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Shop today in stores online at Nordstrom.com or download the Nordstrom app. That's right. Welcome to this edition of the Rich Eisen Show. We're live in Los Angeles, California. 844204 Rich is the number to dial, right? He lives in California. Welcome to the Rich Eisen Show.
We're live in Los Angeles, California. 844204 Rich is the number to dial, right here on the Roku Sports Channel, Infinity Sports Network. We say hello to everybody out there that's listening to us on Sirius XM or Odyssey or later on, on all three hours of our podcast. No Contest Wrestling's going to have their latest edition of such overreaction. Monday's going to be a segment right in the middle of this show.
It's a centerpiece, if you will. Jerry Dulak of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette is going to be zooming in to talk about the Aaron Rodgers arrival in Pittsburgh. He'll be zooming in from Oakmont.
He'll be zooming in from the media tent at the United States Open. And so that's going to be a fun conversation. Albert Breer in hour number three on everything going on in the NFL. Jay Bill is about to join us to talk about last night's game two, the equalizer in the NBA Finals between Oklahoma City and Indiana. And also to talk about this new $2.8 billion settlement that's gone down in the NCAA. What does it mean? Apparently now schools can pay athletes directly and anybody that was performing in college athletics from 2016 on is going to get retroactive NIL money.
There's a lot to talk about in what is a changing landscape for college athletics, which definitely does affect Olympics athletics and athletes. So Jay's going to join us shortly. 844-204 Rich is the number to dial. Good to see you over there, Chris Brockman. Good to see you, sir. Hey Rich, great to see you. For today's show, can you just picture me wearing the Wally green mask and doing this all the time? Can you just do that for the whole show today? Goodness gracious. The Red Sox did take care of the Yankees in a three game set to get within eight and a half games of the division leader. That's good for you. Has the Steinbrenner family officially transferred ownership to Rafael Devers?
How does that work? Good to see you over there, Jay. How are you?
Jay Feli is sitting in his chair. TJ Jefferson, candles lit over there? Or you're just lit because your battery or car is dead? Let it go. And then now we talk about what's going on in our personal life.
And then you never would have known. Well, this is going to be this three hour is going to be a sanctuary for you. Like many of us here in Los Angeles, if they're retroactively paying these people, then Reggie Busch is he's going to. Well, there's a reason we'll talk about this later. There's a reason why I think he got his Heisman back and many reasons why I got his Heisman back. The first I'll tell you what, though, it looks like somebody there's a bunch of people buying in Heisman House because they're going to get some retroactive.
And I think we have a list of those players and we're running through we're running through some of the draft. It's really a fascinating conversation. And oh, by the way, the Stanley Cup final is just awesome. It's just so much fun over regular standard overtime, then double overtime. Edmonton wins game one. Florida wins game two. And that that series between the the conference champions from last year as well in the Stanley Cup finals, even it won a piece. So final part.
Pardon me, singular. The NBA finals is saying hockey. Let's do that. I'm page turning. I'm page turning, Jay.
I'm page turning. We're all tied at one game apiece in the NBA finals as the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated in game two. This thing wasn't even close. Pacers got it to about 13, maybe a dozen points at some point in the second half. You thought maybe they'll be able to pull it off.
But no, no. 123-107 was the final. This thing wasn't even that close. Really wasn't even that close. It was a tough watch if you were looking for competitive basketball. The 68 win team that blew the second half of game one definitely took care of business.
Last night showed up another remarkable performance for Shea Gilges Alexander. 34 points, eight rebounds, five assists. He now has 72 points in his first two games in the NBA finals. Is that a new record? Did that set a new record? It did.
For a man with a hard G and a soft G in his name, it set all the records. It set all the records past Allen Iverson for the most points in the first two games of an NBA finals career. Chet Holmgren showed up.
The rest of the supporting cast showed up. And what now showed up is the Indiana Pacers going back home in a playoff series in these playoffs. It is remarkable.
Got to tell you, it is remarkable. They're going into game three of a series for the first time in these playoffs. One game apiece. They took a 2-0 lead on the Bucs. They shocked Cleveland by taking the first two in Cleveland. And that was the Hallibault night in game two where it looked like it was going to be one game apiece. And Tyrese took care of business. Church bells rang at the very end of that game to take a 2-0 lead back to Indiana.
And that was all she wrote. Stunned everybody in Cleveland. In the Eastern Conference Finals, we all saw what happened in game one. A Tyrese Halliburton shot at the end of regulation to force overtime. Despite being down a ton of points late in the game, they beat the Knicks in game one. The Knicks had a hangover in game two.
