Who's in the game?

to the show. If you haven't already, you can go to soliverbal dot com. That's the website upper right hand corner. You can find all the links for how to subscribe to the show. We're going twice a week all throughout the offseason. At some point, once we get closer to the season, we will switch back up to three episodes per week, but a couple months away from that actually being a thing. Look us up on social media. All the hotspots and check out our Patreon at verbolers dot com.

Today's guest Matt Brown, a longtime friend of the show, never actually a guest on the show, so I wanted to change that because he's doing great work with his Extra Points Newsletter, an awesome source of information if you're just interested in how the college football sausage is made, top quality work, and he's just done some really detailed reporting now that I want to discuss with them in the wake of that EA Sports announcement about the game coming back, So we're going to chat a little bit

about that. We'll wade a little bit into the territory about name, image and likeness, the stuff that we discussed with Andy Staples on Tuesday, and we're also going to talk about of the quirks of the twenty twenty season, maybe some of the lessons learned, and what we expect to see as an output of a really weird college football year. Without further ado, let's welcome Matt Brown of the show, all right, joining me now. It is the esteemed author of the Extra Points Newsletter, which you could

find at extra points mb dot com. He's also got a new podcast called Going for two what he does with our friend Brian Fisher. It's Matt Brown. Welcome to the show. I don't, Matt, have we ever had you on the show?

not as much the college side. So this is a newsletter that talks about things like higher education policy and how athletic department finance budgets work, and how changing student demographic patterns impact the ability for universities to make athletic investments and all of these things that you only think about a whole lot, but it really does have a pretty big impact about what schools are actually good at. Sports publishes four days a week and doing that now for almost two years.

image and likeness. But I wanted to bring Mat on because we both feel like this got a bit misconstrued by what Notre Dame bant. A lot of people took it as Notre Dame doesn't want to be part of the game. They're cutting off their nose despite their face. I think you and I, if I understand, correctly, see things much much differently. Matt. Is that correct?

that were going to be in the game. And there's a lot of time for that to happen. And I would imagine that Andy agreed here, but I would I would even I would be very surprised if when this game eventually comes out that current athletes likenesses are not used. There's given how quickly and how dramatically name image of likeness legislation is changing. I would I alould feel very confident in the next eighteen months that there's going to be

a mechanism for that to happen. And so now a Notre Dame gets to say they're not really giving anything up by saying that they're not wanting to participate now, but they get to one look like a real player's program that they're willing to leave money on the table to advocate for the financial interests of their athletes, and they also get to put a little bit of extra political pressure because if they can kind of sneak out in the world, we'd like to be a part of

this game. If X Y and Z happens, well, that makes it much easier for Notre Dame fans to start sending emails and letters asking well, why is an X, Y and Z happening? And if that means that they start putting a little bit of pressure on May maybe indianas two senators, then all the better here for one hundred Dame, and all the better for consumers of this video game.

larger societal conversation for years. That's not anything new. I can't think of any though that have cracked the sports realm like this one, Like you've got members of Congress openly talking about legislation specifically to get the video game back up and running. It seems like we've entered do territory with this thing where the game maybe kickstarted the

whole debate. The demise of the game, pissed off enough people that they wanted it back and started talking about this, and now we're almost at the point where the game is the vehicle by which we're going to usher in this new era of nil and perhaps video gaming at large.

The demand when I write anyone, when I when I write about name image of likeness, which I've done often, the number one of the feedback I get from any fan is how does this impact the video game? Or great? You know, you can talk to me about the FTC and you can get in the weeds about all this antitrust stuff, but just tell me what it means for the video game. And it's it's interesting. I feel like some senate staffers aired and not letting their bosses know.

Like list, if you come out in favor of a group licensing group license mechanism, there's not a single voter that's going to punish you. There's not a single conservative voter that's going to think, if we have a group license that's giving too much to athletes, I'm going to vote for another person. But it's the easiest layup in the world because if you are like twenty three to forty, this college video game was a transformational experience in your

college football fandom. This is what connected you to all these different schools. It's what made you fall in love with your PlayStation. And there's an enormous rush to bring that back. I think it would be the biggest, the

biggest layoup. And it is funny. Sometimes really significant political changes happen for maybe more superficial reasons, and it's entirely possible that we'll look back and realize that what really got the engine going, and some of these really big changes in how we define amateurism is in a large part because people want to bring Dynasty Mode back.

