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De Smith Part 2 - Now It's Legal with Jim Cavale - February 2026
105 Plays15 days ago
In Part Two of Now It’s Legal’s conversation with DeMaurice Smith, the focus shifts from the NFL to college athletics and the structural failures now playing out in real time. Drawing on his experience leading the NFLPA through multiple collective bargaining agreements, Smith explains why college sports are facing unprecedented instability: a lack of accountability, no collective bargaining framework, fragmented leadership and decision-making driven by emotion rather than rational business strategy.
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Transcript
Introduction to Season 3, Episode 2
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Now It's Legal, Season 3, Episode 2.
00:00:10
Speaker
welcome to now it's legal season three episode two of our interview with Dee Smith.
Dee Smith's Story and NFL Battles
00:00:18
Speaker
If you didn't listen to part one, I recommend going back and giving that a listen because you'll hear Dee Smith's story and his wars with the NFL owners and Commissioner Goodell on behalf of the players achieving multiple collective bargaining agreements, including the big one in
College Athletics and NFL Comparisons
00:00:34
Speaker
2011. But this episode is going to be more about his thoughts on college athletics, where we go from here. And Brandon Copeland teamed up with me to do these interviews with D and they are gold. There's a lot of good stuff in these interviews. So let's go into it. Part two now of our interview with D Smith.
00:00:56
Speaker
I want to talk about the power dynamics, yeah right? Of the NFL, but specifically start to relate that to college athletics and the sense of you have the antitrust exemption that the NFL has. Correct. Right. Which gives them the power to set rules unlike any other business right in the world, but also to not be regulated. Right. And,
00:01:23
Speaker
I guess if you are talking to a college athlete right now that's listening at, let's say, a ah big school, top 10 school, right? Playing in CFP. Guys from Alabama last who were there last night. Right. right That, hey, man, we we we have it good.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Like we I get massages. I get meals from where I come from. This is the life multimillion dollar facility. I get to walk through campus before the game and everybody's screaming my name. Yeah. Can you can you kind of put in into perspective?
Lessons from NFLPA and Player Rights
00:01:55
Speaker
what type of power they could have or what they could be fighting for. And I'm um'm making this question long-winded and I apologize. I want to give a little bit perspective because what you said earlier, I think is so key. You're an educator.
00:02:10
Speaker
yeah And I know when I fell in love with the NFL PA, one, i have a different perspective because my grandfather played for 11 years and his teammate was John Mackey. But I didn't understand or know John Mackey until taking on,
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, one, my granddad was friends with his wife righty and him, right? and and But also, I didn't understand what he did for players until really deep diving into the NFLPA and the role i have now with Athletes.org. And I remember there was a – the NFLPA does a meeting in Los Angeles leadership – Literature Summit. Yep. Right in conjunction with the NFLPA Bowl. And I remember that was my first time being in there. and frankly, I took it because of free trip to L.A. Yeah. I said, you and your girls go to l L.A. and they they pay for my girls. Now i'm my wife. Right. and And I remember sitting in that first meeting hall and just being like, whoa, I went hard in those meetings. And he went through every owner.
00:03:07
Speaker
And basically some of the things like like basically what you were able to do for me and the players in that room in that moment was like, hey, you think you're really good. Right. And you think that you came because you can catch a football, tackle people, sack people that you came into this league and they wanted to give you a 401k and they wanted to give you free agency and they wanted to give you this minimum salary. But. But really, you are standing on the shoulders of John Mackey, of my grandfather, of all of these people. yeah And let me tell you about some of the battles and the fights that we've gone through to get you here. And guess what now?
00:03:44
Speaker
the baton is in your hands. yep The ball is in your hands. What are you willing to do with it? Right? So yeah kind of talk about that. Yeah, look, I'm grinning because, yeah you know, I hadn't thought about Leadership Summit in ah in a long time. And um I mean, you know, we would get after it, you know, when we went to team meetings.
00:04:02
Speaker
But, you know, leadership summit, man, i man i came I was coming from the top rope at leadership summit. And, well, because you've got a group of guys who want to learn. yeah You know, it's not it's not four o'clock after practice and everybody's trying to get through a meeting.
00:04:15
Speaker
When you're at leadership summit, there's a you know there's a hundred dudes who want to learn. And, man, you know, that. I mean, other than trying to case, man, there is no better place. And so, you know, I remember. And i and then the second thing, i I was going through a bunch of PowerPoints a couple of weeks ago.
00:04:32
Speaker
And i went I found my Leadership Summit PowerPoint, and I started flipping through it, and i was like, oh my God. I mean, i i literally, it was like grenade after stick of dynamite, to you know.
00:04:44
Speaker
And um when you learn those battles, and you learn that nobody gave us a pension, and and you learn the number of players who lost their jobs, Fighting, I mean, fighting not for stuff they thought they would benefit from.
00:04:58
Speaker
Fighting for stuff that they hoped players 20 years would benefit from. you know, you talk about John. You know, John sues the NFL in 1971. You know, he sues them by himself.
00:05:12
Speaker
Johnny Unitas doesn't join that lawsuit. Right. Right. You know, Jerry Richardson was on that team. He didn't join that lawsuit.
00:05:24
Speaker
And then when John comes back to camp, after that suit is filed, he is demoted from the number one tight end and then he's traded to Kansas City. So, you know, what I try to tell players in sort of the same way from from the the leadership summit is um it is great that you have made it to this point, but you can't go through this business thinking that it's all about running around and catching a ball and all the nice things that you have.
00:05:54
Speaker
um all of those things come came at a cost to somebody else. And for the college athletes, look, you know, I mean, you're in it. you're It's a dream. you're doing You're doing great. You're doing the thing that you've always wanted to do.
00:06:08
Speaker
But, you know, as a college athlete, you know, when I would go to Alabama, like we talked to the guys last night, you know, sure, it's it's fantastic. But you're in a system where if the coach wakes up and he's had a bad day, all of you have a bad day.
00:06:25
Speaker
If you, for some reason, cross ah a coach's ire, I mean, you signed a national letter of intent, a school owns you.
00:06:38
Speaker
you know forget you know the issue that you guys have done a great job you know working with name, image, and likeness. um You could wake up on a day and that coach could decide that you're no longer on the team. you know Under the old system, you know and i i look i know and I hear all these people talking about the transfer portal this and how bad it is this. Well, imagine a world where you go to a school that engages in consistent over-recruiting.
00:07:03
Speaker
You know, and I would always make it simple for people who talk about, well, you know, they're just lucky to be able to play college football. Okay, you're one of the best linebackers um in the country. The school knows that they have three scholarships for for the for the linebackers.
00:07:18
Speaker
And how many do they invite to school? Six. Only three make the team. The other three are told, hey, you can either stay on the team and that's great, but we don't have a scholarship for you. Under the old rules, you're what?