They lost that one. Indiana eventually took care of business in six. Last night, Oklahoma City is like, you know, the battle is now joined in a way that Indiana has not had a battle joined yet. So we shall see how it responds, how the Pacers do respond.
In the meantime, Shea Gilges Alexander talking about setting that record for the most points in the history of the NBA Finals. By somebody's first two cracks at it. I'm being myself. I don't think I tried to reinvent the wheel or step up to the plate with a different mindset. Just just try to attack the game the right way. And I think I've done a pretty good job of that so far.
Now, I would trade the points for two W's for sure. But, you know, this is where our feet are. This is where we are. And you can't go back in the past. You can only try to make the future better. So that's what I'm focused on. Yeah.
Wearing a John Lennon T-shirt or underneath a dress shirt. SGA. Imagining what can happen now that they're going back to Indiana and. This this guy is unstoppable right now. And has caused the Indiana Pacers head coach to. I mean, either be brutally honest, just resigned to the fact resigned to the fact or work in the refs.
You interpret this soundbite, please. Shea, you can you can mark down thirty four points before they even get on the plane tomorrow, you know, for the next game. I mean, the guy's going to score. We got to we got to find ways to make it as tough as possible on him. You know, we Williams played played really well tonight.
All the guys played well. And so, you know, we're going to have to we're going to have to do a lot of things better. Maybe that's a message to his locker room. Interesting. Yeah, we didn't he didn't specifically mention free throws, but, you know. Well, he was in a mood. Listen to this exchange with Rick Carlow. Curious you talk a lot about disposition and physicality. How do you feel like your team handled that?
Because obviously the standards seem to ramp up their intensity much more. Not well. OK, so there's that bum bum bum. Listen, I don't think this is any I shouldn't preface things this way, but I will here.
I don't think this is anything terribly insightful. What I'm about to say, the NBA season comes down to a 72 hour period starting Wednesday. It goes Wednesday, Friday. We're not waiting two days in between games like we did between games one and two and games two and three. Game three is Wednesday night. Game four is Friday night. We get ourselves a split and they go back to the city of wearing all blue shirts, all blue shirts last night. And as if they gain a split in the city where they're all wearing gold shirts, yellow shirts. This is going to be a tough one for Indiana to come away with another win in Oklahoma City.
I would proffer to say hold court if you can. Win your home games, have a parade. That's the way it works. And if they go back and take both at home and take a three games to one lead back to Oklahoma City, meaning it's all about game six, then we got ourselves a shot for Indiana. But the way I saw it last night, Oklahoma City has obviously what it takes to win one Wednesday or Friday night.
And this is it. Indiana, you got your big, huge game one stunner. But they did what they had to do. They did what they had to do. They got a piece. Now they got a hold serve.
They hold serve. Off they go. We're going to see a parade. You know, in Indiana.
Well, they're not taking two at home, I don't think. We shall see. We shall see. It's going to be fun.
That's for sure. Wednesday night. 844-204-RICH is the number to dial on the program. Aaron Rodgers is in western Pennsylvania. He is in western Pennsylvania. He has put pen to paper, according to Albert Breer, who will be joining us in hour number three. One year deal. Thirteen point eight five million dollars.
Ten of it guaranteed five point eight five in incentives. Look at this guy here, coach. There he is.
Aaron putting pen to paper, smiling. Is that a wedding ring on his left hand? That's another conversation. Who knows? I totally missed that.
Who knows? Because this man has been taking care of business, he has said over the last two months. Albert Breer again, joining us in hour number three, saying in his MMQB today he has been in lockstep with the Steelers since March. Yeah, so we didn't know.
Since March. They played as Chris. Remember when he showed up in Pittsburgh for like a day? Albert says they snuck him in a back gate where construction workers were bringing dirt and sod for something that they were redoing their field there. And they told him just come in the back way.
So nobody notices. And he drove himself in a car. He rented a car.
Non-descript. He didn't want to be found out. He saw Russ's I'm taking commercial from Newark Airport and raised him with I'll rent myself a car. Drive myself to Pittsburgh. Again, everything you think about Aaron Rodgers. He'll just show up and say, I did the exact opposite and then blame it all on the media for overblowing it. That's a good way to endear yourself to those fans, too.
Brother, I'm going to tell you, the way you endear yourself to those fans is you show up and you work hard. And he's already doing that. He's already doing that. Apparently, he's in that playbook right now with Arthur Smith.
They're digging in and. You know, he's. I don't know, this is the jet. Honestly, I don't I don't know. I think it's going to work out. I have a feeling like the guy that we saw in December last year might have turned a physical corner.
