00:00The effect of nil, how has that had on the game of basketball, in your opinion, and how does that
00:07affect a conference like WCC?
00:11No, I think, you know, NIL has had both a positive and a negative effect, Dan.
00:18The positive piece is it's provided some opportunities for student athletes and players all around the country to actually participate
00:27in the financial piece of the pie.
00:30And that's just the right thing.
00:32You know, the way the financial model, you know, of college basketball and sports in general has changed over the
00:37years.
00:37They deserve a piece of the pie, and I think it's great.
00:40What has happened, though, the negative side of that is right now we're in a phase, and I stress it
00:46is a phase.
00:46It won't always be like this.
00:50It's just a free-for-all, and it's a free-for-all because when you involve money, when you involve
00:56revenue in terms of player procurement and paying players, to do it without any rules borders on insanity because it's
01:08an unsustainable financial model that we're living in currently.
01:12But I have hope that either with the intervention of, you know, the federal government, that at some point we
01:23will have some rules to help us govern, you know, the revenue sharing with players.
01:30And when that happens, I think we'll be in a much better place, and I still hold out hope that
01:36that actually will happen because currently the way we're going, I really worry about the sport and the ability to
01:43sustain this.
01:44Stu, do you think that the sport of basketball or maybe even college sports needs a commissioner because what I
01:51think you're talking about is guardrails, right?
01:53And the NCAA is not really the governing body any longer when it comes to this money.
01:59I mean, they're losing case after case.
02:01So, in your opinion, does it need to be restructured a little bit with an ultimate commissioner making decisions or
02:08maybe a board that can make these decisions?
02:11How would you go about fixing this?
02:15Well, listen, I mean, it's an idea that's been suggested.
02:18I'm not sure that one individual and a staff is necessarily going to be able to correct all the ills.
02:24But what you are implying, and I agree, we do need structure, we need guardrails, but that structure in those
02:33guardrails could actually begin to take shape if the federal government gave the NCAA an antitrust exemption, which would in
02:43part, you know, reduce and minimize the number of court cases that, you know, we're experiencing currently.
02:54And, again, I do hold out some hope that that will happen because if you take the NCAA out of
03:02harm's way, meaning harm's legal litigation way, I do think they have the ability and have proven in the past,
03:10at least in the recent past, the ability to govern themselves under the leadership of Charlie Baker.
03:15So that would be the first sort of attempt at this.
03:20But, you know, to say that a commissioner in one broad brush is going to fix all the ills, I'm
03:27not quite there yet.
03:29So the transfer portal, in your opinion, do you look at the transfer portal as a positive or a negative
03:36for a conference like WCC?
03:39Yeah, it's a negative for all conferences, you know, we're going through this currently, you know, we have players, very
03:46good players in our conference in the West Coast Conference that are deciding to enter the portal, they're entering the
03:51portal, at the same sort of rates that the players are in the power five conferences.
03:58So it hurts all of us, right?
04:01You know, going forward, I'd really like to see something that a system that's crafted, like in professional sports, where
04:09you give at least the schools or the institutions that have those players, if they transfer, give those institutions in
04:20school the ability to perhaps revenue share at a higher level than the teams they want to transfer to.
04:28To incentivize them to stay.
04:30I mean, what a simple concept, but, you know, it makes sense.
04:36Because right now, you know, and I don't blame the student athletes, if they feel that they can get a
04:41better offer financially somewhere else, well, sure, they owe it to themselves to look at the market, and that's what
04:46they're doing.
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