel and all of those different things. That's all being nuked. And they're saying, D one, make your own. And many of the Power five schools are saying, we want more autonomy, which means money, and we want more championship access which means money in the current system too.

And I am someone that still really thinks a formal P five split is unlikely based on the conversations I've had, and if it did, it wouldn't be a straight P five G five thing. There's going to be P fives that wouldn't want to do it, in G fives that would. But that does at the table. It does give the Division one a ton more flexibility to blow up how they've organized their sports in a bunch of different ways.

So we could very much see a world where a college track and field is more regulated by US Track than it is the NCAA or Division one. We could have different conferences have different scholarship rules for different Olympic sports. The SEC in particular would love this because they want to give every single softball player the scholarship. They have the money, they don't want that to be a partial thing anymore. There are PAC twelve schools that want that

same thing. There's a lot of division. One that says that literally defeats the point of us having a softball program. We're only doing this for tuition. There's no chance we would want to be able to do that even if we had the money. This is what's happening with the team specific stuff. Is fascinating because you get it now

that I've been writing about this a lot. I think you get an idea for which one of those those team specific organizations are invested in college athletics, like I think US wrestling is an example where they really are because they recognize that that's my Olympic pipeline and these are the sports that are threatened, so we want to be heavily involved. And then there's US soccer, which historically is not very involved to the best of my knowledge,

in the college world. So those things are going to evolve, and I think how football is governed is going to change. It's going to change a lot from more rules being given to conferences. We could see a system I think where the college football Playoff has a lot more like regulatory influence over schools are rather mean that just gets moved out of the NS.

you know the answer. And if we went up and grabbed grabbed Greg Sank and grabbed you know, Julie from Ohio University, the two chairs of the Transformation Committee, I don't think they know yet either, which is both exciting and probably scary because because there's some gigantic questions, really acrimonious questions. Sure that nobody knows yet, they can have some educated guesses, and I have a couple of educated guesses. I think what it'll look like, but nobody really knows for.

dollars per season. You need to have a practice facility, Like there are certain things where if you are the Los Angeles Clippers, if you are the Calgary Flames, whatever, there are standardized elements to how you run your organization. As we look across college football, and this is a conversation Tyan I have, it's like, this is a program that's unserious about winning. They're unserious about becoming that about winning in the Big ten, they're unserious about winning in

the acc that they're to collect a check. They're there because they're big enough, but like they're not spending on coaches, they're not spending on facilities, they're not spending on recruiting, and it just seems like there are certain programs that are just financial doormats, like they're there to make money and they're not there to compete where it seems that for the most part, and I know tanking is now

a thing in professional sports and whatever. Are we going to get to a standardized financial level where we're going to say, you know what school A school B, you're not investing in your program, you are not trying to compete on a level in which and it's hard for a lot of these places. Is there are we going down a standardization path as the sport reorganizes.

not be like FBS anymore. That everyone gets waivers and they make up their attendance stuff right, And there's some frustration about that, but there's also we can't necessarily pick and choose what schools will be in the highest level

without risking being sued. So one thing you could see as a standardization tool A couple of ads that have floated this would be, if you want to be FBS or you want to be like the highest level of college football, you have to sponsor twenty three sports or twenty two sports and use that as a proxy for your athletic department must be doing X, Y or C, and you would have to have X number of paid staff and you can voluntarily jump in and not You're

You're right there. The biggest gap, honestly, I think it might really be between the very bottom of Division one and like a high level mid major, like a what a Missouri Valley basketball team is doing versus a bottom level WHACK or Big South or HBCU right now financially is enormous. There are some college facilities that are probably worse than where either of you went to high school,

and and and like that. Then you have the gap between a Houston and an ECU, and like Ohio State and Alabama, and even within the P five, like I think we can all agree, you're right, there are some schools that are willing to make different financial commitments. And then there are schools that you're right, are riding on inertia, like what Rutgers is able to do financially despite being in the Big Ten. It's not the same sport. And you're right like that, that is a question at all

levels of college football is being asked. Why does it make sense if we're clearly not on the same page here of resource wise or a wise, for us to be in the same boat, And like that's figuring out the best way to draw that line will be one of those contentious issues for sure.

that are serving mostly non traditional students. So a fry school like Portland State, right, you know, that's go Vikings, Go Vikings. Cool history of a program one, they're facing some struggles right now. But I want to say the average age of Portland State students like twenty six or

twenty seven. And so if you're supposed to be serving minority students, non traditional students tradition to students that that don't have fifty thousand dollars to get takeout loans, should you saddle them with student fetes or expenses for a football program they're not going to enjoy or for an experience that's not the same thing as a residential campus.