I don't know. Guy turns 42 years of age on the 2nd of December in between weeks 13 and 14 of this campaign. Week 13 is a home date against Buffalo. On November 30th. Two days later, he turns 42 and then a few days after that at Baltimore for the first of two games against the Ravens, both of them in the month of December. Oh, my goodness. That's the Pittsburgh Steelers schedule.
Actually, that's not true. The second one is the first week of January and the last weekend of the season. So will he hold up? What's the record going to be in week 13? Because you look at that schedule. It is deep and full of teams that he knows intimately.
Well, including week one against the Jets. And it is a dirt cheap contract for somebody that does have neck up, neck up. Hall of Fame, all world, sixth sense football.
Savant ability. Imagine all of that football acumen in between those temples. For 14 million bucks a year, 10 guaranteed. Certainly when you've got the other option, because Russ was already out the door, apparently, the other option is somebody like Justin Fields, 20 million a year, still learning some NFL ropes. And that's the whole point is that you've got, hopefully in his in their mind, the ability of an all world veteran.
You know, say what you will about Russ, obviously he's got that neck up ability, but Rogers, I think, is on a different level. And hopefully for the Steelers, somebody with the physical attributes to play the position, to make it through an 18 week regular season, 17 games, the crucible of that, and then be ready for a playoff run in what does appear to be the last run. Rogers said he would come inexpensively, told that to Pat, and he was a man of his word, putting a pen to paper on that contract. And he's going to be there for this mandatory minicamp. And he is not leaving the Steelers in the lurch.
The Steelers did wait, did have a long time waiting for him, but he's showing he's there and he's speaking on Tuesday. Just reiterating one more time, you look at that schedule and he faces the NFC North again. He's got the Packers in his house, he's got the Vikings in Ireland, he's got the Lions in his house, and he goes and visits Chicago.
Good Lord. All of the division games in one of the toughest divisions in football, a reunion right off the bat with the Jets. There's the DK Metcalf reunion game in week two, a visit to Harbaugh's house out here in Southern California. That's six playoff teams from last year. There is a romp through the AFC East in full, including that game against Buffalo, his last game, if healthy, in the NFL as a 41 year old. He turns 42 between that game and the first of two games against the Ravens. Come on.
Two against Burrow. It's all locked in. And him locking in on that contract takes the question. If he's going to show up out the window, that's now gone. Will we be talking about week one? Oh, man, he should have been there in April. It should have been there in May. Of course not.
This is now no longer fodder for discussion. Now it's about what can he do with this team? How quickly can they get up to speed? Will he be healthy? Is he going to be like the guy that played for the Jets in the final month of the season? Is he going to be the guy that can actually show up and be the Rogers of old in a way that he never was for those two years for the Jets?
Is this his Vikings in the Favre career path of Hall of Famer with the Packers, show up with the Jets, thoroughly disappoint with results, then go to one other spot, threaten to make the Super Bowl? Is that what's going to happen? Can't wait. Front row seat popped one ready. 844-204 Rich, number to dial.
We have set up this program when we come back. Jay Bilas on what happened in the first two games of the NBA Finals. And what in the world does this new settlement with the NCAA and athletics mean for everyone?
That's next. This is the Rich Eisen Show. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance, fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. With rising housing prices and steeper mortgage rates, we know home ownership may seem too expensive to be achievable. But that's why we offer a home buyer's choice loan that can open the door to affordable home ownership. Our home buyer's choice loan has no down payment options available, which means you don't need to wait years to save money. And with our no refi rate drop, you may be able to lower your rate in the future without refinancing. Plus, while most lenders require borrowers to purchase private mortgage insurance unless they can make a 20% down payment, we don't require PMI. Finally, we offer fixed payments, so your monthly payment will always be the same. So if you're looking for your first home or your next home, you can open the door with a Navy Federal home buyer's choice loan. Visit navyfederal.org to learn how you can achieve home ownership. Navy Federal Credit Union.
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Learn more at navyfederal.org. Let's talk about coffee, people. If you're like me, your day cannot begin until you've had your first cup.
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www.drinktrade.com. Back here on the show, J. Bill is going to join us in just a couple of minutes time, and we'll have a chitchat with him.
So Chris, I know what you said at the top of the program. Which part? Do you really, in all seriousness, you as a hard bitten New Englander, you're from all over. I'm from all over. I wouldn't call you softened.
I've softened a little. Do you really like or think it's cool that they put a Muppet head on the Boston Red Sox. It's the mascot, Wally the Green Monster. Putting Wally, you know, a mascot anyway. Like a mascot.
Like a mascot. You're cool with it. You think it's fun. It's great.
I do. So if another team did it, you would have no problem with it, right? Every team does it except your stupid team.
It doesn't like to have fun whatsoever. That's not true. That's not true. By the way, I find that very funny since you rooted for the team that supposedly had no fun for quite some time.
