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S2E5 - Jack Swarbrick - Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale
124 Plays3 months ago
Jack Swarbrick is the former athletic director at the University of Notre Dame. During Jack’s 28 years of practicing law, he was a partner at Baker & Daniels and represented USA gymnastics as general counsel. He then served as Notre Dame’s athletic director from 2008 through 2024, experiencing many on-and off-the-field athletic achievements. He was also a member of the 2023 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on NIL.
Jack joins Now It’s Legal to discuss his initiatives to improve the college athletics model and overall student-athlete experience, including working with Congress to provide competitive equity across collegiate sports.
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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 on Wednesdays this fall and join in on the conversation on Instagram with @nowitslegalpod and @jimcavale.
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Transcript
Introduction of Jack Swarbrick
00:00:11
Speaker
I love that track, NCAA, two chains. Welcome to another edition of Now It's Legal. I'm your host, Jim Cavall. Today we have a treat, Jack Swarbrick. Since 2008, he's been the athletic director of Notre Dame and a proactive thinker for many to follow in college sports in an array of ways.
00:00:34
Speaker
Jack's a guy who recently retired as the athletic director at Notre Dame earlier this year and ah has been very loud about what needs to happen in college athletics for a sustainable future, not just for the industry as a business,
00:00:50
Speaker
but for the student athlete experience, as he calls it, with a student first approach. And of course, Notre Dame has preserved that value for years with athletics by making sure that their students are on campus if they're student athletes more than 25% of their time, making sure that they're interacting with non-student athlete students in a lot of different ways. And last year around this time, Jack had a testimony at a hearing in DC about the future of college athletics. And we're going to use that testimony as a centerpiece for this conversation. So
Life after Retirement for Jack Swarbrick
00:01:28
Speaker
let's go into it. My interview with Jack Swarbrick. Jack, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Now It's Legal. um You know, before we get into the conversation, I got to ask, how is it being retired after so many years in the chair?
00:01:45
Speaker
it's ah It's weird. ah It takes a little getting used to, and believe me, I'm not complaining, it's great. I love not setting alarms in the morning, um but just trying to figure out the rhythm of what you do and what projects you take on. I mean, it's all up to you, right? it's ah So it's it's a little different, but by and large, I'm loving it, especially the extra time with the grandchildren.
00:02:11
Speaker
Absolutely, well, um this is gonna be a fun conversation.
Prioritizing the 'Student' in Student-Athlete
00:02:14
Speaker
ah You know, around this time last year, you were able to go to DC and be a part of a hearing on the future of college sports, NIL, we've seen several of these hearings happen. But with your with your statement that you made, there's a lot of things that that I've ah pulled out and used in a lot of my conversations with folks as we talk about the future.
00:02:40
Speaker
And so for our conversation today, I kind of want to use your statement as a centerpiece, um because there's some things that I think would be great to get you to expound on. um and And the place I want to start is your call for the status of the student athlete to keep the student part first, right? And and so the the the reality is, while Those are part of the principles of the NCAA and many institutions. um There's a lot of things being done by college athletics leaders and presidents to kind of run amuck with the student first philosophy, whether it's conference realignment with ah with with with a situation where there's crazy traveling. um I could go with a lot of examples. The point is this.
00:03:28
Speaker
How do we really preserve the student first aspect of the student athlete with everything that's going on in college athletics? Yeah, it's ah it becomes a little harder every day. There's no question, but I think its importance grows every day also. Now I came from an institution Notre Dame that was was really committed to it, and so.
00:03:54
Speaker
When our coaches set schedules, they had to be approved by the faculty board on athletics, who had a policy that you could only schedule three missed classes a semester and in each course. um It's that sort of thing. it's We had a requirement that you live in a residence hall with other students. The housing assignments for freshmen were random. didn't You know were likely to be assigned with another student who didn't know much about sports.
00:04:25
Speaker
It's all the little things, right? it's It's making sure that everyone's taking and eligible for the same courses. We believe strongly in at least some of the meals being consumed in the same dining hall as other students. You gotta be really intentional about it with all the with all the little things to help keep it in mind for the bigger picture when you have pressure to make a conference realignment decision or to participate in an event that takes your students away from school.
