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S1E1 - Jay Bilas - Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale
208 Plays10 months ago
Six-time Emmy nominee, Jay Bilas is a former college basketball player at Duke University and a current ESPN basketball analyst, covering the top men’s college basketball games. After helping lead the Blue Devils to the 1986 NCAA Championship, Jay was drafted to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, ranking as one of the league's top scorers in Italy during the 1987 and 1988 seasons. In 1990, he returned to Duke as Mike Krzyzewski’s assistant coach for 3 seasons.
Jay joins Now It's Legal to discuss the current state of big-time college athletics, including its commercialization and what standards need to be set to ensure all college athletes are entitled to proper benefits in their respective athlete experience. We'll also hear more about his own experience as a college athlete, coach and broadcaster.
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.
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Transcript
Introduction to NIL Era and Podcast Audience
00:00:00
Speaker
What's up, everybody? Welcome to Now It's Legal. Obviously, the NIL era has changed college athletics over the past almost three years back in July 2021. It started and it's created what is looking like more and more of a free market for college athletes to go and get the best deal with the transfer portal. They're a free agent every year and it's created
00:00:24
Speaker
what a lot of people think are problems, but what I also think a lot of people see is opportunities. And so we're going to talk to those people on this show. This show is for parents, athletes, coaches. It's also for college administrators, head college coaches, and broadcasters and media folks who all are living in this new era of college sports every day.
00:00:48
Speaker
And so if you're one of those folks, we want you to listen to the show. You can find us on Apple podcasts, just search now it's legal or Spotify podcasts. And you can also find us on YouTube where you can actually watch the show and watch the guests and I interact.
00:01:04
Speaker
And I think that you'll get a lot out of it, but also many of you are gonna end up being guests with me on this show. And so just like we wanna have those folks listen, we're gonna have broadcasters and coaches and ADs and commissioners and athletes playing college now, former college athletes and even high school athletes and parents.
00:01:24
Speaker
on this show talking about this new era of college sports.
Interview with Jay Bilas
00:01:28
Speaker
Today, we have Jay Bilas. Jay started for four years under Coach K at the beginning of Coach K's legendary era at Duke. Jay also went on to be an assistant coach with Coach K and became a lawyer before getting into broadcasting.
00:01:45
Speaker
As a broadcaster, Jay's become a staple on ESPN. And you'll get a lot out of this interview because that background I just gave you makes him a unicorn, which makes him one of the best people to hear from on where college sports is today and where it's gonna go. Here's the first episode of Now It's Legal with Jay Bilas.
00:02:11
Speaker
All right, Jay, so first off, crazy time of year for you, and I gotta ask, I mean, I saw you at least a dozen or so times broadcast a game, but how many games did you do this past season? And I don't even know if you know the running tally for your lifetime amount of games, but you've done a lot of broadcasts.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know the amount of games. I think it's around 50. And then, yeah, in studio appearances and all that different stuff. It was a busy year, but a fun one. But I think it's around 50 games. And that's, give or take, it's between 40 and 50 every year.
00:02:44
Speaker
And I gotta also tell you, I needed some motivation going into my workout this morning and I read your daily morning tweet. Confident, I'm just flowing. I'm like a psychic. I must be knowing I gotta go to work. That of course is Jeezy. You've been doing that for a long time and just wanna ask you, how did that start? What made you decide to tweet each morning with a motivational quote from Jeezy?
00:03:11
Speaker
It was by accident. We were I think it's 2010. We were at Michigan State doing game day and Draymond Green walked by wearing some headphones and we asked him what he was listening to. And he said young Jeezy and one of my colleagues asked me if that was on my back then it was an iPod is that on your iPod and I said actually it is. And people didn't believe it. So I went back and forth with people on Twitter and I put a lyric out here there and
00:03:37
Speaker
I'm not even sure if I remember this correctly, but I actually, going back and forth with people, I had to stop and actually go into my office, my law office, and I put, I just put, I gotta go to work on there. And somehow I caught on and I started doing it every day.
Structural Issues and Player Compensation
00:03:53
Speaker
So the name of this show is Now It's Legal. And a lot of people talk about NIL and this new era of college sports. And the reality is this has been a long time coming and it quite frankly should have happened sooner.
00:04:08
Speaker
For more than 100 years of college athletics, college athletes were not able to monetize their name, image, and likeness while building the revenues and programs that they've played for. And now that NIL's here, it's not the end because there's obviously more progress that has to be made.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so, what I want to talk about with you first is just the current state of college athletics. From your perspective, obviously, we're a couple years in, about almost three to NIL, but there's a lot of issues that people are experiencing from a structural standpoint. And even the athletes are still producing billions of revenue that their schools don't share with them. NIL is the outside revenue that they're generating.
