00:00You know, Pete Bavacqua, Bill, as we know, is the Notre Dame, is the Notre Dame AD.
00:07And what's interesting is he used to be the president of NBC Sports.
00:11So, like, you feel like he has a pretty firm idea and grasp of the media landscape.
00:17Because one of the arguments in this was, like, the pooling of media rights will help everybody.
00:21I think that it will, would help a lot of schools.
00:23But would it help the Big Ten and SEC?
00:25Would it help Ohio State, Notre Dame, or Georgia, or Texas?
00:30And he came out and said that if you pool them, I don't necessarily think that there's this big, huge
00:38pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow.
00:41You know, maybe for some of the smaller schools and maybe for some of the smaller group of five schools
00:47or maybe even some of the smaller power four schools.
00:49But they would essentially just be taking money off the top from the other schools.
00:54Pat actually has this.
00:56You know what, Pat?
00:57If you can pull it up, let's play it.
00:59I'll just tell you to cut it when we need to.
01:01But it's really interesting listening to him to talk about it.
01:04This is a major milestone to have this bipartisan support to do something for college sports.
01:10And I think this bill is an enormous step in the right direction.
01:14The concept of a cap emanating from the house settlement, in my opinion, is a fallacy.
01:19The more money that can come from the cap directly to student-athletes, I think, will go a long way.
01:24And at Notre Dame, you know, our North Star in the athletic department is preserving that student-athlete experience.
01:30We want an integrated student-athlete experience.
01:33And we spend so much time in this country talking about the superstars.
01:37In our world, the Jeremiah Loves, the Hannah Hidalgos, the Caitlin Clarks, the Cooper Flags.
01:43But if Congress doesn't act now, there are going to be thousands and thousands and thousands of stories of young
01:50men and women,
01:51particularly in football and men's and women's basketball, that bounce around to three, four schools.
01:57And when you're going to three or four schools over a defined, finite amount of time,
02:01the educational aspect of this becomes a total farce.
02:03And maybe they're earning NIL money along the way in bits and pieces.
02:07And maybe at a young age, you feel that NIL money is going to cure all of your monetary woes
02:13for the rest of your life.
02:14But these are not the type of kids who have the talent to make it in the NFL, the NBA,
02:19or the WNBA.
02:20And you're going to have a generation of student-athletes, thousands of cases that are finishing their college journey
02:27without a college degree, with money that is fleeting.
02:30So by the time they're 25, they've torn through that money.
02:34And it's kind of a good luck with the rest of your life.
02:37You know, we make a promise to our student-athletes.
02:39We talk about four for forever.
02:41You're four years at Notre Dame.
02:43You're four years, you're five years at any university,
02:45whether it's the University of Alabama, West Virginia,
02:47the University is in the Pac-12, where Lance is at Utah.
02:51That school owes those student-athletes the skills, the education, and the degree to make it in life.
02:58One of the things, Bill, that we've talked about a little bit in here
03:01was the bouncing around of four schools and how it seems good.
03:07But is that really the best thing for the players, the student-athletes, when it's all said and done?
03:13Yeah, I mean, the sanity back to the transfer portal, the sanity back to the eligibility,
03:19that is the part of Bavacwa's speech there that really lands with me.
03:25I mean, I think you would get around most coaches, they would agree with that.
03:29They want to have some sanity to it and have a defined, I think, the five-year plan I've said
03:34on here many times.
03:35I totally agree with it.
03:37Now, Bavacwa's a TV guy, so I think he sees the pulling you were talking about earlier.
03:43It would benefit some, and by I mean some, not the major powers in the SEC or the Big Ten,
03:50more than others.
03:52And I think that's part of it, too.
03:54At the same time, you know, the TV battle behind the scenes is a large part of why we haven't
03:59expanded the playoff.
04:00And it has become a debate, and when you do things for TV purposes that don't necessarily help college football
04:08fans
04:09or what college football fans want, I think that's when we have these rips and tears in the sport.
04:14So we're going to find out as we go along.
04:17By the way, Nick Saban in that clip, I've never seen somebody more angry to drink their coffee.
04:21I mean, he could have been in a little bit better mood at that point in the day, right?
04:25But he had a couple heaters in his speech as well that I believe he mentioned the eligibility of the
04:31players as well.
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