I would argue no, Like, I am not going to get all mad online about Stanford or Duke or even American wasting money and they're an athoughtic department for some reason, because you know those are if we can indulge share in hostereotype, those are mostly students of means I would get I do get upset when I see schools that are targeting less affluent students then being saddled but with

some of those things. So I think for me, aligning those two incentives would be an important thing for schools to do, and then every school to be able to say, I am spending this money on my athletic department to achieve X, y and Z, and here's how I can measure it, and here's how that aligns with what I'm trying to do. I also think it's a bad product for fans and honestly for athletes to pretend that schools that are not playing the same sport are playing the

same sport. I don't think it's great for Kent State. But they got to play three body bag games and they might win one out of forty of them, but most of the time they're going to lose by forty. And it's cool that you got to play in Ohio Stadium. It's probably not as cool that you lost forty nine to three. Right a world where that happens less, and those schools have an opportunity to compete at a level that makes sense for them, I think would be a positive.

The last thing that I think is so important here is that the voice of athletes are meaningfully taken into account we make decisions. And this is something I've been thinking about here too in my own work. Because it's it's easy for me to call up an ad and it's easy for a lot of other reporters to call

up a coach. It's harder for me to build those relationships with athletes either because I have to go through an SID, I have to hope they check their Twitter, DMS, I have to use a social network I'm not familiar with, which makes me feel extremely old. Yeah, but ultimately like it's their lives, like it don't ask me to TikTok man,

like I'm too old to learning this thing. But whenever, whether it's expanding the playoff or changing the amount of time that athletes have to do or to spend on their sport, I would want a new system to meaningfully take their preferences into account, whether that's giving them money, giving them healthcare, giving them the opportunity to major in

whatever they want and then being centered. I don't want to spend as much time thinking about what will make Jimbo Fisher's life more complicated, because, as Don Draper said, like, that's what the money's for, Like, I'm not going to cry for you, I but the other it's the people under you an NFL job, and then yeah, exactly that. As I think what we would like and how that ends up looking, that could be one of ten different things, and I don't have a super strong opinion aout any

of them right now. But if we're not gouging regular students with money with expenses for stuff they won't watch, and we're not taking advantage of athletes as much, I'm probably gonna be cool with whatever al I'm going to watch whatever it is that comes out from there. You know.

definitely can't have that on the left. And we saw this, I think in the seventies two, when many black athletes said, actually, you have to treat me like a human being. You can't tell me I have to have this kind of haircut. You can't. And then you know, we saw the at Wyoming in Iowa and Oregon State. Some of those coaches like the de Lloyd eatons of the world. They had

to get out. We also saw that on the administrative level, there's a certain kind of AD that's been doing this for thirty five years and can't imagine a different way. And I don't know if maybe Barry Alvarez specifically falls under this camp, but I think people like him like this is a good time for me to leave. We also saw I think a chunk of administrators, many of them I think were really pretty bright, that are much younger, that looked at this and thought things can't change as

quickly as we'd like them to. And I don't want to kind of go through the thirties of that song and dance. I want to get out now. So we saw the Commissioner of the America Yeast, who was somebody that I think could have, you know, led the ACC in ten years. We saw ads at Portland State and you see Davis and a couple of other places. People that were I think under fifty left and so you are seeing a change now. When I talk to a lot of ads now, I think there's a generational shift

between are you like over sixty and are not? And how you think about athlete empowerment or nil and you have to be comfortable with some of these changes if you want to you want to stay in this business because it's it's a different world for good or frail.

And now you realize that if you lead by fear or if you don't build those kind of relationships across your whole roster, everyone's gonna leave. You're gonna have a whole why situation, and like that doesn't work anymore. That's also true with how you might have talked about politics or or race. Uh. And you know, this was an issue for Orizaron right and one of the things that kind of led to things falling apart at LSU. And building those kind of competencies is hard for a lot

of big time college football coaches. And this is this is not a value judgment here. It's just that that is a system that's tended to reward folks who have an almost sociopathic narrow mindedness into one like into one world, right, and they're they're not There's not a whole lot of

people that are reading uh. You know what, we don't have my Gundy's watching and reading right, But there's not a lot of other people that are like are as we are as connected to to politics or to to to race, or to finance these other things that maybe they're going to have to to connect with their athletes.

