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Frank Cappello: [00:00:00] to this week's bonus episode of Lever Time Premium, exclusively for the Lever supporting subscribers. I'm Lever producer Frank Capello. this week myself and Lever reporter Amos Barshad were joined by sports writer Matt Brown. who's been doing a lot of great writing about how the private equity industry could be getting involved in college football here in the U. S. The controversy is centered around Florida State University, whose football team is currently seeking to exit its conference, the ACC, which could cost Florida State over half a billion dollars in exit penalties. In order to raise that money, Florida State's athletics department is reportedly considering taking on private equity investment.

In today's interview, myself and Amos spoke with Matt about how private equity's involvement in college sports could negatively impact the experience of student athletes, the fans, and the [00:01:00] institutions themselves. and for any of our listeners who like myself do not know much about sports or college sports, Matt breaks down everything you need to know about college athletics programs, media rights, and sports conferences. So don't worry, this is a very rudimentary conversation about how college sports works.

Thank you so much for being a supporting subscriber and funding the work that we do here at The Lever. Now here's today's interview.

Alright, today on Lever Time we are very excited to be joined by Matt Brown. Matt Brown is a journalist and a sports writer. Matt, thank you so much for being here today.

Matt Brown: Of course. It's my pleasure, fellas.

Frank Cappello: Uh, we are also joined by one of the Lever's reporters, Amos, thank you as well for being here, too.

Amos Barshad: Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here.

Frank Cappello: Alright, so Matt, you're here to talk about, private equity in college football. Before we even get into that, um, you're a former political organizer, so I'm curious, how does that background inform your sports journalism? Because I don't imagine a lot of sports writers have a background in politics.

Matt Brown: [00:02:00] Not, not very many. I have a really pretty unique background, I think, in general, cause I didn't go to journalism school. Uh, I did some political field organizing. I taught elementary school for a little while. Um, I, I even in a very different part of time of my life, I was an LDS missionary and like did the bicycle thing and knocked on doors.

And I, I kind of joke when I talk to like J school classes, those three jobs. are absolutely excellent training for journalism because you were trying to talk to people that do not want to talk to you at all. And, right, like, I was working in Indiana, knocking doors for Joe Donnelly and a bunch of Indiana progressive people during the Tea Party election.

So you can imagine. There's nothing that an athletic director or a football coach or a Learfield executive can say to me that somebody in Kokomo, Indiana or a fourth grader in Louisiana or anybody else hasn't said to me before in more colorful language. So you learn to both, I think, develop a really thick skin.

And you also, I think, have to learn how to, [00:03:00] you know, to connect with people in different ways to get them to want to talk to you at all, right? If you're a robot knocking doors or trying to do any kind of organization. Or if you're not trying to meet people where they are, it doesn't matter what your correct opinions may or may not be, it won't go anywhere, right?

It would be much easier for me to walk into a UAW hall and talk about football than it is necessarily about Social Security or about, you know, solidarity with people that they might not necessarily, uh, you know, believe in. And that has been important in covering college athletics, which is, which is my, you know, has been my beat here for the last decade.

Because. None of these stories are just sports stories. College sports, these are generally public institutions. So how those universities allocate money, and how they, how they earn money, and how they decide to spend it, those are explicitly and literally political decisions. People choose to support and affiliate with different college programs for religious or class or Uh, you know, personal identity issues independent of, of just [00:04:00] football.

Um, and so it really kind of ties in, I think, with my entire professional experience, which, you know, I can't say everybody should be like me, but it's helped extra points be successful and helped me kind of connect the dots, I think, in a way that would be different if I had spent the beginning part of my career just learning how to diagram a three, four defense.

Frank Cappello: that's amazing. That makes so much sense that, uh, and I never really thought about it that way and that you're, you are writing about public institutions and these, these, these schools where all of these moneyed interests are now coalescing.

So let's get into the, conversation about what's been happening in college sports, specifically college football. But, but first we'll actually, I think need a little bit of background because we're talking about private equity in college football. We're talking We don't need to, a background on private equity because I think our listeners actually might know quite a bit about that at this point.

but we need background on college football, me especially. So, first can you explain just a little bit, how the college football economy works in terms of the schools, the conferences, and the media rights?

