00:00When we found out you were coming on, we were kind of having this discussion and just talking about everything that's changed with college sports, particularly college football, primarily because of, I think, what for years had been just an understanding that there wasn't sort of an equitable share of the revenue that college sports was generating.
00:16But since we've had these lawsuits and decisions, it's kind of upended the whole apple cart.
00:21And I feel like we have not reached some sort of equilibrium as to what this is all supposed to look like.
00:27Do you think we're going to see that equilibrium anytime soon?
00:30Any time soon is a key question.
00:33We are in a major moment of disruption, historic changes in college sports.
00:38For the first time ever this year, universities were allowed to provide athletes with direct NIL compensation.
00:48And so universities, Division I, are going through major changes, trying to balance these new financial costs.
00:56Certainly athletes benefiting in new ways.
01:01But as the survey showed, there's a lot of concerns about what the results could be for Division I as a whole.
01:09I think on an individual basis, certain individual athletes certainly will benefit greatly.
01:14But there's concerns and we want to make sure that regulations are put in place so that there can be more stability so that we can continue to provide these just incredible experiences that college sports provide to young people.
01:30But how do you sort of rein that in?
01:32Because it's not just the name, image, and likeness.
01:33Obviously, the transfer portal is just on fire.
01:36I mean, the college buyouts that we've seen in some of these college football coaches, I think the latest data, Shaw, were basically at unprecedented record highs in terms of the payouts that we're having there.
01:45I mean, for something that's not necessarily supposed to be big business, it sounds a lot like big business.
01:52Yeah, absolutely.
01:53Let's take a couple of those points you just made with the transfer regulations.
01:58Right now, college athletes can transfer an unlimited number of times and be immediately eligible.
02:04And the survey we conducted with Elon University polls showed that presidents, athletic directors, the campus leaders, more than 80% of them favor some change to the transfer rules to still allow some freedoms for the athletes, but to be some greater regulation to it.
02:23You know, ultimately, we want to make sure that athletes continue to graduate.
02:26And we know that retention and staying in school and making progress toward a degree is the best predictor of graduation.
02:35Some of the federal legislation being proposed, there's two different proposed bills right now, one in Congress in the House that's called the SCORE Act.
02:45And it does put some potential regulations in on transfers, as well as the SAFE Act that Senator Cantwell introduced in the Senate.
02:53So over the next couple of months, we'll see lawmakers debating unprecedented federal legislation for college sports.
03:03And on the buyout, college football buyouts, we just hit a new record.
03:09There were 11 football coaches fired just earlier this season, and the severance obligations are $184 million just for 11 football coaches.
03:20You know, when the college football playoff started just 10 seasons ago, the severance pay was $30 million for the head and assistant football coaches.
03:29So we've seen just, and I see you're showing the graphic there, just tremendous growth, obviously, with the severance pay.
03:36It's really exploded.
03:38And to us, it's a clear symptom of a broken financial model in big revenue football.
03:44You know, in nearly every state in the U.S., the most highly paid public official is the head football coach at one of the state universities.
03:53And now in a few states, unfortunately, the most highly paid public official will be the fired football coach being paid not to coach.
04:01So, you know, I bring up that example to say, while Congress is looking at unprecedented legislation that could put in some new regulations around the athlete compensation and some more regulations,
04:16it may be time for Congress to look at the conditions that allow the continued growth of these excessive compensation and severance packages for football coaches.
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