We have 4 NIL bills to rank now

So thank you very much for your time. We have four NIL bills to sort through. I don't want to rank them. But you know, when you and I talked a couple of days ago, I thought we could at least kind of compare them. I think I know which one the athletes like the most, the last one that was spearheaded by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

But if you could go kind of give us an idea of what each one features, maybe it gives us a jumping off point. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll start with that bill because it's definitely at least the only one that I've seen that's been endorsed by current college athletes. That bill, obvious, all of them create sort of a uniform NIL standard across the country, right, that preempts all the state laws.

It's all four of them do that. But this one allows for, you know, compensation rights to be taken a step further. It would actually require that media rights, you know, putting an athlete on TV would be considered NIL.

So there would have to be some sort of revenue share. It protects the athletes rights to collectively bargain, for example, which is not something that they're currently allowed to do. Right. So that's a very athlete friendly bill.

I would say I see a lot of similarities between the two bills for the first what the two bipartisan bills, Tommy Tuberville and Joe Manchin came out with a bill that, interestingly enough and sneakily enough, had a bit of an antitrust exemption. And for your viewers and listeners, why they should care about that strange phrase is because it gives the NCAA power to protect its amateurism model to set rules that can't be attacked with litigation. Right.

So gives them a ton of power. I would say that the Booker Blumenthal Moran bill doesn't quite do that, but it does empower the NCAA to give a little bit of a little bit of power to enforce these rules. Interestingly enough, those bills also and positively require some amount of like medical care that is not currently required. So that's good. Future medical care. So it's important to note it was about it was about long term medical care. Right. And that's something that is not involved in any in currently in the NCAA. Yeah, it's something that schools offer that particularly schools that have a lot of money, think big football programs, but it's not something that's required by the NCAA necessarily.

So that would be huge and positive, you know, no matter where you sit politically. Right. And then the last the draft of the Ted Cruz bill that my friends at on three reported on is definitely the most, if I'm remembering correctly, right wing bill. It would prevent athletes from being considered employees ever. It gives the the NCAA a ton of power, you know, but really the question that I have is, do any of these bills have legs?

Right. And the last week, we've been talking about them, but like none of that, you know, no NIL bill has even made the first step or the second step through the legislative process after being officially introduced. And we haven't had a bill actually that have we had one that has been officially introduced or are these all in the still still in the draft stage?

I know the the Murphy, not the Murphy, the the Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Jerry Moran, three senators, the first two Democrats, the other one, a Republican from Virginia Moran. That was just a draft. I think the Cruz was just a draft. The Tuberville Joe Manchin bill to me was, you know, really written by Charlie Baker. I don't, there's zero chance that that's going to make anybody but the schools happy.

But I'm pretty sure that these are basically all just draft. I don't think anything's been introduced yet, right? So as far as they presented it, the Tuberville and Manchin bill is being introduced. And the Lori Trahan, Chris Murphy bill has been introduced. OK, good. I would cue that YouTube video of how a bill becomes a law.

I think we all need to review. I'm just a bill. I'm only a bill. I love that guy.

Schoolhouse rock rocks. Yeah. But so, yeah, but I mean, the Booker, Blumenthal, Moran bill that they are saying they're going to formally introduce that they just wanted to get the draft out there so that they could get a little more feedback, you know, but they're coming up on their summer recess. So, you know, the clock is ticking. Yeah, that's not going to I don't think any of these things are actually going to happen and becoming a law and go into the president's desk for his Joe Biden, if you will. And this is going to this is very radical. My thought is that since NIL now is part of the rules of the lay of the land, we should just stop.

If all we're trying to do is unify like uniform it, which is what they keep saying, then we should just get rid of the just who cares? You know, wherever you can get your money, you can get your money. I've talked to a bunch of former athletes about this, and we all recognize that money has been changing hands under the table forever. And the NCAA has done a very poor job of stopping that. I know which I know which bill the NCAA prefers, and that is the Tuberville mansion one.

