NCAA gets another L in court

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Grainger. For the ones who get it done. Maybe I'm just too, I don't know, excited is not the right word. I'm still tickled by the fact that Friday the NCAA saw their, in parentheses, perfect record extended in a court of law. I don't know how many times they've lost. I know how many times they've won.

That number is less than one. Amanda Krstovich from Front Office Sports joins us on the Adam Gold show. So I guess amateurism is done, right? Well, I would say amateurism is on life support.

I think that's how I would describe it. Because I'm not going to say amateurism is done until the players are deemed employees and they sign their collective bargaining agreement. That's when I'll agree that amateurism is done.

But it's on life support, it's in a coma, and I don't think it's ever waking up. All right. To me, you went to the end there because I think that's ultimately where we're going to get to, but I want to just set aside collective bargaining agreement just for one second. So a court decision came down on Friday, which I know following you on Twitter, at A. Krstovich ruined your weekend, or at least ruined your Friday. I hate that that happened.

I do. But they decided, the court decided that the attorneys general in Tennessee and Virginia, who sued the NCAA basically to prevent them from enforcing their idea that you can't use that. Their idea that you can't use NIL as a recruiting inducement, and the courts agreed.

Is that a fair assessment of what the court said? I couldn't have put it better myself. Perfect. All right. So that's where we are, which is basically where we have been since college sports started recruiting, no?

Yes, I would. I would agree with that. And it's funny because, you know, of course, the next story that you want to write after this ruling comes out, you know, the second day story is, well, how is this going to change the recruiting process, the landscape? You know, you want to talk to everybody in the industry and everyone's saying, oh, it's going to be chaos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not so sure how much different it's going to be. Because obviously something is legal that wasn't legal before, maybe legal is the wrong word, you know, within NCAA rules before, you know, talking to, if you're a player talking to a collective before you sign your national letter of intent, before you commit to a school, but it's like so many people were doing it right. And even if we weren't doing it, just the idea of what you could potentially make with, you know, through a collective or with NIL deals that, you know, could be related to your school. Like, of course, that's a factor.

And before NIL was even a thing, you know, there was the bag money. Like there's decades of precedent about this, right? So I'm not sure how different it's going to be.

I don't think it is going to be any different. I related a story earlier. And again, I could be wrong here.

I don't think I am. I'm just going to suggest that it's very possible that Danny Manning, who played basketball, Amanda, I am sure before you were born, Danny Manning may have gone to Kansas because Larry Brown hired his dad as an assistant coach. I'm just suggesting that that might have had something to do with it. But there have been other ways. I mean, you get you can get parents, you get housing, you get, you know, parents or, you know, other relatives, a job in town. There are just so many ways to get around the system and to incentivize, you know, where you choose to go play whatever sport it is in college that I mean, the NCAA was never going to have any more success doing it now than they were before.

We have other court cases coming, don't we? Without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools and power plants, they all depend on you. No matter the weather, emergency or time of day, you're the ones who get it done. At Grainger, we're here for you with professional-grade industrial supplies. Count on real-time product availability and fast delivery. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by.

Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Yes. So we've got two National Labor Relations Board cases within, you know, or updates will be coming within the next seven days in L.A. I'm not I have been covering that trial in person on and off. I'm not there this week, but they are resuming a trial about whether USC football and basketball players should be considered employees.

Right. So that's ongoing as we speak. The reason I'm not there in L.A. is because next Monday I will be taking a very long bus ride from New York City to Dartmouth because on Tuesday, the Dartmouth men's basketball players are having a union election, which was granted to them by the NLRB a few weeks ago. Oh, and by the way, then they're playing a basketball game against Harvard later that night.

So I'm going to be there, too. And, you know, and then, of course, there are several other federal court cases on both sides of the country that have moved a lot more slowly than these National Labor Relations Board cases. We could get into them, but I think the upside of them is kind of the same as the two I just described, which is athletes being considered employees or athletes having to get a share of media rights revenue, get paid more than they are, et cetera, et cetera. Amanda Christovich, front office sports is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. So the running joke from the anti pay players, compensate players, players are employees group, whatever you want to call them. The running joke was, well, Dartmouth basketball players are employees.

They should all be fired. I realize they didn't win 12 games and play for national championship last year. But what would be the argument against Southern Cal football players against them?

Yeah, I mean, it's just it's the joke. They say, well, Dartmouth, those guys weren't any good at basketball. I mean, they are. They're the worst men's basketball team in the Ivy League.

And and and the Ivy League is not a bastion of great basketball. So that was their that was their joke. But they were they weren't really joking. They were like basically saying, well, that, you know, those players will get fired because they weren't playing well or they weren't winning. Like, there's really no argument. That's not the right argument to make, is it? No, because you can be bad at your job and still be an employee.

You know, and but but to your question, the argument about the USC players that I've seen in use in court, like literally, you know, with with them under oath, the with the athletic department officials under oath is that because playing on a football team is voluntary. Oh, it's not employment. And it's like, well, I I don't have to work at front office sports.

I could be unemployed, but I choose to have a job. You know, I mean, that's how ridiculous that argument is. Right. Yeah. And and then the other argument is that there are no rules, like the players don't actually have to abide by the rules. Right. They're just suggestions and there's no punishment. It's just accountability activities, which, of course, we all know is a word I'm not allowed to say on the radio. Right.

So those are literally like not even the jokes, but like the arguments that were used in court. And I don't think they're being very successful. Accountability activities. I'm going to try that with my 15 year old just to see just as I have an accountability activity for you, Jack. We'll see if we'll see if that works. Amanda Kristovich is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show final final area. And this will this is where we circle back to the CBA.

Charlie Baker, the NCAA president who has done some, I think, interesting interviews and where he's like he's not against players transferring. He's for it. Right.

Wherever. He's finally gotten back to this point. But he says Congress is going to have to step in and and set some rules about. And he's really talking about NIL because they want antitrust protection from Congress. But isn't the protection collectively bargain? That's this is this should protect the schools to collectively bargaining with the athletes. Isn't that the endgame here without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running? Everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools and power plants.

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For more time, product availability and fast delivery call click Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. It's absolutely the solution. And at this point, it's probably the only viable solution, I think.

Charlie Baker, when he talks about Congress fixing college sports, he's not talking about them fixing the issues that are actually on the table. Right. This this unrestricted free agency, the idea of transferring whenever no salary caps. Right. That all of that could be fixed through collective bargaining, through recognizing an employment union, giving some you know, you can't have an antitrust exemption without collective bargaining. Right.

And vice versa. But what he's talking about fixing is amateurism. That's why the NCA and the power conferences are paying millions of dollars to lobby in Congress to fix. They don't want to fix the issues that we are seeing now.

Right about NIL and the transfer portal. They want to go back to the days of yore when amateurism was the rule, the law of the land. And we are so far beyond that, obviously, that the only I mean, he's right. If that's your goal, the only way to fix it is to get Congress to pass a law to reverse all of these court decisions. They won't do it because they're not that interested in it. No, they've got bigger problems.

I mean, yes, they have bigger problems, but also there's like four people in combined in both chambers of Congress that have any clue what this issue is about. And I am including not in the group of four, the one former college football coach, because he doesn't have a clue either about a lot of that. Amanda Christovich, front office sports. I love having you on. Appreciate your time. Have fun on the bus ride up to Dartmouth. Oh, thank you. I will.

It'll be quite a scenic route. And yeah, I will be reporting there for that whole crazy day union election to basketball game and everything in between. So thanks for having me. I thank you much. We'll talk again. All right. Out by Granger for the ones who get it done.