Winning is very fun. I know that. Like yesterday and Friday.
Exactly. Well, you lost Friday. You mean Saturday and Sunday.
Whatever days that we won, those were fun. He's locked in, this guy. He's locked in. It's cute to hear you two argue over which team is better. What hat do you guys put on when you hit a home run? You put on a hat. We don't do hats, B.
You know what I mean? B doesn't do hats. Or am I B? You're B. I'm B.
Well, they haven't won a World Series in 30 years. Okay. So what? This guy. Have some more fun. Oh, really? So we weren't the guy who brought out, the team that brought out Grimace and had fun. You hated that last year. Exactly.
Because he's got respect for himself. I defy you. Look at this.
I defy you to find one clip where I say I hated Grimace. That's absurd. What is not fun? Everyone's literally smiling and laughing. That's right.
Because somebody just hit a home run. Do you believe this? He hit his doll here before that even happened. So you hated the Hawk, too, I think. Yeah, that I hated. Don't get it twisted. We're about to be joined by a man that once famously sued Grimace.
That's right. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. Barney. What happened with the NCAA and this settlement, $2.8 billion that now goes to previous athletes as a back pay for NIL and now a new pool of money created to pay athletes directly from school to athlete? I'm kind of a blank slate here, so please have the floor on it, Jay. What happened here?
Yeah. It's called the House case. So it's an antitrust case, and the plaintiffs, NCAA athletes over the past, I think it is eight or nine years, basically from 2016 to 2024, was the class for back damages. They sued the NCAA under an antitrust theory that the NCAA schools colluded together in restraint of trade to restrict what athletes could earn or accept in the marketplace. And that was going to put the NCAA, if they lost that case, and I think they would have lost it, and most legal observers would agree with that, that would put them in the range of $4 or $5 billion in damages. So the NCAA settled the case with the House plaintiffs, so you're correct, $2.8 billion are going to be paid in back damages to former NCAA athletes during that time period. And then also, there's going to be a component of revenue sharing in the future for NCAA athletes. This is all under what is a 10-year injunction, and the court in the Ninth Circuit and Judge Claudia Wilkin are going to keep jurisdiction of this matter. So if things come up over the course of time, the court can pass on those issues.
There's a place for people to go when they have issues with the settlement, if at all. But that time frame is going to give the NCAA time to adjust and maybe try to figure things out. And by that, I mean they can enter into a collective bargaining agreement with the players. What I think is probably more likely that the NCAA is going to try to do over this time period is they're going to go to Congress and say, look, you told us to get our act together. We settled this case.
Now make this settlement into law. I think that's going to be the next step in the NCAA's lobbying efforts with Congress. But under the settlement, Rich, so you have the $2.8 billion that's going to former players. Then you've got revenue sharing, and it's going to be 22% of television revenue, ticket revenue, sponsorship revenue calculated through the power five as an average. That's going to be about $20.5 million to start per school. Now the schools don't have to pay their athletes that money, but they're allowed to up to that $20.5 million annual amount.
There's an escalator clause of 4% per year for years two and three. And then after that, the revenue amount is going to be recalculated. So if you take all the expenses that athletes have been getting, whether it's scholarships, food, things like that, and add the revenue share amount, the NCAA believes that's going to get athletes to around 50% of overall revenue that's going to come their way. There's also going to be a new entity, a new commission that's going to oversee compliance of the revenue cap. And when has that not worked out great for the NCAA? So boy, do I have a lot of follow-up questions.
Let's take it one at a time here. The $2.8 billion that's going to be given out to athletes that have been participating in sports since 2016, whose money is that? And who decides who gets what out of the $2.8 billion, Jay?
It's all detailed in the settlement. So it'll be members that opted into the class. There have been certain players, certain athletes during that time period, 600 of them about, that said, I don't want to be a part of the class.
I want to have available my own action against the NCAA. So that was not a huge number relative to the amount of athletes that opted in. I don't know exactly how much it's going to be for each athlete.
They're certainly going to be showing. I mean, you can opt in and maybe you wouldn't have received anything because you didn't have any great value. You might've been on a roster, but didn't have a great value that you could have commanded in the marketplace. So certainly it's going to be based upon, there are going to be issues that it's based upon your actual value, but that's all hashed out in the settlement. But $2.8 billion is a pretty big number for the NCAA to pay out. And it's a pretty big admission that they've been violating federal antitrust law for a long time. So they have $2.8 billion sitting around the NCAA? They've been preparing for this.
Yeah. They've been preparing for this for quite some time. They knew, I mean, this case has been going on for a while, the settlement's been in place for a while. It just got approved.
