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Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale - Bonus Episode - UAB Football
78 Plays10 months ago
On this episode of Now It's Legal, we recap AO's visit to UAB's football team to discuss the future of college athletics and their impact on its future. UAB is now the first Division I football team to join the players' association with every member of the team signed up for Athletes.org. AO's Jim Cavale & UAB Head Football Coach Trent Dilfer discussed the values (knowledge, access, protection) and benefits of the platform including legal advice, medical second opinions and mental health professionals.
The movement was initiated by Head Coach Trent Dilfer who gathered the team and encouraged them to prepare for a future where they will be able to have a seat at the table, and negotiate for a larger share of revenue. Tune in to hear from HC Trent Dilfer, the AO team, as well as several players including quarterback, Jacob Zeno.
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About Now It's Legal
In July 2021, NIL forever changed the trajectory of college athletics. It’s been a long time coming as the NCAA has long needed changes like NIL, the transfer portal, revenue sharing and other benefits for college athletes. We introduce to you the Now It’s Legal podcast. Join us as we discuss the industry that holds the hearts of millions of fans who want to understand where its trajectory is heading. We are talking to those who are invested in and affected by NIL including: Former and current college athletes, presidents and head coaches, broadcasters and media personalities, investors and more. This is just the beginning of NIL and what it means for the future of college athletics.
Host Jim Cavale is a former college athlete and entrepreneur who has become an advocate for young athletes across the country. In 2017, he created the INFLCR app that allowed athletes to build their brand on social media, and in 2021, evolved into the NIL management technology for more than 100,000 athletes across 200 college athletic programs. INFLCR has since been acquired by sports tech titan, Teamworks.
In 2023, Jim founded Athletes.org which which is the players association for college athletes to negotiate the best terms for their college athletics experience. AO provides its member athletes with a free membership, empowering them with a voice, on demand support, and group licensing income in the same ways that professional league associations do for their member athletes.
Tune in to a new episode every Monday and join in on the conversation on Instagram with @nowitslegalpod and @jimcavale.
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Transcript
Introduction to Bonus Episode
00:00:02
Speaker
What's up, everybody? Welcome to this bonus episode of Now It's Legal. I'm Jim Cavall, and I'm really excited about this specific bonus episode because we're going to let you into an FBS team room.
Athletes' Future Aspirations
00:00:17
Speaker
We're going to let you into the team room for UAB football with head coach Trent Dilfer, who's going to set the stage for a talk that Brandon Copeland
00:00:26
Speaker
and myself gave to the team. You're going to hear from some of the players as they talk about who they are, what they want written at their funeral, said about them at their funeral. You're going to hear us talk about the landscape of college athletics and where things are going. You're also going to see if the team decided to sign up for athletes.org and why.
Mission of Athletes.org
00:00:48
Speaker
they made that decision. It's a special day for me because we want to do more of this. We believe that more college athletics programs and specifically college football and basketball programs should let us in the team room because we believe athletes.org is structured to be the players association for college athletes to vote and speak into the new deal of college athletics.
00:01:12
Speaker
If college athletics is going to have any protection from all the litigation happening, they're going to need to come to a deal with college athletes. And we, now with 2,400 plus college athletes signed up, are trying hard to be the organization to help make that new deal happen in a way that not only protects the future of college athletics for the leaders in the schools, but also
00:01:34
Speaker
helps athletes get a bigger piece of the pie that they help create. And so this episode is going to paint all that and more.
Presentation to UAB Football
00:01:42
Speaker
And it's a bonus episode behind the scenes. We're letting you in the room for our talk with UAB football.
00:01:56
Speaker
So today's kind of an historic day. You're the first. You're the first team that athletes.org is presenting to, okay? What's being done today will be filmed, as you can tell, and sent out to other teams. You guys will follow the conversation in college football. People are making a lot of money. Billions of dollars. How much do you get? The actual money that's negotiated for you to play on TV, you are getting none of. All right, so who's getting it?
