Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
John Talty & Armen Keteyian - Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale - S3E2
112 Plays9 days ago
John Talty is an award-winning national college sports reporter for CBS Sports. He is the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of his book, "The Leadership Secrets of Nick Saban: How Alabama's Coach Became the Greatest Ever." Armen Keteyian is an 11-time Emmy award-winning television journalist, previously a CBS News correspondent and a Sports Illustrated writer-reporter. John and Armen are co-authors of their book, “The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football’s Era of Chaos.”
John and Armen join Now It’s Legal to discuss their co-authored book that includes an in-depth dive into the “Wild West” of college athletics: NIL, endorsements, the transfer portal and the effect this chaos has on premier college coaches and athletes.
.
.
.
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 summer and join in on the conversation on Instagram with @nowitslegalpod and @jimcavale.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Price and NIL Era
00:00:00
Speaker
Manziel had the high selling jersey, Braun moved back to Cleveland. Drake made a song about a man he ain't even working.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Now It's Legal. This one is going to be fun because we have two authors coming on, and it's John Tulte and Armin Kataian.
00:00:21
Speaker
And listen, Armin and John have been staples in the sports journalism world for a while, especially Armin. I used to read his stuff as a kid in Sport Magazine and Sports Illustrated. These two guys put together a book in The Price that is really everything you need to know in an in-depth manner about the first three years of NIL.
00:00:41
Speaker
Basically, 2021 to 24, this is all of that happened. And it's a great way to consume it. But what we're going to do is we're going to give you a little paraphrasing and some of the stories behind the stories that are in this book through our conversation on this episode.
00:00:56
Speaker
So take a chance to listen, but also make sure you buy this
Transformation of College Athletics
00:01:00
Speaker
book. but let's Let's go to the conversation. Armin Katayan, John Tulte. Armin, John, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Now It's Legal. And, you know, the name of this podcast is Now It's Legal because I believe that's what NIL really stands for.
00:01:18
Speaker
OK, we all know that there's been like really three eras of college athletes getting paid. um The first era was under the table. And, you know, SMU, whatever you want to use as the example.
00:01:30
Speaker
ah The second era ah was the advent of n NIL in 2021, where we disguised pay for play as NIL from collectives. And the third era is about to start
Historical Context and Missed Opportunities
00:01:40
Speaker
in some way where schools are going to pay pay for play deals disguised as NIL directly. And so ah that's the the background of the name of this show. And it plays really well into what we're going to talk about, because, you know, I had a chance to read ah this book, which came out recently, um The Price. And um I was blown away as a founder who's built companies in the college athletics space over the last decade, how well you captured ah the context of how we got here, but also what has happened in the past three years of college athletics from a lot of different angles. And I want to talk about that.
00:02:16
Speaker
um on this, this episode with you guys. And so really, you know, the, the, the, the place I want to start is just how we got here. Right. Um, you know, in your book, you talk about Walter Byers and because of that, I read his, uh, memoirs on sports and like conduct, which you quote, um, and, and paraphrase a bunch in a few of your chapters.
00:02:41
Speaker
But, um, the reality is lot of people might not realize Walter Byers built the NCAA around this term student athlete and used it to stop student athletes from getting compensated or being deemed employees, even though they've been treated like that for a long time.
00:02:57
Speaker
And that era is one that I don't think people realize. The guy who created it over three decades, three and a half decades, wrote a memoir condemning everything he created. So talk about how we got here from a standpoint of buyers and what the NCAA created to, to establish this system that, that is clearly broken.
00:03:18
Speaker
Well, if I could start, I mean, when I was at sports illustrated back in the eighties, actually went to mission Kansas with, think it was Doug Looney and interviewed Walter Byers. And it was like going um into outer space almost, you know, you were in this building and at night, you know, every single desk,
00:03:37
Speaker
had to be cleared of everything. There couldn't be any pictures. You couldn't have any paper. um He ran it like a third world death. And it's kind of how he ran the NCAA in the same manner.
00:03:50
Speaker
um He was autocratic. um He created the fiction um of amateurism and student athlete for the sole purpose of really avoiding having to pay any kind of workers' compensation in case of accidents or deaths.
00:04:05
Speaker
um primarily on the football field. And um i mean, if you're looking for third world kind of dictators, Walter Byers was the guy. And I think everything from that beginning in in mission um is what we're witnessing today. The decades of delay and denial of athletes' rights and this persistent, um,
00:04:34
Speaker
what would
Legal Battles and Athlete Compensation
00:04:35
Speaker
I call it? and um ah Almost mythic um ah proposal that they the athletes should be happy and grateful to get, you know, room and board and tuition. And there was no reason to give them any more money. And as John is, you know, and I both well know, as the millions became the billions,
00:04:59
Speaker
um you know, the fallacy became much more difficult, um or the fiction became much more difficult to to understand and believe. and And so, John, you know, Byers starts to get an attack of conscience um in the in the 80s. And that's the the story that you wrote, right, Armin, with Sports Illustrated, um while he's still executive director.
00:05:26
Speaker
And this may have been the first chance. There's probably others, but the first chance for ah maybe the NCAA and its schools to get it right, to to maybe progress the model a little bit.
00:05:37
Speaker
But instead, they looked at him and said, what are you doing? And pushed back. so Talk about that. Well, I think it's one that's interesting too, just once the golden handcuffs are off, you know the the truth that can come through you, and we can get to it later, but you know we talked to Mark Emmert at length for this book, and you know a lot of the ideas that he was you know putting out there were very different than what he was saying, I think, as NCAA president. and So I think seeing sometimes, you know when you're in the system, you're just you're collecting the paycheck, you're following the rules, and once you're out, you're able to be you know have these more maybe outlandish or more innovative ideas. But
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's been multiple opportunities. And I think one of the the real stories of the NCAA and Armin was hitting on it there is just putting their head in the sand and just ignoring all of these different things that were happening along the way. And, you know, some of it just seems so trivial now when you look back on it. But, you know, fighting over kids getting bagels and, you stipends and cost of attendance and all these different big battles, we've quote unquote big battles we've seen over the years.
00:06:40
Speaker
in which athletic directors and commissioners have said that, you know, if we do this, I'm leaving college athletics. And of course they, they didn't. And so there's just been a lot of those opportunities where what should have been wake up call was ignored. And instead was almost a ah kind of a and reason to double down on what they were doing. And,
00:07:01
Speaker
That playbook worked for a very long time, right? I mean, here we are now in 2025. It's really coming home to roost the last couple of years. But for a long time, that strategy, which includes, of course, their legal strategy as well, was very successful. And you know a lot of people made a lot of money doing it.
00:07:17
Speaker
The other thing, too, is you look at the succession of buyers and you can go to you know Dick Schultz, and you go to Sed Dempsey, and you go to Miles Brand, they all came in with sort of a reformer's attitude. We have to change this. We have to do more of that.
00:07:34
Speaker
But the fact is, the infrastructure and the bureaucracy of the NCAA and the college presidents and the conference commissioners, and really the power the the power people and the real stakeholders, um they put a stake in the ground and said, no, we're not going to make these um in many cases, important and innovative changes.
00:07:53
Speaker
And as John, who did all the interviews with Mark Emeritt for the book, it's clear that you can sense the frustration that Emeritt had kind of ex post facto. But even now with Charlie Baker, he came in as a reformer.
00:08:08
Speaker
And I think he was a brilliant choice. But as someone said in the book, he's either going to be the best president of the NCAA or the last president of the NCAA. Because i that job,
00:08:19
Speaker
um is inherently almost impossible because you're, you're essentially herding cats and people who have nothing more than, and I think if you, if you look at the price and you've, you've tried to find two really predominant themes of the book, a, the title of the book is not just about the financial, um,
00:08:41
Speaker
toll that is taken, but it's the psychological toll. It's the physical toll. It's the emotional toll. But the other words that came through with John and I were self-interest and greed. And I think that's what's driving whatever changes are happening right now or however the system is evolving.
00:08:59
Speaker
Those are the two predominant forces. and Protecting your own self-interest and how much money can we make in this next media rights deal or protecting our money
Chaos and Need for Collective Bargaining
00:09:10
Speaker
as we have it.