00:04:55
Speaker
If you were to sum up the current state of college athletics, where would you start? We're at a middle point of where we're about to be. And we're about to be joining the rest of American business, where everyone that participates in the business is allowed to realize their fair market value. Up until recently, athletes were restricted in a way that I always felt was illegal and violated federal antitrust law.
00:05:25
Speaker
For a time, the courts didn't agree because of a 1984 decision in a different antitrust case where the schools sued the NCAA. It was called Board of Regents. But right now, one thing to remember, every game has been played on time. Every check has cleared with regard to the conduct of competition.
00:05:48
Speaker
So the most complaining, if not all of the complaining you hear about the current state of college sports is coming from college administrators because they don't want to share their money with anybody. That's really what it comes down to. And we hear the same doomsday predictions that we heard before NIL.
00:06:08
Speaker
People are going to stop watching. This is going to hurt women's sports. This will kill college sports, things like that. And they've said that with regard to stipends, with regard to other things. And none of it's true. It's all doomsday nonsense. Where I think we're headed, Jim, is we're going to get to a point where the schools are allowed to pay their players if they choose to.
00:06:31
Speaker
It's not a mandate, like none of these lawsuits are trying to force schools to pay. They're trying to take restrictions off from them paying. And I think we see with NIL,
00:06:43
Speaker
People say, this is not what NIL was intended to be. What did they think was going to happen? The schools want the best players. And they're going to do what it takes to get the best players. So in recruiting, instead of a quote unquote NIL deal with a collective, they're working in tandem with the school.
00:07:03
Speaker
Basically, the school's paying the player. And it's not that big of a deal. But why have these stupid restrictions when you could just open it up and pay them? And then you could sign them to a contract. The contract could have a buyout in it. It could have all kinds of contract conditions that protect the school and also protect the athlete.
00:07:25
Speaker
Just like they do when they sign a contract with an athletic director or coach or an assistant coach or a trainer Whatever they want their employment conditions There's not you know, they don't randomly fire people You know the coaches love to say this coach will say okay Well if they get paid then we can fire them go ahead if you want to fire them go ahead you can actually fire them now Coaches kick players off the team. They run them off it that doesn't happen a lot, but it happens and
00:07:54
Speaker
And uh, and show me any business that goes in. God, we, we get to fire people, you know, you, you want to retain employees, not fire them. Uh, so a lot of it's nonsensical rhetoric that's going on that just, there's, there's been a change and the people who don't like change don't like this, but bigger change is coming and it's going to be stabilizing change more than, more than anything.
Resistance and Change in College Sports
00:08:20
Speaker
But what I hear are administrators complaining because they know what's going to happen. The athletes are going to get their fair share because they deserve it. And that's the efficient way, efficient place to put money is talent on the floor.
00:08:36
Speaker
And a lot of these needless sort of government type jobs on college campuses are going to go away. You're not going to see 20 athletic directors at a school that are like bank vice presidents. They're not going to do that anymore. They're going to put the money where it's most efficient. And that scares some people. You said a quote in there that I want to go back to, which is a lot of people are, I'll paraphrase you, villainizing the current
00:09:06
Speaker
And especially the athletes. You hear some fans and different folks say, it's all about money now. And it's not fair that athletes transfer all the time. And you even hear people criticize coaches for going and stealing players in the portal. The reality is, and I would ask you if you agree with this and to expound on it.
00:09:26
Speaker
The tampering happening with coaches, making offers to athletes, sometimes those offers aren't even honored because there's no accountability system to make sure that the offer is paid out. The reality of serial transferring and athletes becoming free agents every year, even the reality of bowl opt-outs or NIT opt-outs now.
00:09:45
Speaker
All of this, if we have a collectively bargained portion of gross revenue that goes to the athletes, can be fixed because you'll have transparency of what athletes are getting paid. You'll have a structure of minimum salary, maximum salary. You'll have the ability to make transfer rules because of the fact that now the money they're making is tied to a term of time. And if they don't want to play in the NIT or a bowl game in football, they won't get paid what they were supposed to get paid for that game. Is that correct in your mind?