And that, of course, is the I read that top to bottom. I'm like, of course, this sounds like Charlie Baker wrote it. I think they would definitely not be interested in the Chris Murphy bill because it really puts the athletes in the driver's seat and it forces the schools to sort of tailor themselves to the athletes as opposed to vice versa. I don't see the NCAA being too happy about that. No, they wouldn't be happy about that at all.

And neither would the major conferences. And I can tell you that for a fact, because there is a D.C. based public relations firm that has been sending reporters statements from the Power Five conferences supporting, you know, the progress, the bipartisan progress in legislation. And I've got I got a statement after the Booker Blumenthal Moran bill and I got a statement after the Tuberville mansion bill.

And I did not get a statement after the Chris Murphy, Laurie Tran bill. So just putting that out there. Right. But, you know, I think what's really interesting about because everyone's talking about the regulation of NIL. Right.

But if you're really paying attention, the big question isn't about NIL. It's about athlete employment status, collective bargaining, revenue sharing. Right. And that bill sort of creates a legal onramp for those things to take place. So obviously that is going to be the big issue for the NCAA with that bill. But I will point out that that bill is written by two Democrats, you know, one in the House, one in the Senate. And there is no I have no confidence that that that's going to pass either because nothing is bipartisan these days. Right.

Nothing right. Nothing that's bipartisan passes these days. Right.

So I just want to point that out. No, no, you're I would say that none of these will pass. And I'll just use a football term where they say, well, we have four different guys. We can play a quarterback, which really means you have none. If you have four quarterbacks, you have no quarterback.

Absolutely. We have four bills. We have no bills. But I think they are at least giving it the college try, which for whatever that's worth, I'll make the pun there. Final thing for Amanda Kostovich from front office sports, sports business and college sports reporter for FOS. So Colorado went back home. They they just say moved out. They moved out. They moved to the Pac-12 for X amount of years. And now they have moved back to the big 12. They said it wasn't about money. It was more about.

Yeah. Would they stop it? What is the future right now for the Pac-12 and what is the economic what is the economic impact to both conferences with Colorado's move? Yeah, it's funny, I'm working on a story right now about particularly from a media rights perspective, what the Pac-12 is looking at.

And look, the Pac-12 is in a bad situation before they lost Colorado. You know, the major networks and streamers are not very interested. You know, what I'm hearing is there, you know, their bidders are more like Scripps and Ion, right, than ESPN and Amazon. So so they weren't in a good position before. They're going to have to go out and try to replace Colorado if for no other reason than an inventory perspective. But folks are also telling me it's not clear that someone like SDSU could replace the value of Colorado, especially at Colorado with Deion Sanders. So, you know, I would be very surprised if the Pac-12 was able to put together a deal that dished out even what the current deal is, which is far behind the other power conferences. As far as the big 12 goes, I mean, you know, there are rumors about the networks giving the big 12, you know, a certain amount of money so that Colorado can be a full member, that Colorado can get an equal share in the media rights distribution. Right. I'm not super clear on that. No one's really clear about where they're getting that money, whether or not the networks have agreed to do that, whether or not they're using exit fees. Right. But I think in the long run, this is going to be financially good for the big 12 because again, the Deion Sanders Colorado is a great brand. Right.

It puts them in another time zone as well. And it's going to entice potentially a 14th member, which is also going to be good from a revenue perspective. Yeah.

Depending on who that 14th member is. Yeah. The big 12, you know, it's funny about four or five years ago, we were, we were basically blowing taps on the big 12 and the PAC 12 was in a great position. And the PAC 12 actually turned down a big 12 offer of a merger of those two conferences because nah, man, we're good. We're all good here in, uh, in California on the West coast.

And boy, what a decision that was by former commissioner, Larry Scott, Amanda Kristovich on Twitter, a Kristovich I'm sorry, on X, a Kristovich basically the way I said that just makes it seem uh, somewhat illegal. Uh, I appreciate, I appreciate your time, Amanda. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you soon.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Always cool to catch up with Amanda. She does a very good work over at front office sports. Uh, BS conference expansion is not stopping. That's too bad.