And so it's going to be fun to see who's comfortable making some of those changes, who will attempt and do it clumsily and we'll get those jokes off, but I think athletes will forgive them and who is completle, incapable of changing for anything. The Mike Leeches of the world, you know, like, come Heller high Water. This is exactly what I am and you know what I'm getting and I'm not changing. I don't know how it's going to work out, but it'll be fun for us all to watch, right Absolutely.

conference money payouts. Some people will say, you know, the ability of America to fall in love with a quarterback who's going to be taking number one overall, so right now, and my own answer is do I enjoy watching it as a TV show in that like, yes, hell yeah, I want to watch West Virginia, Texas Tech because those programs are entertaining, and this is a a sport driven by TV money. So it's just a matter of, well, I go out of my way to watch this game

or as many games as I can. So to you, how do you quantify a very strange sport, a very disparate sport in terms of overall health.

One of those is with just pure participation in football, which has been in decline almost everywhere in the country. It has been most pronounced in the PAC twelve footprint and in the Northeast in some places. Here here in Chicago, I wrote a big story about you know, this used to be one of you know, the Cook County was like Miami Dade for finding football recruits right a couple

of decades ago. And whether that's population shift, whether that's a lack of adults to help run some of those youth leagues, whether that's concern about the health and safety of playing youth football, and and just pure cost. A lot of families aren't participating anymore. And I think for particularly for a lot of young men, you fall in love with football in part because you played it in seventh or eighth grade and you learned the kind of

nuts and bolts of it. So that would be a concern not just for finding enough talent, but but for finding fans. I think the fact that students by and large are going to these games far less than they did a decade ago, and in most places in general, are facing declining attendance. I think I think that is an issue, and I think the governance of this sport

is an issue. And by that I mean not just with the NCAA, and not just with Congress, but we've had a bunch of commissioner and ad changes over the last ten years, and the trust level within the people that have to govern this sport is maybe at an all time low, even with people in Delaney was somebody that I think a lot of administrators would happily dogcuss

behind closed doors. But they also knew that you know how to work with him and knew and were able to work through some of those things, and that really isn't happening right now. I think a lot to what we saw with the conversations about expanding the playoff, which is something that every Conference commissioner wants to do, and they weren't able to figure out a way around a couple of these important but not massive sticking points. And I think part of that is because right now they

don't like each other. A lot of them straight up don't like each other. So if they're unable to come to a good agreement on something they all want to do, what's going to happen when they got to come to agreements and stuff they don't all want to do, which is what the next six months are. So I look at all of those things and think there's some big problems to say nothing of Congress, or to say nothing of the courts, or we know about CTE. There's there's

there's things to be excited about. Like I, honest to God, look at NIL and think this might make me like college football more. Think of all the the great memes we're gonna get right, think think of Think of of of how this is going to improve the lives of athletes, Think about how this is going to help me get

to know people in a deeper way than before. But I have some concerns and and I'm not necessarily sure that the people who are responsible for finding solutions to those problems are best equipped to do that right now.

has positioned itself as a national sport. It wants to compete with the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, the NHL, the MLS, whatever, which are easier sports to follow, because inherently they have athletes who can play for fifteen years. The best athletes can become famous in household names. And you're like, I don't care what team Lebron James plays for. I love rooting against Lebron. I'm gonna watch Lebron games to hate on him or whatever. You can't do that

in college football. And now we have a sport in which I'm speaking on behalf of the sport. We want mainstream eyeballs, but we're making it extremely difficult via recruiting, via transfers, via coaches leaving, via nil rules, via opt outs ahead of huge games like Pitt had a Heisman caliber quarterback who decided not to play in the biggest game of pit season. Like, that's just a reality, and whether you like it or not, that's a reality of

the sport. Is the difficulty of being a national or regional or local college football fan sure or a bug at this point.

in Chicago are not that way. So what like I try to think here one This is why I think about this all the time when I'm writing, because even I'm really getting in the weeds about stuff like is this something I can explain to my father in law and have his eyes not glaze over in the first forty five seconds? And if I can't, then great, Like then I've got an actual story.