00:10:16
Speaker
Yes, if they go around of collective bargaining, but collective bargaining is a little bit problematic for public versus private institutions. It can be done, but I don't think it's necessary. There's no collective bargaining for athletic directors or coaches or presidents. And most people don't pay attention to this and I don't blame them. Why should they? But if they're worried about poaching,
00:10:42
Speaker
What about poaching, as you mentioned, poaching of coaches, like coaches are under contract and other competitors are trying to take them away through back channel negotiations to leave a job and go to another. It happens with presidents. It just, it happens with athletic directors all the time. They just went from Nebraska just like weeks after signing a new contract and went to Texas A&M as its athletic director.
00:11:09
Speaker
Nobody claims tampering or poaching and it's it's no different than with a player But I don't consider players. I don't consider poaching or tampering With a player. I don't even think that exists. How can you poach or tamper? An unpaid student You can't that student can get up and leave whenever he or she chooses and
00:11:38
Speaker
And people don't know this either. Athletes transfer at a much lower rate than non-athlete students do. Retention of students is a major issue for universities. And I think the transfer portal, look, it was the NCAA's idea. They came up with it. This is not some rule that the courts forced on the NCAA. They chose to do this. But they did it because they were fighting over money in court.
00:12:04
Speaker
and losing, and they knew how bad the transfer rule made them look. It was basically a non-compete provision in an employment contract for a non-employee. How can you restrict someone's movement when they're an unpaid student to be treated like any other student? They knew that was making them look bad. So they came up with this. Then they wound up losing those cases anyway. The transfer portal could be better, could be regulated better, and the timing could change.
00:12:32
Speaker
But how do you tell a player who was recruited as a mid-major player out of high school that because you were identified at this level out of high school, you are relegated to that level for your entire career? That's absurd. And if you prove yourself better, you have to give up a year of your life to sit out because of how you were evaluated out of high school. None of that makes any sense. And they know it.
00:13:00
Speaker
and that's why they came up with this transfer portal. The portal, I'm not saying it's going to go away, but it will be greatly diminished in importance once players are paid. Once you can sign them to a contract, you'll be able to negotiate. Do you want a four-year deal? Do you want a two-year deal with an option? Maybe the school only wants a two-year deal because they want it out. You don't know that, but individual deals can be cut and it'll be really ordered.
00:13:30
Speaker
Maybe early on, a school overpays for a player. Or maybe they get a great deal. They underpay. But they'll figure it out pretty quickly because they know exactly whom to recruit and who to put in the game when they want to win. They know what the players are worth to them. And I think that what NIL has done, Jim, is it's spread talent out across the board.
Impact of NIL on Talent Distribution
00:13:53
Speaker
So we've got a lot more. We're closer to a parody than we've ever been.
00:13:59
Speaker
There's no parity now, but we're closer to it because the third best player at Kansas can get more money to be the best player somewhere else. And money is not the only factor in making a decision, but now it can be a factor. And it's absurd. When people say, oh, now it's all about money or it's so transactional. One, it was transactional before. Am I getting a scholarship or not?
00:14:25
Speaker
How much will I play? Can I get to the NBA or the NFL? What position will you put me at? Those were transactional. And what non-athlete student goes to college and doesn't ask, how much is this going to cost me? How much scholarship money can I get? And you don't hear people saying, it's all transactional now. All they care about is money. Like, it's so stupid to go down this road. I don't understand.
00:14:52
Speaker
So you talked about the fact that we're going to actually make this a real business. The commercialization of college sports has exponentially grown in the 21st century, especially with media money. And we've seen that play into coach salaries, coach severance. We've seen it play into the way that schools spend money to try to attract talent.
00:15:14
Speaker
to your point without actually paying the talent. We've seen all this happen, but yet there's this last step of commercialization that is fair and equitable for the athletes producing this revenue. You hear a lot of excuses why you can't share gross revenue with the football players or the basketball players that produce it. You hear things like,
00:15:38
Speaker
We already do, which is we have a scholarship and we also have all these facilities and perks. We have cost of attendance checks to help them live to a certain standard. We have educated related benefits. We already do a lot, a good amount of our gross revenue to the athletes, right? Now, the tracking of that shows that the average Power Five school is allotting about 11% of their gross revenue to scholarships and benefits. And in pro sports, it's 50%.
00:16:07
Speaker
But the other thing that you hear a lot about is title nine is going to be violated and Olympic sports are all going to be canceled and we're not going to have any Olympic sports anymore. So just give me some reactions to I feel those are very mythical excuses.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah. And they've been used before every time there's been a change, whether it's the stipend or, uh, you name it, we can go through a laundry list of them. They've said, this is gonna, we're going to cancel sports. And they never do schools offer sports that are their interest to offer. And one thing that people, uh, don't really process particularly well is the fact that most of these Olympic sports, the athletes pay their own way. There are scholarship limits in these sports. So take a baseball team, for example.
