What are the Baltimore Ravens going to do?

Collegiate athletes' disempowerment and unpaid labor. A system some like sports commentator Balmoni Jones has termed legalized exploitation. All right, I've heard Balmoni Jones say that before.

Shouts to Yvette Clark, a representative from the borough of Brooklyn in New York. I hope she apologized for getting your name wrong, but she quoted an article. How old was that article? That article was a week old.

It came out last week. Like, did you see the one that the Notre Dame guys did, the president and the athletic director? Yes. Yeah.

I had one two days before that. Nobody told me that it was a counterpoint situation. They just asked me to write something. And so I did.

And the next thing I know, it turned into that. Unbelievable. Well, well, well, that whole hearing and we're actually going to talk to Jason Stahl from the College Football Players Association. You know, they're trying to organize and he's a good advocate for them. Who knows how this whole thing is going to play out.

I'm going to talk to him about the whole thing later. But the name of that hearing, Protecting College Athletes, NIL Rights, was actually the opposite of what they were really doing. They were not protecting them. They were trying to restrict them. And I know you always say that they're trying to keep kids poor. And that certainly seems like that's what they're trying to do. Yeah. And see, the thing about it is, I do think that there's room and need for protection in the regulation of the NIL stuff. And that Jaden Rashad story, which is still bananas, where he went from having 13 million dollars promised to him by the Florida Collective to go into Arizona State for 400000 dollars and not because he turned the 13 down.

You know, somebody does need to come in and offer some measure of protection. But as our buddy Bob Orr, former justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, made the point that he called during the whole Carolina situation 10, 12 years ago and he asked the compliance officer read through this whole NCAA rule book. I can't find here what the rights of the players are.

Can you tell me where to find them? And the response he got was, that's a good question. Yeah, because they don't. And that's really what they're trying to do. They're trying to keep make sure they don't really have rights.

But we need more people to stand up for that. I know I hit you up earlier in the week because I wanted to talk about Lamar Jackson. There are two things I want to get to. This will primarily be a Lamar Jackson conversation. Bomani Jones and game theory with Bomani Jones on HBO Friday nights. And that is I know it's going well. You're in season two.

I hope there's season 10 at some point. Let me let me ask you about Lamar. And because I spoke to the folks in Baltimore about this yesterday, they think that the Ravens are going to stand firm on what they believe his value is. Is it possible that they are one hundred and thirty million dollars apart on value?

I think they are one hundred thirty million dollars, perhaps, apart on the allocation of said value. They seem to think, if you believe the reports that you heard, that they're willing to go in on this for three years. They're not willing to go in on it for five, which for what it's worth is generally the way the football teams view contracts.

What makes it very interesting is all of us understand the way that leverage works. And we're just so accustomed to NFL teams having all the leverage that we're ignoring. They don't really have it this time because they need a quarterback. You can go get another running back. You can go get more linebackers.

You can go manufacture something for your pass rush. A quarterback is the scarcest commodity that there is. And so I would love to know exactly what the bar Jackson is asking for. But if all they offered him was one hundred thirty three million dollars guarantee, no, he's not taking that. And I don't blame him at all for not taking that. And that's where I was on that, because I thought that if he's looking for the Deshaun Watson contract, which we all assume we haven't really heard from Lamar about this, but I assume that that's what he is looking for, which if Deshaun Watson got it, then, yeah, Lamar Jackson would be a better representative of your organization and a better player than Deshaun Watson.

So why not? But if that's the deal, then the Ravens coming in at basically half that isn't going to get it done. Maybe if you came in at that guaranteed money, but over longer than five years, maybe he would accept that. At least maybe that would be the start of some parameters for a negotiation. Yeah, it's just I mean, this is people stuff in part of why you get an agent is so you don't have to be the person. Right. Right.

Like you don't have to be the one that gets involved in the arguments. And I think that part of what has happened here, based on some of the things that you hear is that Lamar Jackson is a little offended by some of the things that have been said in the course of this process. Again, part of why you get the agent and why I think he's doing himself a disservice by not having one, but when nobody sees the answer for me is okay, the Ravens are going to stand firm.

All right. If Lamar Jackson is not their quarterback in September, what the hell are they going to do? But let's dial it back. If you believe that all these OTAs and stuff matter, and I am inclined to believe that they do, especially in a year where you're picking up not just the new offensive coordinator, but one who seems to be stylistically much different than the last one you have.

