Mike DeCourcy on greed being the problem in college athletics currently

Looking for an excuse to talk to my friend Mike Decorcy, national college basketball writer, but just columnist, sporting news. So let's say hi to Mike. How are you, sir? I'm well, Adam. How are you?

I'm good. Like last week, we basically invented a reason to talk with a silly rumor that UConn is a target of Big 12 possible expansion, and that may come up. But with the news that Jack Swarbrick is stepping down after, I guess, this upcoming season as the athletic director at Notre Dame, let's start here.

Is there a more powerful AD? I mean, there probably are, but there aren't more than two more powerful directors of athletics in the entire country than the position of Notre Dame AD, no? Well, you know, I think, I think in some ways it's less because, I mean, let's just say Mike Decorcy were his successor instead of Pete de Vacqua, right? Former NBC Sports executive.

Yes. And Mike Decorcy thinks that football independence in 2023 is ridiculous. And he does think that. Yeah, I'm with you. Okay, but I can't change that.

So how powerful am I? I can't even get the number one thing in athletics on my campus, even on the docket, because they won't listen to that. I mean, there are more powerful voices on that within the Notre Dame community.

I don't even know that they're all on campus, but you can't even get that to budge. So, I mean, I think that Jack has had a loud voice and I think he's been available for people to talk to and he's always been a really reasonable guy. And I think he's been good for college athletics during his time at ND, no doubt.

But I don't, I don't know that he's got the power that some others have. Well, I don't know that any ADs have power to do something like that. I mean, boards of trustees are always going to run those kind of decisions.

You know, the ADs deal with schedules. But in terms of the influence on, because Jack Swarbrick is the only AD in the room when the conferences all meet. Because he is a voting block unto himself. He doesn't have to go to however many other school presidents or athletic directors to get a consensus.

He's the consensus, so there is. I mean, it's obviously a difficult job. What is the, which is the best AD job in college sports? The best AD job in college sports would probably be Texas because they have the most money.

And so, and they also have stunk at their biggest sport for so long that you can look like you've improved it. So I think that's the best AD job, at least currently. You know, if you're asking me, I think it's at UCLA because like I'd love to live on at or near their campus.

So that would be another one. But I do think that, you know, there's some terrific places to be AD. Gene Smith has been really successful at Ohio State. He's done a wonderful job there. Bubba Cunningham does a great job, right? Yeah, absolutely. Bubba's wonderful. I really like him a lot.

He's terrific. So I think that there are athletic directors all over the country that do a good job. It's still rare, though, that I once said and still maintain that the club of really good college athletic directors is one of the smallest in the country.

One of the most exclusive, no doubt. I think it probably speaks to your first response to this topic is that they maybe don't have as much power as we think, because all they can do is say we should do this. And then the boards and the presidents get involved in other ways and make decisions for other reasons. Let me get to the the initial reason for our conversation, whether it's real or imagined, because I think you and I agree that partly is at least partly responsible for Connecticut's national championship a year ago or a few months ago was their return to playing basketball in the Big East. And they have gone independent in football.

And I understand that's a difficult place to be. But for Connecticut, I don't really know the difference between being in a league other than finances and being being an independent. But Connecticut won a national championship back where they belong in the Big East. And now there is some talk that the Big 12 may try to lure them. And it speaks to me about the level of greed in college sports, which is way more problematic than all the other player related economic drivers, NIL, transfer portal type of thing. And that's in Florida State, you know, basically looking at Florida and say, we want that money.

How do we get that money rather than just do the best you can with what you have? What how do you view the level of greed that we have in college sports? Well, I think it has changed college sports over the last 15 years in ways that are under underestimated. I think that you look at a lot of the problems that exist competitively, just just programs that, hey, weren't they good once? And now they're kind of, oh, well, not great.

And what happened? Well, in a lot of cases, it's they moved conferences. Yeah, it for a lot of programs that they were really strong in the conference they were.

And then they decided, well, you have it. The check's bigger over there. We'll we'll be fine. We'll do just as well over there.

Let's go. And then all of a sudden, because they completely changed their circumstance, everything that had worked for them before no longer does. And that's why UConn really is an interesting case. It's not just us. The two of us saying that UConn's return to the Big East made a big difference in their ability to eventually get this national championship. Dan Hurley said that.

Yeah, he said that very publicly. He thought that being in the Big East helped them significantly. And you can see it in who they recruited over the last few years, where they recruited their great players from and how it, you know, the core players, the guys who were who were part of the build of this program back to national championship status.

There are, there are a lot of guys who would, you know, were Big East type players and, and it worked for them. And, and I don't think that the Big 12 really coming after UConn because UConn's not like, ESPN's not saying, Oh, UConn, yeah, we'll write another $35 million check for that. UConn football, are we serious?

I mean, come on. So that's not going to happen. So everybody else in the Big 12 is going to say, Oh yeah, we need another body and we will take less money. No, that's why they're in the Big 12 in the first place. Cause they want, because like West Virginia needed more money than they were getting in the Big East or whatever. So no, that's, nobody's taking a smaller check so they can add UConn and no, and there's no way that ESPN is writing a 30, whatever the number is, I think it's 30, around 30, 35 million. They're not writing that check to get UConn football in the league. So that's not going to happen. I think their commissioner is kind of, kind of likes to be in the media.

And so there's a lot of that going on. But I don't think that happens, but let's just say it were feasible. They would have to decide. This has worked for us competitively now on five occasions. The building, because even the one that they won in the American was a year after they left the team was built in the Big East. You can't count that as being a, you know, as, as a title they won because they were in the American.