Role of Congress in College Athletics
00:05:00
Speaker
Absolutely. And and so as you talked about this status that that needs to be preserved with the student being first, you also went into the fact that um student athletes need to have congressional and intervention to remain separate from the employment status that many have said student athletes should be ah given.
00:05:23
Speaker
Talk about that. like how How do you see the academic side of college athletics playing out? Should Congress not intervene and student athletes become employees? And why is that, in your perspective, a dangerous thing? Well, first of all, a little a little ah without intervention, a little of that may may be dependent on the upcoming election and sort of who's controlling the National Labor Relations Board, among other things. But right now, um there's sort of this strong momentum in a host of different places, federal courts, administrative rulings, NLRB, to make at least football and basketball players employees.
00:06:13
Speaker
um And listen, I recognize that we've done a number of things that contribute to that argument. And we've got to correct those. We've we've we've we've got to fix them along the lines of what you and I just talked about. But the damage is enormous because the the separation becomes real. um they're They're not part of the campus student body anymore. They can't be.
00:06:40
Speaker
If there's a disciplinary matter, it's resolved by HR, not student affairs. um
00:06:48
Speaker
Things regarding policies for students and employees are fundamentally different in any environment. And and and so there are 30 examples I could give, but the common factor is they all move you away from other students so that you're seen differently you're not having the experience of being a student. That's that's sort of what's missed in all this. you know it's It's not a status, it's an experience. One of the things I've pushed for for years that got zero traction was a national missed class policy that but says you can't miss, for example, you can't be away from campus, say more than a quarter of the day as the university schedules campus.
00:07:35
Speaker
That's not about being in class. I recognize that a lot of schools have video courses and other things. It's about taking part in the experience of being on campus. That's that's a big part of being in college. And if you're an employee and you're living separately and you're having a separate relationship with the university, you're just not having me the student experience that I think is fundamental to a university education.
00:08:01
Speaker
So a lot of what we're talking about, you said you know there's ah there's a contribution from college athletics to get the ah situation of of suggestion for student athletes to be employees from some of the decisions that have been made, the commercialization aspect, et cetera. right there' There's responsibility that you just acknowledged. But most of this has to do with one sport.
00:08:26
Speaker
and one group of student athletes, right? And so we've seen recently groups like College Sports Tomorrow come out with a model for football to separate. And whether employment status happens or not, football players have an opportunity to collectively bargain and be a part of a more professionalized league with academic preservation and academic requirements. um And the rest of college athletes could really operate as is.
00:08:56
Speaker
And for some, this seems to be the best chance to have employment be associated with just a small group of athletes versus all. Now, I understand you want all the athletes to not only be together, but also to be with the students. But what is your reaction when you look at how much football has kind of dragged everyone else along with them? Conference realignment, Rutgers and Oregon playing women's volleyball on a Friday night.
Professionalization of College Football
00:09:22
Speaker
like is Is separating football something that has some wisdom to it?
00:09:29
Speaker
um
00:09:33
Speaker
My basic answer is no. um I think there are reasons that football needs to be governed separately, have some elements that are different But that's in part because it's funding all the other sports. And we need we need to maximize the value of football because that's the reality. It is gonna fund the other sports. And we need to make sure we're operating in ah in a way that that ensures common principles across the sport, right? um But that doesn't mean we have to separate out
00:10:14
Speaker
the activity. um Listen, I would suggest to you that in a sense, this all started with basketball um with with with some of the misconduct that occurred. Well, yeah, she passes is a great example that I always hear from Congress. oh But you know, the, the early examples of a lot of money going to student athletes outside the system were basketball driven and sort of robbed you of your ability to say, oh no, they're they're students, right? Well, we're not treating them like students when we're delivering huge payments or the shoe companies are deciding where they go to school. So I just wanna make the point that it's not, it has become football in large part because of the dominance of football.