Matt Brown: Yeah, so this, this is a [00:05:00] great question, and I'll do my best to not get too into the weeds here. What I can tell you is that really since the dawn of cable television becoming more ubiquitous in the United States and after this 1984 Supreme Court case, Oklahoma v. Board of Regents that um, kind of deregulated who can control Broadcasts.

The money behind college football has skyrocketed. It's always been very popular in this country. Lots of places could sell 90, 000 tickets. But where the biggest chunk of new money has come in our lifetime here, has come from television rights. As ESPN and Fox and various other cable channels bid lots of money for the rights to broadcast these very popular names.

And if anything, it's become even more money. In a world where now we have, where people are cutting cords, right? And, and they're moving away from the traditional cable bundle. Because that means there's only a tiny number of programs that are Netflix [00:06:00] proof. That you have to watch while that event is happening.

And that's live sports. And there's not a ton of live sports that are broadly popular across lots of different regions and lots of different demographic groups. NFL is overwhelmingly number one. But college football in large parts of the country is number two, more than the NBA, certainly more than baseball or the NHL.

So it's a very popular property. typically what will happen is a television company like ESPN or Fox will enter into a multi year agreement with an athletic conference, which is a group of universities that compete against each other, like the Big Ten or the Ivy League, uh, or the SEC. And the value of those deals has gone up.

I mean, we're talking huge numbers here, right, the, the, the big 10 and their latest television contract at the end of the deal, we'll be paying big 10 schools like Ohio state and Michigan and UCLA Washington for some reason, upwards of 80 million a year per school. There's 16 schools. So we're talking about a [00:07:00] billion with a B level of, of, of television deal.

Frank Cappello: school within a conference get the same amount?

Matt Brown: It will vary depending on the league, but almost always yes, at least from television. So whether you're a championship contending program like Ohio State, or a program that's there for homecoming like Rutgers, you're going to get the same check from the three major television partners. every conference does not make the same amount of money.

The Big Ten and the SEC, uh, which are predominantly state flagship schools in the big, in the Midwest and in the southeastern part of the country, make the most. Those are the most historically successful programs. They have the largest fan bases, largest stadiums. Many of them are located in big markets.

There are other leagues that make less, and sometimes hilariously less. Like if you're a fan of a school in The Western Athletic Conference or the Missouri Valley Football Conference at the FCS level, your annual television check might be 200, 000. Sometimes it's less than what it costs to broadcast the [00:08:00] event.

So you're broadcasting the event at a loss. And you know, the ESPN is helping to pay for the truck a little bit, right? but even among schools that really care about winning championships, like Clemson or Texas Tech or Utah or Florida State, are in leagues that are making, are projected to make substantially less money.

Which then puts a difficult onus on athletic directors and university presidents to often try to chase as much of that money as you possibly can even if it means Asking your athletes to fly across the country or break up historical rivalries or make changes on the surface seem ridiculous Because they feel like if we don't maximize our television money then we won't have enough money to hire the best coach or Get the best whirlpool and laser show for our locker room and recruit the best athletes and then we'll lose and that takes us to a potentially, I think, earth shattering decision here with Florida State.

Amos Barshad: Yeah, uh, speaking of Florida State, uh, that's kind of, the new cycle where it's fixated right now. yeah, I know this is a whole other can of worms, but the, yeah, college, [00:09:00] uh, football playoff, uh, scandal involving Florida State, basically not being selected for the playoffs. has, as you've written, opened up a possibility that Florida State will go seek out, uh, outside investment, private equity investment.

so yeah, I don't know if you could, uh, yeah, break that down for us. Uh, I know, I know it's, uh, I know it's complicated, but I would love to hear, um, you know, your thoughts on, yeah, how this scandal, uh, you know, correlates to private equity, uh, potentially coming in.

Matt Brown: Yeah, and actually the private equity angle with FSU predates the college football playoff, uh, selection, but that could be a, it could really escalate it. So let me kind of explain how this works. Florida State is currently in a conference called the ACC. and they are, you know, depending on who you ask, either the, the most important, uh, program in that conference from a football perspective, or maybe the second most, but it's a large brand.

They have historically competed for national championships, and are one of the flagship football programs of this league. But the league includes a lot of other schools that are not very good at football. Uh, Wake Forest, [00:10:00] Boston College, Syracuse, apologies to anybody listening if I'm slandering your football program, but you suck.