00:07:31
Speaker
Stuck. You can't leave that school. So now you're at a school that you can't afford and a scholarship that you can't have. And now you can't go to another school.
00:07:43
Speaker
So when somebody stands up to me and says, you know hey, D, this transfer portal thing is broken, I'm thinking, of okay, under what scenario would you take a job offer at a job in Pittsburgh get there.
00:07:55
Speaker
And once you get there, you find out, Hey mom, Hey, look, here's the deal. ah we We told you we're going to you 150, $175,000, but we can only pay you 50. And you go, well, first of all, that's not the deal.
00:08:07
Speaker
And second, when you go, Hey man, I'm gonna leave and I'm just going to go to another company. No, we have a non-compete. You can't. i mean, I always tried to take everything that people thought was great about college sports and and pro sports and just put it back into the real world and then ask you, does that sound great?
00:08:24
Speaker
um Should you be at a school where, yes, you've got a great facility and you get to eat meals, but you're living below the poverty line? Because the reality is if you have a group of guys under the old system, you know, once they got to their second year or third year, you realize that the only way that you could possibly, you know, continue to live is four of you now have to get an apartment.
00:08:49
Speaker
I'm just being real. yeah And instead of eating on campus, you'll take the money for the food because that way you can pool your money and you can afford to to to to live and eat you know off campus.
00:09:04
Speaker
And I'll never forget a story. And Scotty Graham, I think, was the guy that told me, you know, Scotty was ah was a rep for for the for the union for years. Great guy. He played at Ohio State. And he told me one story about they were at the Rose Bowl. They lose the Rose Bowl.
00:09:20
Speaker
They get on a plane right after the game. They fly back to Columbus. um You know, now it's one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning. Season's over. Mess hall is closed. um Training room is closed.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's one in the morning. They haven't eaten. They go to the student union. you know, they're they so pulling their money together to buy chips and some soda and some something to eat. And a guy pulls a jersey, his jersey, off the wall that they're selling um that that has his number. and the guy pulls it over and says, hey, man, Scotty, do you mind signing a jersey for me? Mm-hmm.
00:09:58
Speaker
He gets nothing from that jersey, and he's pooling his money together after he's lost the Rose Bowl. Man, does that sound like a great experience to anybody? No. So sometimes it's just about breaking guys out, right? Because the school wants you to believe everything's great, everything's fun. and And even now, even though players are now getting paid for their name, image, likeness, or getting paid to play,
00:10:20
Speaker
um You're still in a world where, God forbid, you are one injury away from all of that being over. um There is no requirement whatsoever for that school to provide you medical care for a continuing injury that you suffer in college.
00:10:37
Speaker
And worse yet, for the most part, you are uninsurable for that injury. So, yeah, you're doing the work. You get no workers' comp. You have no ability to control your destiny inside of that system.
00:10:50
Speaker
One person is judge, jury,
Challenges for College Athletes
00:10:53
Speaker
executioner, God in that system. And, again, the final thing, there is this absolute um irreconcilable tension but between your desire to get an education and your job to play a sport. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
And anybody who wants to talk about how great things are on a college campus, man, walk walk a day in the shoes of a college athlete. um and And look, I watched it with my own son um of trying to balance, trying to get an education around, and let's not kid ourselves, you know this whole you can't only you can spend hours Man, stop. Well, I think there's there's a lot of realities that play into your your constant analog of, hey, let's look at what things look like in the real world versus this sport um that have now run amok in college because there is no antitrust exemption. 100%. And, you know, the DOJ, I mean, people are like, why did they do the transfer portal? That's what fans will say, thinking that the college leaders created the transfer portal. No, no, no. The DOJ said, You can't have non-competes on non-employees. right That's why we have no transfer. That's why we have a transfer portal. the Pittsburgh. Right. And so whether it's it's that statement or whether it's um you know some of the other things we're seeing start to happen in college athletics, um ultimately, that's why their hunger, meaning the leadership in college athletics, is to get a bill that gives them an antitrust exemption so they can have the lack of accountability, and autonomy that the NFL does have. Yeah, they want all of the control without the responsibility or or all of the control without the accountability. I mean, look, one one of the things i would say, and and look, I always had no love for NFL owners, obviously. ah Nobody's sending me a thank you note for the book. um
00:12:47
Speaker
And if they did, I wouldn't open it because it would explode. um You know, one of the things that, that you know, i look back on the history of the National Football League, you know, that merger between the AFL and the NFL in the 1960s, you know, Pete Rozelle is the commissioner.
00:13:01
Speaker
um You know, the way that deal unfolds is when, you know, the league clearly wanted the antitrust exemption, but they also agreed to a fully unionized workforce.
00:13:13
Speaker
So it's tied to the antitrust exemption. which is which is why we're preaching what we're preaching to college athletics about getting an antitrust exemption by letting the players sit
NFL & NFLPA Dynamics
00:13:23
Speaker
at the table. But without the accountability. So people ask, you know, why does it work? And and look, i you know, i'm ah I'm somewhat of a capitalist, but but I say to people, Look, that the juggernaut of the league works because there's an antitrust exemption. There's just no competition to what they do. Well, how did they get there? They understood that if they wanted the antitrust exemption, it came along with not fighting a fully unionized workforce.
00:13:49
Speaker
That's it. And so someone decided that the yin to our yang is going to be the business model that drives us to nothing but unparalleled success.
00:14:00
Speaker
mean, it's 93 of the top 100 shows. Every year. Would you call it a partnership? The nflpa NFL, PA, NFL? um I would call it a joint venture. okay A joint venture. It's not a partnership because we look there is an in there's just an antagonism between what they want and what we want.
00:14:25
Speaker
You know, so, you know at the end of the day, yes, they have to allow for a fully unionized workforce. They don't want a strong union, right? They want a weak union. And so it's not a partnership, it's a joint venture.
00:14:40
Speaker
and And the reason why I say it's a joint venture is if you get rid of one side of it, it's no longer a venture, yeah right? And look, I mean, again, one of the most ironic things about the National Football League is that it's the largest concentration of billionaires in in the world, and they're all okay with a fully unionized workforce.
00:15:07
Speaker
They're more cool with a workforce in football than they are with a workforce in their other businesses. And here's the irony. There is no group of workers in America who get 50 cents on every dollar of revenue that they generate.
00:15:23
Speaker
So this same group of greedy billionaires who on one hand are talking about, we need to get rid of unions, we need to diminish the the amount of unions in the country. The only thing that the union has done for these people is 93 of the top 100 shows, $24 billion dollars in revenue this year, and the only business to literally make it through unscathed through COVID.
00:15:48
Speaker
So I'm like, anytime people want to jump out and, you know, talk about, you know, unions are inhibiting this and inhibiting that. but i have two words for you. There's no tech worker at Google who's making 50 cents for every dollar they generate.