The court finally approved it. So now they can move forward and implement it and start paying athletes. The biggest, I think, thing for me in this is now schools can sign players to contracts. So when you sign a player to a multi-year contract with this $20.5 million amount annually, that's going to keep going up because revenues keep going up. In those arm lengths negotiations, you can also put buyouts in those contracts. And when you put a buyout in, these players aren't going to go anywhere.
They're not going to pay that. It may be a few players that might be able to maneuver, but there are going to be fewer places where you can transfer and then it's going to cost you money to transfer. And if another school pays your buyout, that's going to count against their cap. So it's going to make it restrictive once athletes sign a contract. Now if you want to go to school and not sign a contract, you can still move around like you want to now. But I think you're going to see schools signing their players to contracts and that's going to give them a lot more stability in the sports that really matter to them. Well then that's where collective bargaining is going to come in. That's where unionizing is going to come in. That's where professionalizing is going to come in and we're clearly on that path.
Does this mean NILs? Does this mean collectives and things like that go away or schools can continue to do that? Like again, Ohio State, we can go down the list of SEC schools, my school, Michigan. I'm sure in the case of your alma mater, certainly on the basketball front, Duke, do these collectives now just add on to the 25 and a half so there will actually be haves and have nots? It's not like a level, we're all under one salary cap playing field.
Jay? Well the answer is yes and no to that. So there will still be third party NIL and there will be no limit to that NIL except that any contract for NIL, for your name, image and likeness in the marketplace is going to be subject to review by Deloitte for fair market value.
So let me just make up something. If there's a local car dealership in Ann Arbor that wants to pay the third string quarterback $4 million a year to do commercials for a local car dealership that grosses only a million dollars per year, Deloitte's likely to say that's not a fair market value deal. That's a circumvention deal that is pay for play and not a fair market deal for name, image and likeness. So if Deloitte dings that deal and says, nope, not fair market, there can be arbitration that's going to be quickly settled and is finding arbitration over that particular dispute. But really what this will do is say, all right, are these market based deals that make sense in the marketplace and aren't just a way to circumvent the cap and just pay for play essentially in addition to the revenue sharing. So it'll I think it'll streamline things a little bit. There'll still be some deals here or there that might raise your eyebrows, but it won't be I think it'll be a little bit more orderly. The difficulty is going to be in this new commission with enforcement. It is, by theory, going to be centralized and move quicker. But how many times have we heard that in the past with regard to NCAA enforcement?
Man, Jay, what does this mean for Olympic sports, Jay? Because I can already imagine 20 and a half million dollars, right? There are some schools that get that and that can make up for a massive shortfall in budgets, right? But are they mandated this money must go to players or they're able to just take it and throw it at the bottom line, like say some major league baseball owners do instead of making sure they get enough players to compete with the haves, they just say, screw it. We're going to we're going to take this money and throw it at our bottom line rather than give it to players.
Is that possible that we're going to see? This is not a mandate that that schools have to share their revenue. It's allowing them to share it. So no school has to give any player a nickel if they don't want to. They can allocate it basically now, however they want. So if they want to allocate all twenty point five million to football, they can do that. And it's a fair question. How many sports are schools going to have?
But I've always asked this question. How many should they have? When you and I were in school, there were a lot fewer sports and there are now like schools now have 30, 29 sports played on the varsity level. The SEC, I believe, has 18. So is the SEC shortchanging their athletes when the Ivy League isn't?
I don't know the right answer to that. What we will see going forward are challenges with regard to Title nine and employment, because the old model of amateurism and all that stuff in a multibillion dollar entertainment industry, that's dead. So there is a key question as to how many sports will schools decide they want to have? And I think that's going to be a school by school, conference by conference issue. But what I believe to be the case is schools are going to have however many sports benefit them. And one of the things that happens with athletes in the quote unquote non-revenue or Olympic sports is they retain students. These athletes want to compete. And so they don't move around quite as much as the athletes in the revenue producing sports, at least as of late. So if if Cal Berkeley, which years ago tried to do this, they tried to eliminate their baseball program. The university community rose up and said, no, we're not doing this.
And they found the money and they kept it. And I think you're going to see that pretty much across the board. And one last thing on the Olympic thing, please. The Olympic sports, I've heard administrators over the years say, boy, we start paying athletes, it's going to really hurt the United States Olympic movement, because college sports is the breeding ground for our Olympic athletes and Olympic movement. And I'm going, oh, so now the college athletes got to pay for our Olympic movement, too. They have to remain unpaid so we can win medals. If we really if we really care about our Olympic movement, the government should deal with that. Not not college athletes. And I don't see coaches anywhere taking a discount so we can win more medals or facilities not being built so we can win more medals. We got to get out of this idea that the players have to take a discount so we can do all these other things.