Like, you know, you haven't, you haven't done anything meaningful, uh, since, since pre integration. So that's, that's, it's a different thing and you're a smaller school. So Florida State is projected to make Upwards of 30 million a year less. then maybe some schools that they might recruit against or compete against for championships like the University of Florida or Alabama or potentially Ohio State in the Big Ten.

So because of that they Many of their regents and people closely tied to the governance of Florida State have said well We should go to a different conference and for many many schools That's not terribly difficult to do if you're good enough to attract interest from a major league But Florida State has a problem and that they've signed something called a grant of rights agreement That runs into the 2030s, and what this means in plain English is that Florida State has signed a contract with the ACC that says, until the end of this agreement, [00:11:00] no matter where you are playing football, whether it's with us or the SEC or the AFC North in the NFL or, you know, in Europe or whatever it is you want to do, we own your television rights.

So you can go to the SEC. But you can't get the SEC television contract. It belongs to us through the end of this deal. Which means then, when you then couple in the exit fees, um, and the cost to make this, this transition, it would cost Florida State a staggering amount of money to break that agreement right now.

As of this recording, you know, industry people have told me we're looking at a half billion dollars. We're looking at a 500 million dollar and change. check to get out of it and you can fundraise, you know, it's one thing to fundraise for 10 million to fire your football coach. It's another thing for get 500 million, especially cause Florida state remember was like a women's college until like the thirties.

It doesn't have decades and decades and decades of rich lawyers and business executives, alumni like Florida or perhaps some other schools [00:12:00] do. So they don't have that liquidity. And so, because of that, hey, I might need 500 million bucks to bail out of my league so I can make, chase this more money, and I don't have that.

That's where private equity comes in. And, and, and, the, the Sportico reported this, I believe, in August, and I'm told those conversations have continued, where they've talked with 6th Street. They talked with J. P. Morgan and looked at some other entities to potentially get a gigantic cash infusion to allow them to buy their way out of the ACC and go somewhere else in exchange for now this other entity owning a stake.

Not in Florida State University, you can't really liquefy that, but in Florida State's long term broadcast revenue, potentially real estate assets around their stadium. Potentially, revenue from ticket sales or parking passes or any of the other things that are generated by their football program or their athletic program in general could then be controlled in minority or in majority by Sixth Street, which is [00:13:00] something that happens sometimes in European soccer, but has been completely foreign to the way that any collegiate or professional organization in the United States is operated.

Amos Barshad: Yeah, no, it's kind of just, just hearing it is, is, is kind of mind boggling. How could a private equity company like 6th Street, buy into a public institution like Florida State University? And per my understanding of your reporting, they would effectively create a, a spin off entity, like a new LLC, and FSU would put all that money generating stuff in there.

Matt Brown: That's, yeah, that's exactly right. And it's, it's, it's an idea that. Florida State did not invent in college athletics. The PAC 12, you know, eight years ago looked at doing this as a way to provide a cash infusion. What you'd basically have is Florida State would create some new LLC. You know, maybe we'd call it Seminole Athletics, Inc.,

or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, and they would move. Definitely they're broadcast assets, but potentially they're multimedia rights, which would be Florida State selling billboards or radio ads or, you know, uh, [00:14:00] any kind of other advertisements. It might include ticket sales. It might include any number of other revenues.

Park it in this company and then sell a stake of that to somebody else, like a handful of European soccer clubs have done.

Amos Barshad: Right, and, and the, as you've also written, you know, the thing that, The questions that immediately come up is what would private equity do with that ownership and you, you know, you mentioned, you know, right away you start thinking down the line, do they raise ticket prices on fans? You know, do they effectively create a situation which in which FSU has to get rid of other less, you know, popular sports programs.

Um, so yeah, I mean, is that, is that kind of where your head is at as soon as you hear private equity in college sports?

Matt Brown: It's, it's a major factor. And, and this is part of what makes, A lot of this challenging, right? Because college athletics is indisputably a big business. We're talking billions of dollars in media revenues here and that's been a cornerstone of my coverage. We should treat it like a major industry. And write about that, but in some ways it still doesn't operate exactly [00:15:00] like a business in part because like Florida State University is right now the 100 percent owner and operator of FSU athletics.