And they're telling me, like one of our goals is, and this is a culture that understands football is we want to be the cheapest restaurant in Lafayette on game days. So we're going to offer dollar tall boys and we're gonna we're going to price our concessions cheaper than local high schools, and we're going to fly at every community center and every school and get people to come here and like, you know, you know the post I was

talking like, listen, South Louisiana. We are professional drinkers, so we can give dollar tall boys and it's not going to be an issue. But our thing here is let's get everybody we possibly can to see this, to see the marching band, to see students, to to to see the wonderful South Louisiana tailgate experience, and we can get them to fall in love with it later and at

what once once they see that. I've talked to people at Nevada or you know, Reno is a city that's changing an awful lot right now, and they're like, what we're doing is we are We're calling up every realtor we know and we're get giving them two free tickets to every new home that's sold in Reno to get the new people to come in and hope you fall

in love with that. And I think that might be part of what you have to do because for as much as the in person experience, we can talk about how TV makes that more challenging and maybe it's not the same as it used to be, but the most compelling way to get people to see beyond recruiting rankings and transfer windows and rivalry trophies that we invented in nineteen fourteen and their bronze monopoly pieces or whatever, I think you just got to get people in the building.

Because if you get people in the building and you see the brick and on the campus and you hear the marching band, it's cool and that helps you work through some of those things. So that is an issue you have to solve. The fact that this is so unique is a selling point that it's so provincial and that's local. Yeah, I think that's the very best part about college football, and it's finding ways to overcome that barrier to make it accessible is is a challenge. But

it's that way with other things too. Like I feel like I've been saying I could really get into hockey like every year the last like five years. I think that's a place that has a high barriered jury right totally, and I've been scared off a little bit. Maybe maybe eventually it'll make it, it'll make it happen, But like that, that's something that people have to do with for sure.

be to set up an account on a marketplace. And there's a bunch of them open doors, market price, mogul, no cap, I can even you know, I can DM you. I have a list of all of these right and for most of the Bronxton time for brands, it's free to sign up and it works kind of like Facebook Marketplace. You would you would give some information about your company. You would explain this is what I'm looking for for

my campaign. Maybe two Instagram posts and maybe a podcast appearance or two Instagram posts, and could you take a picture of you wearing a solid verbal T shirt or something right, and you would list all of your information and your budget, and you can make that budget a flat rate. You can tie it to conversions, you could tie it to a couple other things, and I'd usually give a range, and then you could make it public.

And you could either make it public and invite people to come pitch you, or other athletes will come and pitch you, which is what I did on a few of these marketplaces, or then you could you could say, hey, show me all of the athletes in this database who play this sport, who have followings in this range, who

have like a budget specified by this I think. I think the best marketplaces will also let you sort by maybe major or hometown or more granular with what their what their audience looks like, and then they'll match you with people and you can directly reach out to them as well, just like you would if you are trying to hire somebody on a resume database or selling something

on Craigslist. And then the way it typically works is you would begin the conversation on that platform, you might exchange phone numbers and then talk otherwise like you might tender I think, or I mean I can't confirm, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got married before all that became big. And then the way it typically works is then like the marketplace takes a commission off the value of the deal. So if you're going to pay an athlete one hundred and fifty bucks, you might put one hundred and seventy five

bucks in escrow. The marketplace takes the twenty five dollars fee. The one hundred and fifty then goes to the athlete once you approve it. It really is pretty simple. And I would say for a company that's trying to drive awareness that is a college football show or a college show that talks about college athletes, I think it's a good idea. It becomes a little bit more complicated if you are like a beat writer, and I wouldn't recommend you pay for an interview that way, but for a podcast, I

mean like that it would make sense. Many many others are doing that, and that is how you the best way I think you'd go about trying to find the right athlete.

bucks a month. But I'll set up a special solid verbal specific discount, right, Yeah, well I'll do this orry we're done recording here, right if you use say promo code solid verbal not twenty five percent off, so you can get it.

to be afraid of it. I don't know if I'm any less afraid of nil.

Don't know if it'll happen. I kind of think it might not, but you can never be too prepared. All Right, I have three options, and I'm not going to promote. I'm not going to promote for free a business in Auburn, Alabama. But you can get all of these things there. Okay, I'm saying, what if he does a Zach pack. Okay, a Zach pack at some sort of local fast food place because you've seen like KFC or the other day, Like these lunch deals are like popcorn, chicken, tater tots

and a drink and a biscuit. So we have a Zach pack of his choosing. That makes sense. That's a fun thing to say, Zach.

a local commercial Instagram or whatever. And my final offering for Zach Calzada should he really pop in Auburn, Alabama, is Calzada's Calzona's and those are I apologize why at the local boat.

So Cal's ota is Calzona's. I'm ready to make it a thing and be a creative director for the commercial if it comes to pass.

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