Those days are over. Yeah. I mean, I was literally about to say this sounds like the feds need to need to get involved.
You know what I mean? And which is obviously rife with its own issues ripped straight from the headlines, right? That that, you know, it sounds like the the NCAA is outsourcing their oversight, their compliance, their outsourcing the I guess, accounting, right? I mean, Deloitte is now going to figure out whether something's cap compliant in in in college athletics. So the question is, I guess, is who is going to get together and say, we're just going to create our own world with a commissioner and a union and players and go for it. And does Congress really need to be the one to bang these heads together?
Jay, because I don't know if that'll ever happen. You know, at some point that may happen, Rich. I mean, this is just my belief that as long as this money train is is going smoothly down the tracks, Congress doesn't have any incentive to get involved. And one thing that I've learned over the last several years is, you know, Congress doesn't want to take this on and sort of have the federal government doing, you know, running college sports by the same token. They don't want to give the NCAA a law that takes them out of antitrust scrutiny.
And then at the same time, allow them to oversee their own shop, you know, like the Fox in charge of the henhouse type of deal. So one of the one of the issues that would get Congress involved, in my view, is if there's a major disruption to college sports, if you saw the power for conferences break off and start their own thing, maybe Congress might say, hey, wait a minute, we got constituents that are smaller schools that this is going to affect that could happen. But because things have been, for the most part, pretty orderly, and every check is clearing, you know, ratings are up. You know, there's been no game canceled because of any of these issues. Congress hasn't really had the incentive to get involved. But what I do believe is going to happen, at least going to be the NCAA's strategy here is Congress has basically told them in so many words, get your house in order before we get involved. And I think the NCAA is looking at this settlement saying, all right, now we have our house in order. So make this into law, give us a law that codifies this settlement and gives us some cover so we're not getting sued every five minutes. My personal belief is yes, you don't want to get sued, stop breaking the law. You know that that's, let's start there. You're breaking the law all the time.
Stop doing that. And to me, the easiest way to do that is like all these schools are market market competitors against one another. So you guys do whatever you want, pay whomever you want, however much you want, and we'll go from there. Then we don't have any antitrust problems. All the antitrust problems go away. But they've never had the will to do that.
And I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon anyway. Well, listen, Jay, it just sounds to me that there will just be more haves and more have nots. And at some point, the haves are all going to get together. That's what it sounds like to me.
I mean, maybe, maybe. But to that point, we've always had haves and have nots. And paying athletes now allows the former have nots access to better talent than they have ever had. So I think it spreads talent out more than it concentrates it. Because people think it was something not you, but some people out there think that there was an equitable system before NIL.
The answer was there wasn't. And I think you may recall a few years ago, Nick Saban was saying, well, we don't have the same amount of money as Texas A&M does. I mean, Alabama was complaining that they couldn't compete. So by paying players, Texas A&M could get as many good players as Alabama could get, which they couldn't get before, or at least felt like they couldn't get.
So this actually spreads talent out more. And I think we're seeing that. But it's never going to make Ball State the same as Indiana. Like that's not going to happen with this system, unless there's revenue sharing among the schools. But you're never going to see that. Like the SEC is not going to share their, in the Big Ten, they're not sharing their money with anybody.
That's not going to happen. Before I let you go, Jay, your opinion of the first two games of the NBA Finals and how it could be a roadmap of how the final five, if necessary, games go? I think the games have been great.
The whole season's been great. But I think what game two showed you, you know, game one, Indiana had an amazing comeback. And similar to a couple of the comebacks they had maybe against the Knicks earlier where they were down. That's not a good recipe against Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's defense is the real thing. I mean, I put that up with some of the great defenses in the history of the NBA. That's how good they are.
With their ball pressure, their rotations, their close outs, their rim protection, they are legit. And the one thing I think if people didn't know it, and part of it is this big market thing, Shae Gilges Alexander is a great superstar. We've been banding about what a superstar mean. I don't know what it means, but I know it when I see it.
And that dude is the real deal. He ain't going anywhere. He's going to be getting 30 in all these games. Yeah I mean that's what Rick Carlisle sounded resigned after the game, saying he's going to get 34 before he gets on the plane.
We got to do something about it. So you think Oklahoma City eventually takes it in, not to put words in your mouth, but what do you think? I thought before the series, and I've been proven wrong in a couple of these things, that Oklahoma City would win it in six. But I mean this puts a tremendous amount of strain on Indiana to win their home games.