I feel like I feel like when I go through and produce this show, we're going to have to put Foyer Requests somewhere in the title or at least in the body the description of the episode, because people care about that stuff, and you did send out a gazillion of them. Why did you send out a gazillion of them? What are you trying to accomplish?

Boosters and other third parties are telling athletic directors or coaches in a way that you can't necessarily tease that out from a press conference, especially over the last year when we haven't had a chance to do as many press conferences or have that same level of access. So this has been a pretty consistent reporting tool for me when I run Extra Points. And as soon as that video game came out, I was really cure about the announcement of the new video game coming Back. I was

I was curious. Well, you know, in the initial story with ESPN, the EA Sports mentioned that they have over one hundred teams signed up. Well, that's not one hundred and thirty. So clearly there's some team, there's some schools here that are aware of this video game and didn't immediately sign up. And there's a lot of other schools that would like to be in this video game and

weren't mentioned in this in this press release. You know, if you go back, I think it was like two thousand and seven or so, there were SCS teams in the game. You know, I don't think all of them. I don't think the Patriot League was in it, but there were a lot of other scs insteaditutions. And you can still find people who are still playing the original PlayStation too, so they can keep playing as like Morgan

State or Portland State or something. Right, So I filed an open records request for about one hundred and sixty FBS and FCS institution.

really big batches relatively quickly. You know. It's funny. It still took me a couple of hours because a lot of schools have individual forms you have to fill out, but I got every public school that I'm allowed to foil them for FBS and FCS. Try to understand who's in the game, and if they're not in the game, are they communicating why they're not in the game, and

what some of those communications are like. And you know already I found out I got something back from Murray State, which sent me a communication from the CLC, which is the licensing organization that works with most colleges, not everybody, that said, hey, as of right now, you know a lot of people are asking about it. We're not planning

on including SCS programs at launch. We might include them later on, So you know, given to this as EA, don't be surprised if there's a DLC package a couple of months after launch, so you could play with your HBCUs and your Patriot League and your Missouri Valley teams. And then I also found communications from some other institutions that either expressed reservations or did not immediately jump on board,

like Notre Dame. So I honestly would not be surprised if in the next week or two we saw an institution give a similar statement to the press that under Dame did, saying that we're not going to participate unless X, Y, or Z happen. Some of those are going to be

really big names like Notre Dame. Some of them might not be, because I've seen documents to suggest that there are some Mountain West in common Diference USA teams that are not excuse me, not Conference American Athletic Association teams that are not immediately on board.

paste job. That development team has been they're not with the company anymore, or they've been moved on to other projects. We want to do this right, and that's going to require some substantial changes. So I want to say the exact language in the CLC email was it may take

several years for this to come out. Even EA Sports right after that teaser was saying like this, you know this is going to take a little while, So my expectation is that you'll probably see some kind of teaser or some additional information about this game, maybe in next year's you know, you know, major consumer electronics exposed. But I would not expect to be able to sit down with my PlayStation and play it probably until twenty twenty three.

much skipped an entire generation of consoles. There was never a version made for the PS four, and with the PS five now being more and more available, you would assume that they're going to have to do a complete step change in order to make the thing better. What I'm curious to see, and I tend to agree with you that we're going to see players in the game, But a lot has changed on the EA side over the course of time, where the model has geared a

lot more towards micro transactions. What does that mean? You can buy stuff in the game, and they've done that really well with Madden, They've done that really well with FIFA. I think there was an old Ultimate Team mode, I know it was there in the twenty fourteen version of the game, where they could probably use that in a newer version and they could steer more into that micro transaction thing to make money, because let's face it, when this game drops, there's going to be a gazillion people

that want to buy it. It's going to be one of their top selling titles almost instantly. So I guess I'm just curious the balance between what does it mean for them to have current players in the game versus what does it mean to just have a game where people can go in there, play it again for the first time in a in a eternity, and start buying stuff and making them money.

was the Dynasty mode. It was this idea to go pick you know, take Middle Tennessee State, or take Acron, or take some imported team that we made up and guide them from essentially a Division two program to a powerhouse. And that's a more solo experience. Now, I think you

can customize that experience with micro transactions. Like I mean, they obviously can't do this because they need to have some school licenses, but you can imagine a world where it's like, well, I'm trying to recruit this player, spend five ninety nine to drop a bag and make it more likely to bring that player.