00:11:13
Speaker
has exerted over the past decade in college athletics, but it it isn't just football. And you have some Olympic sports that are so important to schools that you have yeah ah a bit of the same conduct, right? Absolutely. You know, if if if you're great in sport A, and I don't want to give any examples because people think I'm talking about a certain school, but if you're great in sport A,
00:11:37
Speaker
And as part of your reputation, you're going to do everything you can to get the best athletes in that sport as if they were football players. But bottom line to respond to your question is, um I think there are things we have to do differently, but I don't like the idea of separating football out.
00:11:55
Speaker
Okay, so let's get back to your testimony this time last year. You talked to the Congress, you said we need state preemption. um And we're seeing now states like Georgia with their executive order now allow the University of Georgia and other schools in the state to just pay players directly for NIL instead of the collective, right? We've seen the situations in Tennessee and Virginia. I could go on, but ultimately fragmentation continues.
00:12:24
Speaker
um How important is it, if there's anything Congress does, to just preempt a lot of the different things that are happening state to state and create uniformity? Because it's it's really not an even playing field with rules right now, let alone with financial resources. Yeah, it's important. There is no question. And it was it was the one thing in my trips to Congress that I i think was sort of non-controversial, whether they would intervene was the bigger question. But if they were going to intervene, um they understood state preemption had to happen. um Some of the other things we were asking for were were more controversial. But listen, every sport, and and and this is not to get preachy here, but our problem is is is this is a relatively simple one that people need to understand. Every sport requires competitive equity.
00:13:23
Speaker
you you can't operate without it. Like the league baseball has age limits and geographic limits and high schools have transfer limits and you know all you sports does, you probably have a golf handicap. That's part of competitive equity. Of course, the pro sports have drafts and transfer fees and salary caps and everything else. Sport doesn't work without it, without some measure of competitive equity.
00:13:51
Speaker
that's That's force field number one. Force field number two is we're academic institutions who can't and shouldn't have competitive equity as as institutions, right? it's It's what the admissions cases have often been about. you know it's it's You can't come together. If I said colleges and universities are gonna come together, form a conference and agree on tuition,
00:14:19
Speaker
everybody would say, well, that's a clear antitrust violation, and it is. So that's the tension, right, between if we're academic institutions, it's an antitrust violation, but competitive but sports has to have competitive equity. how do you How do you find that? How do you find that middle ground that allows both things to occur? And that's the essence of the problem, right? As we've moved away from the educational model,
00:14:49
Speaker
We lost any support from the courts that that's what was our primary mission. You know, Justice Kavanaugh's famous dissent is pretty clear. Yeah, exactly. Look guys, you can't call it yourself educational institutions when you're doing these things. That's what has to be resolved. And part of resolving that is you can't have states having different rules. um It just doesn't work. It doesn't allow competitive equity.
00:15:19
Speaker
and and we've got to find a way to keep it educational, but be allowed to have some measure. don't have to be you know We're not going to have a draft system that decides where you go, but some measure of competitive equity. My route to that is being allowed to negotiate with the student athletes about what those rules should be. Because my my experience starting as student athletes about these things is we can resolve this in 30 days because their interests are sophisticated, but more common among each other than people give them credit for.
00:15:57
Speaker
Absolutely. And obviously that's where we kind of got linked up last year is that's what we're working on at athletes dot.org. And I believe you referred to the group as a mechanism. We need um a medium or a mechanism for student athletes to be able to organize and and and work with their schools on crafting how things will work. I'm going to read something from here. ah An admittedly more radical approach would be to craft legislation articulating the rights of student athletes, including the right to negotiate with the conferences or schools in which they compete over the terms and conditions of their athletic participation. Such an approach would protect the rights of student athletes while also preserving their essential status as students first.
00:16:46
Speaker
Talk about putting that together and then saying it because obviously that's in line with why we started athletes dot.org. It seems to be the greatest opportunity for protection of the future for everyone to have a system that's more level. Yeah, um it it was interesting. I mean, i had I had been toying with the idea for a while, but I've been cautioned by people that it's, you know, it's it's too It's too radical. Don't go there. people won you know You won't get support for it. But in that setting before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I thought, what the heck? I'm not going to get here again. um'm good um up um I'm going to close with this argument. um And you know I believe very strongly in it it. It strikes the balance that I just articulated, right?