00:09:11
Speaker
And so when those are when the greater good um is not the paramount factor, when your own self-interest is driving everything, that's when you see the chaos that we have today.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's no doubt about it. And, you know, the the i the irony is, is the money being spent on their legal strategy and the money being spent on coaching salaries, and we can keep going, um could have been redistributed. And there was probably a lot of chances before 2021 to um maybe relinquish some of the controls and share a little more um with the revenues ah for the talent.
00:09:52
Speaker
just like every other multi-billion dollar sports and entertainment does in America. but But of course, that didn't happen. And I think you guys call out a lot of things in the price that are important moments that, once again, I don't think a lot of people realize.
00:10:05
Speaker
um And so i'm going to go chronologically. I'm actually going to outside the price to another ah book you wrote, Armin, Legends the Souls, 1991. ninety ninety one Greg Anthony was ready to do a boycott for the national championship game when UNLV was trying to repeat and had a 40 plus game winning streak, but they lost to Duke in the semifinals.
00:10:25
Speaker
A boycott would have changed a lot, yeah whether it was that team or other teams or stories we might not know about, but it didn't happen. um And the the the next chronological thing that I think people might not know about, and I want to ask you about this to unpack it a little bit, is in 2005,
00:10:43
Speaker
There was a model where they said, you know, if we let the name, image and likenesses in these video games be licensed, the NCAA could make 8 million more a year and we'd be doing something for the athletes. We go in a step in the direction. A lot of people have been pushing us on.
00:10:59
Speaker
And for the next four years, The NCAA worked on that, thought about getting the SAC, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, to be able to have a voice so that they could put a deal together.
00:11:10
Speaker
Then Miles Brand passed away in 2009, and the gentleman he had put in charge ah really didn't have any place to go. like ah First of all, how did did you cover that when it was happening?
00:11:21
Speaker
Did you find that out when you were putting this book together? I had no idea that was going on at the time. And think about a pivotal moment where um there's a great quote in there. You know, they're talking about name, image and likeness.
00:11:36
Speaker
Likeness is is how we define it, how the NCAA defines it. and And as someone said. You know, my mother can tell me what likeness is. That certainly looks like, um as Ed O'Bannon saw himself, um which was the the pivotal moment for Ed to join Sonny DiCaro in the landmark lawsuit.
00:11:55
Speaker
Wait a second. That guy's left-handed. He's bald. He's at UCLA. He's wearing number 24. um That's my jump shot. The only thing that was missing was the name O'Bannon on the back of the ah the jersey.
00:12:08
Speaker
That's what's so um disheartening in so many ways here is there were ample opportunities time and time and time again for the NCA to share the wealth.
00:12:20
Speaker
um And now if you look at the numbers, 2.8 billion, 20 million per school and that is going to join with the the house settlement,
Saban-Fisher Feud and NIL Dynamics
00:12:30
Speaker
these are extraordinary large penalties.
00:12:33
Speaker
that the universities and the NCA is paying for, as I said, you know just decades of delay and denial in the courts, where law firms settle um suspiciously settled in order to take their fees and left the athletes on the outside looking in. So I don't have a lot of sympathy right now.
00:12:57
Speaker
And I dare say I don't think John does either um for the situation that that college sports finds itself in. It's going to resolve itself somehow, some way down the line.
00:13:08
Speaker
But I think the next three or four years are going to be absolute madness in so many ways. um because the money is there. They're going to expand the playoffs.
00:13:19
Speaker
and The self-interest is going to rule. And sooner or later, you know, this atomic bomb that Sonny Vaccaro set off in the O'Bannon lawsuit, you know, we're in the midst of the fallout right now. Sooner or later, people are going to realize that they have to get together um and they have to create some solutions that um are for the greater good.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, that's what we spend all our time on at athletes dot org, because we don't think there's any way to do that without collective bargaining. But we'll get into that in a little bit. I'm going to keep going along the theme of the steps of the way. So fires while he still was president of the NCAA gets an attack of conscience, does an interview with you.
00:13:59
Speaker
um talks publicly about how maybe there are some ways to depend on compensating talent and nobody does anything. Then early 2000s, the SAC starts to get involved with maybe a deal for the video game to have name, image and likeness in it.
00:14:15
Speaker
um Doesn't happen. While all this is going on, Sonny Vaccaro is getting... ah little attack of conscience on his own and and saying, you know, like I've done a lot to, to, to build things in this world with Nike and Adidas and help the coaches. But, but the athletes didn't really get anything out of it. And there was a little bit of ah exploiting going on. And,
00:14:36
Speaker
I want to make it right. So he starts talking to a legend in my hometown, Pearl Washington, um and ah but you know Syracuse ah point guard great, and tries to get Pearl to talk about ah whether he would not want want to make money um on yeah ESPN Classic when his old legendary games are being aired. And he starts talking to more athletes. He starts thinking about going at the NCAA, but no athlete will put their
Challenges and Future Speculations
00:15:00
Speaker
name on it because they don't want to be blackballed.
00:15:02
Speaker
They still want to broadcast. They want to be invited back to the school. And he finds that O'Bannon. And you think about the timing... 2009 when Miles Brand passes away and this this idea of name, image, and likeness being compensated with the video games happening goes away is right around the same time that Sonny gets O'Bannon to commit and off they go and they win this court case. so um And obviously that took to the mid 2010s, but like there was there was real chances here. And so here's my next question. I'll go to you, John.
00:15:32
Speaker
Post O'Bannon, you know there was an opportunity for the school say, okay, we lost that. ah should we still be condemning Kyle Guy for putting his wedding registry online?
00:15:45
Speaker
Should we still be policing the kicker at Central Florida for having a YouTube channel that he can monetize as an influencer? But they held they held strong as preserv preservationalists and didn't bend at all, even after O'Bannon. How crazy is that?
00:16:02
Speaker
In hindsight, it's obviously insane. you know And I remember talking to people, and Armin did too, as we did this book, of kind of like, why, right? And you know it's hard sometimes to put yourself back in that time. I mean, I think certainly the people who made those decisions have made it seem like it was you know it was the popular thing. That's what they were tasked to do. That's what, you know and not to get too in the weeds here, but as you both know, there's a lot of bureaucracy that happens with the NCAA. And you know Mark Ember, remember telling me, like,
00:16:30
Speaker
you know, how he dreamed of having power like David Stern, you know, the NBA commissioner and that, you know, still there's so much of these different votes and that's kind of how it played out. But yeah, I mean, I think, again, I said it kind of earlier, but I think time and time again, there were these opportunities. There were these exit ramps almost where if you take an exit ramp here, you could you have saved yourself what's happening right now with this massive house settlement and potentially much more to come in the future. House settlement might just be the beginning in some ways.
00:16:57
Speaker
there are opportunities, I think, to have done things where they could have fixed it. And, you know i think we detail that throughout the book, whether it's, you know, even when we get to the NIL era, there are opportunities to put rules in place and that they were kind of up until the last minute, thought they had something that gets pulled down. There's just all these kind of near misses or clear decisions to not do what now, of course, would have been the right decision. And, you know, that's a big part of the NCAA story. And, you know, I remember talking to Andy Schwartz, I'm sure who you know, Jim, and you know just talk about some of things that could have done that probably would have made
Potential Reforms and Athlete Representation
00:17:30
Speaker
some of the people who are very passionate have backed off. If there were certain settlements, they could have probably pushed people off. But their defiance in the face of these things allowed people to keep on pushing. And that's, of course, eventually there have been you know some breakthroughs from Alston and others you know now at the house House and other settlements down the future.
00:17:49
Speaker
And you look at what Sonny DiCaro did. He was making a half a million dollars a year at Reebok. He walks away from that. He goes on this knight-errant quest, this almost Don Quixote quest for justice for the athletes.
00:18:04
Speaker
It's a seminal moment in sports that ifs one person excuse me if one person hadn't done what Sonny did, I dare say we'd be back in the same place we were in the early 2000s with tens of billions of dollars you know, pouring into college sports in various ways, shapes and forms.