bit or I don't know. I don't even really know if we're going to have an Ultimate Team mode in the same way you have for the other EA Sports games, or even if it does exist, if it would be as popular. I do think it's a pretty safe assumption though, that is going to try and to find ways for you to spend money beyond the seventy bucks. Oh yeah, to actually get the game.

that they incorporate that. But again, you know, the bigger question remains the players in the game. Are they actually going to have real likenesses? Are they not? I feel like that's a huge selling point for a lot of people, though I do think if they put a game out tomorrow and they didn't have that, people would still play it just to kind of get back in the swing

of things. I guess the biggest barrier to entry then is that licensing component that you mentioned earlier, And there are bills in Congress now, some have group licensing, some don't. What do you see as the eventual future state that gets this deal done. How do they structure it for something like college football, which is not like the NFLPA, where you've got a players association that bargains on behalf of the players, at least not yet. How does this eventually happen when it happens.

Instagram ads. That really doesn't bother most athletic directors. Some coaches might complain about it, because coaches complained about literally everything, but that alone is not a existential threat. But the idea that that might open the door for codifying an

employee employer relationship, that's the existential threat. And I believe the a couple months ago when they were first talking about this, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman was saying like, this is why we don't think we can do group licensing. The entity that can force them to do it as Congress, And I mean, there was actually another name image likeness bill introduced today from a Senator from Kansas that was much more expansive than what had been proposed six months ago.

What I imagine that's going to happen is we're going to see a federal sweeping college athletics reform bill that's going to be signed probably in Q three or Q four of this year, and it's going to produce some kind of national standard for name, image, you likeness legislation, so you won't have thirty six different states doing things.

It's not going to make athletes employees, and there's going to be a group licensing component, and then the event everyone's going to haggle over what kind of medical obligations are school is going to have, What is this going to mean for transfer rules? What is this going to

mean for anti trust exemption? I suspect that eventually the NC DOUBLEA will concede to allowing a group licensed mechanism, whether that's through the NFLPA, whether that's through the College Athletes, the organization that had been in organizing athletes to protest but before the beginning of the season, whether that's another entity.

I think that that's going to be an easy thing to say yes to, to maybe take some of the more scary things to the NC DOUBLEA off the board, and that's probably where we're headed.

education here right now. I've talked to a lot of the administrators from smaller conferences and smaller schools that say, like, honestly, I'm tired of talking about this, Like let's just allow it. It's really not going to be a big like a

big deal for most of our athletes. And all the time and meetings that we spend haggling over something that's going to impact a couple of kids at Clemson and Ohio State, it's time that we're taking away from you know, supporting our academic mission or helping our people graduate, or you know, figuring out how we're going to keep Olympic sports. I think if you talk to some administrators at FCS leagues or even some G five leagues, that's what the

feedback that you're going to get. But you have a couple of leaders some really big schools that are are still kind of really hardliners against any kind of named image of likeness. And there's one thing that I think scares everybody in the Power five. It's this idea of schools getting recruiting advantages, and like, it doesn't really make sense to me because I know, and you know, and God knows, and Mark Emmer knows that this is not

a like a completely fair recruiting playing field anyway. Ohio State and Alabama and Notre Dame are going to have advantages over Oregon State forever. They've had that for one hundred years. But that is what is keeping these administrators up at night, is this idea that somehow if you codify the ability for a recruit to make a little bit of money, then that will throw everything into disarray. And I don't think the data supports that, but that's definitely the concern.

acquisition since we've really been measuring it in earnest. So let's say, Okay, name image, you like this because Alabama an advantage, how much better can that recruiting class realistically get? Like one school's not going to sign literally the top twenty five recruits. You know, four of them are going to be quarterbacks. I don't know if there's really a meaningful way for like the top six schools to separate

themselves even more from a parody perspective. So that means, Okay, it's either worst case is going to stay the same, or it might get better. And this is what I've heard from economists is that if you are a program in a more rural market that has a really defined fan base, you're in a position now to make literally make a better financial pitch. I could definitely see a world where somebody could make more money playing at Nebraska

or at Mississippi State or even East Carolina. Then they might add a more prestigious institution because they have a market that's more willing to let them have other commercial opportunities. I feel like a lot of the detractors are kind of talking at both sides of their mouth when it's this will either this will ruin competitive balance, which has never existed, or nobody will. Only three people are going

to take advantage of this. And while like, I don't really think there's going to be a ton of football players that are going to be making six figures, you go again, coming back to the video game, if there's a if there's a group license, literally every single football player in FBS will get some money from participating in this game. That means your name, image of likeness value is greater than zero. That payoff might be one hundred bucks on a copy of the game, but it's it's not nothing.

