Roundtable Time!!!

Before we introduce our friends for this edition of The Round Table, I want to bring back my favorite piece of audio.

It was actually a video, but we used the audio earlier this week. This is our friend B. Dot complaining, whining, kvetching, I'll explain what that word means in a minute, about the potential of high school kids getting NIL money. I'm laughing. Look at that one little reek going back home with more NIL money than her mama making on third shift working at the Radisson. How are you going to coach kids when little Connor making more lacrosse NIL money than Coach Thompson is for coaching lacrosse?

I don't know if that's a lacrosse coach name. Like, nobody's going to leave high school. Every high school senior is going to look like Zeke Cross, all because of this food. This is dumb. I don't like it. What do you think? Am I tripping? Am I just old ass?

Or is this a bad, bad idea? Do you know that North Carolina is the 27th state to adopt this? Okay, bye. Gosh, I love it. We played, what did we play that three times? We did.

On Tuesday. Gosh, I love that video. All right, the man who gave it to us and allowed me to use it. B Dot, the six man arena host, UNC Hoops. And he has a resume that is too long to even list them all. At B Dot on Twitter and Josh Graham from Sports Hub Triad at Josh Graham.

Oh, I have to do that. Gosh, I don't even know the format of that show. What an embarrassment.

Josh Graham Radio on Twitter. I appreciate Victoria just going, he's too dumb to even know how this thing works. I'm going to play it anyway. All right, B Dot and Josh, man, I know you guys are very, very tight. So I know this is going to be a lot of fun.

So I'll just start with you, Dot. Yes, you're old. I do appreciate Unc. I don't know who Lil Reek is, but I think all of that was fun.

I also didn't know the last reference, but that's because I'm old. But in this particular issue, I mean, are we so scarred from NIL in college that we think that this is going to be a big deal? Absolutely. I immediately start thinking about names like Mikey Williams, who left North Carolina and went back west because of the NIL money. You know, and Josh, I was on his show earlier this week, AG, and he told me that, you know, the money that they're getting is between 60 and $120.

Yeah, some some guys. But then there are some guys that are going to be seeing five figures, six figures off these kind of deals in high school. And it's already difficult trying to coach these kids with these attitudes. And they're not wearing these belts and wearing hoodies in the summertime, also trying to put a bank account in them. That's more than what your coach is possibly making. I just see a lot more problems with this than the old narrative of let the kids make money off of their skill set. We're in high school, man. We're still 13, 14, 15 and 16, 16.

Still trying to figure this thing called life out. Trying to balance NIL deals is not something else that needs to be put on their plate, in my opinion. Josh, is he crazy?

I think I don't think he's crazy, but he's crazy, but maybe not about this. Yeah, I think maybe there's a bit naive in this sense. The guys who don't make the 60 to $100, $120, I hate to break it to Dot. They were receiving more than $60 to $120 before these rules came to exist. I mean, just look at Pony XS and SMU 40 years ago. I hate to break it to all the high school coaches and to the parents and everyone out there.

If you were projected to be one of these top guys, you probably were having meals paid for you already, and a lot more than that. It's not going to change all that much, in my opinion. It's a big nothing.

Sure, sure. Yeah, it's a roundtable. It's a free-flowing discussion, right?

We didn't think that it was going to affect the college game the way that it has. We were talking the same thing at the presence of that with, oh, guys have been getting money anyways. But the reality is when you pull back the curtain and now it's just free for all to the point where it's not illegal. We don't have to hide now. We don't have to drop the money by the dumpster. We can actually be in the forefront, come to you and talk to you about these monies, exchanging hands. Now everybody wants to be that top dog. That's why you got thousands jumping into the transfer portal. Yeah.

Hey, Dot, you've said this a few times and I'm interested, I'm genuinely interested in, because you're very plugged in and knowing a ton of guys on a lot of different teams the last few years. You're speaking about the disruption inside college programs. Like, we see it from the media side of it on the outside.

Like, what types of things are you hearing without saying specific names, obviously, that speak to the disruption you're talking about? Oh, man, just, you know, guys getting more NIL deal exposure than others, feeling like their coaches are putting certain players in positions to get more NIL agreements than others. And that jealousy starts to seep in.

And then you start to say, hey, I'm getting play in time too. Why aren't I seeing these types of NIL deals? And I've seen those on D2 level.