I think if they can win these two at home, which is a big if, they're fully capable of doing that. But home court hasn't been the benefit this year in the NBA that I expected in the past. It's amazing how many times you're seeing this, well teams that were down this much in the fourth quarter were 0 and 1,200, and you've seen that change this year. But it seems like home court advantage has not been what it was in the 90s, although the officiating has been what it was in the 90s. These games have been ultra-physical, so I don't think anybody can complain that somehow physical defense is not being played, because it is.
These games have been tremendous in that regard. All right, Jake. You're the man.
We'd love to have you back before the draft and then before the American Century Championship, sir, where I will be seeing you. Looking forward to it already. Very much so, Jay. Thanks for the time. You always make me smarter, man. Love our chats. Always a pleasure. Thank you.
The great Jay Billis here on the Rich Eisen Show. So much to take in right there, man. Even the safest drivers still encounter unsafe conditions, so it's important they do it in a safe vehicle. And Hyundai's offer available class executive advanced safety features to help keep you protected against the many challenges the road throws your way. Basically, in a Hyundai, you can drive as safely as possible and enjoy your journey and confidence and style. When you change lanes, signal check for traffic and enjoy the added safety of Hyundai's available blind spot view monitor. Constantly scan for dangers and take advantage of Hyundai's standard forward collision avoidance assist to help prevent accidents by alerting you of imminent collisions and automatically applying the brakes. Stay alert at all times and be thankful that Hyundai's standard driver attention warning system monitors your attention levels and can bring your focus back on the road. Safety is all about making the right decisions on the road and when selecting a vehicle. Learn more at HyundaiUSA.com.
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Assembled in Flint and Hamtronic, Michigan in Fort Wayne, Indiana of U.S. and globally sourced parts. Were you a trial lawyer? Yeah.
Well, yeah. I was a commercial litigator. So I did trial.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, like you did that opening statement, closing statement. The one case that I had that was somewhat gained some notoriety was I represented a costume manufacturer against Barney the purple dinosaur. So the group that owned the rights to Barney went around and they have to do this called alliance partnership. They were, they were suing people who were infringing upon the image and likeness of Barney. And so if you don't protect your rights, you can lose them.
So it just kind of happens that way. So I was representing a guy named Phillip Morris who owned Morris costumes and he described himself as the Colonel Sanders of the costume industry. They sold this thing called Hillary the hippo, which looked exactly like Barney and it was just being rented for people to do parties for their kids and all that. So we wanted to settle the case right away, but they wouldn't settle it because they wanted to make a, they wanted to make an example out of it. So we went to federal court and won, we won and we wound up. Then it went to the fourth circuit court of appeals. I had to argue about Barney, the purple dinosaur, one step away from the United States Supreme court.
The funniest part. And because the case is over, I can say this now. I had, I had had the costume, the evidence of the trial, the costume at home for some reason. And my wife and her friends used it to have a birthday party for some of our kids, for some of the kids in the neighborhood. And they had all, you know, this is back before cell phone pictures and all this pictures of all this.
And I'm like, are you, what are you doing? Like, do you realize this could end the trial right here? If, if the defeat, you know, the other side got ahold of this, is that why it never made it to the Supreme court?
No, no, no, no. We wound up, that, that never would have made a period, but the fact that it made it the fourth circuit court of appeals, I would have loved it. Just to hear Jay Pellis, Justice Rehnquist, I ask you, I subpoenaed Barney to the trial, honest to God, I subpoenaed Barney to the trial. The other side said, you know, your honor, you know, we can't do that. There are only three of these costumes in existence.
It's on the road doing this and hardship of bringing it in. And the costume is a six foot eight inches tall, weighs like 250 pounds or whatever. And I stood up, I said, your honor, I'm six eight and I weigh about 240.
I got in there just fine. And so the judge ordered the costume and they brought it, they brought it, opened up this big truck and they wouldn't let anybody see it unless somebody was in it. Barney pops out of the back of a truck onto the loading dock. The judge came down, all the, the, the court reporter and every employee of the federal building was there to see it. It's a celebrity, right? It was the dumbest thing you'd ever seen in your life. Oh my gosh, I haven't heard that story in a while. Laugh out loud. Still so good.
He brought Barney to the trial. Your honor, I'm six foot five, what did you say, 240? Is that what he said? Almost 240.
Dude, six, six eight, 240. That's pretty good. It's a big dog. He looks good. Stout.
I got here just fine. I order Barney's appearance, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't let Barney be seen as a costume. Right.
And scare the kids. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Barney's real.
Barney can throw out first pitches and change fortunes of baseball franchises and turn towns into Mets towns. Grimace. Grimace. Oh, is that right? Yeah.
The approval. Oh, darn it. I did it again.
Grimace is supposedly like a taste bud. And then you end up playing yourself back here on the rich eyes and show radio network. Everybody.