probably isn't going to be very much. The schools themselves don't get paid very much for the license, Like Notre Dame's not getting a three hundred thousand dollars check for being in this football game.

those games that are really popular now are inaccessible. But you know, you could put college football on TV, and we know people understand it. Some of these athletes themselves might want to do it. There's there's so many commercial opportunities tied to this particular product that are out there. It's just involves, you know, some some administrators being willing to take the take the risk or give up a little bit to make it happen.

We had the influence of frankly, being in a conference versus not being in a conference for a school like Notre Dame, we had the opt outs. What is your takeaway?

about what next season might look like. And one big takeaway for me is that I think a lot of the data that we saw doesn't make any sense at all, and it was it was honestly surprising to me to see schools still pay out enormous buyouts to let their coaches go in large part based off that data, where very few Power Five teams played with the completely full roster for extended for extended weeks, games got cancel and postponed all of the time, nobody had any kind of

of of of practice continuity. Like my impulse, as honestly is to throw out most of that data at all, but a lot of schools didn't. And that's I honestly, I think an important takeaway because if there was, if the coaching salary and buyout and that marketplace couldn't be reset after last year, where these so many of these athletic departments are facing such a significant financial crunch, and there's all of these great, I mean great like in terms of stuff stantial, you know, reasons to to take

it slow. If schools are still willing to pay that money, I don't think anything's going to slow that down short of like federal law in an anti trust exemption that that limits salaries. The business of college football doesn't really stop for anybody. It doesn't. It didn't stop for for athletes. I know we had some of the beginning of the season where athletes tried to organize and bargain for uh for for changes and what they're given in this as far as as medical rights.

near future. Even so, there's there's other commentators that seem to be more bullish about it. We're gonna see some changes, you know, kind of in terms of how teams schedule and what they spend money on, and those are gonna last for you know, more and more. But I think we're gonna look at this way. We do a look at football seasons back in like nineteen forty two, and we look at the record books and just think, well, clearly,

none of this makes sense. We know Alabama was good, we know Notre Dame was good during the World War two years, we know Army was good, and we just have to you know, throw the records out because all the other all the other data basically doesn't make any sense to me.

Do we have any data, any thoughts around the economics of that and whether or not it will make sense maybe five years in the future versus what we see presently.

next year. The PAC twelve and the Big twelve have new deals coming up. The SEC just signed just signed theirs. The a SEC is locked up with ESPN, for another decade, and they're going to get lapped revenue wise by probably everybody else by the end of the decade. And the only way that they're going to be able to get ESPN to renegotiate is if they meaningfully change their conference membership.

And the big fishp obviously is going to be Notre Dame, and their new commissioner, Jim Phillips, is a Chicago guy. He was at Notre Dame before he was at Northwestern. I would be shocked if that scenario did not come up during his interview process. And that's going to be a storyline because, especially as we get a better idea of how much more money the Big Ten and maybe some of these other leagues will potentially be able to

get in their TV deal and lap the ACC. I don't know if necessarily Notre Dame is going to be forced into it. The only way I can think of what that might happen would be if for some weird reason, the College Football Playoff changed their selection criteria and locked Independence out. Notre Dame is the only school that has the flexibility and the other revenue streams where I think

they can still dictate terms a little bit. I think we both recognize that there are some forces here outside of just pure money that are in play, because you know, there's a whole lot of older Notre Dame grats and donors and people connected that university that come hell or high water, don't want them to join a league, even if maybe that isn't so important to the school's identity for people around our age. I'd be a little bit

surprised if it happened. I think it made sense for this year, gave us some good football games, it was good for Notre Dame schedule, it made sense for COVID. I'm sure we're going to keep talking about it. I'd be surprised if it happens in the immediate future.