00:02:26
Speaker
the conference and the institutions. I'm one of the few people who believes you deserve some of it. The movement is going to happen as power is going to go from institutions and conferences and be shared with players. When you're a player and they're in a failure, you're part of a union, okay? And you have people fighting on your behalf.
Brandon Copeland's Journey
00:02:49
Speaker
You have help, right? Right now you have no help.
00:02:53
Speaker
Right now, your lone ranger is you and your parents, right? At least our order is set up to be your help. And it's really cool who's talking to you. You guys know Jim Cavell. Jim's a very good friend of mine, entrepreneur, super successful influencer, him. Like a lot of things in the space are him. I don't know of a human right now that fights more on the player's behalf than Jim.
00:03:16
Speaker
And Brandon Copeland, we always talk about crushing life, right? We talk about being great husbands, fathers, providing, being awesome humans. You're gonna love his story. Undrafted free agent, okay? 10 year NFL vet. Average lifespan of a first round pick. How many years, Logan? Guess. Three to five, 2.7. Undrafted free agent, 10. You don't think he's got a little bit of this?
00:03:45
Speaker
He got a little something, something in him to do that. That's not just talent. He's got some, but that's everything else we talk about. But it doesn't stop there. He's a professor. While he was playing, he was going to Wharton, right?
Challenges of NIL
00:03:59
Speaker
Professor at Penn now or Professor at Wharton? Professor at Penn. Most of NIL.
00:04:05
Speaker
is donors laundering money through collectives to pay players to come to a school. Instead of the schools paying the players, this NIL thing's being used for it. It should be that the school
00:04:21
Speaker
who is generating $16 billion is now the size of the annual market of college sports, 16 billion, okay? None of that money's being shared, so instead of the schools paying the players, this NIL thing's being used for it. And I realize it wasn't sustainable and start building something to help athletes go get a piece.
00:04:42
Speaker
of that
Support for College Athletes
00:04:43
Speaker
money. And I don't just mean with a salary, but with better benefits. This should be the launching point of your lives. It should not be the peak of your lives. The reason why we spend time doing athletes.org is because, frankly, I just want to see y'all eat. I want to see y'all win. I'm tired of seeing people take advantage of us. Who represents the athletes? Who's going to be fighting for you to get a bigger piece? We like to say decisions are being made about you without you.
00:05:10
Speaker
and you have a choice, you have a decision. At this point in time, you can either say, ooh, you know, NCAA's got it. They gonna look out for me. They'll make sure I get my piece. How many of y'all believe that? Raise your hand if you believe that. Or, again, college athletes need to organize into their own association where they can amplify their voice, access trusted support, and maximize their income.
00:05:39
Speaker
And what we propose to you guys is athletes.org is your association. NIL is not regulated. What does that mean? That means that we don't have any transparency to know who's getting paid what. You're not signing a deal that's locking you in and locking them into paying you. You could be signing a deal that's not standardized by an association that can make sure that your contracts look right. These things all happen in pro sports. The problems are pretty simple, guys. This is the foundation of athletes.org. Number one,
00:06:07
Speaker
athletes deserve a bigger piece of the pie. We do want the revenue that UAB football makes to be able to be shared with you, but also we want you to have a voice. We want to have standards and accountability across your whole experience.
00:06:23
Speaker
And so we want to give you a voice. And then number three, we want you to have support. If you got a legal question, we want you to have a place to go. If you're about to do your taxes and you don't know who to hire to do them for you, we want you to have a solution.
Importance of Organizing Athletes
00:06:35
Speaker
If you're really struggling with something and you don't know who to talk to, because like Cope was saying earlier, you're the athlete that's got it all figured out and you don't know where you'd go with it and you're scared to go to a team official just because it might affect how you perceive them in the locker room or whatever it is, we want to help you.
00:06:52
Speaker
Right? And so support, voice, income. Not only are we hearing that athletes are getting bad offers that aren't real, and they'll switch schools to find out that they don't get what they were promised, but also in the contract, what you're committing to is really important.