Florida State University, you know, at least for the time being. It's still technically a non profit that has, you know, uh, goals and obligations independent of generating and maximizing profit or revenue, right? And part of that means, you know, we're trying to provide educational opportunities and we're complying with federal Title IX, which means that we are required to operate a number of different sports.

Florida State is a women's soccer powerhouse, you know, as, as an example, one that regularly competes for national championships, if not wins them, sends women not just to the NWSL, but to compete internationally for, for countries around the world. You know, if there might be a, a talented woman in Nicaragua, uh, or in Europe who might decide that you're going to get your best development at Florida State, then you will elsewhere.

It, it, it trains Olympians and other places and they don't generate PNL. You know, profits the same way that the football team does, and they're, they're not [00:16:00] sponsored for that reason. But, Sixth Street doesn't need to care about those things, and in fact has a fiduciary interest not to care about those things.

It cares about generating return for their investors. So, Florida State Athletics goals that do not align with that particular goal If they are giving up, you know, uh, governing rights to this third party, there, there you have a conflict. And so I, I would say that would be absolutely one of the risks. Uh, potentially losing control of important real estate assets near a public university that might need to be developed for something other than maximizing profit.

That's a potential challenge. Uh, raising ticket prices or, or ending accessibility in some levels is a, is a challenge. And then, hey, what's to stop this group from maybe looking to liquidate other assets to generate some kind of short term return? Um, these are not things that these guys typically want to hold for 80 years, right?

Like, we've seen that with media, we've seen that with housing, we've seen that in other places. I don't [00:17:00] necessarily think it's bad everywhere. I'm not, I don't know enough about every sector of the economy. I'm a sports writer. But I know enough to be very concerned about what this would mean for, for Florida State and potentially the enterprise as a whole.

Amos Barshad: Yeah. And the super interesting thing is kind of what you brought up earlier. This idea that college football reflects so specifically the literal geographical zone it's in, you know, it's, it's unlike anything else. You know, you tell someone if someone tells you they're a Lakers fan, you can maybe guess a few things about them.

Someone tells you they're Ohio State fan. You could really like hone in in a very specific way. You can understand where they're coming from. and so, you know, I think maybe even the most ardent capitalists, you know, someone who would say, you know, the Lakers, are gonna raise ticket prices. Well, that's how it goes.

You know, they're, they're, they're a business, and they're popular, and they're raising ticket prices. Uh, but, you know, with college football, you know, we can, yeah, even though most ardent capitalists might say, you know, this isn't a business, you know, this is something else. It's something that generates money, but it's not a business.

Um, you know, that, [00:18:00] that there are other, Interest cultural interest in maintaining the traditions, you know, like you spoke about local rivalries, uh, you know, things that are historical and that make college football what they are, you know, the very, very specific regional identity that these that these places have.

And so in a way, it seems like you're saying that private equity would be basically pushing away from that.

Matt Brown: that, that's almost exactly right. You know, and all of this Florida State particular situation is also happening at a time when there is enormous upheaval in college athletics generally, like independent of just trying to maximize television revenue. We have a world where, uh, the court system and, Some lawmakers and some activists are really challenging the amateurism status quo.

I'm making amateur, I'm making finger quotes here around amateurism because that's clearly not the case. where, I mean, just, just yesterday from when we were recording, a group of state attorneys general from red and blue states filed a lawsuit to, to block the NCAA's ability to, to [00:19:00] enforce some transfer regulations.

So there's a, there's a chance that a lot of this stuff could fall apart. And the profit maximizing view would be. Florida State should probably never play WIC Forest again. They probably shouldn't play NC State or Boston College or anybody in the ACC. We should make a Football Champions League. What if we built the whole plane out of Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Alabama, Florida State, and just separate these 30 programs?

Amos Barshad: The Champions League is the European cross club tournament. for all the, all the major famous names that probably people have heard of, like Manchester United and Juventus and, uh, PSG and clubs like that. So yeah, so the idea is you basically carve away all the elite and have them compete in their own, in their own sphere.

Matt Brown: would be like somebody saying the NBA is very fun. But do we really need a Minnesota Timberwolves? Wouldn't it be better for ratings if the Lakers, Knicks, Celtics, and, uh, you know, whoever had Giannis on their team simply played each other ten times? And, in terms of, like, [00:20:00] capturing just raw, casual numbers, or potentially gambling interests, that might be true.