00:17:43
Speaker
let's Let's declare that they are students. If you want to impose additional requirements that make sure they're students, I'm all for that, but let's let's do that. But let's allow them to negotiate with conferences, national organization, however it works, to develop the core elements of competitive equity.
00:18:07
Speaker
i've I've got to tell you, I run into a lot of students who are frustrated by the transfer rules because they're trying to build great team cultures and and people are coming going a little more frequently than they'd like.
Negotiating Rights for Student-Athletes
00:18:19
Speaker
Well, that's a great discussion to have with students. What do you want? How do you want this to look?
00:18:25
Speaker
um you know, how do you want to make sure our Olympic sports are preserved, but the sports that are producing the value, those students, their their contributions recognized. Those are all great things to discuss with and reach resolution on with student athletes. Right now, if we did that, and you and I talked about doing doing a model, right, a sort of beta test of it, um it's unenforceable.
00:18:56
Speaker
by law. um and And students could say, yeah, I know this was negotiated, but i'm not goingnna I'm not going to follow it. That's why you need a shadow version of the National Labor Relations Act, which declares their status, but says you can negotiate with them. But what I've been thrilled about in the intervening year is is is how much traction the notion's gotten.
00:19:22
Speaker
um I have people reaching out to me all the time now. um They frequently don't don't know I authored the concept, but they'll they'll say, what do you think about this? And I'll say, what happened to you? None of it. oh but But it's gotten some real traction. and And I think there's an opportunity in front of us. We've got to get past the presidential election and you know get back to where Congress is more focused on a broader range of things, but i think I think we might be able to get it done. Well, when I look back at this time last year, I had one week where I stepped down as CEO of Influencer and TeamWorks and folks like yourself around the industry congratulating me on what we did there and and asking me what was next. And a week later, I launched athletes.org and a lot of those same people were like, what the heck are you doing?
00:20:19
Speaker
and And not all of them because there was others like yourself that as I had more and more conversations were like, I actually think what you're doing could be the best chance for us to solidify a future for college athletics that preserves academics but also allows for the things that you just went through, allows for athletes to have a voice.
00:20:40
Speaker
And so for me, it's been fun because what what we did at athletes dot.org was pretty radical, especially me going from partnering with schools to now organizing athletes for a negotiation with their schools. But also as the market has moved, as the house settlement has formed, as a lot of the things have happened that have happened, I think everybody's seeing we really need to include the student athletes in how we decide to do the future. I've been fortunate to be on your campus meeting with student athletes from different sports in one room. And there were football athletes and track and field and soccer athletes all sitting at the same table. And you know what?
00:21:20
Speaker
The soccer and ah track and field athletes had no problem with the football players getting the lion's share of revenue sharing. As long as they knew that their sport was going to continue, that they were going to continue to have scholarship funding and facilities and travel to the same standard that they have been having.
00:21:36
Speaker
right so that That's part of it. We saw the NFL now say, you know what? We've done 17 games. We're thinking of doing 18 because that'll allow us to do 16 games a year in Europe or abroad. And Joe Burrow came out and said he supported it, but there was a lot of players who were pushing back. And what's that going to take for that to happen?
00:21:56
Speaker
they're going to have to negotiate it with the players, right? And so if we're going to change the transfer portal, which would be a monumental change, if we're going to change how much athletes can get paid and what the transparency is, you have to have the athlete voice in there. And this seems to be, as I go into my next question with you, you spent a lot of time in DC and you didn't have to. Nobody said, you got to go to DC, Jack. You wanted to.
00:22:19
Speaker
Because you see that there is an opportunity for an NLRA type act to be passed to allow for this negotiation to happen with preservation of some of the things you said are so important for college athletics with the student first model. um And so you spend all this time up there with Republicans and Democrats.
00:22:39
Speaker
This seems to be the most important issue, employment, student athlete voice. And obviously on the Democratic side, employment is more of a desire and student athlete voice is a requisite. Whereas on the Republican side, student athlete voice is taboo and employment's a no-no. How do we get them to agree to something that can actually protect the future of college athletics?
00:23:05
Speaker
I'd characterize the perspective of the two parties a little differently, but that's okay. We'll, you know, everybody, no one disagrees with the student athletes.