I've seen those on D1 level, and I've seen it on the AAU levels. And we weren't even legalizing paying those players at that point, but it definitely causes a divide in the locker rooms when guys start pocket watching. It does seem, by the way, Josh is asking all the follow-up questions, and we might be done here. All the follow-up questions I was going to ask, he's bringing up, but that's fine. As I said before, it is a free-flowing discussion.

It does sound to me that maybe in a certain case that might be where Dot spends a lot of time, that we might be blaming NIL for something that was probably there already. And I think the money that has been funneled to players illegally over time, and the money that is... First of all, I think players are getting more money today, initially, than they were then. The illegal money nobody is paying, and I'll just use examples because we have them. Nobody is paying Armando Bacott 800 grand to play a senior season at UNC until it becomes legal.

That number was probably, I would say, 10% of that, and not to Bacott, but to other great players. People weren't getting that kind of money, so it wasn't that big a deal. But now, and I think this is just the beginning of it, I think we'll find that water will find its level here, and we'll get into a more sane realm. It's brand new. We've only really had this system for really one year.

I know it's been legal for a little bit longer than that, but actually not much. But really, for an entire academic year, even if you use that term, it's so brand new. We have to kind of adjust to it. But I think that the old phrase that adversity builds character is actually wrong. It's adversity reveals character. If I say that this, in a way, is adversity, it's revealing something that was already there and maybe a divide that would have found a different way out. I'll just use Caleb Love as an example, and I don't know if that's a problem or not.

I'm not trying to say it was, but if players play better and stick around, then we probably don't have these problems. Did you know if you pay your nanny or sitter more than $2,400 a year or $100 a week, you owe taxes? Let Care.com HomePay help you get the tax savings your family qualifies for, up to $2,500 a year.

Get your first month free at HomePay.com with the code FreeMonth2022. This reminds me of the conversation we're having in regards to sports betting as well, something that's become very new and legalized in many different places. And you see some opportunists talking about the Alabama baseball betting scandal from this week, where the coaches fired yesterday in relation to a game a week ago. And there are a bunch of different stuff if you haven't read up on that.

I'm sure you have, but many others haven't. There are a lot of stuff with that and the Calvin Ridley story and what happened with the Lions a couple of weeks ago, where folks are using that as a way to say, hey, maybe sports betting becoming legalized is leading to all these stories that are existing, when probably these types of things were just always happening. And because they've been legalized and it's become a bigger business nationally, there are more regulatory infrastructures in place that allow for things like the suspicious things to get caught.

It's just more things are being revealed in the light, both in the NIL context and also in that example, I think. In the NIL context, too, I'd like to say if they're going to start these NIL deals on the high school level, as they've done on the collegiate level, I think it's also important that these things come with financial literacy classes, especially on the I mean, on both levels, like the way they have an Armando and these guys getting millions of dollars with these NILs and then coming. And when they graduate, if they don't go NBA, where's the money?

You know, are they paying taxes on this money? And even now, when it's trickling down to the high schoolers who are dependent on their mom's taxes and or their parents taxes and things of that nature, like financial literacy classes on the high school level and the collegiate level should be mandatory if you have an NIL deal. And that's something that the North Carolina High School Athletic Association is requiring for the athletes to participate, to do like you have to take a course in order to benefit and following the actual place, the stuff that I love in place. Isn't that right? Do we still have the North Carolina High School Athletic Association?

I haven't refreshed my browser from the last couple of days. Well, they have to give them at least six months notice before they eliminate the relationship between the high schools and the athletic association. Look, financial literacy, like I don't maybe a little reek, we'll have to take financial literacy classes. But honestly, isn't this just for the most part, isn't this just like a legitimate job? Like we all had like jobs in high school, you know, whether it's delivering a paper and maybe you get to, you know, I don't know if we, I don't even remember paying taxes. I did know when I when I had a high school job at age 16, you got to file, you got to file taxes, right? So, wait, you were a paper delivery boy?

Did I hear that right? No, I didn't do that. I didn't. I never had a paper route.

Are you kidding me? I didn't have a bike with a basket. I wasn't lugging that bag around. We had legitimate, we didn't have like the periodical, we had the big broadsheets.

Like the Star Ledger when I was in New Jersey was like a mini New York Times. You can't be lugging those things around. A lug and a hernia at age 12 or whatever it was. So, all of these things, just following the law is good for me. Uh, are you against, God, are you against NIL for college kids?