So they have to, they'd have to look at it and say, okay, this has worked for us five times. And we were out of this, this group for like five years, six years, seven years, whatever it was. And we stunk. What we had completely dissolved. So do we really want to leave what's worked for us now on so many occasions so that we can get a bigger check and we can get crushed in football?

I think that would be just ludicrous. Mike DeCorcio of the Sporting News is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. All right, let me, let me, let me flip to this because I know you care and I care.

And I partly blame you for me caring. Lionel Messi to enter Miami. I know you wrote about this.

I was here. I remember hearing the news when David Beckham came to the LA Galaxy. I, Wayne Rooney had a hot minute in MLS. Zlatan Ibrahimovic also played out west.

I think it was with the Galaxy. And Gareth Bale last year came off the bench for LAFC. This is 700,000 million times bigger than any of those because it's clear that Messi, while not vintage, isn't far off. And he still has some really good years that he can give to enter Miami. And this has a chance to, I mean, MLS is doing very well anyway. But this is a chance to, I mean, really cemented. I think that it can, it can continue to grow the league. The biggest problem for Major League Soccer, honestly, the first hurdle for them, I think they've done a really good job of building their, building their league in the communities they're in as a live product. They've really done well with that. Building the great stadiums they have in Cincinnati and Columbus and Austin and so many other different places. They've done a beautiful job with that. And it's become a great live product for those who've embraced it. What they have a problem with is the American sports fan is conditioned, I think my generation certainly was conditioned to hate soccer.

I think less so now. But even at that, the American sports fan still is conditioned to best hockey league, best basketball league, best football league, only football league just about, but still best, and best baseball league, and not the best soccer league. And so a lot of American fans reject MLS just based on that. They can see the best league, whether they consider it to be the Premier League or La Liga. They can see it on their couches in their living rooms or at their local pub, whatever.

And so they don't have to watch the less than best. And that's the problem that MLS struggles to get past. What some people in soccer call Euro snobbery. And so Messi coming in at this stage, no, he's not what he was when he was 25, but he's still really good. He just won the whole dang World Cup almost by himself in December. He scored 16 goals and had 16 assists and 32 games for Paris Saint Germain this year. The PSG won the league and that's considered the fifth best league in the world.

So I had a friend on Facebook asked me after I posted my column. Well, would it be bad for the league if he comes in and absolutely dominate? I'm like, well, I don't know if you've been watching, but he's been absolutely dominating everywhere, even at this age, right? So I don't see how it would hurt.

I think it would be great for people to see that now. He's going to have to have a better team than surround that currently is in place in and into Miami. And when Zlatan came to LA to play for the Galaxy, he scored 30 goals. He never made the playoffs.

I think 30 and 27 in two seasons and did not make the playoffs because his team wasn't very good. So I think it would be better for the league if Miami can figure out a way to get a decent team around them. There are some obstacles to that because they went ran afoul of the rules a few years ago.

And so they're kind of on double secret probation. And so what they can actually get done in terms of player recruitment at this point, I don't know. But I do think it's great for major league soccer and I think it can certainly take the league, continue to move it forward and maybe get some of those American fans who think they're too good for MLS to realize, look, you watch college sports too. They're great.

They're fun. And it's high level. But it ain't the NBA. It ain't the NFL. We still watch it.

I've been arguing that for years. If you want to watch the best, if you're watching, I love college sports, but if you're looking for the best, you shouldn't be watching college sports. You should be watching the NBA or the NFL. The atmospheres are what really sells for me. The greatness of college sports. Those game days, the settings, the arenas, the stadiums, that's what sells. But the aesthetics of the actual game, you took the fans out. Man, when we had no fans for college sports for a year, it's kind of hard.

School uniforms are out there. There's also the meaning. The NCAA tournament means something even when it was played and I was there for the last four rounds of it. I was played in front of a few hundred people or in the case of the final four and a half of Lucas Oil Stadium, a few thousand. It still was great.

The UCLA Gonzaga game in the semis was still unbelievable. So it makes. But the atmosphere, you're right, it makes it that much better. But I know that I'm not seeing the absolute best at what they do. And so when I go to an MLS game and I don't live in an MLS market, but when I go to a game, I mean, I know I'm not seeing the best players in the world, but it's still a great night out.

And it's still an interesting competition that the players involved want to win and the players, the people who are in the stands want their side to pull out. By the way, Mike, before we say goodbye, Messi didn't win the World Cup by himself. He had help. Alexis McAllister, new Liverpool midfielder. He scored a couple of goals in the World Cup. And that was it from from Man City. I don't even know. Remember his name from Man City. We'll just we'll just ignore him.

But yes, Messi's got a World Cup and now he's he's going to bring soccer to the masses here in the United States. I appreciate your time, Mike. Thank you so much.

And I'll talk to you soon. You bet tomorrow, by the way, I have a piece coming out that you can you can brush up on your Liverpool history because this will be the first Champions League final back in Istanbul since 2005. And so you can you can read about what it was like in 2005 when when Liverpool played in what may have been the greatest sporting event in the history of the planet.

All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna read that because now I'm excited. All right, because we're not in it this time. But next year, we know we can't be in it next year.

We'll win Europa next year if they care. Thank you, Mike. I'll talk to you later. You bet. Thank you. The new Chevy Silverado HD puts you in command. Own strength with its enhanced available Duramax 6.6 liter turbo diesel V8. Own the lake with its available advanced towing technology and own technology with an available 13.4 inch diagonal touchscreen. The new Chevy Silverado HD. Own work, own play, own life. Learn more at Chevy.com. Find new roads. Chevrolet.