00:23:21
Speaker
having a much bigger voice and helping to determine the future. it's It's really a relatively clearly defined question of how do you get there, right? Do you just let through a random group of decisions, as I said, in courts and administrative bodies, et cetera, gradually define more and more student athletes as employees and proceed that way which which one of the real problems with that is it'll only occur by jurisdictions, right? So much like you said about the states, you'll have a jurisdiction that's declared student athletes or employees, while another one hasn't, and they're gonna have to compete with each other somehow, and and that's chaos. um but But so if we can all accept the premise of the state, that student athlete involvement in this needs to be much greater, and that that they have to play a bigger role in shaping the future. That is a procedural question of how we get that done, right? Do we do we go through a fairly torturous process of having these inconsistent decisions about employment, or do we come up with a model that serves the same purpose, um but preserves student status?
00:24:49
Speaker
and I don't see another route.
Involving Student-Athletes in Decision-Making
00:24:53
Speaker
I mean, I hate to be, I suppose you could you could split out football and maybe delay the employment decisions for other student athletes, but it would still come for other student athletes, right? This is the most reasonable approach to get people to agree on, to get student athletes the voice we have to have them have. This isn't altruism. We can't operate.
00:25:20
Speaker
unless we can get to a place where we can agree with the student athletes um because we'll get further and further away from competitive equity. We'll lose frankly more and more sport opportunities for young people in this country. And we we we can't let that happen. No one wants to see that regardless of your political leanings. How can we accelerate this? We tend to get distracted in the discussions on the Hill about attempts to fix NIL or address the transfer problem.
00:25:56
Speaker
Don't go there is my argument. You don't need to. Congress doesn't have to come up with rules for NIL in American college sports. Let the student athletes and the universities figure out what that should look like and we'll be fine.
00:26:15
Speaker
and we'll we'll reach We'll reach agreement that'll do the things we want to do. You you said of our student athletes at our Olympic sports, we're fine with football players getting the lion's share of the financial rewards if their sport and scholarships were protected. The converse is true. When I say to a football player or when I said to football players on campus,
00:26:42
Speaker
Hey, you could get if I told you you could get this much money, but we'd have to cut four sports, what would you say? They'd say, don't cut the sports. I'll take less money. So so students have the right perspective. They have the ability to get to resolution here. We just need a way to allow them to do it.
00:27:05
Speaker
Absolutely. Now I had Jeffrey Kessler on here a few episodes ago and I brought up the model that athletes dot.org is now talking to a lot of schools about in a post house settlement ah world where ah Each team on campus would have a player rep for athletes dot.org and and the teams that produce revenue would have more player reps than the other teams, but there would be at least one player rep from every team. Those athletes would sit on an executive council and they would negotiate all these things that we're talking about with the schools.
00:27:39
Speaker
And without an act from Congress to protect that, is it still worth doing? And Jeffrey said, yes, it's better to do that than to not do anything ah because of what will most likely come post House settlement, which is more lawsuits. How do you feel about this potential interim period where the House settlement gets approved, the terms begin next summer, Congress still hasn't done anything?
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. um I see the benefits of it, and I like having a proof of concept, as you and I discussed, to show to Congress.
00:28:23
Speaker
um But I worry a lot that Congress will say, well, maybe you don't need us. Maybe we don't have to do anything. um and and And they do because much like in the traditional collective bargaining world, when your representatives agree to it, you're bound to it, right? And and we've we've got to have that force of law behind these agreements we reach. um Or frankly, they're not going to <unk> they're not going to be very meaningful.
00:28:58
Speaker
Absolutely. Now, before we keep going, what did I get wrong about the two parties? How would you categorize the two parties when it comes to athlete voice and employment status? um I don't both embrace athlete voice. um and I haven't run into anybody who doesn't understand the value of that.