You kind of need Lamar Jackson there now. Yeah. Now. And he's not.

So what are you doing? He does have you over a barrel. I don't know why they don't seem to get that. They're getting Tyler Huntley ready to lead them into the playoffs. Well, I mean, look, the only way I feel like you could be this confident, your Baltimore is if you got a real reason to believe that nobody's going to jump up.

And I would love to know what their real reason is, because to be fair, nobody seems to be jumping up stupid old Revan Rivera. I mean, it ain't really stupid, but he sure sounded stupid ways like, yeah, Lamar doesn't fit what we do. Well, what y'all do is lose.

So you might want to try to get him to fit something new. No, but if he said it that way, then he's right. Lamar doesn't fit that because generally, Lamar doesn't lose. So I would I would play the find the lie with what Ron Rivera said. What I don't what I don't get. I don't get what they're doing in Atlanta. Frankly, if the Jets are having problem with the Packers over compensation for Aaron Rodgers, why don't the Jets talk to Lamar Jackson? I just think that most people believe and teams believe that it's going to take the Deshaun Watson contract and they're not going to be that team that signs him to that kind of a contract.

So why even bother? Well, this is where it's going to get fun and where I think the Jackson thing may get settled, depending on the timing. I think the true market setter on all of this is going to be what happens with Joe Barrow and Cincinnati. And Mike Brown is the single cheapest owner in sports. But also the key thing to remember about Mike Brown is all that money is football money, right? So he is not a person that has billions of dollars from outside of this. They are finally putting a stadium sponsor or they are. They finally have got a stadium sponsor in Cincinnati because he kept the name of his father on there. And the NFL teams were mad about that because he was depressing money. But there's a lot of people who believe the reason is so they can get the cash to put into escrow decides your borough because cheap as Mike Brown is, he's not stupid.

He can't hardball that guy. So once we find out where Burrow gets, I would imagine that Lamar Jackson deal as a market that would be slightly below a burrow deal. All right. I think that might be the thing that brings us around.

All right. But that's we're still a year away from that, right? Oh, well, Burrow's played with three years. I mean, Cincinnati can sound burrow right now if they want. I guess you can't before the four.

That's right. Before the fourth year. Well, if I were Cincinnati, I would do that because I think history tells us the longer you wait, the more expensive it gets. So why not go there? Go take care of maybe Steve Bishati should supplement that contract.

Maybe not. Maybe Steve Bishati shouldn't supplement that contract because that contract is going to be massive. I will be interesting. Interested to see the structure of that deal. So we'll close the Lamar Jackson part on this because I asked the question of our friend Will Brinson the other day. More likely, Lamar Jackson plays for Baltimore. Lamar Jackson plays for another team this year, or Lamar Jackson does not play at the current look. Lamar Jackson does not play. That's what I thought.

That's what I thought. Will actually came around and said, Certainly not for the 1st 10 weeks. And then he shows up at the end of the season.

And I don't know. Maybe that'll be good for Baltimore if they're still in playoff in the playoff race. He could just finish out and he'll be hopefully be healthy for the playoffs. That's the other thing that's kind of worked against him is that he's missed the last two seasons at the end.

But we all know what kind of player he is, and I don't think I would hold that against him entirely. I'm sure you know you have been following this, but the Jim Trotter NFL media departure Trotter's tweet about Well, basically, he had proven to him what he's thought about NFL media for a while. And today's tweet just made me smile. I've thought a lot about Brian Flores lawsuit against the NFL for alleged discriminatory firing practices. His case is the micro.

The macro is the culture within the NFL, including owner behavior that was covered up by the league owned newsroom. Stay tuned. More to come. Oh, yeah. Oh, so you have thoughts on that? Whoa. No, I didn't know Jim had it in him. Whoa, that's that's all bad.

And you like Michael Douglas and falling down. They don't push the wrong bad a little bit too far. And part of what's interesting about this is Jim Trotter did a lot of reporting when we were like, Why does Colin Kaepernick not have a job about how the fading out of the read option? Like he had all the reasonable explanations for why it was the Colin Kaepernick did not have a job. And I do wonder if this change in circumstance makes him take a different look at some of that stuff that went on in that time. Right. You go back and look at his archives and you'll find what it is I'm talking about.