Maybe we have evolved beyond the need for Utah Jazz, right? But I think if you actually love the NBA, you'll look at that and think, Well, that sucks. Like it's fun to have a wider thing. When we saw this in, in, in England, right? With this idea of, let's potentially have private equity, which is what happened here, right?

To carve away the, the biggest English soccer clubs away from the English pyramid and never have to worry about relegation again and just play the biggest names, which might be good for television, but it's terrible for the cultural importance. Symbolic importance of the, of the, of, of, of the enterprise, right?

It's bad for the general consumer and the English, God bless them, right. Um, we're not so good at that in the United States, uh, or, or, or telling, you know, major corporate interest exactly where to stick it.

Amos Barshad: Yeah, no, that's that whole story is so interesting and I think so relevant. So yeah, like, so, so the champions league exists and it's this entity already kind of geared towards [00:21:00] the elite and they're kind of trying to tweak all the rules to make it even more geared to the elite. But technically, uh, clubs from all over the world can, can get, can enter there.

And sometimes they do. And sometimes they beat the big teams and it's incredible and, and, and fun. And then, so some of the, uh, people involved with the mega clubs decided. That they don't like that, so they try to create this super league where they really were just going to fully leave and like, uh, Matt is explaining, yeah, the equivalent of like, the, the Lakers and the Knicks playing each other all the time and, you know, it's so funny because, you know, that makes sense, right?

If you look at, if a robot would look at it, go, look, when the Lakers and the Knicks play each other, there's a lot of ratings that we generate a lot of money, but it wouldn't be true if you did that every week. But, you know, it's so obvious to a sports fan, but, you know, someone looking at it from a, from a kind of business perspective wouldn't understand that.

Um, yeah, it's like such a clear path towards, diluting and ruining the product, while yes, in the short term making money, which is a very interesting parallel to, um, to other ways that yeah, American capitalism works. And then, yeah, the, the UK thing I think is super interesting too. Cause for, for me, if I'm looking at it from the outside, [00:22:00] college football has a lot of parallels with.

English soccer in that there's a community around it and, uh, again, like a regional identity like that goes way beyond even sometimes winning or losing, right? Like, it's how you play and the values that you actually do, uh, embody. and, and I think college football is unique in America as far as that goes.

I don't think we have that, uh, elsewhere.

Matt Brown: think you are exactly right. Um, on, on, on multiple levels there, you know, if, if, uh, you know, I, I grew up in Ohio and I live in Chicago now, uh, but, many of my closest friends here in Chicago are, are BYU fans, even if they didn't necessarily go to BYU because like that to, to associate yourself with BYU football is to associate yourself with the LDS church.

If you are, if you are a Mormon and care a little bit about sports in this country, like this is the flagship brand, like it was to be a Notre Dame fan. In the 1950s, if you were an Italian kid in Long Island, you might not know anything about Bumblefart, Indiana, but like this is the Italian team. This is the Irish team.

This is the Polish team. This is the Catholic team that where you were [00:23:00] maybe shut out from other parts of elite American society. If you were rooting for Yale in 1906, we can infer a couple of things about you. Maybe not all of them positive, but like that was also part of, of, of, of the appeal. And we look at this now and you kind of have this enormous billion dollar industry that kind of popped up almost by historical accident.

We would not put a professional football franchise in Starkfield, Mississippi, but we have a very passionate and large and successful football program and basketball program there. It's not urban, it's not built generally, not in the major media markets of this country. Like, New York doesn't have any of these things.

Los Angeles has two and they only care in their good. Um, and, and they're, they're often worst attended than places in Mississippi and Alabama and in Oklahoma. Um, which is unlike everything else we have and that is very much how a lot of European and South American soccer clubs work. And those have been magnets for this kind of investment, which is very controversial in other parts of the world and, and could potentially be coming here to the States.

Frank Cappello: So, Matt, we've talked a lot about [00:24:00] how, how the need to chase profit has sort of affected the way that these schools are organized, and especially how it affects their fandom. but I want to turn to the players because that seems to be the other group of people that is the, that is the most drastically affected by a lot of these changes.