00:16:02
Speaker
I can make a pretty good argument that the worst, the most underpaid people in the country are tech workers. I mean, what's what's Google's annual revenue? hi
00:16:15
Speaker
I don't know, $50 billion, $100 billion? There's no way they're paying their workforce $50 billion dollars a year, right? And so the the the conundrum and the thing I don't really understand from the college side is all you have to do is look back to 1961 through 65 and the merger between the AFL and the NFL. Somebody made a decision that the business model was antitrust exemption good for us,
00:16:41
Speaker
um fully unionized workers, good for us. I don't understand why there is a group of people who frankly, if you look back in the history, and it's fascinating, right, by the way. So, you know the people who were the most upset about the NFL getting the antitrust exemption, college.
00:17:03
Speaker
The college presidents and the college ADs lost their minds. when the AFL and the NFL was granted their anti-trust exemption. They actually fought it.
00:17:15
Speaker
Fought it. Because they recognized that, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, this anti-trust exemption would what? Become a threat to our business model. At the time, the NFL and the AFL were like four and five right on the most popular sports. I mean, there was Major League Baseball and there was everybody else.
00:17:32
Speaker
Everybody else. College football was way ahead right of professional sports. So they're sitting on top of this juggernaut of, again, forget whether it's pro football or football, they're sitting on the juggernaut of football.
00:17:46
Speaker
If you wanted football, the only football you could get was college football. There was this thing where these pro athletes are playing in fields and mud fields and running around with leather helmets, and that thing was like, and that was like a cartoon to college sports. So when the AFL and the NFL merge,
00:18:04
Speaker
Man, college football realizes, whoa whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, no, and they were the ones who fought the antitrust exemption. Okay, fast forward to 25, to 20. 60 years later. Just read history, right? So they fight the antitrust exemption, but they insert a poison pill.
00:18:23
Speaker
They realize that the NFL, the AFL are going to get the the the exemption. They understand that the Sports Broadcasting Act is going to give them the ability to negotiate singular television contracts. But college football did slide a poison pill into the mix where they thought this is going to preserve our business model.
00:18:45
Speaker
Y'all can't play on Saturdays.
00:18:49
Speaker
No, you're going be relegated to Sundays. And Sundays, everybody's at church on Sundays. So you know what? Good luck to the NFL. Good luck to you. Good luck to your little venture being stuck on the only day where people aren't watching sports because they're going to church.
00:19:06
Speaker
And the NFL reacted to that. That still exists to this day, by the way. NFL reacts to that by saying, okay, we'll take Sunday. then we're going to take Monday.
00:19:18
Speaker
Then later we're going to take Thursday. And then what happens when the college season ends? We take Saturday too.
00:19:29
Speaker
Right. And if people don't understand the level of game strategy and ruthlessness to this business, the league reacted to being relegated to Sunday to saying, we're going to take on church.
00:19:47
Speaker
And they won Sunday. I mean, we went to church at, we went to the, during the- Just go to first service. Make sure you to first service. In the off season, we went to the 10 o'clock service, man, or 11 o'clock service when football season, man, everybody was in Sunday school at eight o'clock in the morning. And so it's weird now to fast forward to 2025 and you've got a group of people standing up saying we need the antitrust exemption, but we don't want the collective bargaining. We don't want the union side.
00:20:17
Speaker
and
Future of College Football with Unionization
00:20:18
Speaker
and And I've said this to to college ADs before. Why are you so worried about that? The only thing that has happened, the only time we've seen that system is one that where ah the National Football League's only competition now is Google and Apple.
00:20:37
Speaker
right I actually envision a world where if they got their heads around um ah unionizing college athletes or having some sense of collective bargaining, I think that college football could be a threat yeah to the NFL. I do. Yeah, well, it's the second most popular sport right now by by viewership, but not by monetization because there's no centralization. There's no leader for it, right? And and look, you've got 32 teams that are stuck at 17 games, unless the players agree to it.
00:21:16
Speaker
You have a college football system where you have a gazillion teams. 136 in FPS. Playing whenever they want, yeah who can decide their own playoff system.
00:21:31
Speaker
and again, you know, from, a you know, stepping back, you know out of the out of the union side for the last two years, if I were college ADs looking at the football model and looking at the March Madness model and looking at the women's March Madness model, I'd blow all of that up.
00:21:50
Speaker
And if the only thing I have to eat is collective bargaining, but yet I now have the freedom to have a joint venture to, instead of having 64 games in March Madness, to have 128 games, I'll tell you right now, watch that.
00:22:07
Speaker
I mean, for a shorter season, I mean, what's the difference? You just play a shorter regular season and you play a longer tournament. By the way, I think the athletes would want that. and Right. And so what what I, you know, what I watch a shorter college season in exchange for a larger, you know, February madness to March madness system. I'll tell you right now, whatever, whatever subscription package I have to sign up for. Well, look at players era, the tournament they do in Las Vegas right now in November. 32 teams, NIL money for the players. I mean- the the The impediment to this business model is not a business impediment.
00:22:46
Speaker
The impediment to this business model is an emotional impediment. you talked And I've been there. yeah You talked in in the book about doing the right thing at the right time, right? the right reasons. For the right reasons. and We obviously feel very compelled. I mean, Cope and I have done a lot of other things in business. I'm sure we'll do other things down the line, but this is a calling for a calling. it was a calling for you. You've said that many times. um And so we know this is the right time. There's so much that's happened from O'Bannon in 16 to Alston in 21 to NIL happening but being used really as pay for play, the lack of structure, the transfer portal, all this stuff, right?
00:23:29
Speaker
When you look at what we're trying to do with athletes.org, a CBA style framework for college athletes. What's the hardest reality you think Cope and I are going to have to accept upfront knowing we want to do this work? Yeah, that your battle, your your your your your Everest is um emotional.
00:23:53
Speaker
Just emotional. And look, having gone through two collective bargaining agreements, Deflategate, Bountygate, Ray Rice, COVID, um gamberant Kaepernick, Anthem, concussions,
00:24:07
Speaker
you know, if if you sit down with all of those things and just put on a piece of paper, here are the linear things that you want, here are the linear things that that I want.
00:24:18
Speaker
Man, it... We did that earlier this week. It was right, you know. They're not that far apart, the players and the schools. They're actually really close. You could figure out all of these fights that we had and and in a linear way, if you had rational non-emotional minds um sitting down, the through line you could reach in 25 minutes.
00:24:40
Speaker
right Because first of all, it's not it's not binary. And second, the trajectory of everything that we want means that, I'm sorry, there is a trajectory to the things that we want. You don't need all of those things on day one.
00:24:57
Speaker
So the ability to to take everything that we were fighting over, you know, take commissioner discipline, right, which was a huge emotional issue for NFL players. Mm-hmm. You know, when I get there, I'm like, well, okay, wait a minute. You know, look, I get it that it's an emotional issue. I get that Rogers judged jury and in and execution. But how many personal conduct issues do we have that happen every year?