00:18:26
Speaker
that That road that Sonny Vaccaro took through Ed O'Bannon and then finding Michael Hossfeld and then having convincing Michael Hossfeld, one of the great antitrust attorneys in the world, to take on this case and then take seven years more for it to find its way into Judge Wilkins' court and for Judge Wilkins to rule in the way that she did that opened the floodgates to NIL and then have the Supreme Court rule in 2021 in a nine nothing decision.
00:18:54
Speaker
When's the last time the court did something like that and essentially call the and NCA a cartel in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act? I mean, you read those words of Judge Kavanaugh and others and you're like, how in the world did this perpetuate for as long as it did under the guise of amateurism, which is a word that basically Walter Byers created student athlete amateurism for nothing more than the self-interest of the NCAA.
00:19:26
Speaker
And I think one of the beautiful parts of the book is, and it's, and it really goes back to something that um I'm so impressed with, you know, John and I never really knew each other only by reputation before we worked together.
00:19:39
Speaker
And I've kind of laughed about it with John over the years. John's kind of a young me. He's very, very obsessive and very detail-oriented. He's a great reporter.
00:19:51
Speaker
Trust equals access equals information. John has built up a reservoir of trust over the years with critical players in the NCAA, conference
Conclusion and Call for Change
00:20:00
Speaker
commissioners, presidents on down.
00:20:02
Speaker
And without that trust, you don't get the access. And without that access, you don't get the scenes and they're in the detail that you have in this book where you feel like you're in the moment. as people are dealing with this shit storm that's going on all around them.
00:20:18
Speaker
And that's what makes these books so much fun. Not fun. I don't think John and Earth, they can fun, but, but so on rewarding in the end, because you can take people to places that they otherwise would not get. You can be inside Greg Sankey's head. You can be inside Jim Harbaugh's head.
00:20:36
Speaker
You can have somebody like Tom Mars, you know, who I didn't know, but knew of me and I knew of him, And Tom Mars is a great character in our book. There's, you know, Jed, um Jed Fish, you have him. And John did a great job with so many of the Jackson Zager, the the attorney down at m SMU, who's a great character.
00:20:57
Speaker
All these things come to life, but they come to life with a purpose because through them, we're telling you something about the cost of doing business right now in in college football.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a perfect segue because, um you know, you you talked about Alston and um how big of a ruling that was. You know, what's what's interesting is for me, leading a software company that had been around four years before NIL started in 2021, were building for all of our college athletics clients, NIL software that we were going to roll out when it started.
00:21:33
Speaker
um But the Alston ruling happening just ah you know a few days before NIL started changed a lot of our product roadmap for what the schools wanted and what was going to be allowed because it basically made it so that the schools couldn't set any rules. The NCAA was going to have You know, they had 31 pages of rule recommendations, but they never actually set more than just three rules in their bylaws for n NIL, one of which was never up upheld, which is that you can't have booster ah payment and inducements for athletes.
00:22:04
Speaker
um So 2021, you talk about the scenes in this book. I'm an upstate New York guy, Syracuse, New York. Came down to Alabama to play college baseball. Never left. I live in Birmingham right down the street from John.
00:22:16
Speaker
OK, so I understand the north and the south really well. Have lived my half my life in the northeast, half of the south. I read the chapter about Nick Saban and you know he's on stage in Birmingham. Right.
00:22:28
Speaker
And doing that interview and what he says about Fisher. I'm thinking of all my New York comrades reading that who've never been down here. It was it was written like like you were taking them there.
00:22:39
Speaker
You know what i mean? And just the way you went into the deep south where a lot of this takes place ah was really, really cool. And so i just want to validate what you said about the scenes in this book. For those who haven't read it, you should.
00:22:51
Speaker
But let's talk about that, because that scene and that situation was really where we had heard at Influencer and Teamworks, my company at the time, we had heard about collectives. We had seen pitch decks.
00:23:05
Speaker
from folks trying to put them together. But we were thinking, you know, whoa, we got to stay. I mean, we're not going to, you know, get involved with that, right? And so all of a sudden you get to this situation where there's not only donors laundering money in shell companies to pay players, but It's going public through rants from one SEC coach to his former pupil that's now an SEC coach another school in a conference whose commissioner before Greg Sankey said, keep it all in-house.
00:23:35
Speaker
And it was, you're talking about an atomic bomb. It was an explosion that occurred. And I just want you to unpack putting that chapter together, covering the whole Saban-Jimbo-Fitcher situation, because it's a really important part of what's happened over the last three years.
00:23:50
Speaker
I think it's, you know, it changed so much. You know, I just had an explosion shot heard around the world, however you want to put it. i mean, it was such an unbelievable thing, I think, for multiple reasons. One, just the idea, as you said, Mike Slive brought everything in house. That was always the mentality of the SEC after there was so much infighting. And, you know, you had schools, you know, early 2000s turning each other in. you had the Albert Means situation. There a lot that was happening that time frame. And so I was cleaning that up. We're not doing that. I mean, if,
00:24:19
Speaker
I remember I've done some work for other projects that the SEC used to have their own like investigator basically, um you know, on contract, former FBI guy who would investigate things that they're in. Like, we're not doing that anymore. We're keeping it house. We're all going the same team.
00:24:32
Speaker
That's, of course, continued under Greg Sankey. So for the most well-known coach, you know, in college football, ah Nick Saban, I have written a separate book about to call out,
00:24:44
Speaker
Not only a fellow SEC coach, but a guy who was a mentee of his, a guy who he worked closely with at LSU, who he won a national championship with, who publicly has always lauded on both sides, even though you always heard things privately maybe have been bubbling beneath the surface.
00:25:01
Speaker
For him to say it the way it did, I mean, I can just remember that night, I felt like my phone blew up. can remember talking to people calling me, be did he actually say that? People thought it was fake at first until there was video, which at time I was at ale.com that we put out there.
00:25:15
Speaker
People didn't believe it was real. They thought it was, you know, just misinformation, I guess. And then... From there, Jimbo seeing it, and if you know Jimbo Fisher at all, it's a very passionate guy, ah Burns Hot, um him seeing it and just losing his mind, essentially. And what I found so interesting, you know as we kind of reported it out the details,
00:25:36
Speaker
You know, the the next day, there's a famous press conference that Jim O'Fisher does in which he in part says that Nick Saban should have been slapped as a child. Calls him, you know, he thinks he's God. I know how God does things. I mean, just it's an all-time press conference. It'll be forever burned in my brain.
00:25:51
Speaker
And it was just wild. Like, you've never seen a coach go that score-stirmed on a fellow coach. But what's amazing about was that not only had Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner, warned him not to do that, His boss, Ross Bjork, warned him not to do that.
00:26:04
Speaker
Even Jimmy Sexton, his agent, the agent of both of these two guys, warned him not to do that. And he still did it. And it was, you know, it was unbelievable. It threw a lot of attention, you know, on this thing that was, again, bubbling beneath the surface. I think the three of us were hearing about these things. can remember people at other SEC schools texting me like, you won't believe what Texas A&M is doing right now with NIL. It's unbelievable. And all these different things.
00:26:29
Speaker
But no one had really poured that much gasoline on it yet until Saban. And I think from there, created a lot of things. I think, one, there was a lot of attention on i think a lot of people were like, what the heck is happening in college football? These two guys are going after each other.
00:26:43
Speaker
But also, I think it was kind of a wake-up call. And that was part of, I think, Saban's attention. It's a wake-up call to Alabama and other boosters around the country. Like, this is how the game's being played. we didn't even start spending or we're falling behind because this is how A&M's doing it.
00:26:57
Speaker
And I think after that period, We've seen just so much money pour in. So many people blew it up. It's the new arms race in so many ways. And I think that's a key moment of, all right, if the NCAA is not stopping this, then let's do it too. And ah you've seen millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in NIL money since then.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's funny, Jim. You know, if John hit it perfectly, but it was kind of like you're at the big boys poker table and somebody goes all in and it's a $30 million dollars pot and they go, wait a second, A&M, Kyle Field, those facilities, that booster base,
00:27:34
Speaker
holy shit, they've got 20 or $30 million dollars pouring into that program. Well, the gloves are off. You pick whatever it is, Miami, on Oregon with Division Street and Phil Knight, um Tennessee.