00:16:55
Speaker
A baseball team is allowed to provide 12.5 scholarships for their baseball team. There are 40 people on the roster. So that means what, 27 and a half, if my math is right, 27 and a half players are paying their own way. They're not canceling baseball because that gives them students that are paying their own way that are going to be retained at a higher rate than another student that would be in that chair. And the scholarship money that is paid
00:17:24
Speaker
is paid from the athletic department to where? To the school. The school is not out a nickel in this. The only thing they're out is the opportunity cost of having another paying student in that seat. But if the baseball player is paying, they're out 12.5 regular students that could be there. They're not out very much. And they're providing something that their university wants and needs
00:17:53
Speaker
And if they don't want to need it, then cancel it. That's fine. But they're not going to do
Financial Decisions and Varsity Sports
00:17:58
Speaker
that. They've never done it, and they're not going to do it. And it also brings up, what's the appropriate number of sports for a school to offer? Some SEC schools offer 18 varsity sports. Other schools out there offer 30. So what's the right number? It should be up to them. And really, it's not an issue of going back to your original question or the first part of your question.
00:18:23
Speaker
If a scholarship and a stipend and what they provide to players now is such a great deal, let it stand on its own in the marketplace. And if another school wants to offer more, they can offer more. If you want to say, okay, we're only offering what we've been offering, see how you do in the marketplace. It's not that big of a deal. Just open it up. Some schools pay their football coach $10 million a year. Alabama just signed.
00:18:48
Speaker
to a $10 million a year deal. Other schools seem to do just fine paying $2 million. That's their individual choice. And it should be the same in a competitive environment for athletes. That's all this is about is just take the restrictions off and all of you market competitors compete in the marketplace against each other as you do with everything else.
00:19:14
Speaker
Allow players to compete in the marketplace with players like you do for literally everything else. And the reality is we got here because there has been no proactive thinking.
00:19:27
Speaker
or action from the leaders on all of these topics, really starting with O'Bannon, which was decided 10 years ago, and was the writing on the wall for NIL. And then, of course, in 19, State of California passes the Fair Pay to Play Act, which makes NIL a realization starting in 2023 for all of the California schools. And the NCAA took no action on that.
00:19:52
Speaker
And then of course, Alston in June 2021 really showed the handcuffs on the NCAA to govern and create any caps on anything because of all the antitrust implications.
00:20:04
Speaker
of that 9-0 decision and Kavanaugh hit the gavel and says, I question why this organization should even exist. But when you think about all the leaders from the NCAA down through the presidents of these institutions and the ADs and beyond, there's a lot of bureaucracy. Is that the main reason that nothing's happened? How do you make sense of the lack of action
00:20:30
Speaker
all the way to today where we can see this coming. And I think most leaders would agree with us in a meeting like this, but they're not going to do anything. They're not going to do anything. They're going to have to be forced into it. I think that's been proven over the years. It is difficult in the structure that they have where you have 1,100 or 1,200 institutions on all the different divisions, Divisions 1, 2, and 3.
00:20:54
Speaker
where they have to come to some sort of agreement in order to do something. It's a bizarre system that you wouldn't run a business with now. And that should change. But they've been reluctant to do that. So I have some feeling for the NCAA president, because he or she has very, has less power than you think. It's largely a figurehead position and a bully pulpit to be able to do things.
00:21:24
Speaker
Um, we've had better presidents. Uh, some are better than others. Some are horrifyingly bad. Um, but I will, we'll see how Charlie Baker does. Uh, he was hired for one reason and that's because he's got a political background and the NCAA basically sees. And when I say NCAA, I mean all the member institutions, they basically see their future. The lifeboat that they have on this Titanic that they're steering right toward the iceberg.
00:21:51
Speaker
is congress and so they're lobbying congress saying give us a law that pre-empts all these state laws and gives us safe harbor from federal antitrust law so that we can continue with your blessing to violate federal antitrust law that's what they're asking and i don't think they're going to get it maybe they will we'll see i don't i'm not very good at predicting what congress will do
00:22:19
Speaker
But I think it's a fair prediction to say Congress isn't going to do what you want them to do. And it's going to take them a long time. And if you look at other areas of action, you don't see the action that one would expect given what's in front of them. I don't see Congress doing anything here. And the longer that we go, where this business continues to run efficiently and bring in revenue the way it has, and the world hasn't come to an end as predicted by the NCAA,
00:22:47
Speaker
the less incentive Congress will have to act. And Jim, I actually think if the NCAA institutions really wanted Congress to act, they're gonna have to do themselves something that the outside world is gonna see as catastrophic. In other words, the power five schools are gonna have to break off and do their own thing. And then the Congress might come in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have constituents in these other areas that we think are being hurt. Now we need to come in.