00:25:21
Speaker
Like 10. ten yeah Oh, I'm like, okay. Are we willing to trade economic issues for emotional issues?
00:25:32
Speaker
No. No, no, no, no, no. 10 guys are involved in some sort of personal conduct issue every year. You know, I mean, I talked to him, you remember Don Davis, right? You mean Don is a great leader and Don played for 12 years, 13 years, something like that. and I remember asking Don one day, how many times were you fined?
00:25:52
Speaker
Never.
00:25:55
Speaker
How many times did you, I mean, you ever have a personal contact issue? Like, looking at me like, are you crazy? so when you think about it, 2,500 players, Man, less than, what is it, one hundredth of one percent of the guys are dealing with judge, jury, and executioner. I get it that it's an emotional issue. But when the league comes to us and the league says, we'll give you um a neutral arbitrator in exchange for us getting more money off the cap.
00:26:30
Speaker
Right. lina No. where And that's what they're going to do because they're going to play the emotional issue against us. So, you know, I think the hardest thing for for you guys is when you when when you're dealing with these emotional obstacles that become inhibitors to to common sense deals, because they do.
00:26:48
Speaker
um It's both sides of the table, right? Somebody is going to leverage your emotion against you. And then, and then you're going to try to have to deal with the fact that they're putting emotional obstacles that they want you to buy.
00:27:05
Speaker
Right. And those are just tough. Right. I mean, look, this is not complicated. the The juggernaut of the success of the National Football League is the joint venture.
00:27:19
Speaker
we want to be as successful as the NFL. So it's literally like whatever it is, eighth grade, solve for X. i hate and And by the way, you're allowed to cheat and look at the other person's paper and the other person's paper is the NFL model.
00:27:38
Speaker
So the only reason that you aren't there yet is you have a group of people who feel like solving for X will mean giving up power, And even though they don't really understand that that that power that you've lost will will be dwarfed by you succeeding in your business model, they just can't get over it. So until they're convinced that they can't have the business model that they want unless they buy the whole thing, that's the way this is going to be. And and again, you know you look at this thing
00:28:15
Speaker
You know, we talk about O'Bannon, you know, the trajectory again from O'Bannon to to Austin. Well, the first, you mean, the the number of absurd things is, you know, you start losing Supreme Court cases nine to zero.
00:28:27
Speaker
when the And the judge after, the justice afterwards calls you a cartel. I mean, after, i mean i think i don't know if I can't remember the last nine to zero case other than O'Bannon and the line of sports cases. Mm-hmm.
00:28:41
Speaker
So, you know, as a lawyer, I'm sitting back when when I heard that O'Bannon was was nine zero Look, there is a common sense business person that doesn't look at the loss of O'Bannon and go, we have to change our business model. We have to change it now.
00:28:56
Speaker
They didn't. They fought every one of these cases, lost every one of these cases, every one. And so that... That was the first time where I realized that you're not dealing with a group of people who are thinking in a linear way. These people are thinking in an emotional way.
00:29:14
Speaker
Emotion and ego. I think oh when you are in a room with... um I'm going to go back to the NFL a little bit and then we can bring it to college, right? Like you're in a room and in your mind...
00:29:28
Speaker
you are presenting the logical, rational, rational decision. gonna say. happens to be the best for all parties, right? But you, you're dealing with irrational minds at times, right? And in their minds, an irrational mind thinks that what they're presenting is rational. 100%. How are you, can you speak to outside of Kraft? Because you've already mentioned him and maybe yeah that is the only one, but like,
00:29:55
Speaker
At some point in time, well let me actually relate it to college athletics. At some point in time, everybody's on this ship and there's captain or captains of the ship. And at some point in time, you're like, hey guys, there's there's iceberg over there and we keep doing the same stuff. right And you're driving us all into this iceberg.
00:30:14
Speaker
And now there's certain leaders who are coming out and starting to say, hey, guys, we need to start thinking about collective bargaining. Hey, guys, let's bring the the players to the table. Hey, guys, let's look at what the NFL is doing and the NBA and the MLB, and let's let's just do it that way, right? um Yeah.
00:30:32
Speaker
Have you ever seen leaders – leaders step out and step up and step to the forefront and do what is right on behalf of the entire joint venture. Not organically.
00:30:47
Speaker
It never happens organically. um You know, so when I'm in a negotiation room, especially in 11 years, um And I like your ship analogy because that's what it is. You know, it's this precipice or iceberg, whatever, you know, coming coming right at you. and and And there's plenty of captains, you know, on the ship that have, for the most part, you know, sailed this happy sea by consensus because there was no iceberg. Right.
00:31:11
Speaker
right Hey, let's go right. Yeah, sure. Let's go right. want to go left? Sure. Let's go left. Are we all going to get there at the end? Absolutely. Nobody worries about it. Right. It's it's sometimes it's the job of a leader to put the iceberg there.
00:31:24
Speaker
um and And to be blunt, you know, in a negotiation room, it was important for me. Once you figure out where the power is likely to lie, you know or who you think are gonna be the the people that rise up, um you have to um neutralize or attack the other captains.
00:31:48
Speaker
and And so at some meetings, you know I will just tell you, and a mean, look, there there is no love lost between me and the owners. I mean, there there just isn't. I did my job. I make no apologies for doing my job. I have zero regrets for doing my job. They they at times didn't like the way that I did it um because I felt this was the only way to do it. But if you're in a negotiation room and there's 10 owners on one side of the table, and I've made a decision that two of them are are potential generals,
00:32:15
Speaker
And they're all making the same arguments, right? um I would deliberately make a decision that I am not gonna direct this at Kraft. I'm not gonna direct this at Jones, because those are the two guys that I'm looking forward to be the generals. um I'm going after everybody else in the room.
00:32:35
Speaker
and I'm going after everybody else in the room in the most brutal deconstructionalist. um Why? Because they are now the obstacle, right? And i have to demonstrate to the two generals that I'm not gonna go after you because if I go after those two, now I gotta deal with their emotional feelings that I've gone after them, right?
00:33:01
Speaker
But I do go after everybody else. And I went after everybody else hard, like really hard. um And so much so that you know they were the ones who I don't wanna talk to D anymore. That's exactly what I want.
00:33:14
Speaker
you know, I mean, those guys would react to it with, you know, I'll show him. I'm just not going to deal with him anymore. No, the goal is for me to not have to deal with you anymore because I know that you lack the gravamen or the ability to get us around the iceberg. Right.
00:33:31
Speaker
Right. So I think as you. As you take on this this college athlete issue, you have far more than 810 owners you know in the room. I mean, part of the challenge is um you know the league's board of directors, you know they're they call the CEC, might not be the most efficient thing in the world by any by any stretch.