00:27:49
Speaker
It was basically like a call to action for all the big money boosters and the big programs that said, Well, hell, if A&M's doing it and nobody's getting criticized for it or investigated for it, we're all in.
00:28:05
Speaker
The problem was, and what we've seen, is what that did to the A&M locker room and what it did to that roster. And the the fallout from that is now being felt in locker rooms and in athletic departments and programs.
00:28:22
Speaker
and certainly within football programs all around the country. Because when you pour that kind of cash into the hands of 18 to 22-year-old boys, soon to be men, it creates a set of problems that coaches have never had to deal with.
00:28:38
Speaker
And I think to me, part of the chaos is, is that The coaches are still trying to figure out how to restructure retain and recruit you know um their teams.
00:28:54
Speaker
um and I think so much of that is is really visible in the frustrations of the coaches and the interviews that we did for the book. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, you know, the reality is it is an arms race that was started back when when this happened three and a half, four years ago.
00:29:11
Speaker
um But it's an arms race that doesn't have structure around it. So there is no transfer portal, which allows athletes to always be free agents, which allows Niko situation to happen much different than it would happen in the NFL, because there's no fines for holding out and you can hold out and go to any other team.
00:29:27
Speaker
Whereas in the NFL, you can only hold out figure it out with your team. And, um, there's, there's so many of those things missing that it's a, it's an incomplete arms race, uh, in a lot of ways.
00:29:40
Speaker
And, uh, you know, it's funny, one thing you said, but you started mentioning in all the schools, um, I remember going to ah the Georgia-Michigan game at the Orange Bowl in, I think it was New Year's Eve day, 2021.
00:29:56
Speaker
twenty twenty one So it was about to be 2022. And I remember ah the two teams walking on the field and I remember how much bigger Georgia was.
00:30:07
Speaker
than Michigan. And to me, being a guy that's leading an NIL software business, I was thinking about data and things that I know. And I go, well, Michigan is not doing much NIL yet. Their donors have been slower to get into the game or just doing a lot of it.
00:30:22
Speaker
and And when I really think about all this stuff with pay for play and the the eras, if you will, the under the table era, the NIL collective era and the soon to be school NIL era, um there's two things it takes to be good at it.
00:30:34
Speaker
You have to have behavior and resources. And the South has the behavior mastered. North's a little slower with behavior. But the resources...
00:30:47
Speaker
Michigan's got a lot of resources. They probably got a donor base with more money than most of the schools, if not all the schools in the South, minus the Texas schools. So now what we've seen fast forward, which is in this book, Michigan finally gets over the hump.
00:31:00
Speaker
They do it through Alabama. They beat Saban in his last ever game. you it was like It was like a Hollywood story if you're really covering all of the moving parts of this. And I think it's really interesting how it all played out. But Michigan was not the same team that won the national title just a few years before. And I think NIL activity from their collective or lack thereof was a big reason for it.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think there's any question. Michigan had, you know, has, I think, one of the largest living donor bases in the in the country, in the world, really. um But they had five NILs at one point in time. You know, everybody was that they were playing with and they really didn't. But when the you know when the Ellison money came in um to get their hot new quarterback, um a lot of these programs, it took them a while to figure it out. and And like I was just on the phone
00:31:54
Speaker
about three weeks ago with Jed Fish, who's out in Washington now. And he was very honest about what he's dealing with. You know, you have the Ohio State $20 million, $25 million NIL budget. You have Michigan now that's in with both feet. You have Indiana that's in bit big in NIL.
00:32:12
Speaker
And here's Jed out there with a $5.4 million NIL budget. And he said to me, he goes, Armin, I'm no longer playing the um the, kind of the gloves have come off.
00:32:22
Speaker
When I talk to my donor bases and my boosters, he goes, if you want to see me here in two more years, things have to change. I need a bigger budget.
00:32:33
Speaker
I cannot compete despite the beauty of the campus, despite the Big Ten money, despite everything else. He's playing with the big boys now. And He's learning very quickly that he is going to lose top players that he just can't afford to keep on his roster because he doesn't have the cash to do it.
00:32:52
Speaker
And I think that's those are little mini tragedies, you know, great coaches in a perfect system for him, um able to recruit with great facilities, but he's missing a big piece of the puzzle.
00:33:05
Speaker
And he knows full well if he doesn't fill that void, he's likely not going to be coaching at Washington in and another couple of years. and And what's interesting is, you know, in the book, you take two different coaches that are um not in the top echelon. They're at schools that aren't in the top echelon of college football. Arizona in Maryland.
00:33:27
Speaker
Fish, who was at Arizona at the time. And Loxley at ah and Macy's. I mean, Maryland, um which he calls Macy's or he calls Maryland Macy's in the book. You got to read it to find out. But the reality is you take two coaches coaches it at non top echelon college football programs, trying to make it work right.
00:33:47
Speaker
They don't have the donor bases and the resources. And I thought you did such a great job telling the stories around, uh, for instance, coach fish keeping McMillan, who was just a first round NFL draft pick, um, not with money, but with relationship.
00:34:05
Speaker
Loxley keeping Tungvaloa to his brother at quarterback, not with the biggest financial offer, but with the vision of what the program could be. um You know, there's a lot of.
00:34:19
Speaker
ah There's a lot of victims in this when it comes to conference realignment um and the greed driven by that, um where you have the Pac-12 demise and schools going all over. and um But there's also this reality that um you can sell relationship to a certain point, but there's so much transaction happening that it's hard to keep.
00:34:40
Speaker
And the guy selling the relationship, who's a good guy and a great coach, Fish, ended up having to leave for transaction. ah from what he built in Arizona. So like you you ah talk about that conflict you saw as you were covering things with these coaches who care about young men, want to develop young men, but we're having to figure out how to balance selling relationship and development to the young man and his family and actually having the ability to do a transaction.
00:35:05
Speaker
I just say one quick thing before John, when he sent me that Macy's chapter, I just called him up. I said, this might be the best chapter in the book. Locked leak. I mean, John captured it so perfectly, so I'll let him tell it, but he was so deep inside of that program. And then when he said, and and then to pull off the metaphor um of Macy's was just brilliant.
00:35:26
Speaker
Explain Macy's, John. Yeah, I mean, it's just hilarious. I Bloxley's a hilarious guy. And he's, you know, he's had success at Maryland. It's a tough job, as you'll read about in the book. But yeah, he had this, you know, there's some some bad words used in it in Bloxley way, but basically explained that, you know, college football is kind of like, ah you know,
00:35:45
Speaker
store chains, clothing store chains in which you know the Alabamas and Georgias of the world are kind of your Saks Fifth Avenue. It's high level. There's a lot of money involved. you say There's kind of a lower level that's like Charlotte, ah which he kind of referred to as like a target, basically.
00:35:59
Speaker
little less expensive. you know You can do different things there. He said, we're kind of stuck in the middle of Macy's, which is you're kind of you're not the high end and you're not the low end either. So you're not the best price.
00:36:10
Speaker
You don't have the best quality product. And so you're kind of stuck in a and no man's land. And he used, you know, kind of a profane way of explaining that that's why there's no Macy's anymore. And, you know, not long after remember him telling me that I saw some story about Macy's closing a bunch of their stores. And it's true. I mean, Macy's store I went to a lot as a kid and, you know you don't see them.
00:36:28
Speaker
The way you used to, same with probably Lauren Taylor and places like that. But his his his metaphor was essentially explaining that when you're in the middle, in Maryland, Arizona, different schools like that, you don't have the resources or prestige or whatever you want to call it as the blue blood. So if they want one of your top players, they can take him.
00:36:48
Speaker
We've seen this play out. quite a bit in the transfer portal, especially, you know, even recently. And on the flip side of the smaller schools like Charlotte, they don't have a lot of money to offer, but they have starting playing time. So they're taking all your depth players, the guys that maybe you're to take two, three years to develop.