00:23:17
Speaker
But absent a catastrophe, why would Congress interrupt this industry that's bringing in billions of dollars and operating at a pretty efficient level in raising revenue? It's not operating efficiently in how it treats athletes. But I don't see this lifeboat theory working out very well for the NCAA.
Player Power and Financial Literacy
00:23:39
Speaker
All right, so we always have known that the players have the power, right? We've seen this in pro sports from 1964's All-Star Game and the NBA where the new media deal the owners attained didn't give the players what they thought they should get out of the deal from a benefits increase standpoint.
00:23:59
Speaker
And Bob Pettit, Oscar Robertson, organized a sit out of the game that ends up turning into progress. And we've seen it all the way through. There's a lot of examples of this throughout pro sports where top players who had less to lose, or excuse me, who had more to lose and less to gain, use their influence to get the rest of those players to be a part of a group that unites and stands up for what they want and what they believe they deserve, right?
00:24:29
Speaker
And at this point, aside from some small examples, Shabazz Napier 10 years ago, this is the 10 year anniversary of Shabazz speaking up about all the inequities he experienced after bringing UConn another title and winning most outstanding player. But of course, Shabazz did that after he won the title and was declaring for the NBA draft.
00:24:51
Speaker
Sedona Prince a couple of years ago in the NCAA tournament exposed the inequities for women's basketball players versus men's basketball players with their fitness facilities amongst other things. But the reality is a lot of players are in better situations right now in college sports than they've ever been in history. NIL has allowed athletes to really use the transfer portal to test the market and get the best possible offer from a collective laundering money.
00:25:20
Speaker
as a side entity of the school, paying them to go there. And the reality is for athletes to really push the envelope, they need to realize their power and unite. What do you say to that? Well, I think all that's right. The NCAA has benefited from something in college sports that probably doesn't exist on the pro level. And that is any action that players take.
00:25:42
Speaker
right now, collectively, if they decided to boycott something to flex their muscle, which is considerable, they're not doing it for themselves. They're doing it for future players. So if, say a group of teams decided they were going to boycott some event,
00:26:03
Speaker
They would take all the arrows. They would take all the criticism. They would see none of the benefit. They would be doing that for the benefit of future athletes. And it's a big, big step to take. You may know this, but I have been approached over the years by players who wanted to boycott events. And they had it set up, and they wanted to do it.
00:26:31
Speaker
would never counsel them to do it or not do it. The only thing I did was I would counsel them to ask themselves the right questions in determining it. And what winds up being the biggest hurdle is time, that say you wanted to boycott the Final Four. Well, first you have to make the Final Four, and you don't know which teams are going to make it. And then you've got to put it together in a week, which is difficult to do.
00:27:00
Speaker
And then you have to process that we're going to be looked upon negatively for doing this. In the future, we may be hailed as heroes, but it's going to be a long time before that happens. Historically, that's the case. So that's a big deal. I've said this on the air, not in counsel with any players. So I don't feel bad saying this. I've said it a million times. If the players really wanted to flex their muscles, they should do it during the regular season.
00:27:28
Speaker
And as you know, all of these big institutions have practice facilities that are palatial. They have scoreboards, you name it. And I had said, if I wanted to do that now, I would just get, you know, you coordinate it with the other team, but big game, national television, you go off with the opening tip, you just shake hands and walk to the practice facility. And we're going to play in here.
00:27:55
Speaker
And everybody would say, wait a minute, you can't do that. Well, we're going to play. We're not, we're not saying we're not going to play, but we're going to play in the practice gym. We're still going to compete for old state, you, and we're going to play our butts off for it. Cause we want to win this game, but they say, no, you have to play here. I don't know if you remember this, but in court one time, the NCAA says we are not selling the players. We are selling access to the arena to television. Well, you still got access to the arena.
00:28:25
Speaker
There's just no players in there. And if they walk to the practice facility, what are the, what are administrators going to do order them to play in that arena? The players could say, Hey, the officials are here. The, the, uh, the, the scoreboard staff is here. All the managers have it set up. We can play. It's a regulation court, scoreboard and everything we can play in here. It's not a problem. Um, we just want to play here is rather than in there. So they're not boycotting the game. They're just saying we're going to play in here.