So, I know recently, uh, you know, college athletes can now be compensated for their name, image, and likeness. This is known as NIL. it's a relatively new rule. So, so what role, if any, does the NIL rule have on, um, private equities, possible entrance into college football, or I guess just the way that, you know, these media rights, these, these broadcast rights and all of this money, like how is this affecting, I guess, a player's, like a student athlete's experience in college football?

Matt Brown: Yeah, it's a good question. And I think to give the best answer for a less plugged in sport audience. Let me try to zoom out a little bit here first. it is a little silly that we're talking about an entity that makes It generates billions in revenue and sells out [00:25:00] 000 seat stadiums for athletes that literally don't make any direct comp money at all from any of this.

They're given a scholarship, they are given, cost of attendance money. Um, they're given unlimited food and snacks and the food and snacks thing is recent. Like, you know, when we were in school, that was not the case. And so people were, were, were, you know, bumming frat parties and French club to go get free pizza if they didn't have enough money to get their own stuff.

Um, but they're not paid. Salaries, they're not shared any of the media rights revenue or concessions revenue or sponsorship revenue. And, you know, they used to enforce very strict rules on this amateurism, right? If you sold, you know, a Jersey that you had worn in the game or signed some monographs for a hundred bucks, you could lose your eligibility.

People that this, this has happened, recently, thanks to aggressive state law changes in California and also places like Florida. both red and blue states, uh, you know, passed state laws saying that the NCAA can't, uh, punish [00:26:00] people for taking advantage of monetizing their name, image, and likeness or their promotional rights.

And then the NCAA changed their national policy. So What this means in practice is that, yes, an athlete can earn promotional income. And there are many athletes, particularly women, who are earning money doing endorsements and, and, and conducting camps. I've actually paid a couple of athletes myself to promote my newsletter, or I've interviewed them in my newsletter.

including, you know, I went to Ohio State, I've paid Michigan athletes. Like, I'm not doing that because I'm a secret, like, Michigan spy. I paid like a pole vaulter. I did it because I thought that would help my business and because she had an interesting perspective. So like that world exists. It's not a replacement for sharing revenue because that's kind of like being a second job, but you can make money from that.

And then you have what I like kind of colloquially call a bag man system. Where you have groups of donors and fans that create these little fundraising entities and sometimes they launder the money through charities for non profit reasons to compensate athletes. And then they [00:27:00] say it's NIL, but it's really not about your name or likeness, it's about your ability to pass block.

It's about your ability to be a running back. Um, and those can be six figures. And for a couple of athletes, it's in the seven figures. It's not really an NFL salary necessarily, but it's, uh, it's real money. But it doesn't come with The kind of protections that you would expect from employment. It's not guaranteed money There's no guarantee that the person giving you the money is going to be liquid, right?

Because it's not the University, you know that like Texas, the University of Texas is going to be there next week You don't know about the Horns for Heart collective necessarily that could be liquidated in your SOL Yeah, sometimes the the agents working on either side are not real agents But but even so like it's it's not the same thing as actually getting the money.

It's still a second job And that is still the rule, the law, and the NCAA policy here at this point. Part of the reason that many schools are so aggressively trying to grow as much revenue as they possibly [00:28:00] can is not just out of naked greed, but it's also because they believe, correctly in my view, that Amateurism is not going to be a thing in under five years.

Potentially not a thing in two years. And one way or another, whether from the courts, or the NLRB, or from athletes unionizing, or anybody else, someone's going to force college programs to directly share revenue with athletes. And so if you're a school, like say East Carolina, if you're a regional public institution, and you can barely pay all your bills now.

And now you're realizing we're going to have to come up with an extra 10, 15 million dollars to be able to pay our athletes, even if it's not much more than minimum wage. Well, we got to find every quarter and dime and nickel in the couch cushions, even if it means we have to do some things that would have seemed unthinkable for us in the nineties if we want to participate in the system.

And that's also part of the rationale behind Florida State. So now you could see. The politics can get kind of tricky, because I'm guessing most of your listeners will hear all this and think, well, yeah, no, everyone [00:29:00] deserves access to a union, and workers should be able to share in the fruit of their labors, and playing high level athletics is a dangerous job, and people deserve protections, because we're all one ACL tear away from playing in Bulgaria, you know, rather than guaranteed contracts and everything, and then you realize, oh, well, maybe in order to get the money to make the math work for everything, That might mean we have to do some things we don't want to do, uh, and, and, uh, and there, I think it becomes less about cartoonish bad guys, which I think private equity often is, and, and deservedly so, versus how to move this system into something that is good for consumers and also good for the athletes taking part of it, and that is a, is a trickier thing to solve.