00:37:05
Speaker
Charlotte say, hey come here, start right away. And then you do well here, you'll get a big offer and you can leave again if you want. So you're getting... eating at both ends basically. And that makes it really hard for those schools stuck in the middle. I think it's even harder for the mid majors. You know, I've done some research on Mac schools and just how many first team Mac players are somewhere else now after just last season.
00:37:27
Speaker
Those are the schools that are, are really tough spots to be in. And I thought, you Armand did an incredible job Arizona. And I think with just to give a little background in book too, like we made these decisions to follow different people in places, you know, before the season, and you just don't know how they're going play out, you know, and when Arizona and Maryland people might have initially thought, why'd you pick those? And you just don't know. And then of course, Arizona turned into probably, you maybe the best story of that season. And certainly one of the most interesting ones, which would in detail throughout. But we thought it was really important to include schools like that. It can't just be about schools that have the most money. mean, those are really interesting and they have their own problems and interesting things that happen with them. And A&M is a great example, but it's kind understanding what happens if you don't have a lot of money? What you have to do? What you selling? And like you said, Jim, it's relationships. That's what you're trying to sell. And that works at times. And other times money wins out. And I think what's going to be so interesting to spin it forward is that
00:38:24
Speaker
you know, if this house thing gets approved soon, which we expect it to, we get, you know, rev share happening. Maybe we get collective bargaining eventually and there's more, you know, actual guys are bound to different schools and the schools are bound to them.
00:38:38
Speaker
Unlike currently right now, does that change what's most important? Does that put more priority on relationships? Does that put more priority on X's and O's abilities, which is I think part of what the NFL is, right? The the smartest people often win.
00:38:53
Speaker
I think right now, the last year or two, not that the coaches have won aren't great because they are, but there's just been so much money whipping that's happened. You're just seeing the top, top dogs just have such a financial advantage over schools like Maryland and to the tune of 20 plus million dollar difference in their roster compared to what Maryland and a school like Arizona and others had last year.
00:39:13
Speaker
When those disparities get smaller, what wins out? I think it's an opportunity for certain coaches who maybe have struggled a bit in the NIL era to kind of show how good of a coach they really are as there's some rules. If again, we get rules, but that could be years down the road.
00:39:28
Speaker
What John was talking about the Mac schools, I'm pretty close to some of them. John and i have talked to Todd Anson, who's a part of our book, who's been just um walked away from the Central Michigan Board of Trustees.
00:39:40
Speaker
And Central's a... i I played baseball at Central before I went and played at San Diego State. And I was there and I kind of know that environment in Mount Pleasant. And i mean, they're They're right in the in the spot you don't want to be.
00:39:55
Speaker
um They're getting eaten, as John said, on both ends. They don't have the financial resources. They're losing their essentially their money games like at Michigan or Michigan State, which would put a million and a half dollars into their athletic department budget because those schools aren't playing each other anymore because of the what's going on in the in the Big Ten.
00:40:15
Speaker
It's, I mean, you're, you are about to evaporate. And I think that's what conferences like the Sunbelt, conferences like the MAC, um, conference like the American athletic, what is going to happen in the future with those conferences? I think that's another huge domino that's going to fall in the future.
00:40:34
Speaker
And there's no telling. Um, I know central scrambling right now to try to figure out what they, what they can do. and Maybe it just becomes, you know, they become, as somebody said to me, they become minor league programs like AAA teams for a Michigan or a Michigan State.
00:40:52
Speaker
And Michigan State and Michigan have first dibs on central talent that wants to go into the portal. um And in exchange, Michigan state or Michigan subsidized as part of the athletic department and the football program at a central Michigan, whether that happens or not remains to be seen, but I think you're going to see those kinds of landslides, um,
00:41:15
Speaker
the the sort of the fracturing of this system even further, and because i think it's pretty clear that the SEC and the Big Ten sooner rather than later, or maybe later rather than sooner, are going to split off and form whatever will be a Super League and everyone else scrambling to get into that league, however many teams it is and schools it is.
00:41:39
Speaker
But right now, the last place I would want to be is one of those, you know, in the middle schools. Yeah. Well, we see it here with with Trent Dilfer and UAB.
00:41:50
Speaker
um it's It's a really, it's ah it's a tough situation to compete right now. um And, you know, some might believe this, but I personally believe that you should be allowed to do multi-year deals.
00:42:04
Speaker
This is all post-collective bargaining, but multi-year deals with athletes. and And if you lock them in for two or three years and they become good enough to leave in one, You pay a buyout, and that's how the school gets funded for developing that player.
00:42:16
Speaker
um These things are not novel. I mean, i don't want to say they're as easy as copy and paste, but they almost are. They exist in pro sports. um And we're going to get to solutions um as we wrap it up in a little bit. But I want to go into relationships. So talking about relationship versus transaction, and we've seen it from the coach side.
00:42:33
Speaker
um But I think really great part of the book is is the chapter about the quarterbacks. Right. You got this, this, this young man who's the number one quarterback in the country, Julian saying, and his dream is to play for coach Saban. And he comes to Alabama right when coach Saban realizes his, his formula that he built Alabama into a behemoth with, which was to get great players who could be number ones at all the other schools to come and be number twos and threes at Alabama and not play to the junior or senior year.
00:43:05
Speaker
mean, that was Saban's formula. That's gone. with the portal and NIL, right? Saban's complaining about Jimbo Fisher and schools paying and trying to ignite his own booster network. And then he loses to Michigan and leaves right when Sainz coming in.
00:43:18
Speaker
and and And so then he's got to go ah where he is now at to Ohio State and he still has his career out of him. But as you tell that story, um Transaction had nothing. He had the bigger picture. Him and his family were thinking about NFL for money.
00:43:32
Speaker
They want to go to a place where there's the right system and where he's going to be able to maximize his development. I just thought that was a really unique story you guys had in the book. I'm telling tale. i'm I'm still close to the family. I saw Julian a couple months ago in Columbus.
00:43:48
Speaker
and We had dinner together with his mom, Karen, and Jocelyn, his sister. And he's going to be a star at Ohio State this year. and that It's already in in in the works there for him. But imagine being your first day of school and you're in your first class and that was done purposely to keep those kids from entering the portal where they, it would have been much more difficult if school hadn't started.
00:44:13
Speaker
But you have a three o'clock class. You leave and you walk into the team meeting room at four o'clock by four or four. Nick has, has announced his intentions to retire. um Julian is just blown away. His mom is in tears on the phone when Julian tells him.
00:44:30
Speaker
And then you have a whole nother set of circumstances with Kaelin DeBoer and Julian, which, really greased his decision to leave and go to Ohio State. But that's the price, you know, wrapped up in in in one chapter. And, you know, to me, like you said, Jim, Julian and Karen and Dan, the father, did everything right. They went to Alabama to for development to be taught by a, you know, historic college football coach, legendary coach.
00:45:03
Speaker
And in the end, You know, the trap door opens in and Nick disappears and it's complete chaos on that end. Caleb Downs and everyone else leaves. um And that to me is was very telling of of of where we are right now in the system. That's the price that people are paying.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah. And, and, and, you know, John, the, the dominoes chapter kind of plays off of this. And it's always been ironic to me that when um schools realign for money and ADs move jobs for money and bigger power opportunities.
00:45:39
Speaker
And when coaches move, there's not a lot of scrutiny, but when players move, man, oh man, they are greedy, aren't they? um And so the dominoes chapter really captured, I mean, the, the Troy Dannen move, right? Like,
00:45:52
Speaker
Tulane, ah then he goes out west to Washington, and then he's at Nebraska, right? All in the matter of a year, right? And so you guys covered that chapter, and there was a lot of dominoes with players, with coaches, with ADs that were all reacting to this chaos of realignment.
00:46:10
Speaker
Well, it's it's amazing to just again, some of the schools that we pick kind of some of them are interconnected and some of them are very separate. But by the end, they're almost all interconnected, right? Because by the end, Saban, who we spend multiple chapters with, is gone.
00:46:24
Speaker
ah Jim Harbaugh, who we spend multiple chapters with, is leaving. Arizona, which Armin spent quite a bit of time with, by the end of our year plus journey with them, the president is gone. The AD is gone and the football coach is gone.
