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Brandt: NIL Opt-Outs Could Become A Trend

JR Sports Brief / JR
The Truth Network Radio
September 25, 2024 10:04 pm

Brandt: NIL Opt-Outs Could Become A Trend

JR Sports Brief / JR

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September 25, 2024 10:04 pm

Former Green Bay Packers VP Andrew Brandt joined JR to discuss UNLV Matthew Sluka leaving the team after a NIL dispute, if this will become a trend throughout college athletics moving forward and what the solution could be.

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Andrew, thank you for taking the time to join us.

Yeah, happy to be with you. I've been saying for now two years that college sports is really pro sports now. It just has a lot less labor costs. The labor costs keep going up.

They're not the millions and millions that pro athletes make, but it's certainly getting that way. And this is another example of it. Is this kind of, and we've seen, quote unquote, a series of shoes that have dropped over the past few years, obviously with the advent of NIL in 2021. But today is the first time we had a player in an active season say, I'm gone, I'm leaving the starting quarterback. And we saw another one of their players leave.

He said it was a lack of playing time. Are we should or should we expect more of this into the future since there are no clear parameters? Yeah, my first reaction to this was, I'm not sure what you just said is true. I'm not sure that players have made the play for either getting their money or getting more money or they're bolting and donors, collective schools have stepped up and done it.

And if it hasn't, I just think you're right. This is going to be a trend because I don't know if all these NIL commitments are real. And sometimes, and I think this is what happened at UNLV, you'll hear something from a coach, even an assistant coach, and you'll take it to the bank and the people responsible for paying it are like, wait a minute, we didn't agree to that. But I could see this in a much bigger stakes game. In other words, a big time college football player deciding not to play against a big rival or a bowl game or a playoff game or a basketball player, an NCAA tournament game saying, you know what, unless you pay up, I'm not playing. Because this is not the NFL or the NBA or hockey or baseball where they have rules about that. Like you can be suspended, your whole contract could be at risk. You could be fine to give discipline. There are no rules right now. So it's certainly right for anything that could happen right now, because it's truly a mess.

Former NFL exec Andrew Brant is joining us here, the JR Sportbreeze Show Coast to Coast. We know the NCAA pretty much said, hey, hey, everybody, every man for himself, y'all figure it out. But what's next to create some parameters? We've seen some governments try to create, you know, some type of guidance. And do we need the players to unionize or who steps up to pull this together in a functional way for everyone?

Well, let's take it back. I'm a lawyer. I teach sports law.

I teach all about this. Where back in the day, NCAA players, as well as pro players, by the way, had no rights. And that really continued up until about 15 years ago.

A guy named Ed O'Bannon a guy named Ed O'Bannon challenging the rules and seeing himself on a video game. And some things came in such as cost of attendance, such as stipends, such as the genesis of name image likeness, which really hit home in 2020, 2021, where players could. But that was NIL when it was innocent, right?

Just four years ago, it was innocent. It was like McDonald's would pay you for ads or Nike or Reebok or signing autographs. Now it's become sinister because it's the arms race to get the best players. And because of lawsuits, judges have allowed the schools to operate without restriction. There was a case that basically said you can't enforce any rules on NIL, which means that they don't have to show up and sign autographs. They're just paid to play football. So with this lack of rules, we now have a potential settlement of the big cases that could put in a new system, but the judges weighing that may take weeks, months, years.

So I don't know the answer. That's really the point. The thing is Charlie Baker's the new president of the NCAA. He's inherited a mess. It's not his fault. We had Mark Eimert's guidance for so many years, and he put his head in the sand.

Like no pay, no way, amateurs. And it's now come back to bike the NCAA big time. Well, we know that Charlie Baker, a former politician, I'm sure that he plans on using some of his relationships to potentially have some overall larger federal guidelines. I know every state is kind of every state for itself right now. Doesn't his current or his past kind of lead towards a better future, maybe? I think that's why he was picked. I mean, he's a governor of Massachusetts. He was a Republican governor in a Democratic state, and absolutely why he was picked.

To go up there Capitol Hill, get some federal governance over this mess. And I think what that would have is really some fair market value guidelines for these deals. So sure, if you want to pay a quarterback $2 million, you can, but he's got to do something to get it. It's not pay for play.

It's not pro. So these are the things they're trying to put in place, and as you said, uniformity. So Georgia's the same in Alabama, the same as California and Texas. So there's some kind of level playing field. And so ultimately, we're going to be screwed for a few more years until somebody steps up.