00:33:55
Speaker
um but at least it's there. you know On your side, you don't have board directors. It's very fragmented because of the fact that the conferences are separated and you know the the they're separated as businesses really from their media deals. and And then also the revenue is driven by such a small number of schools playing one sport. and Well, and also they have a history of just fighting with each other. Yeah. You know, I mean, you you have a moment of honesty of of an AD who's now reached ah a top school. if In a moment of honesty, they will tell you that, you know, when I was the AD of...
00:34:33
Speaker
you know, small school university, man, it was my job to go to these meetings and mess with big school university. And all of that is just baked in to all of this. And again, i think that the league, you know, again, you know, from the outside, if you're not a player, if if you're not a coach,
00:34:53
Speaker
um Or if you're not a member of the of of the union, you know at at my point in the union, you know even the reporters who like to pretend that they understand how these teams are working, and you have no idea.
00:35:07
Speaker
and and even inside of an individual team, man, you realize that the palace intrigue that's going on between the GM, the VP, the owners, and now it's gonna get even more complicated with the private equity people. Man, inside of a team alone is like, man, it is crazy town of intrigue.
00:35:33
Speaker
you know You multiply that by 32, um It's crazy town. So look, a group of owners in the National Football League left to their own devices um couldn't order off the same lunch menu.
00:35:50
Speaker
What Roger does a great job of is there's one menu, there's five choices. Choose among the five. but You know, clowns will come out of cars, you know, there'll be broken glass every way. But you know what he does so well? At the end of the day, you know what? Everybody's going order one of those five items, you know? And the reason that he can get that done is there's a way that we do the TV contracts.
00:36:22
Speaker
There's a way that we pool revenue. There's a way that we have this joint venture with the union. And those are our three pillars of how our business is run. And at the end of the day, are going to have to deal with those three things. And we're going order off this menu to make these things work. and And college football has to get, well, they don't have to get there.
00:36:43
Speaker
They have to get there if they want to achieve their business ends. And part of getting there is having ah a single league with a single leader. ah Absolutely.
00:36:54
Speaker
That's the only way. And so, you know, to me, the again, if you're sitting across a table and, um again, everybody's had at least a shot of Johnny Blue to take the edge off, right, and everybody's just come down a little bit, if if you put – 20 people in a room, everybody's going to come to that conclusion in an hour.
00:37:18
Speaker
i mean, it just doesn't take that long to realize this is the model. This is, I'm sorry, this is the model and this is the success you want. Solve for X. Take an hour.
00:37:31
Speaker
It hasn't gotten there because they are people who are long wedded to a system where they've never had to negotiate. They've never had to collectively bargain with anyone.
00:37:42
Speaker
People have told them that collective bargaining means that, you know, yeah I mean, yeah I don't know what they think is going to happen, but literally it's like when I would go give a speech at the Chamber of Commerce.
00:37:53
Speaker
and I would talk about collective bargaining. And the first thing I'm looking for is like, what's the exit door and whether the car is already running, you know? Because these businesses just think, no, no, absolutely no, no.
00:38:05
Speaker
I always stand up and say, hey man, two simple frames. the the The National Football League is gonna do $25 billion dollars of revenue.
Economic Benefits of Unionization
00:38:14
Speaker
It doesn't matter we're whether we're in a war. It doesn't matter what natural disaster happens. Didn't even really matter if we were in a worldwide pandemic.
00:38:24
Speaker
Business model rolls. 50%, I'm sorry, the workforce is entirely unionized. That means that there are no state court filings. There's no you know there's no lawsuits that you have to deal with that are you know existential you know disruptors in your model.
00:38:43
Speaker
You get predictability because there's a cap. You can understand exactly, almost to the penny, what your labor cost is gonna be every year.
00:38:55
Speaker
You can make long-term decisions 20, 30 years into the future, knowing how your business is going to progress, what CEO in America wouldn't want that?
00:39:09
Speaker
The only CEOs in America that don't want that, as far as I know, are college ADs. Presidents. And I'm looking at you like, I want stability, predictability,
00:39:23
Speaker
and the ability to make long-term forecast. Because I know that, first of all, it gives me a level of stability just just to plan. But i also know that I can um i can leverage that economically. can leverage that that predictability um in a way that's very attractive to investors.
00:39:44
Speaker
What investor wants to jump into the college space right now, not knowing if this model is going to exist in two years? you know Again, i just look at it, I'm just not the smartest guy, but you know when I'm you know back at Latham or back at Patton Boggs and I'm advising boards of directors or or advising CFOs about how to plan for the future,
00:40:10
Speaker
um my first question is, what's the comfort level of your predictive model? It's really the only thing I ask about. and And then my job is just first to test whether that predictive model is sound.
00:40:23
Speaker
But college football can't have a predictive model. Why wouldn't you do everything to have a predictive model? you know So to me, you know the idea of collective bargaining, the the idea of giving a sense of stability on the labor side of this, that is the source of your greatest amount of potential disruption.
00:40:45
Speaker
Let alone growing your revenue together. yeah you can't grow your revenue together if um you don't have a level of stability and predictability um among everybody else. I mean, yes, a small number of schools are driving the the train, but look at the, I mean, we have had more disruption in the college, if you if you're just looking at the college football space as a subset of the entire sports market ecosystem, college sports has caused the most disruption in the sports landscape in 100
00:41:31
Speaker
I'm just being dead honest. I mean, you you you look at every other sports landscape, but I'm talking about international and and local. There has been more disruption in college sports than any of the other ah aspects of the sports ecosystem combined.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah. look at that as a failure. Yeah. right mean you know I mean, the the the again, the the arc from O'Bannon to Alston, i mean, you know looking as an outsider into that, yeah you know you would look at that as that is the failure of business leadership. yeah Well, from a legal standpoint, I mean, with your background, i'd love to ask you this question, but like how could a serial antitrust violator who's lost cases like that
00:42:27
Speaker
get an antitrust exemption without collective bargaining? Well, the answer they would give is through Congress. How does Congress justify giving college sports an antitrust exemption with all that they've done and how much they've lost in these cases? Yeah, I tend to be, you know unfortunately I worked at Patton Boggs, as you know the biggest lobbying firm in them in in the country. um I don't think the two have anything to do with each other. um i think that, I mean, I could ask the same question. i mean,
00:42:55
Speaker
there's really no justification for the AFL and the NFL to be given the antitrust exemption. mean, let's be, I mean, if Home Depot and Lowe's went to Congress and said, hey, you know, we need an antitrust exemption to merge, they'd get laughed out immediately.
00:43:10
Speaker
um You know, this idea that you're going to decrease competition, decrease the ability of um of of ah of a purchaser um to to find different places to to purchase the wares. I mean, that's just antithetical to free enterprise and and the economy. So, i mean, look, they are a serial antitrust violator.