00:46:38
Speaker
I mean, it's unbelievable. Just a year of spam. We never could have predicted that, but it all kind of comes to a head and all of those different moves impact each other. And Nick Saban retires, which leads to Kalen DeBoer leaving Washington to come to Alabama, which opens up the opportunity for Jed Fish to leave Arizona, to go to Washington. and And then all the different players that are involved in it too. And, you know it's,
00:47:01
Speaker
I think Armin hit it and Jim, you did too. It's you it's one of the things that I think sometimes when guys leave, and again, it's I think right now, such a challenging time for everyone just because of the free agency of this world where there's no contracts and guys can move freely, that it leads to frustration from different people. But when you think about some of the kids who who did everything right, we mentioned Julian, Caleb Downs as well. I mean, Caleb Downs came to Alabama to play for Nick Saban's where he wanted to be. He didn't want to leave.
00:47:31
Speaker
And this guy who he expected to play for for three to four years is gone. And it puts you in a really tough spot. What do you Do you stay? Do you leave? And all those different impacts, you know, all those different things have major impacts on these different kids. And, you know they don't for many, many, many, many years had no power.
00:47:47
Speaker
And now they have power and people don't like that. And that's part of, you know, what's happening in this current world where, They probably have never had it better than they do right now in terms of their freedom of movement, their ability to make as much money as possible, if no real restrictions on that to this point.
00:48:02
Speaker
and They're capitalizing on it. And you know some of them unintentionally so, others you know made clear decisions of, I want to go somewhere where I make more money. But it is kind of amazing in that year that we followed together.
00:48:14
Speaker
just how it all came to a head at the end of all these different schools and coaches all coming together. Even Mike Loxley was talking to Nick Saban, I think the day before, before he retired. And just you know all these different pieces that came together is pretty unbelievable.
00:48:28
Speaker
mean, you got TMAC where at Arizona, there's a great scene in the book where Jed is talking to him. TMAC's getting offers from everybody to go into the portal. He and Noah Fetita, the you know a really terrific quarterback,
00:48:41
Speaker
of A's coming back this year. But T-Mac's an ethereal talent. I mean, I watched him many, many times at practice and certainly in games, and he showed it in the Alamo Bowl against Oklahoma. He's a tremendous wide receiver, but he could have made a couple million dollars in the portal. And that that conversation that Jed had with him, which was like, okay, how much how much longer are you going to stay? One more year.
00:49:03
Speaker
What do you want to do? I want to go top 10. Okay, let's go look and see what a top 10 receiver has made in the last five drafts in the NFL. And it turns out it's about $25 million dollars contract.
00:49:15
Speaker
And what happens with T-Mac? When he got drafted number eight in the NFL draft, I thought, Wow. There's a full circle. There's a kid who stayed for the right reasons in Arizona, um was really on a tough team last year, was nowhere near as good as as it was the year before, but he was ah he was an exception to the rule. He stayed because of tradition there and his belief in the family atmosphere.
00:49:41
Speaker
And he got rewarded in the end in the way that he should have been rewarded. And that You know, when you're looking for these little rays of sunshine in this very dark period of time in college sports, to me, that was one of them.
00:49:54
Speaker
and And I know Jed had to feel the same way because um that was a family there in a lot of ways. It was a family that Jed built over three years. And when that family was starting to break up, led by the father himself, when he had to, you know, he got offered $8 million, $8.5 million dollars to go to Washington.
00:50:13
Speaker
And he got another $3 million dollars for his coaching staff. um He was able to give 10 of kids, His on the field assistance, a hundred, $200,000 a year raise.
00:50:25
Speaker
I mean, you can't compete with that kind of money. and And it was terrible in Arizona and Tucson for the for the for the fans and and for those that were really supportive of the program. But that's just the facts of life right now.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, no doubt. And, um you know, when you talk about all these dominoes, ah almost like, ah you know, pieces on a board game, um you wrote a chapter about the power broker that really is moving the pieces around, right? Jimmy Sexton. And, you know, when Saban makes his decision, which Jimmy's, you know, consulting with him on and Saban's finally ready to make the move. Now it's time for Jimmy to do the same work he's been doing for decades now. It's lot not like he just started doing this recently.
00:51:09
Speaker
where, you know, well, if you're going to get Boer to come to Alabama, first, you're going to get other coaches who are candidates you represent to get a better contract at their current school. And then you're going to get the guy who's going to go replace the board at Washington, a bigger contract. And I could keep going, but it's really well written in here.
00:51:27
Speaker
um Talk about, you know, Jimmy and and even CAA and their position in this because, because um you know, the the motto of Michael Ovitz, who started CAA was no conflict, no interest.
00:51:41
Speaker
Right. um And and so there's a there's a little mean, you know, CAA represents the SEC in their media negotiations. um But at the same time, Jimmy Sexton represents the coaches.
00:51:52
Speaker
And before NIL, the coaches were helping and Jimmy Sexton get players that he's representing in the NFL. So, I mean, like, you know, talk about his position in all this. Well, I think there's one thing to say, too, is that and we write about this a little bit in the book. And there are some people, you know, like Jimmy's a powerful guy there.
00:52:10
Speaker
He has admirers and detractors. Right. And I think the people who maybe are not as big of fans of his in terms of just the impact he's had will say that. One of the biggest reasons why we are in the place that we are in right now is because of Jimmy Sexton, that he's so good at negotiating that he pushed the salaries of coaches so high up there that it got to point where it was untenable for their players are not to be compensated, for there not to be opportunities. Because if you've got a coach like Nick Saban making $10 plus million dollars a year, players are making nothing.
00:52:42
Speaker
and that's a bad look. The optics of it were terrible. And that was, you know, a huge um increase from, i think, early 2000s. You had maybe a couple guys making just a million dollars. So the the money has exploded.
00:52:53
Speaker
And Jimmy's a ah big reason for that. But yeah, it's it's such an interesting world in which CAA, you have, because it's now, and you know this probably, Jim, like, you know, you have agents now also representing ADs because the AD compensation has gotten so big. So you have, ah there are situations where you might have the same person representing ah the conference potentially in their TV rights negotiation.
00:53:18
Speaker
They might be negotiating, they might be representing the AD. They might be representing the coach that AD has to negotiate with. And so everyone's making money. And I think, you know, sometimes maybe not to the the betterment of the school. I think that ah some of the contracts of of kind of coaches, you know, good for them. They're pretty absurd, especially with the buyouts that ah you wonder how much that will continue ah just because of the you where the money has to go when it comes to rev share now. But, you know, Jimmy's he's a master. And i think one of the things that was so interesting about that chapter, kind of similar in some ways to what
00:53:52
Speaker
remember talking about with Sonny initially struggling to get people to, you know, to get Ed O'Bannon, to get a player to want to go forward. Very hard to get people to talk about Jimmy Sexton, especially if you want to dive into some of the things that maybe are not just glowing. I've had, you know, multiple people would tell me a story and then essentially say, i will hunt you down if you put my name on that.
00:54:12
Speaker
So, That was a difficult balance trying to work that one out. He's very powerful. Every AD, pretty much, as if you have if you're in the game, you have to deal with him. And people are very concerned about getting on his wrong side because he'll make you pay for it. But he's very good at what he does.
00:54:28
Speaker
He's made his clients a lot of money. And... you know and He was not the first coaching agent in college, and we detail kind of how he got into it, but he certainly is going to go down as you know the greatest, at least in my lifetime. We'll see who comes after him, but he's completely transformed this world in which you know At the time, coaches were not super sexy to have his clients. And over his career, they just there's they make so much money. And they make their CAA and WME and others so much money. And Jimmy's you know really the puppeteer behind so much of that.
00:55:01
Speaker
There's a great quote in the book. And John got it. John, was it the ex-Florida president, I think it was, if I remember right? Nobody negotiates with himself better than Jimmy Sexton. I mean,
00:55:12
Speaker
negotiating with yourself. And that's essentially what he's doing. I mean, you know, oh I can move this coach over here or that coach over here. You can choose or pick them, but I got them all, you know, all the ones, all the apples on the tree that you're looking at, 90% of them are my apples and we can negotiate, you know, this way or that way, but you're still negotiating with me um on both sides of the equation. That's,
00:55:37
Speaker
You know, that's that takes it that's a real art form to do that. And Jimmy's, nobody does it better than Jimmy. Well, and and the reality is post 2021 with NIL, they're also representing players now. And, you know, there's a way to put even more pieces together.