00:28:55
Speaker
And I'm sorry that your fans can't come in. And I'm sorry that television isn't set up too bad. That's your problem, not our problem. And that would make a really powerful statement without boycotting the game. And that would tell everybody and let everybody know, hey, the players are the important thing here. The school has a great brand and it's valuable. But the players are valuable too. And they deserve to be compensated to the level of their value.
00:29:26
Speaker
I love it, man. That's a genius concept. And obviously, I've started shifting my time and energy in the past now seven months to building the Players Association to organize these college athletes and help educate them on all the different benefits and
00:29:47
Speaker
revenue opportunities that will lay ahead with cases like House versus the NCAA and Johnson versus the NCAA and the NLRB cases with USC and so on. And as we've organized now more than 50% of Power Five Conference men's and women's basketball athletes and had conversations about this,
00:30:09
Speaker
What we've realized is there's a feeling of there's a lot to lose. And I think that the powers that be have always known that that's how the players will feel, and they've taken advantage of that. Yeah, I mean, look, these players, young people as I know them, are a lot smarter than they're given credit for. And as they have been allowed now to make some money
00:30:36
Speaker
The overwhelming majority are treating it with the same respect that we would as older people. You know, they may make a purchase like we do that, hey, I'm going to treat myself to this. But for the most part, they're learning about money. They're putting stuff away that they wouldn't have had access to otherwise. When they get out of school, they're going to be savvy financially, at least more so than they would have been otherwise.
00:31:05
Speaker
And I had one one coach that told me, he goes, they're just going to blow it. And I said, okay, like, first of all, I don't agree with that. But what if they do blow it? They'll learn a valuable lesson, and they'll be in the same place they would have been otherwise restricted. So like, I told this coach, I said, Look, you sound like somebody that says if the players were just allowed to drive a car now, they were restricted by the NCAA, you are not allowed to drive a car.
00:31:34
Speaker
Coaches would say, oh, what's going to happen now? Now they're going to have to keep the car up, maintain the car. They're going to have to keep it registered and do all that paperwork. They're going to have to have to keep their license up. And they can get an accident. They get a DUI. All that's true. I mean, that could happen. But the overwhelming majority of people who drive do so responsibly and they handle it. Are there accidents? Yes.
00:32:00
Speaker
but they're pretty, a small percentage relative to the amount of people that drive. And it's the same thing with money. When I graduated college in 1986, I had just turned 22 years old. And I had no idea about finances.
00:32:15
Speaker
And the reason is because I was restricted from having access to money while I was in college. And what's the downside of all this? Do we really care what a player drives to the game? People don't care. That's been proven. They don't care. And I was at a seminar last year that was set up by the Oakland basketball coach, Greg Campi, who's in the tournament this year. And one of the panelists was Blake Corum, the running back from Michigan.
00:32:44
Speaker
And someone asked him, why did you come back for your last year? And he said, I want to win a national championship. I want to win the Heisman trophy. And I have always been interested in real estate. And with my NIO money for the last year or so, I've been putting together real estate portfolio. And I want to add to that portfolio. So I'm in a better position a year from now than I am now.
00:33:07
Speaker
And Tom Izzo, coach of Michigan State, was there and he looked at him like he was a guy, like you're not the normal player. And I said, well, he may not be the normal player, but he's certainly not a unicorn. There are more players like him. And why should he be restricted from doing that? I see that only as a positive and a fantastic thing.
00:33:27
Speaker
Do we expect that all these players are not allowed to have interests in the financial world? Of course they are going to have those. And I think the financial literacy of players is something that has not been talked about enough as a huge benefit to players being compensated to their value.
00:33:48
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that's what's so beautiful about NIL and even before NIL, athletes having their own social media because it's helped them work a muscle that quite frankly, you or I didn't get to work when we were their age. We had to learn it after we got done.
00:34:05
Speaker
playing college sports, which is it's a muscle of go out and take initiative, connect with other people, use your social media to build a brand and create opportunities. And now with NIL, as you make money, learn how to invest, learn how to save, learn how to spend. And I remember we were sitting down with a group of athletes
00:34:24
Speaker
for a seat at the table, which is one of our shows that we do with athletes.org to feature them talking about these things. And we were blown away by Armando Baycott saying, I want to have my own private equity fund. So right now, I'm trying to learn about alternative investments by using some of my NIL money to do that.
00:34:43
Speaker
You heard Jeremy Roach talking about how he's used his NIL money to have his own equipment to make music, right? Because he loves art and music, right? And so those kinds of things are the beauty of not just NIL, but the sophistication of the current young college athlete and who they'll be when they're done playing that sport. And I think that's pretty powerful. So I love those thoughts there. That Blake Corum story is amazing.