00:29:23
Speaker
um
00:29:27
Speaker
It's sort of the difference between states that have right to work laws and those that don't. I mean, it's so yeah it's um I learned in advancing the notion I've articulated here never to use the words collective bargaining. hero Collective negotiating. but Yeah. you know but Common negotiations, whatever. And ano I talked to one Democratic senator who said,
00:29:54
Speaker
can the students choose any representative they'd like for purposes of bargaining under you under your model? I said, yes. And he said, okay, I'm good then, right? um
00:30:06
Speaker
Others on the other side of the aisle would say, we don't want traditional unions representing students. um and And so that's, how can we not have that result here?
00:30:21
Speaker
you know have the teamsters or the ironworkers or whatever. So um it's it's a little bit more about traditional labor relations perspectives of the of the two. they're all I spoke to a lot of senators and congressmen, and they're all fans of college athletics um and this country's Olympic sports. And it's just finding the common ground.
00:30:51
Speaker
Well, I've been hearing through the the lobbying work we've been doing in DC and all the conversations we're having with both sides of the aisle ah that Cruz's bill has gotten a lot of traction as of late and um is even being looked at at the state level. One thing that that I know is not in that bill is the student athlete voice. So whether or not they would say, you know in a verbal conversation, yeah, we're for student athlete voice, I know it's not in there.
00:31:18
Speaker
And so that's that's where my reference came from. Doesn't mean that it couldn't end up in there. And I just feel strongly that if it was in there, not only would it create the sustainable future you and I have been discussing, but I think there's a greater chance that folks on the other side of the aisle from crews would be interested in supporting it. That's all. Yeah. Oh, I don't think there's any question about that. And You know, the challenge here, and it's a good challenge, is you got to get 60 votes in the Senate. um we We could get something through the House, but the challenge is at the Senate level. um And I think you've got you've got to thread that needle. um and And I think by adding the concept we're talking about to some of the legislation that's already been proposed, it would get us there.
00:32:13
Speaker
Absolutely. All right. So a couple more questions and I'm going to let you go. But the first one is, you know, when you go to the studies that have been done around the revenue of college athletics.
Revenue Sharing and Administration Sacrifices
00:32:26
Speaker
there is a reality that um you know the $17.5 billion dollars across all of college sports ah has ah kind of an upside down allocation currently. Now, the allocation in the report says that student athletes are getting $3 billion of the $17.5 billion and that's because only scholarships and and benefits like cost of attendance are counted in that. i know that You would say a lot of the facilities and and other ah aspects that are being invested into should be counted against are counted into that as well. But seven billion of the 17 half billion is going to compensation for athletics administration and coaches. And that, of course, includes severance.
00:33:05
Speaker
And so I ask this question to athletes when they come on here, and I want to be fair, I want to ask this question to a longtime leader in college athletics. Should there be some some sacrifice on the ends of ah how the leaders are compensated, whether it's ADs, coaches? Because you hear a lot of leaders say, well, we're just not going to be able to afford revenue sharing.
00:33:27
Speaker
We're going to have to cut sports. Okay. Getting away from cutting sports. Should there be some cutting of the payroll being invested into the folks who work for a college athletics department?
00:33:39
Speaker
um Yes and no. The yeses, we clearly have excesses, right? um That they can be addressed. you You pointed to severance, right?
00:33:54
Speaker
We don't have to write contracts that have those severance provisions. um I inherited one when I took the job and I was i was shocked to find out it existed. um So you know that's that's an easy place.
00:34:13
Speaker
Coach compensation itself is more complicated because losing is really expensive. yeah really expensive. And if you want to support all your other programs, it's a lot easier if you win. And the role the talented coach plays, we see it all the time. um Talented head coach is critical to that. So there's they they're the things you can do and things that are much harder to do in this. The other thing I i'd i'd caution about in this, when <unk>d be careful about talking about it as a lump sum because
00:34:51
Speaker
you know, I don't know, seven years ago, eight years ago, Notre Dame didn't have a dedicated sports psychologist on staff to serve student athletes. Sure. It's got four or five of them them now. Right. It didn't have a nutritionist. It's got a whole group of nutritionists now. So part of this is recognizing that we weren't fully meeting the needs of the student athletes and building staff. Now,
00:35:19
Speaker
is in some areas of businesses, staff being built that we could probably live without. um Yeah, there's there's no question. um But we've also invested a lot in staff to address needs that arise that we didn't have before.