00:55:52
Speaker
um So it's really, really interesting. All right. So now let's get to the conclusion where we go from here. Right. You start to talk about the settlement in the book, but you guys wrote the thing in such real time that, you know, you you couldn't you couldn't finish that part and release it at the same time. So, um you know, I guess where I would start here is just you know sharing a little bit of of of my journey. In 2022, would be asked by a lot of ADs and commissioners who were clients of our software company at Teamworks, hey, come show us what's going on with NIL.
00:56:25
Speaker
We had about $350 million of NIL deal data from
00:56:30
Speaker
ah the software we had built for 220 Division I schools. and And so I would share, like, here's $350 million. dollars And, you know, that's just year one of NIL. 90% of the money is coming from your donors.
00:56:44
Speaker
They're laundering money through a shell company called A Collective to pay your players to play at your school. I know, I know. You hate pay and play in the same sentence. I know. Don't kill the messenger. I'm just telling you what NIL is.
00:56:56
Speaker
And this chaotic environment we're in, is reality because O'Bannon beat you in court a little less than a decade ago and you didn't do anything to get in front of it. And while this is going on here in 2022, there's new court cases.
00:57:10
Speaker
Carter, Hubbard, Johnson, House versus is the NCAA, which is you. And so my advice would be figure out how you can create structure because these lawsuits are about you paying your players directly.
00:57:24
Speaker
And ADs would raise their hands, say, I'll retire before I pay athletes directly. And some of them have. um And and they would just push back, tell me Congress is going to bail them out and give them an antitrust exemption.
00:57:36
Speaker
And so once again, they did nothing. This is back in 22. Now, during this time, i decided I sold the company. I stepped down as CEO over at Influencer and Teamworks, and I started a players association because I believe firmly that there's no solution for college athletics without collective bargaining.
00:57:52
Speaker
We need a lot of rules, free agency, transfer portal, compensation, minimums and maximums, health and safety. All that. You can't do it without collective bargaining. So I've built and building the vehicle for athletes to be able to collectively bargain. But when you get to the house settlement, what's interesting is that I've had ADs and commissioners say, well, this is collective bargaining, the settlement. and it's not even close. Less than 0.1% of the athletes were represented.
00:58:17
Speaker
And so as we look at the settlement and the terms, it's a $20 million dollars a year cap per school in year one, which is this summer. OK, by year 10, it's 10 year deal.
00:58:28
Speaker
It gets up past 30 million dollars okay per year. um So the numbers are good, but then you've got to figure out how to split up the money per sport. And then you've got this reality that it's still pay-for-play disguises NIL, which means the contracts are going to be quite confusing because the quarterback thinks he's signing for $500,000 to play quarterback. But then the school is going ask him to do NIL stuff because that's what the contract says.
00:58:52
Speaker
There's going to be lawsuits on Title IX and the contracts, and we've got eligibility lawsuits. Athletes are able to get paid. They want to play for more years. And it's just going to keep spawning out of control. So I guess I share that whole story to say, do you agree that the house settlement is a very incomplete solution and there's a lot more chaos that still lays ahead?
00:59:15
Speaker
I completely agree. You know, I think, Jim, you and have even talked about this a little bit off air. mean, I think there's you just mentioned multiple lawsuits that are still to come. I think there's some that have potentially be even bigger than than House. I think Johnson i mean could be one of them. So I think that there's still more to come. I think that.
00:59:35
Speaker
Just to this point, and you I try not to be overly cynical, but I feel like there have been a couple of times where it's, well, if we do this, it'll fix the problem, right? And every time I think we think we have a solution, it really, it's like whack-a-mole. There's just more things that pop up from it. And I think to your point, even house, which think,
00:59:54
Speaker
people who are very well read on this subject or have really talked to a lot of people realize that it's not a magic fix. But I think at times it has been sold as a magic fix. Well, we can just figure this thing out.
01:00:05
Speaker
Everything will get better. And I think people like us think about, well, Title IX is going to be legally challenged. The ah you know fair market value is going to be legally challenged. There's all these different things. And if any of those things you know, go forward successfully, it opens it all back up again. I mean, if someone successfully legally challenges the $600 fair market value thing, we're just right back to where we were in some ways. So there's still so much I think that needs to be figured out. You know, collective bargaining is certainly that topic is not going away. I think it will continue to get more and more traction. It it feels like, again, we'll keep going back in time.
01:00:42
Speaker
There's always a big group of people who are no, no, no, until the moment it feels like it's inevitable and then they jump on board. And I think that's been how NIL has played out, how RevShare has played out.
01:00:54
Speaker
It feels like just playing it out. That's how collective bargaining will play out, where they will be drag kicking, screaming until the moment it's inevitable and then they'll get on board and they'll figure it out. That just has been the track record in the past, but I think there's still quite a bit that that needs to be figured out. And you know we're probably still...
01:01:12
Speaker
three to five years out from real stability. That's, that would be my guess. um You know, but, but who knows? One of the people I like to talk to um is Oliver Luck.
01:01:23
Speaker
um You know, Rhodes Scholar, former AD at West Virginia, great football player, had spent years inside the NCAA as an executive, high level executive.
01:01:34
Speaker
And you mentioned it, Jim, it's like, you know, there's a system in place, you know, there's the NFL program, Players Association. There's a Major League Baseball Players Association. There are unions in professional sports.
01:01:47
Speaker
And those unions in that system, and you would know this better than I do, would seem to be a very good starting point um for the future of college athletics. You're in a professional sport now. It's essentially pro sports, certainly at the highest level.
01:02:02
Speaker
um You collect a bargain. You join a union. When you come into college football um or into your conference, you're part of a union. There are rules, there are regulations, there are guidelines.
01:02:15
Speaker
um I think that's a very good step in the right direction to to limit this wild, wild west that we are we're now suffering through. is Certainly, um college and presidents and athletic directors and coaches are suffering through.
01:02:33
Speaker
I don't think Congress is going to have give them any help. um I think there's enough going on there right now, day to day. There's not hardly any bipartisanship. People are trying. I'll be interested to see what the so-called commission that President Trump has now and publicly talked about with Nick Saban as a co-commissioner with one of the Texas Tech billionaires.
01:02:55
Speaker
What ah Yeah, what's that going to do? i mean, what power do they really have to regulate college sports? I think it'll be a lot of hot air, honestly, with no real solutions in sight.
01:03:08
Speaker
um I don't think the NCAA is going to play a major role here. I think they're going to stay with college basketball because that's where their billions of dollars come from. um College football will continue to just move further or further away.
01:03:21
Speaker
They don't make any money off a college football, really. So um I think John's right. It's going to be three to five years before we see um anything happen. And I think, Jim, what you're doing with athletes.org is really going to be important in being a stakeholder here.
01:03:36
Speaker
and And the more power that you have with the athletes, creating a an an association or an organization or a group that has true power,
01:03:48
Speaker
and has a voice for change in the future is gonna be critical because you know these athletes cycle through. That's not like they have 10 year contracts like you know or can play 10 years in the NFL.
01:03:59
Speaker
um It's so transient. And I think that'll be some of the issues that you're obviously dealing with is how do we keep this group together in a way that that there's a show of force and a show of power um and control of some of their future?
01:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting is I came from being partners with all the schools and working with the athletic directors and their staffs. um And of course, when I when I made the decision to step down as CEO and then the next week launch this, um I lost some friendships and some people blocked me.
01:04:33
Speaker
um But others stepped up and said, i think this is what you need to do. Bubba Cunningham, not scared to say, like has been a big supporter. and And there's many others like him. um and And so we've thought about it as bridge builders.
01:04:48
Speaker
Now, we are clearly representing the athletes and we have almost 5000 members now. We have 4600 members, ah mostly power conference football and basketball. And technically, that's the biggest thing.