or even a playoff. Berth they were going to have to do something drastic, and that move was to join the ACC to become team number fifteen. So it made sense in context to do it during COVID. I'm just curious to see what eventually comes of it, because you're right, having Notre Dame in the conference for one year was an interesting test case. It certainly had more eyes on the ACC, a conference which right now is very lopsided

at the top with Clemson. There are a whole lot of contenders outside of Clemson in the ACC, so to bring Notre Dame in there, it was an infusion of attention and infusion of eyeballs that care about the conference. And now to bring over a Chicago guy, somebody who

knows Notre Dame. I know it's been written about and talked about an awful lot online, but it makes sense to me that he's got Notre Dame in Jack Swarwick on speed dial trying to see what kind of agreement they can come up with, because the alt'm a question here outside of the whole image and the identity that Notre Dame has formed around independence. Eventually, someone's going to put an offer on the table that's too good to pass up. What does that offer look like? Is my question?

What is it going to take. Because everyone's got a price, what is it going to take to change Notre Dame's mind in a way that it's it's too good to pass up?

something similar. If USC is frustrated with the direction of their programming, and if NBC thinks, like, look what if we got two or three teams that are all major brands and we can we can control their entire television inventory, we can try to do this entire thing somewhere else. I almost think that's that might be more likely than

Notre Dame jumping into the league. What'll we be looking at a you know, Notre Dame would have to pull in fifty five sixty million dollars at least, I think as per per school distribution to make a jump into the ACC. And that's hard for me to see that immediately happening. But you know, who knows who decides to enter the television world later this decade or what other membership changes the league might potentially make.

that give them the visible ability that they want? If you're the PAC twelve, visibility is not something you've been very good at, and so maybe it's worth thinking outside the box to try and figure out, all right, how can we get this product that we have in front of as many people as possible. Maybe it takes a platform like a Google to help you do that. But if you're a more traditional conference that you know is on in the Eastern time zone and is more marketable

in the Midwest like the Big Ten. Maybe it doesn't make sense, so I don't know. I just think we're at a really interesting place right now, not just with Notre Dame, but with how people consume media, how people watch football. Fewer people have cable now than ever before. The dynamics have just changed so drastically.

want to be able to say you know me and while can watch you, Grandma can watch you on TV without having to futs around with three other apps. It's why coaches are terrified to not be on ESPN, even if someone else is going to pay them more money because they want to be able to say that they have that same access. But we're already seeing right now colleges you be willing to step outside of the traditional

framework in the hopes of maximizing revenue. You know, the Colonial Athletic Association, which is a pretty good SCS football league, if not, you know, it's probably one of the top three. They have, they signed an agreement with Flow Sports and it's all streaming outside of local cable and they Flow pays them a rights fee far and above what they would have been able to get had they know reupt

with CBS or ESPN plus. Now, Flow is not cheap and a lot of their fans aren't crazy about it, but that you know, moves to a platform that then was able to maximize their revenue. And so that's going to be a question for Notre Dame and for the PAC twelve and for the Sun Belt and for everybody else. Do you go with what gives you the most exposure? Do you go with what gives you the most revenue? Do you want to bet on what you think will give you the most exposure. We'll still will still give

you the most exposure. A couple of years. And because yeah, and because this has such an outsized role in budgets, it's it's it's an enormously important question for college athletics because you know, for Power five teams, you're making more money from your television, your conference distribution, then you're making from donations, then you're oftentimes you're making from ticket sales. Like you have to get this right.

as possible. It's a compelling case. It's a compelling case knowing the era of Pack twelve football that he just left behind, where despite all of Larry Scott's efforts, whatever they were, it didn't really work to raise the profile of the conference. So I think the time is right for them to think outside the box and maybe do something that that wouldn't necessarily be the cookie cutter way to go about it. But I am clearly not in charge of that conference, and why would they listen to me?

starting programs. But if you're starting it now, you don't have one hundred and fifty years of amateurism baggage, or you wouldn't kind of you wouldn't do things the same way that we do. So I've sent out a bunch of interview requests and I've got through some books, and

that's something I'm hoping to dig into. I think over the next couple of months, I have a couple of other stories coming up with some academics who have been doing some research about college athletics and the sort of things that help you promote athletic achievement and student achievement.

And you know, if you if you're just curious about what goes on off the field, and I want to under really understand the nuts and bolts that shape this business because it is business, then I think you would enjoy extra points.