I'm not really saying this as a judgment necessarily. He reported what he was told. He believed the things that he was told. But I do wonder if now that this is going down, he looked at it a little bit different.

Oh, I don't think there's any question. And the commissioner can say all day long. And I thought he told on himself, first of all, the response at the Super Bowl was he was shaken by Jim Trotter's question, the same question he asked. Maybe it was the Jim Ball, the James Baldwin quote that that Trotter dropped dropped on him.

But he was definitely shaken by that because the answer was inarticulate. But when he said at the NFL owners meetings earlier this week that, oh, I didn't even know until 10 minutes ago that Jim Trotter wasn't didn't have his contract renewed. What, like nobody told you?

Come on. I don't buy that. I don't buy that for a second. It's possible that nobody told him. I don't buy that happening.

Right. Well, I could buy that he would have wanted somebody to tell him. But I tell you that some of these companies that I work for, Jack, you'd be surprised when people don't get told. I have stories I cannot tell right now. But if you would be.

But if he told if he said I just found out about it 10 minutes ago, if his response wasn't, why the hell did you do that? Then I have then I have a problem with Roger Goodell more than I already have a problem with Roger Goodell. Yeah. And I think that's fair also. But I would not be surprised.

No, it's not a thing that I know about Roger. I would not be surprised if he didn't got off that podium and was like, which dummy did this? Right. They got plenty of dummies.

They got plenty of dummies there. All right. We we know Dan Snyder is going to have to sell the team.

That's good. Now he's all he's all about Jeff Bezos buying the team, because apparently the value for it is not what Dan Snyder was hoping for. Who's going to win the Final Four, Bo?

Good God, I guess it's Yukon. When in doubt, pick the team you heard of. But the games I saw them play at the tournament, they look really, really good. And Dan Hurley looks like he really knows what he's doing. Well, he's got good pedigree as coaches. I mean, his dad was a pretty good coach and Dan was a pretty good player. Just wasn't really as good as his brother as a as a player.

Here's what I found interesting about or find interesting about this Final Four. In my lifetime, two of those programs did not exist. I mean, I feel like in my lifetime, two of those programs did not exist. Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't sure of the time frame there.

You know, you're you're younger than I. So, yeah, but like Florida Atlantic, I'm sure the school existed, but I don't think the program. I mean, I remember when Howard Steleberger started the football program there. Yeah, but so like two of them, if you go back and you look through college basketball reference, like there's a break. There's nothing there for Miami for I don't know how many years until Perry Clark. Yeah, because they quit.

They really, they really stopped. But I think the other part about that that was interesting. ESPN.com did a thing where there's the all data, clearly a pre-planned feature of the all time teams of all the teams in the Final Four.

And man, that was not nearly as compelling as they thought it was going to be when they trumped up that idea. Like Florida Atlantic was basically the team they got now. That's right. That's their entire team. You can have a great Miami team and obviously UConn has become a Blue Blood so you can have great teams there.

That UConn team wouldn't have had to show up in that Final Four they tried to come up with. Nope, not at all. Bomani Jones game theory with Bomani Jones on HBO tonight. It is right. You got your just after just before Bill Maher or just right right after more right after Bill Maher. We take our season finale last night. It will air today. Our guest is Cameron. I don't think you'll want to miss it. Oh man. Very cool. By the way, you should get Bill Maher on next season.

Yeah, let me tell you somebody who I don't think does that. I need to try to get on his show. He's a well that would be or just do the what is what is it called the one straight to YouTube where you guys just hang out over time?

Yeah, no, no. The one that goes straight to YouTube, not not the real time with Bill Maher. Yeah, that's the overtime.

The overtime goes straight to the YouTube. Yeah, he also does a separate one that has nothing to do with HBO. That's just hanging out in his basement. Yeah, gotcha wasn't up on that.

Yeah, you should check that out. He's just hanging out in his basement. You'd be you'd be a guest like Aaron Rodgers was a guest. That doesn't bite to say they're over there smoking. Yeah, I feel like they are. Oh, no, they are not Aaron wasn't but Bill does.

That's that's his thing. Bo, I appreciate your time, man. Good luck with everything. And we look forward to season three and the finale tonight. I appreciate you, man. I'll talk to you soon.