00:35:13
Speaker
Okay, so as we kind of get towards the end, you said Blake Corum's not a unicorn. He's like a lot of college athletes and who are now working this muscle, but you are pretty much a unicorn. I mean, you played at Duke, started for four years at the beginning of Coach K's legendary era. You coach there as well. You had a legal career and a broadcasting career that's carried on.
00:35:39
Speaker
to today and you've been speaking about this issue well before it was a popular topic.
00:35:46
Speaker
for folks like us to talk about on a podcast. So if you could kind of weave your experience as a player, as a coach, as a lawyer, broadcaster into why you started talking about this as much as you have over the past years.
Jay Bilas's Advocacy and Experience
00:36:04
Speaker
It's sort of interesting, Jim. It started when I was in college. I was on an NCAA committee as an athlete representative when I was in college. It was the NCAA's long range planning committee.
00:36:14
Speaker
And as a committee member, I raised a lot of these issues at the time about transferring. When I was recruited, I almost went to the University of Iowa to play for Lute Olson. And when Lute Olson was recruiting me, he showed me his 10-year contract. He showed me the plans for the Carver Hawkeye Arena, which was being built at the time. That's how old I am.
00:36:35
Speaker
And he looked me in the eye and said, and he was a great person. We remain good friends his whole, his whole life since I met him. And, and he looked me in the eye and said, I will be here your whole four years. And he was gone the next year to Arizona. And that would have been the end of my freshman year. So that made an impact on me that had I gone to play for coach Olson, I would have been put in the position to stay at Iowa with someone who did not recruit me or going with him to Arizona.
00:37:05
Speaker
if he wanted me and having to sit out a year in order to do that and then graduating college at age 23 instead of 22. I didn't want to do that and didn't want to be put in that position. I felt like, you know, you should be allowed to transfer if your coach leaves. Didn't seem like a controversial thing. Shot down immediately in the committee room.
00:37:25
Speaker
by the athletic directors and commissioners that were on the committee. They were very kind, but dismissed out of hand. And my thing back then wasn't about getting paid. It was about take these shackles off us and quit nickel and diming us. Like if I go to a restaurant and the proprietor says, hey, on me, I shouldn't have to wrestle him to the ground and make him take the money.
00:37:48
Speaker
You know, if I go to the same place over and over again, like a lot of people do every once in a while, they'll say, Hey, this is on us. You're a good customer, that kind of thing. Um, quit nickel and diming us. Nope. Strict amateurism. Um, so I learned how the system worked and I didn't like it. And I thought it was wrong, but at the time I was a, I was on the committee and I was a team member.
00:38:10
Speaker
So whatever decision the committee made and whatever decision the NCAA made, I supported publicly because I was part of the process. My argument didn't win, but I didn't think I could go out and be some Norma Ray character that was dissing the NCAA. But later on, when I became a broadcaster, I really thought about, wait a minute.
00:38:31
Speaker
An official makes a bad call, I point it out. Or when a coach does something wrong, I point it out. When a player does something wrong, I point it out. Why am I staying silent on issues of policy that I feel I know something about? And I started talking about it. And I talked about it at the appropriate time. I don't walk into an arena and say, I can't believe all this exploitation. I go to enjoy the game. But when it's time to talk about policy, I don't let my love of basketball
00:39:01
Speaker
color, uh, my commentary on policy. I keep it to policy and I try to keep people out of it. Like not all the people at the NCAA are bad people. They're great people. They want to do the right thing. I don't think they do the right thing enough, but they're not, you know, some sinister folks stroking a hairless cat, you know, somewhere trying to rule the world. Uh, I just, I think there's a lot of bad policy that needs to change.
00:39:27
Speaker
but I've spoken out on it and sometimes to my detriment. And what's kind of funny is, NIL and players being allowed to be paid has cost people like me money. So now instead of getting a broadcaster to do ads during the NCAA tournament, they have players doing it before they couldn't have the players. So that's actually cut out money coming to the way of broadcasters that would normally be in those commercials.
00:39:57
Speaker
And that's not a bad thing. I'm happy about that. I want the players to be in that marketplace. And if someone like me are in my position, if you're so valuable, they'll come to you for those commercials. But they want the players. And they're having the players now, and it's working out just fine. I don't see anybody recoiling when a commercial comes on for State Farm, and Caitlin Clark is in it.