00:35:38
Speaker
or didn't recognize before? I think even from the fans' perspective, I was just at a ah retreat with 100 or so CEOs of different companies in the Southeast ah with my YPO chapter. And we're sitting and having dinner, and several of the CEOs are alums of a certain SEC school. And they're being asked for a lot of money to to go towards at IEL, right? And so ah the the consensus at the table was, I already give to capital campaigns, I already give for these ticket packages, and I have this suite. And now I'm being asked by a coach that's making $10 million dollars a year to support paying his talent, right? And that's just where we are with college athletics and at IEL being used to bring players in and and and pay them to play at a school. That's just the reality of where we're at. But
00:36:30
Speaker
um If you ask any coach, any of those great coaches that win, what they need to win, what are they gonna say? We need players. yeah We need talent. So if there's a $22 million cap, even for the great coach, could they make a million or two million less so that they have a little more to go towards the 22 million so they can have great players? I think a lot of them would take that deal.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, they they they would if the cause and effect were direct, right? I mean, that the you know with this, i I get the talent. Yeah, yeah I mean, the markets always adjust, and and that's what Ken too. For me, have the the financial side of this equation starts with we got to figure out how to capture the the value of college football.
Maximizing Revenue from College Football
00:37:25
Speaker
And we don't, we're not close right now, right? The differential between the revenue produced by professional football and that produced by college football is enormous. And that's because of the way we organize ourselves. That's right. Right? I mean, we there's no there's no uniform scheduling. There's no common sale of media rights. There's no national sponsorship.
00:37:49
Speaker
of college football. um So we have a responsibility to address that, to bring, to to not leave all this revenue on the table. That's a starting point for me. To the fundraising model isn't sustainable. um It just isn't. And and so we we have to build an economic model that captures the uncaptured revenue, but learns to live with the revenue that's available to us, right? And hopefully hopefully in a model that depends less on campus subsidies, which is during the recent years, that's become more and more prevalent. And that's not sustainable either. we we've We've got to have a model that financially supports itself. We've got to capture the revenue we're not capturing, but we have to have the discipline to live off that revenue.
00:38:48
Speaker
I love using example, you know, Shoya Tani was the most desired free agent probably in the history of baseball. Well, you didn't have business people in the cities he might have gone to offering Shohei up money to go play there, right? it was the It's a self-contained financial model where the teams offered him what they thought they could afford based on the revenue they received. That's the only system that makes any sense, that that we have third parties directly involved
00:39:28
Speaker
in providing financial benefits to students to either cause them to pick a school or leave a school and pick another school is absurd. and And there's all kinds of negative elements of that. I hope donors continue to support universities and I hope they continue to support athletics, but that ought to be the only place it goes. Not not this crazy unregulated model but that increasingly directs where young people choose to get an education. And in some cases, don't even get what they're promised. Yeah, as we're finding out. that That's right.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, you know, everything we're talking about goes back to the opportunity to negotiate with players and schools coming together on all these key issues is is the most sustained sustainable opportunity to pursue. um And, you know, as as I look at some of what you just broke down, I mean, college football is is no doubt the second most popular sport in America.
00:40:36
Speaker
And yet it gets outperformed $3 to one, $6 to one per consumer by the MLB and NBA. And it just shouldn't. And so a lot of the money complaining while expenses and budgets need to be balanced and people need to lead their programs with a mindset of investing in things that do have an ah ROI and maybe saying no to others, there's a bigger pie of revenue out there.
00:41:03
Speaker
should college football be under one umbrella with one media deal and one centralized scheduling system that gives you the best match-ups every week, that brings in sponsorships like you just talked about. There's a real opportunity for more revenue here. Enormous. And I i i think the forces driving towards that grow every day.
00:41:29
Speaker
you know What you're seeing now, of Florida State and Clemson are sort of the canary in the coal mine in in terms of schools saying, wait a second, the equal distribution model may not reflect value here, right? um And you're going to see more and more of that. And that all, again, can get resolved if we do what you just said.
00:41:55
Speaker
let's let's have a centralized approach to the sport. Still keep conferences, still keep rivalries, but we we can we can place something on top of that in addition to that, which captures the value, recognizes the different contributions of schools to the model, and puts us on a much more sustainable financial path.