01:05:00
Speaker
players association in America because the biggest one is the NFL. They have 1800 members. And oh, by the way, those members automatically sign up for the NFL player association when they sign their NFL contract. The NFL PA doesn't have to go sign them up.
01:05:14
Speaker
We've signed up 4,600 one by one by one through agents and parents and referrals. And it's been a journey. And we're not doing it as a union. We're doing it as a trade association, much like the Screen Actors Guild does it for actors and writers who are contractors, because we know that college athletics leaders don't want employment to happen. So we're working in the present.
01:05:34
Speaker
And there's this inflection point we're at with the House settlement that I think is really interesting because they've been saying Congress is going to help now that the Republicans have the House and the Senate and the White House.
01:05:47
Speaker
But I think they're seeing there's not a lot of bipartisanship that's going to get anything done in D.C. And I think they're also seeing from watching seven hours of objections on April 7th at the House settlement hearing. There's going to be a lot of new lawsuits. And oh, by the way, the new lawsuits ain't coming to the NCAA anymore.
01:06:02
Speaker
They're coming straight to your school and your coach. That's who's getting sued next for all these things. And there's a true cost of doing nothing that if we wait three years, like you guys are saying, we'll hit ahead with Johnson.
01:06:15
Speaker
Because through the Fair Labor Standards Act, everybody's going to be an employee. you're going to pay minimum wage and overtime and workers comp and payroll taxes. And that's eight figures a year for everybody, including Central Michigan.
01:06:27
Speaker
And so it's either that or negotiate the cap with the athletes. Negotiate the minimum maximum salaries with the athletes. Negotiate a veteran's bonus and incentivizes to stay. Negotiate transfer rules and free agency rules with the athletes.
01:06:40
Speaker
Create health and safety standards, including standards that require you to pay if they get hurt really bad. You know, like that's what we need to create. And while I'm building the vehicle, the voice ain't me.
01:06:53
Speaker
It's got to be the athletes, right? It's not what I want. It's what they want. And the only thing missing right now, I talk to ADs. A lot of them will all talk to me now because they're all getting their head around collective bargaining.
01:07:04
Speaker
I'd say more than 80% of ADs right now in power conferences want collective bargaining. Who do they answer to? The president. Who's the president answer to in public schools? The The governor.
01:07:17
Speaker
How are governors and presidents thinking about unionization here in Alabama? Oh, they don't like it because it's a right to work state. And there's a lot of others, not just Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, whatever. And they're saying, you know, they they got a ah feud going on with the United Auto Workers Union.
01:07:31
Speaker
That's not how you should think about this president of school X or governor of state X. You should think about this as an analogy of not the United Auto Workers Union, but the NFLPA. Like this works, right?
01:07:42
Speaker
And so it's it's it's at this point where the cost of doing nothing is the employment that we're heading down the interstate towards, but it's also um the $20 million dollars cap that not even Ohio State has the money to pay because they outweigh their $300 million dollars of gross revenue with $340 million in expenses.
01:08:01
Speaker
um And it's the collective money they're still going to have to come up with because Deloitte ain't going to be able to regulate a $600 or more payment without a lawsuit. So that's still going to exist and it's only going to be more.
01:08:11
Speaker
And then it's renegotiating all these deals a year from now when they've been inflated and they're only going up. So it's it's a it's a crazy situation. And for me, it's one of these things where I think what you've said throughout, which is they've they've always had a chance to do the full solution, but they've tried to just do a little bit.
01:08:30
Speaker
I think it's going to hit an inflection point and they're going to do the whole, the full Monty. And, and that's, what's going to save this. But the only way you can have this beautiful dinner for the fans, the college athletics leaders is the athletes got to sit at the table too.
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think we should have Jim. If we ever did an afterward, John, for the for the price, we'll just have Jim write it right there. Just take that, put it on. I'm chapter 22. That's what I was telling John. I'm chapter 22. You are. Yeah.
01:09:00
Speaker
yeah And I like it. I like what I'm hearing a lot. And I think the other problem too is, is you mentioned college presidents. Well, that, that job is so transient. Look at Santa Ono.
01:09:11
Speaker
He was at Michigan for less than three years. Now he's going to Florida. You know, he lived through a, um a whirlwind of issues on that campus, way beyond what was ever going on in the athletic department.
01:09:23
Speaker
And, but now he's walking into an entirely different situation. you know, in a completely ah different conference. And that's part of the problem. Like John mentioned, Bobby Robbins, who I thought I called the solutionist.
01:09:38
Speaker
I thought he was one of the brightest minds in college sports. Where's Bobby now? He's nowhere near, um you know, a president's job. He's at the Hoover Institute out at Stanford. um looking to get back into the game, but hasn't been able to.
01:09:51
Speaker
And those kinds of people who are really problem solvers, problem solvers, like what you're trying to do, they're not around anymore. And I don't see any college presidents raising their hand, going, let me let me be at the forefront of this. Let me be a leader in change.
01:10:08
Speaker
You know, when you have as smart as Nick is, Nick doesn't deal with the day to day problems that a college president deals with. And as you mentioned, the political issues with a governor or a legislature that's that's resistant to this kind of change.
01:10:24
Speaker
So I think you're on the absolutely right track. And hopefully people listen to you um and and your forty six hundred and counting. members of your association to get something done before this thing completely collapses. And you see that as time go on.
01:10:44
Speaker
I appreciate that. and And here's the thing is, you know, we're funding this with no revenue, you know, and that costs a lot of money. This is a multimillion dollar a year operation. My partner, Brandon Copeland, gave up his 11th year in the NFL to be the executive director of this. He's a Wharton grad. He taught at Penn during his NFL career. He's an NFLPA rep for his team three of his 10 seasons, voted on a CBA.
01:11:08
Speaker
And we've got a team around him of former NCAA, college athletics, pro team executives. This costs money. And the school's not helping us sign up. Athletes cost money because it's hard.
01:11:19
Speaker
And you got to have a team to go do it, let alone serving them with free legal, free accounting, free mental health and and the benefits. And we don't charge athletes anything. there's There's no member dues to charge them right now. We're not collectively bargaining for them.
01:11:31
Speaker
But I say all that about the price for us to run athletes.org because the schools should beware if I'm not the one sitting across the table representing the vehicle of the athletes.
01:11:45
Speaker
Because if it's somebody else, the cap is going to be probably $50 million. or 70 million. And employment, doing this as non-employees, as contractors in a creative way like I'm proposing, ain't going to be on the table.
01:11:59
Speaker
And I could keep going and going and going. I'm trying to build a bridge. And we're two years in. We've done some good work. But I hope it don't take five years.
01:12:09
Speaker
It's going cost a lot of money.
01:12:13
Speaker
So anyways, um man, I really appreciate you guys taking time with me. And John, obviously we can connect easy here in Birmingham and I look forward to following up with you in person.
01:12:24
Speaker
Armin, I hope we can meet one day, man. You're a legend. ah Both of you guys did great work on this book. Your book was Sonny was unbelievable. I'm interviewing him for another episode of this podcast. Just thank you for your contributions. I'm a student of this whole thing and you guys are enriching me with a lot of great wisdom.
01:12:41
Speaker
It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Jim. I really enjoyed it. Well, you both put it well. Appreciate the conversation and I look forward to talking again soon.
01:12:51
Speaker
Great stuff, as I expected from Armin and John. These guys really did an amazing amount of work in such a short period of time as they covered everything that happened in the first three years of NIL through this book, The Price.
01:13:05
Speaker
um Think about it. I mean, it's only 2025. These guys covered 21 through 24 and told the story of how we got here all in one book in real time as it happened. Make sure you pick it up on Amazon and also make sure you're subscribing to the podcast on whichever engine you prefer. Spotify, Apple, YouTube. You can search Now It's Legal and you can find us on all three places.
01:13:27
Speaker
And please make sure you subscribe also. Follow us on Instagram at nowitslegalpod, where you can get clips of upcoming episodes. And for our team here, I just want to say thank you for tuning in to this episode. We have much more coming here in season three of Now It's Legal.