00:43:33
Speaker
um that and And that's true. i don't see that as being the major inhibitor of of what's on Hill. um I see the ability of them getting an antitrust exemption on the Hill as more of a factor of no bill or no law is going to come out of Congress.
00:43:54
Speaker
anytime soon about anything. um And for the the the problem for college sports, thinking that they're going to be able to come up on the Hill, you know, I haven't talked to those people, so I can only speculate about what their Hill theory is.
00:44:13
Speaker
i think their Hill theory is, is this is all so bad, somebody needs to fix it. You know, and and so to a certain extent, they're bemoaning things like the transfer portal. They're bemoaning things like Lane Kiffin. They're bemoaning, um you know, the college playoff system. They're bemoaning, you know, all of the things that people think are killing college sports.
00:44:39
Speaker
But they're bemoaning it with a wink and a nod. that they hope that people on the Hill think that it becomes so bad that somebody has to step in. And it's cool to them.
00:44:49
Speaker
And it's cool, yeah, for the people on the Hill, it's cool. It's sexy. It's like, college sports. It's sexy. So they're banking on that.
00:44:56
Speaker
That's not a plan. you know That's a hope. you know A plan is, okay, how do we make this antitrust system consistent with other antitrust systems that we've granted in the past.
00:45:13
Speaker
That's a plan. Your first thing is a hope, right? Let's get college coach X to come up on the Hill and say it's horrible. Let's get former player Y to come up on the Hill and say it's horrible.
00:45:28
Speaker
Let's talk about the transfer portal hurting your school and your state's chances of winning a national championship. Let's talk about how horrible is. That's a hope.
00:45:40
Speaker
A plan would be, hey, there's this model for how we have an antitrust exemption and how everybody wins.
00:45:51
Speaker
That's a plan. Their unwillingness to adopt that plan, i i know that they just don't have stupid people. I just think that they have people who are unwilling emotionally to accept what it takes to get this plan done.
00:46:09
Speaker
And, and that's, and and look, I'll just be, you know I'm not, you know, I'm certainly not going get any holiday gifts from anybody, but that's a failure in leadership. Yeah. you know, it's not even a failure in vision because, you know, sometimes when you're dealing with, um um you know, this mental mindset that has to accomplish in order to change institutions, it's people lack vision.
00:46:31
Speaker
You know, it's where where there is no vision that people perish, right? um Sometimes the lack of vision is the inhibitor. There is no lack of vision,
00:46:42
Speaker
when you simply look over your shoulder and you see the model that already works. That's not a lack of vision, right? That's a lack of will.
00:46:53
Speaker
And I think that everybody has not reached a point where um they are willing to embrace the will to employ the model that's always worked.
00:47:08
Speaker
It's always worked. Yeah. and And so look, now, do am I hopeful? Yeah. Yeah. Because again, again, it might be a year, it might be two years, it might be five years. I'm hoping it's not five years. But, um you know, it's it's not hard for someone in the college sports space to draw up the economic model that quadruples the revenue of college sports.
00:47:39
Speaker
That's not hard. It's just not. um And so, you know, am I comfortable that someone has done that? Absolutely. I mean, probably a hundred people have done it.
00:47:53
Speaker
And the longer that there is a model out there for a way to quadruple revenue by, for the most part, not increasing the number of games, just changing the structure.
00:48:06
Speaker
um at some point, someone is going to go, that's a really good model. what's the plan? And then somebody's going to the plan is bad. And that's the day we'll work. you know and And again, you know i ah i teach it, I preach it.
00:48:25
Speaker
Institutions don't change. Mindsets change. The... And we can edit this out, but I just got two more for myself, if you don't mind. but I'll wrap us up. um
00:48:41
Speaker
You... We're also, so most people see the fight with the NFL, with the negotiation with the NFL, whatever you want to categorize it as. But you also were the leader in protecting NFL players group licensing rights yeah beyond just the negotiation with the NFL. Can you talk about yeah one, what you saw there, the opportunity you saw there, but also how important it is because as we look at college athletes, Right, we're we're watching college athletes sign over their name, image, and likeness. We're watching um video game companies create the highest grossing video games of all time. And frankly, I'm watching a lot of people who look like me, younger versions of myself, who get told once you graduate, well, you should have paid attention in college. Right. Or you save your money. But really, you're getting robbed in deals that you're not getting actually, you're not getting the the representation you deserve yeah in those deals. Yeah. Yeah, look, the the you know the group licensing right is the, um you know when i when I teach at these you know business classes or or you know Chamber of Commerce or anybody who's in the business world, um I talk about the the group licensing right being the multi-billion dollar part of my job that nobody ever paid attention to.
00:50:01
Speaker
It's true, right? And so um you know the the group licensing rights landscape, you know when I came in in 2009, the way that i looked at it was was one, You know, the NFLPA is still the only union in the world that doesn't run on dues.
00:50:18
Speaker
So, you know, people hear that and they think, well, okay, that's interesting. Why does that why does that matter? Well, it matters because if you open a sports law book and you look at the table of contents, 80% of those cases in every sports law book is an NFL case.
00:50:36
Speaker
Why? Because we had the economic wherewithal to fight that case to the death. you know And in the way that I always looked at at at our group licensing rights, that became the only way that we could, you know borrowing a line from you know the Godfather, go to the mattresses.
00:50:56
Speaker
Right, and so I'll give you a case in point. you know We had a young man in Jacksonville, I think, that, I think Coughlin was a coach at the time, ah who showed up late for OTAs.
00:51:09
Speaker
He got fined for being late to an OTA. He got fined for showing up late to an unpaid voluntary practice.
00:51:20
Speaker
It's crazy. So, you know, we we we react to that by calling the league and saying you can't fine a guy for a voluntary unpaid practice. The league's response, sue us for it.
00:51:34
Speaker
I don't know what it was. It was probably a $20,000 fine that they were going to try to take out of his check going forward. But I do know one thing. I do know that we probably spent $200,000 litigating case over $20,000 fine. litigating a case over a twenty thousand dollars fine And again, if if you're you know if you're living in private equity world or or trying to draw that up on a balance sheet, that makes no sense. If you're in union world, it makes absolute sense because if I don't fight that fight,
00:52:03
Speaker
What happens next? What happens next? So group licensing from my, you know, the the first touchstone for group licensing on on my side is it's the engine that runs the train to protect the players.
00:52:14
Speaker
And, you know, my salary, litigation cost, all that stuff. You know, no player had to pay that. Right. other side of group licensing, right, is, yes, you know, trading cards, video games and and apparel are are the bread and butter.
00:52:29
Speaker
But the one thing I saw when I i came in 2009, there were only only one company in those various ah ah business sectors were setting the market value.