Amos Barshad: yeah, it's fascinating because it's basically like In this new zone of what will the future look like, right? Who's going to get to set the terms, who's going to get to define it? And it's all, it's all wide open right now. I think that, yeah, the NIL stuff, you know, from the outside, for sure. I [00:30:00] think, I think, you know, you'd see guys doing goofy car, local car commercials.

And it's just so, Oh, it's great. Look at these guys making money, having fun, you know? And then all of a sudden you stop and think and you go, what? What is this system, uh, you know, and, and, and how can you actually ensure that, yeah, everybody is getting paid for their time, not just the, not just the higher profile names, right?

I mean, you can't play the sport just with the high profile names.

Matt Brown: That's exactly right. And I, and even you dig even below that, right? Well, it's, it's not just the high profile names, that's the marketable ones. And if you're an athlete in Iowa, well, marketable might mean that you need to look a little bit more like me than maybe somebody who's been blessed with more melanin, right?

And then, uh, and, and that might scare away brands in Iowa. And so even though you're a very important athlete, you might not get some of the money that you deserve because your worth is now independent of your value as like, uh, from your athletic labor. So there's. Like equity concerns on gender lines and race lines and certainly on time [00:31:00] Investment for all of this to where you know, you think oh boy, it would just be better governance To have the schools pay everybody especially because like these collectives the ones that are like raising the money and distributing them They're not controlled by the school.

So it would essentially be like to go back to the NBA example What if the people that ran the Boston Celtics payroll? With the 50 dumbest and loudest commenters on mass. com, um, and two of them just happened to sell a bunch of Kias, so they had a bunch of money. That would be a disaster. And like, we're all laughing here.

That's kind of what SEC football looks like right now. you know, I say this with, with deep love and affection. This truly is the dumbest sport. Um, and sometimes it's dumb in ways that are fun and sometimes it's dumb in ways that are like, actually, this is profoundly distressing and we all kind of have to navigate those, those, those challenges of being a fan, I think, just like we do with professional teams.

Once we learn a little bit about who are, who the owner of the team is, because, you know, I'm guessing we're all probably [00:32:00] not going to love everything that the owner of our favorite sports team does.

Amos Barshad: Yeah. And that's, what's so cool about, you know, your point of view with your sports reporting. I think people think, uh, that being, uh, politically active means, you know, writing a letter to your. Congressperson or whatever, but, you know, I've always felt like if the thing that you love is your, is your sports team, then why not, invest your energy in making sure that that's run in a fair and sane way.

And I think, like you said, like in England when they announced the Super League, yeah, people literally took to the streets. And you're thinking, who are these people? Like, have they ever been politically active in their life? And it's like, well, probably not, but if they're taking their club away, like they're taking to the streets.

And it's like, uh, it's, it's funny and it's silly, but it's like, yes, it really is kind of inspiring. And, and I, I wonder with college football, you know, with people having that same, you know, they feel their sense of identity through who their favorite team is, you know, how many of them literally went to that school, you know.

Um, so, so it's, uh, it's, it's super interesting to think about, you know, sports, uh, being your zone where you're going to be politically active and affect change. Um, cause yeah, cause these are employees and, and, [00:33:00] and they deserve labor protection like everyone else, just like you said. Yeah.

Matt Brown: you got to meet people where, where they are. And not everybody has this limitless reservoir of indignation where they could be equally passionate and plugged in about every single possible thing. So you talk about the stuff that's important to them and maybe they make the connections and maybe not, but it's better to have somebody fighting for a better world in one segment than to be completely disengaged.

It's part of it. Just drove me crazy when I worked at Vox. When I lived, you know, in D. C. and to hear these kind of smug NPR liberals say things like sportsball. And, or just kind of completely dismiss everything that we're doing here. It's like, look, I'm not asking you to go buy a jersey and go, you know, be a Georgia Bulldogs season ticket holder.