Is that accurate? Well, as I said, it gets technical, but we have a lawsuit pending settlement. A judge in California is reviewing it now. That would provide a revenue sharing cap, if you will, where the big time schools can pay up to $20 million for all their athletes. And it would provide some kind of clearinghouse for NIL where an oversight office would say, that's a fair deal. We approve that. That's not a fair deal. We don't approve that. Again, this has to be approved by a judge, hopefully within months, if not a year.

Andrew Brand is joining us here at the JR Sport Brief Show. Back on the NFL side, you helped negotiate contracts, tons and tons and tons of them with the Green Bay Packers. We have seen the salary cap explode. We have seen some of these quarterback salaries explode when it comes to the results on the field, at least early on. And I think for quite some time, we won't see the salary maybe match up to the results and wins. What are your thoughts on the explosion of revenue? It has to get split somewhere, but maybe you would want to win with it?

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, listen, the quarterback market is one of those where you're either in or out. I mean, I thought about this with Tua.

I thought about this with Dak, with Daniel Jones. It's like if you're a team that's going to do a deal, you're going to pay the market. And the market has gone from 40 to 50 to 55 to 60 over the last couple years. If you don't want to play in the market, fine. But if you do, I just don't think we're getting any quarterback saying, hey, I'll take a $25 million a year deal.

It's just not going to happen. So, yeah, I thought the Giants would hold off. I thought the Dolphins would hold off. I thought the Cowboys would hold off. But I guess it's just that fear of not being with a high level quarterback.

And I don't know. I mean, if you're jumping in, you're going to pay it. I do push back about this theory that it's gone crazy and how are they going to afford the rest of the team? Listen, as someone who managed the NFL cap for 10 years, 10 years, it's not that hard. You know, you have half your team, some places, 60% of your team, 70% of your team that's on rookie contracts.

So they're cheap. You just have to figure out a way to pay 15 players. And I just don't, I think too much is made of that. You don't get in trouble paying quarterback $50 million. You get in trouble when you miss on $10 million players or you buy free agents that don't work out, those kinds of things. So I think too much is made about the quarterback pay. Yeah, I agree.

I can't tell you how many people call up and, hey, he needs to take the discount that Tom Brady took. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, just relax here. Okay.

Just slow down. Hey, final question. As we approach the break, Andrew, in a general sense, when you look at contracts like Otani or what a Victor Wenbanyama might make, are we approaching a sports bubble? We know the importance of sports as a re in regards to entertainment, live entertainment, its value to streaming companies, but are we ever going to get anybody who just says, this is nuts. Are we approaching a sports bubble with maybe the interest in something like baseball or are we just going to see the money continue to go up and up and up and up and up? Yeah, I think there are two distinct things and we can debate why, but the media rights are going up and up and up. The contracts are going up and up and up, but I don't think there's a ton more people watching.

So I'm not sure what that means. Like the NBA just went from $25 billion over 10 years media to $75 billion, 3x. But the number of people watching the NBA has not really changed.

It's gone up a little bit, tiny bit in the last 10 years. So I don't know what that means. I just think if we're having a media discussion, networks just can't get anything better. There's nothing better than live sports.

It's, unless you're talking about the Oscars or presidential debates, that's it. So they're paying and paying and paying. And if you're talking about contracts, it's a two tier system. The stars are going to get paid. And as I said, just now you've got a ton of players on low contracts.

They're not poor, but they're not making millions. So yeah, I think we're going to see more 50, 60, $70 million a year players, but the majority of the players are making a million dollars or less. So that's going to be the system. It's one hell of a system and it certainly has changed.

You talk about free agency and Ed O'Bannon, there's a lot that has changed from Kurt Flood, you know, all the way to Ed O'Bannon up until now. Andrew, where can people follow you, your work, your writings and everything that you do? Yeah, I got a lot of f**k that's running, but I do a podcast, The Business of Sports, wherever you hear podcasts. I do a newsletter on Sundays. It's called My Sunday 7.

MySunday7.com is where you sign up. I do reels, instructional reels on Instagram, AndrewBrant2 and my column every week on Sports Illustrated as well. Andrew, I appreciate the time and your expertise and we'll see how things continue to roll. Every day we got a new piece of news, so I know it keeps you busy. Indeed, take care.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-09-25 22:51:03 / 2024-09-25 22:55:56 / 5

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