00:52:41
Speaker
So, you know, when I came in, I think Reebok was at the end of their deal. Nike had just about taken over. And on the video game side, um ah EA Sports had had the Madden game and Panini, I think at the time had trading cards. So, you know, you're looking at the how you value those rights. Well, the first thing that, you know, again, you know, has to come to mind, if you're trying to value those rights and there's only one purchaser in the ecosystem, I don't care what it is, the rights are undervalued. Mm-hmm.
00:53:18
Speaker
cause there's no competition you know and then sort of the third piece of it is we live in this world where again you asked me whether was a partnership or a joint venture i always refer everybody to if you want to understand the relationship think about a jersey front of the jersey has the shield and yes everybody shows up for the shield every player wants to play for the shield um every person buys a jersey because of the name on the back
00:53:45
Speaker
So the league understands that they'll sell more jerseys with the name on the back, but they also want more money because they they believe that the shield is more valuable than the name on the back.
00:53:56
Speaker
So the third sort of ironic piece of this is every business partner would do a deal with the league first. And I'm just making up the numbers. you know If they were doing an apparel deal, they would they would get $20 million dollars a year, $30 million dollars a year from the league for the jersey, for the shield, just making up the number.
00:54:15
Speaker
Then they would come to the PA and they'll say, hey, for the names on the back of the jerseys, we'll give you $10 million. dollars Like, yeah, but you paid them 30. Yeah, but we're gonna pay you 10. And you would like to say, I'm not taking the deal.
00:54:30
Speaker
But I can't do that because I know that if I go and tell a group of NFL players that, hey, here's the bad news. ah There's not gonna be any names on the back of jerseys. and um And the engine that runs the train isn't gonna get the $10 million dollars that we need.
00:54:46
Speaker
So you know what you end up doing? You end up having to do bad deals on the one end that are undervalued in the first place. So, um you know, one of the most,
00:54:57
Speaker
you know, probably the most impactful change in in that was was two things. We started, i made the decision that we would go into the market first to do the deal first.
00:55:09
Speaker
um And that caused, you know, talking about the, you know, getting over the emotional obstacles. When we went into the market and said, you know, EA Sports, you're gonna do the deal with us first, we're gonna do a deal.
00:55:20
Speaker
um or tops the same way. Everybody lost their minds. When, you know, unfortunately EA Sport um became kind of the first guinea pig of that.
00:55:32
Speaker
um When we didn't get the the offer that we thought was fair, we actually put an RFP into the market for the rights of a video game, which um let's just say had not the most positive impact on EA's share value once that became popular, right? pick Became public. Right.
00:55:54
Speaker
But you know what? They came back. 100%. Yeah. 100%. And then, so that was kind of the first turn of the screw of us taking more control over the destiny of our of our group licensing rights. And then the second one, um i remember getting a call from Ahmad or somebody in in Players Inc. and and they said, hey, you know we want to set up a meeting between you and this guy named Michael Rubin, the owner of Fanatics. And I remember honestly saying,
00:56:26
Speaker
who's Michael Rubin and what's Fanatics. I mean, and at the time, Fanatics was a, I mean, a relatively small, insignificant company out of out of Philadelphia.
00:56:37
Speaker
And met with Michael at at the Palm, I'll never forget it, in DC. And we're really good friends now, having not having gone through a bunch of wars together, obviously. And he said that, look, I wanna be the player in apparel.
00:56:52
Speaker
And I want to be the pair the player of apparel by doing deals with the unions first and doing deals with the league second.
00:57:02
Speaker
And again, I come and out of this system where it's opposite. yeah And so literally on the back of a napkin, we scratched out the structure of that deal um where he would purchase the rights to the players first and then go get the rights to the league.
00:57:20
Speaker
Change the game. right So now... you know we might still only have one bidder in this marketplace, but we've already put out this ah RFP. So now the market, the worldwide market knows, hey man, you know the NFLPA might be a little crazy, but they might be willing to break some eggs.
00:57:36
Speaker
You know, and and that's that simple one ah RFP did that. Second, now you get a player coming into the game knowing the ah RFP history saying, I'm gonna i'm goingnna reverse engineer the way these deals have been done in the first place. I'm gonna come to you guys first. I'm gonna leverage that into getting a deal with the league. And we actually negotiated equity in Fanatics based on that because again, we've got got leverage.
00:58:01
Speaker
And then the last turn of the screw was taking those two things But also realizing that, look, there's going to come a day when the the EA Sports of the world, when the fanatics of the world are going to become so big that they might dictate their destiny to us.
00:58:19
Speaker
And that was why we created one team partners. And so creating one team where we took the group licensing rights of a bunch of other unions, putting them into one company, um that was a trump card, right? Because what that now means is that everybody who comes and gives us, um gives these unions an offer that that we think is not competitive, because we have a private equity partner or a venture capital partner, um it means two things. One, we might decide that this year there's no names on the back of the jerseys.
00:58:53
Speaker
You know, the players will lose their minds, but then I get to turn them and go, hey, but you know what? Your royalty check's not to change. We good? We good? Yeah, we're good. And we might have to go one year with no names on the back of the jerseys, and there's going to be a year where every fan loses their minds. And then the next year, we're going to own the entire thing.
00:59:14
Speaker
That's what one team gives you. Yeah. and And so it it protects you against, you know, these these companies that are growing so big that they might turn their market power on us.
00:59:26
Speaker
But also the last thing that one team gave us is, you know, we talked a lot about the secret insurance policy. um Look, i i one team was was a vision. It was one of the hardest things that we put together. You know, is it perfect? No.
00:59:38
Speaker
is it Is it, you know, all startups, man, have their their issues. Yeah. But the one thing that I realized that on my way out, I wanted to leave, you know, what we're all taught, leave the locker room better than the way you found it.
00:59:52
Speaker
I wanted to create something that would give the NFLPA players and every player who belonged to to one team um the gift of the perpetual insurance policy.
01:00:05
Speaker
Because the reality is, and and again, I don't know what's going to play out in 2030 with the NFL players, but if the players decide to fight, um if they decide that they are just not going to be complacent and passive.
01:00:22
Speaker
um It's impossible to get the same insurance policy that we got the last time. But one team is going to have a valuation of somewhere between $3 and $5 billion. dollars And the NFL players are going to own 40% of that, 35% of that.
01:00:38
Speaker
That allows them to go into the market. against ah ah you know a 40% ownership of a $5 billion dollar company. That would allow them to go into the market and borrow probably close to 10 to $15 billion. dollars Because remember, they get to pay it off for 30 years, 40 years. Our rights are perpetual.
01:00:58
Speaker
know The only thing that's more perpetual than than player rights is is is you know literally water and air. So now
Group Licensing and Financial Security
01:01:08
Speaker
the ability of players to go out and get a loan for $15 billion. dollars Strike. It's got leverage.
01:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, ultimate, ultimate leverage. you know, again, you know, the the the group licensing, right, is is that kind of thing that kind of gets lost in this. But I also think on the college side, you know, again, the the athletes are the people doing the work.
01:01:35
Speaker
And yes, you know the money that they're getting for you know name image, and likeness, or the money that they're getting for pay-to-play is great. But the larger pie of this thing is the collective strength of the group licensing right that they're entitled to have.
01:01:53
Speaker
And that's the game changer. Right. And, and, and so, you know, I am sure that there are people on the college side who are emotionally reactive to um
01:02:08
Speaker
the term collective bargaining. They are equally reactive to this idea of group licensing. Well, they, they're, they're reactive to that for a lot of reasons. I mean, the first reason is, is that they're, not calling the payments that they're making as a school to the athletes performance salaries. They're calling them NIL deals. right And to make them make sense, they're buying the group licensing rights of their athletes right in a lot of these deals. right And the collectives are doing the same thing. So the fragmentation of group licensing rights is crazy to the point where whatever they do get paid for a video game sometimes isn't even going to them because they already got paid by the school or the collective first. Correct. Well, and again, and you're still dealing, at least in my world, you're still dealing with the devaluation of the value of those rights. Well, and and then there's the devaluation aspect, which we saw with the EA college football game doing over a billion in sales and the players getting...
01:03:08
Speaker
$7.8 million dollars of of of of that deal. um But but what what they're betting on with group licensing and really with with a lot of the other things in in sport college sports, what they're betting on is The players will take whatever they can get. EA puts a website up that says, hey, when you sign up here, upload your headshot, give us some information about yourself. You get $600 and a copy of the game. You know what?
01:03:32
Speaker
All the players did it. Yeah. Well, and look, and and that's, you know, that's the, that's the, um, That's the yang to this idea of um collective bargaining, right? and And look, there's a certain amount where I understand why they did that, right? Because again, you're trying not to bite off Everest. You're trying to bite off a piece as you go forward. The the goal here for both the collective bargaining side and the group licensing side is,
01:04:02
Speaker
in the absence of of leadership to to make sort of a monumental stride forward, you're you're left with incrementalism. and And I'm a big believer in incrementalism because look, again, I always tried to teach you know at the leadership summit, you know we would we would get into getting into the civil rights movement.
01:04:22
Speaker
right Because that becomes a very a very transparent frame to say, you know you start off that you want, quote unquote, equality.
01:04:33
Speaker
Where are we biting this stuff off? We're biting this thing off starting with a bus boycott right in a small southern town that allows people to get on the bus.
01:04:46
Speaker
And then it starts off with fair wages for the sanitation workers who are on strike. And then it grows larger into, okay we're going to translate this into a voting rights movement for our town. And then we're going to eliminate the poll tax and eliminate all those things. And then we're going to build that into a larger movement around the Civil Rights Act. Well, you know,
01:05:09
Speaker
you know i get i get sort of the frustration sometimes with the incrementalism as we go forward. But again, i always go back to how did it always work in every other aspect of history?
01:05:20
Speaker
until there is a mental reset. you know Gil Scott Heron had that famous song, you know the um the revolution will not be televised, right? People look at that and they think, oh, well, you know that means the revolution will be somewhere else. No, what he was talking about is the revolution won't be televised because the real revolution is a mental revolution.
01:05:42
Speaker
And the NCAA, I don't even say the NCAA, the co the the the college sports landscape is desperately in need of a mental reset where you can imagine a better future and then build a plan around that vision. and And that is that is something that you can influence, but it's not something that you can make.
01:06:12
Speaker
because it has to start with someone on that side. yep is going to have to stand up and say that the current system does not work. There is a patented, proven vision that does.
Vision for the Future of College Sports
01:06:25
Speaker
And this is our plan for achieving the vision that already that already exists. And by the way, I'm looking forward to it. I mean, yeah that's literally the only way that I'm helpful. And look, the work you guys are doing is so important, um you know not not only for the individual athletes who are going to benefit from a better life,
01:06:43
Speaker
But i'm just a I'm just a big fan of of of how leaders evolve and how leadership um effectuates change. And by the way, it never happens without you know, we, we paint sort of these lovely, easy stories, right. About how we got there, man. And the reality is man, if you want to look at, you know, how mindsets change, you know, on the, on the grand scheme, man, watch Ken Burns documentary on the American revolution or watch his documentary on, um, on, um, on, you know, the 10 years, you know, the, the 1963 to
01:07:24
Speaker
and the necessity of effectuating mental change is the hardest thing that anybody in the world has ever done.
01:07:36
Speaker
And we would like to believe that it's linear. um We'd like to believe that there's a math formula. And you know, the the thing that kills, I think almost everybody is, look, I went to law school, nobody taught me about the importance of mental change.
01:07:51
Speaker
Go to business school, and you do a lot of business models, and people talk about critiquing the model, and this is the model, this is the theory, and this it should work, and the inverse rationale proportion of you know best value markets. you know and like All these people like try to boil it down into...
01:08:06
Speaker
You know, these linear models of that that that try to seek some sort of mathematics certainty where there is no emotion and jealousy and anger and fear.
01:08:19
Speaker
Ego. And ego. And honestly, I think schools do us all a disservice because those things are actually more important than the linear mathematical models.
01:08:33
Speaker
They just are. Yeah. You know, and and look, the great news is I know it's frustrating for what you guys do. um But man, until there's people who are willing to stir the pot, um change doesn't happen.
01:08:45
Speaker
So congratulations to you guys. Thank you. Well, thank you I appreciate you. This has been an amazing conversation and you dropped a lot of knowledge, not only for people who will watch and listen, but for us to.
01:08:57
Speaker
to take in consideration as we continue to stir the pot. so Journey. Appreciate you, D, Cope. Cope, thank you, bro. It was great. thank you And thank you for being such a great leader. appreciate you.
01:09:11
Speaker
Great stuff from D. The biggest takeaway for me has been and always will be the fact that when the NFL and AFL merged, they voluntarily put unionization in that merger to get what is still their secret weapon today. And that is the antitrust exemption.
01:09:28
Speaker
It's the largest concentration of billionaires, more than 20 billion in annual revenue. And those billionaires have businesses that they probably don't prefer unionization to be a part of. But yet in their NFL business, they love it because they have no 10 Qs, no K ones, no board of directors, no accountability. And this huge, huge growing business that's now to the tune of 24 billion as of last year. It works because collective bargaining and unionization is in it. And Dee talked a lot about that. So really thankful to him to come into Birmingham. in our studios and doing that interview. Thankful to you for checking it out. And of course, if you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe to our podcast, whether it's searching for Now It's Legal on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can search and find us and subscribe. And of course, follow us on Instagram at NowIt'sLegalPod, where you can get clips of upcoming episodes. For everybody here, I'm Jim Cavall.
01:10:23
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Now It's Legal.