00:40:23
Speaker
You know, nobody's saying, well, I'm not watching this anymore because this, this dirty professional, you know,
Popularity of College Sports and Legal Considerations
00:40:28
Speaker
they don't, they don't do that. And they've never done. And the NCAA has made it seem like that was going to happen. They wanted that doomsday scenario to take hold. And it did just like it didn't with the reserve clause in baseball. When, when baseball owners said this is going to kill baseball, it's going to kill interest in it. Just like it did in the Olympics when Olympians could make money. Uh, the Olympics are more popular now than they've ever been.
00:40:51
Speaker
And the same is true of college sports. It's not going to diminish in popularity. If you talk to anyone in private equity who's trying to get into it, they feel college sports is undervalued as a property. So all the doomsday scenarios that we're hearing are nonsense. As soon as the restrictions are taken off, there'll be an adjustment period, but it'll be orderly and just fine, just like the rest of American businesses.
00:41:16
Speaker
Absolutely. And you've said before, it doesn't necessarily have to be employment unionization and collective bargaining. There are ways right now, you know, on Rich Eisen, I heard you talk about the fact that you could have a trade association that the athletes could be a part of to help them negotiate what is like collective bargaining, but ultimately not officially a collective bargaining unit. Do you see that as the first phase or do you feel like it needs to play out all the way to employment?
00:41:46
Speaker
I think the first phase and frankly the only smart thing to do for the NCAA is to go to Jeffrey Kessler who's litigating the House case and the Johnson case and perhaps others and and reach a settlement and as part of the settlement it'll have to be a significant amount of money for damages because they're looking at a damages amount over four billion dollars in the House case.
00:42:12
Speaker
But as part of that settlement, come up with a framework and a system that everyone can live with. And I trust Jeffrey Kessler, after all of his experience with the NFL and the NBA and the like, to be able to reach that agreement with the NCAA. It would have to be blessed by the court, which I think is a good thing. But that's what I would do if I were the NCAA. The problem is, who do you send and who's got authority to reach that kind of settlement?
00:42:42
Speaker
Why go through that whole process if the person that Jeffrey Kessler is negotiating with or the people don't have the authority to come to a deal? That's where the structure of the NCAA becomes a real problem. Anytime you want somebody changed, on whose door do I knock to get an answer? You really don't know because it's all these committees and conventions and it's like Congress. It's really difficult to get anything done. And that needs to change.
00:43:12
Speaker
But that's what I would do, is I would settle the house case and try to come up with something that Kessler can live with as a representative of the players. And I think that's the most prudent thing to do. Am I confident the NCAA will do the prudent thing? No, I'm not. But that's the thing I would do.
00:43:33
Speaker
Well, Jay, I could talk about this with you for hours, but it's March Madness time. You've got a lot going on and your time is extremely valuable. I thank you for sharing it with us. Parents, athletes, college administrators, coaches are all listening to what you had to say today. And it's very valuable for all of them to hear as we consider the awesome future, the opportunistic future for young people.
00:44:00
Speaker
coming in college athletics. So thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you, Jim, for having me. And your point about parents, I talk to a lot of parents whose kids are being recruited. And one of the things I tell them is money can and should be a factor for you in making your decision. But it shouldn't be the only factor. It's just like taking a job.
00:44:25
Speaker
You know, you may take a job for less money because it's a better opportunity. It's a better place to live. It's better for your future. It's no different with your decision on college. And because money is a new thing, it's the biggest thing or can be the biggest thing for some people. But this will all normalize pretty quickly. And I'm really glad you're doing this because it's educating a lot of people. Thanks for doing that. Absolutely. Talk to you soon.
00:44:52
Speaker
Man, Jay is a wealth of knowledge. And I mean, that background that he's lived out has really put him in a position to provide so much wisdom on how we got here, where we are today, and where we're going in collegiate athletics. And we're going to have awesome show notes for every episode. But for this episode, we'll have some show notes that are key takeaways for you. And if you're a parent or a coach or a current athlete, high school or college or former athlete, broadcaster,
00:45:22
Speaker
or maybe you are a college administrator and you're a college coach or AD commissioner, this is meant to provide you with perspectives that you can use and weave into your daily approach with whatever role you play in this wonderful industry of collegiate athletics. And so those show notes are there, but also you can follow along with the show as we continue to roll out new episodes with exciting guests by subscribing on YouTube at Now It's Legal with Jim Cavall.
00:45:49
Speaker
You can also subscribe on Apple podcasts and Spotify podcast by searching Now It's Legal. You can follow us on Instagram at Now It's Legal Pod. So you can really stay in tune with short clips of the new episodes before you go watch or listen to the entire one. And so thank you so much for tuning into this one. Share it with your friends. And for some of you, I'll be reaching out. We got to get you on the podcast.