00:07:11
Speaker
We've seen athletes who were going into the last year of college football sign a collective deal that says they have to do this many autographs at this rate. When they leave, they still have this many left to do, and they can't do the pro deal that's twice as much per autograph. I've seen players, you know, get told, they'll come in and start, get all this money, and then they get there, and they third and fourth on the depth chart, and they don't get no money. Now they just send their stuff, because they can't leave again. Well, forcing function is when something happens that forces action.
00:07:41
Speaker
Okay? And that's what's happening right now. Because this is coming, because I worked in TV, right? They're still gonna pay the $7.6 billion for the college football playoff. They've signed their contract. Okay? So college football games are gonna be on TV. This is a forcing function to tell Aedes and presidents around the country, okay, to put their money where their mouth is. Because what they say in the NCAA site, they say they're for you.
00:08:12
Speaker
Don't they say that? Don't all these institutions say they're about the kid? Are they? Are they with the information you know right now? Your scholarship's a big deal. I don't ever want to discount the scholarship. They are paying for your college education. And that's a big deal. And that's part of it. That would be part of the revenue sharing. And that's something that would be part of the pie. But how many of those people, I'll use Smyre. We're Smyre.
00:08:40
Speaker
How many people outside this building sacrificed their body and long-term effects to your health? Nobody, like you guys do. There ain't one athletic administrator that's splattering a play. Right? Is that fair? Right?
00:09:10
Speaker
There ain't one college administrator that's handling the sea gap, damis, against somebody that's, what, 50 pounds heavier than you? Not one, right? And this is what got me with the NFL Players Union, is that it wasn't about the moment we were in. It was about the moment we were all gonna experience when we were done giving our bodies to the owners,
00:09:38
Speaker
to make billions of dollars. Yeah, we got rewarded. But what about health care after? What about mental health? Who did I call when my son died? The NFLPA had a group of people that I could call. It's more than just the bag. It's all the things you deserve because you put your bodies on the line. Prime, you're the most important voice in college football. Let them come into your team.
00:10:09
Speaker
Every college coach, if you really are about your players, then let them organize. You're scared because you think your comfortable life is gonna go away.
UAB's Historic Sign-Up
00:10:20
Speaker
If you care about your players, let their lives be comfortable like yours. Thank you.
00:10:29
Speaker
Ultimately, again, we're not here telling you guys to fight. We are being invited in here by your coach and all your coaches, because again, they love you. They actually want to see you win. It's not like that everywhere. Y'all are the first team to sign up together for athletes.org. That's a big deal. You're making history today in a journey that's going to be historical as college sports changes. Let's give ourselves a hand for that. That's a big deal.
00:11:00
Speaker
With that being said, I appreciate y'all. Let's give two claps and a woo to yourselves.
00:11:07
Speaker
So thankful that you could check out this episode of Now It's Legal. And as always, if you're not subscribed on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts, search Now It's Legal with Jim Cavall and make sure you subscribe. You can do that on YouTube as well. You can also get teasers and clips from future episodes before they come out on Instagram at Now It's Legal Pod. So you can subscribe to the clips that will preview each new episode.
00:11:36
Speaker
Now, this episode was different. We're going to try to do more of it as athletes.org goes into team rooms and talks with athletes and has candid conversations with leaders, coaches, but also teams of
Call to Action for College Teams
00:11:49
Speaker
athletes. We want to let you in behind the scenes. And so my hope is that we'll do it more. And my hope is also if you're a college athletics leader listening to this and you just listen to that conversation,
00:12:00
Speaker
in that team room at UAB, bring us into your team room. Help your athletes start to unite so that as one united group,
00:12:10
Speaker
They can collaborate with you and the other schools in your conference and across the country to speak into and decide on the terms of the new deal for college athletics, a new deal that will only make college athletics that much better in the future and will create a protected version of college athletics that we all can feel great about.