I got to be honest with you. You know, I I'm all for full, you know, fair market, free trade, all that good stuff, right? Free agency. I'm all for it, but I'm, I'm hearing that now schools can just pay players. I don't have a problem with them paying players.
I have a problem if sports go away because they're not getting the money or schools go away because their money is the same as the big schools from this pool, but the big schools can then add on top with all sorts of stuff and IL deals. But he's even saying right there, Jay, that this is going to be watched by a group of CPAs from Deloitte. So it's going to be always tax season at Deloitte because this stuff's going to be going on three 65, 24 seven, three 65, all the time looking at these NIL contracts. Oh, okay. So that's my problem with this as well. In the same way, I had no problem with NIL. I just had a problem with like, we don't know what it means and there's no construct set up to run things in a way that's fair, equitable and transparent.
And sure enough, years later, it's like, we got a problem. Somebody's NIL deals in this part of the country is different from that part of the country. And who's enforcing it? Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. And, or there is, but some legislatures have this rule.
Some legislatures have that rule. And that's my concern with this is just like, who's going to be in charge of it. You're now outsourcing stuff to CPAs, courts.
I mean, really, this is going to work. I am genuinely concerned that this is just going to hit the market and nobody knows what the hell is going to happen. And it's, I'm telling you, it's all going to come down to a bunch of schools that have the same issues economically, same issues, or same, at least playing field sports wise. They're just going to say, why the hell are we going to be competing in this manner when we could just make up our own rules, have our own commissioner, have our own contracts, have our own stuff.
Well, I'm going to let some CPA in Deloitte handle this. We'll have our own management council. We'll do a whole damn thing and we're going to take our ball. We're going to go in somewhere else. Only if other schools, smaller schools, like I was saying to you during your commercial break, just as for an example, what if Jim Mora at UConn can pay somebody $2 million more to come to stores to play football instead of going to Syracuse? Right. What happens then?
And Jay Billis is like, that's great. UConn will be better. Okay. That's right. Yeah.
Maybe, like Cam Ward, would he have stayed at Washington State instead of going to Miami now? I don't know. Like, this is a total brave new world.
Jerry Dulak on the Steelers and Aaron Rodgers coming up. And is there going to be a tax for schools who go over there and I don't know what meant, you know, similar to like, you know, I mean, I imagine it's a hard cap. Yeah. I imagine it's a hard cap.
I'm sure everyone will abide by the hard cap. And in terms of like, is a court now going to be in terms of like compliance with everything? Oh my God. There's like, what? I don't know how many schools opted into this, but it's gotta be in the hundreds. Yeah.
It just seems like there's more opportunity for rules skirting, just like the old ways. Oh my goodness. Oh, and by the way, just like, uh, Conn and the wrath of Conn, remember the wrath of Conn? Remember that?
Remember that? Remember he was like dead pretty much on the, on the, on the bridge of his ship, right? He was like, he was, he was out, but he was going to spit his last breath at captain Kirk, Admiral Kirk.
Okay. Remember he's gonna spit his last breath knowing that he's a dead man. He's dead man on a ship. He was gonna, he was gonna spit his last breath at the, that's what the NCAA is doing at Michigan right now. They just finished their two day hearing on, yes, all the stuff that's been going on is the last basic compliance hearing the NCAA has under its current construct. That's what we got going on.
So wait, I'm going down on you because this thing's over, it's over. The NCAA is toast. I don't know what the hell they're going to do with themselves at 20, 20 million more teams to the NCAA basket men's tournament. Is that what we're going to do now?
The stupidest idea. Is that what we're doing? We're going to spit our last breath at the tournament too.
We haven't talked about that last week. That's what we're going to do. Yeah.
Yeah. This is crazy. 68's not enough. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's do 150. Dumb. Correct. So, I mean, I, I'm looking to have the NCAA dead and buried, but I'm concerned that there's no current construct to place this new system in and have it run efficiently where there's not more haves and there's more have-nots. Where there are more haves is what it looks like to me right now, don't you think? Currently, but this is, the whole idea behind this is to even up the haves and have-nots.
It's what he seems, Jay, Jay's just like, you know what? If you don't want to have this sort of stuff, stop breaking the law. And that's what they were doing, antitrust. And now Mahomes is going to go to his mailbox and get some sort of NIL back pay and go, oh, right. Oh, that's right.
I did play in 2016. That's a nice check. Like Joe Burrow's going to go to the mailbox? Yeah. Hey. Oh. Oh, hey. Wow.
That's a lot of zeros. Oh, great. New wine room. If you work as a manufacturing facilities engineer, installing a new piece of equipment can be as complex as the machinery itself.
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