00:42:22
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, if you talk to any of the the experts in the media deal world, ah they'll tell you that there's you know a handful of teams that drive most of the viewership for college football. And those teams know who they are and they want upside.
00:42:39
Speaker
You know? And so the the idea that eight years from now, these conference media deals are going to run out and then we're going to figure it all out. I would say, I think before then, you're going to see more Clemson's in Florida states because they're they're in every conference and they're not happy about the fact they get equal distribution. And here's the thing, for the other teams in those conferences, what you have to realize is if it was centralized, you probably would still make more too.
00:43:04
Speaker
You just wouldn't make as much as the top schools and the smaller schools would make more and we need them to make more because They're a big part of this too. And so You and I obviously been talking about that one for a while and agree on it But it's something that is gaining momentum and will only gain momentum in a compound manner I think in the next 12 to 24 months Yeah, I think that's right um It's it's again sort of coming full circle here, a lot of my discussions with congressors Congressmen and Senators has been, look, we want to help, but get your own own house in order first,
Demonstrating Readiness for Reform to Congress
00:43:48
Speaker
right? come Come to us demonstrating what you're prepared to do that's different from what you're doing today, and that it represents a real path forward.
00:43:59
Speaker
And what you and I are talking about right now is for me is central to that. Like, okay, if we can do this and we'll need your support to do it, Congress, um we're going to protect all the current Olympic programs.
00:44:18
Speaker
and our on our colleges and university campuses. that that that'll be This additional revenue won't all go to coaches' compensation to your earlier point. Here are the things we'll do with it. Here's how we'll protect the model with it. And um I think that's what that's what college athletics needs to do. um And I hope I can still play some role in encouraging that to happen, even though I'm sitting in my rocking chair. Well, I appreciate you getting out of your rocking chair. You're not in it right now. Getting out of your rocking chair. and ah
00:44:56
Speaker
and spending some time talking to me today and and continuing our conversation offline as we have. And obviously I've noticed the same thing with Congress, with all the conversations we've had. I think the biggest thing that um Congressmen and women senators all appreciate about athletes dot.org is that we're executing on the ground and we're prepared to be a part of the solution. Going back to your point about the House being in order, the schools have to show that there's a way to do this and it's not just some magic wand.
00:45:25
Speaker
that's going to be waived by Congress. And I think, you know, every day we talk to more and more schools that are open to what you and I initially talked about at the beginning of this year, which is coming together with student athletes through an organization to be able to figure this stuff out together. And that's ah that's where we have to get to. So I appreciate you, Jack. Thank you for your support. Thanks for coming out. Hey, my pleasure. And thanks for all you're doing. I love the the leadership you're exerting and and how dedicated you've been to helping people think about this issue.
00:46:00
Speaker
amazing stuff there from jack so much to call out i think the biggest thing is this all the issues, the transfer portal, NIL, health and safety benefits, all of them really are secondary to the primary issue that has to be solved. And that is getting the student athlete voice to the table with their school.
00:46:22
Speaker
to be able to negotiate each of those categories, to negotiate how revenue sharing works, to negotiate any regulation of the transfer portal, to negotiate health and safety benefits. That's the only way to get to those places. If those things are decided without the student athlete voice, we're going to be right back here talking about the same liabilities, exposures, and issues for college athletics in an unsustainable future. But if the student athlete voice is brought to the table, then there is a sustainable future for all of us in college athletics. Of course, every day, that's what we're working on at athletes dot.org as we talk to a lot of schools, you, about how to get your student athlete voice to the table from the outside, not through the sack, from the outside.
00:47:07
Speaker
in a way where each sport is represented, where an executive council of current student athletes are able to receive the information they need to come up with stances on how they think each of these categories should be handled so that they then can vote as an executive council of student athletes to be able to negotiate each of those categories with you, college athletics leaders.
00:47:30
Speaker
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00:47:58
Speaker
For everybody on our team, I'm Jim Cabal. Thank you for watching or listening to this episode of Now It's Legal. We have a lot of great guests to come.