I don't know, man. It's polluting the playing field so much these days. Like, I do agree. I'm in such a gray area, AG, and the idea that I do agree that these colleges are making millions and millions and millions of dollars off the talent of these athletes.

Pick a sport, any sport. They're making millions of dollars. Pick the two that make the money. So, I agree that they should be compensated on some level. However, initially I always wondered how it would go if player A in the basketball locker room is making two million in NIL deals and player C, who's still a starter but isn't quite player A, is making $50,000. How would that compare in the locker rooms? And I've been able to see that it has not been a good thing, but you also can't make it even where all of the players get the same money. So again, I don't know how to accurately answer your question, AG. No, I'm not against players profiting off of their talent and their skill set.

However, the way that it's being done now is muddying the waters, and it's very, very confusing. The only thing I would say to that is, like, these guys all emulate, want to emulate the people that they grew up watching. So, in a college basketball locker room, they have to recognize that at the next level, somebody is going to be making a max contract and somebody is going to be making the league minimum. True. Also, I like watching Kyle Filipowski, Armando Baycott, DJ Burns, and all these guys play basketball, and if NIL didn't exist, none of those guys would be back for another year. I'll throw Zion Williamson into this mix.

If NIL existed when Zion was at Duke, we would have had year two of Zion. 100 percent. Agreed. 100 percent.

Agreed. And that's good for college sports. All right, final thing before, guys, we talked about that a lot. Did you see the rule?

I know you guys are both college basketball fans. Did you see the rule? The NCAA is possibly going to make it more difficult to award the defense a charge call. They're going to make the defense get to the spot sooner.

I say they have to get to the spot before the game starts. Can I just be honest about this? I do. I think it's fine the way that it is. I don't think it's a problem. We've heard enough of you.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I think this is a reaction to what we've seen, the popularity of ref guy in recent years becoming a character. It's now the most popular thing to just rail on officials game after game after game to the point where conferences are having to respond to fans who are complaining, and now they feel they have to do something.

So then they listen to the place that they pay too much attention to. Twitter, where you see the hashtag abolish the charge on social media. It's fine. It doesn't need to be changed, but kind of like football, anything that leads to more offense, it makes it harder to play defense. Let's go for that. It only took Josh 16 minutes to be wrong.

What do you think about Lamar Jackson a few weeks ago? I remember. Just remember that.

I've been right on everything. If they're going to change the rules, so what? I just wonder how Duke is going to play. Like, I just wonder how Duke is going to practice with, you know, with these new system in place. Like, Oh, my gosh, you're going to see. Hey, you know, it's funny. I took a lot of I took a lot of flack.

I don't know how many years ago this is. Tyler Thornton, when he was at Duke, and I wrote an entire piece about why that is not good defense. I hate the secondary defender more than anything, but I would say that it ain't just Duke that the team eight miles down the road does the same thing, and that's the way the college basketball game is.

I think what Josh is saying, there's some truth to what Josh is saying, though. If we change, you know, not that the rule doesn't need to be changed. The rule needs to be changed. I would go further than the rule is that that they are proposing.

I would go significantly further. I wouldn't let a secondary defender pick up a charge unless he was making a play on the ball. Just standing there doesn't do anything for me. But if you change the signal for a charge to having to do jazz hands or do something, what is the dance that they did in the movie Grease? Right? Ted Valentine would quit. If you changed it to that, then I believe referees would not want to do jazz hands, and that would be it. Also, I'm sure Dot is also in favor of the other rule that they're proposing, that you're not allowed to slap the floor on defense either.

That's another thing that they're looking at potentially passing. Are you serious? No, he's making that up.

He's making that up. He got excited for a second, though. He got excited.

No more slapping the floor. That is amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Dot, I'm a little surprised you fell for that, but you know what? It was a good roundtable.

At VDOT on Twitter, at Josh Graham Radio, you guys are the best. You know what they should put a rule in is that in-arena hosts get paid more. That's what they should do. You're damn right.

Speak on that. Start the petition. I'll sign it, AG. You guys are the best, man. I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Save me a seat over there, okay? I'll see you tonight. All right, we'll do that. Look, that was fun.

Well done, Victoria. Did you know if you pay your nanny or sitter more than $2,400 a year or $100 a week, you owe taxes? Let Care.com Home Pay help you get the tax savings your family qualifies for up to $2,500 a year. Get your first month free at HomePay.com with the code FreeMonth2022.