Just like I'm not trying to, you're not asking me to throw myself into your hobbies or care about Caroline Calloway or whatever New York Times drama is happening. Like, we don't have to do those things, right? I don't have to care about your prestige drama. that only other reporters care about, right? It's just been like, [00:34:00] this is, this is part of our world.

And this is something that's deeply important to a lot of people. And it shapes civic life and day to day life in large parts of the country. And if you don't want to care about it, that's cool, but we shouldn't be little to people who, who are, one of the things you kind of, you know, kind of tie this together full circle, right?

The other kind of challenge with this labor situation with athletes is that in the United States. Every other professional league has a union, and you have the, and the players will collectively bargain with management over how revenue is distributed and how players are disciplined and what kind of protections they get and everything, and we can discuss if you want about it.

Some of the challenges in that model, because it's very difficult to build labor solidarity when your union runs from the LeBron James interest to some dude who, you know, was playing in France four days ago's interest, they're very different. But like, we can look and say there's, there's, there's protections and they've advanced the interest of those people by having this unit.

College does not have that. And it will be very difficult for them to create one, even if they become employees, [00:35:00] because the, uh, not only is the bargaining unit massive, even if it's just college football players in division one, FBS. That's 12, 000 people, who do not have the same interests, uh, necessarily.

And most didn't come from union homes. And you guys probably don't know this too. Organizing a union is hard and it requires a lot of like interpersonal trust. It's not something that one dude who's a professional organizer in Cambridge can do for you. It's, it's, it's peer to peer blood and guts in the weeds there.

But. I say all this because one of the other challenges is we have right to work laws and we have parts of this country where it's very difficult for public employees to form any kind of union. And what if, you know, work with me, walk with me here, if we are in a world where college athletes could potentially be unionized and they enjoy better protections and they enjoy guaranteed salaries and they enjoy some kind of health care benefits, and the first places to have this happen are places like Northwestern and Boston College and Notre Dame or, or USC.

Well, then it becomes a competitive [00:36:00] disadvantage for the South Carolinas and Arkansas of the world. And there are labor activists who are like, I don't really care about football, but this might be the best way to fight for better, you know, uh, to organize, fight for organized labor in the South. Fight for organized labor in the rural Midwest.

Um, and, and, you know, people make the right decision for the wrong reasons all of the time or, or make, you know, make political concessions because they're, they're juggling things anywhere for every major issue, right? And if that's where you're going to meet people where they are. To get them to start eventually thinking about teachers unions or eventually start thinking about manufacturing or anything else, by God, let's start with football, right?

And, and not, I'm, I'm a reporter and this is, this is my world. I'm not in the political world anymore, but this is legitimately a language that I think more people that care about workers rights and care about building institutions or communities that want to move against institutionalized power. Should learn to speak in this language and, and learn to care about the things that, that people here care about and help them then connect [00:37:00] it to other things.

Frank Cappello: this is actually a perfect segue to what was going to be our final question, which was, if you, Matt, could run college football, other than players unions, what other steps would you take to protect players and the fans?

Matt Brown: It's a, that's a, boy, it's a good question. And, and I say this, I think also with the recognition. And I, I say this when I talk to, you know, athletic directors or, or presidents all the time. Like it's, I understand that you might not even disagree with me on a lot of things, but when your mortgage depends on, X, Y, or Z, or a very different political calculation than I face sitting in this chair, I get why we make different decisions.

I'm trying to have empathy for ethical people operating in an unethical world, right? But, I do believe that college football and college basketball players, men and women, should be employees. They should be directly compensated by their institutions, rather than outsourcing that to boosters.

Um, and there should be a collective bargaining agreement. And it may end up being. That it has to be a collective bargaining agreement with like nine different unions. [00:38:00] It may make sense to have much smaller bargaining groups that might affiliate for larger things to build better solidarity and better organizing strength than it is to try to do one big union.

I am more agnostic about the best way to organize those because I understand I'm a 36 year old dad. I'm not a 20 year old football player. And however they want to do it, It's the right way to do it, rather than any way that I might recommend, right? I'll talk to anybody that wants to hear the pros and cons, but I'm not going to sit here and say, like, you need to do X, Y, or Z, or you should call for a general strike, or you should do whatever, because that's, it's not my skin in the game.

It's your skin in the game, so it has to be your decision. I also legitimately think that the employment model probably doesn't make sense for a lot of other sports. for how we do, uh, collegiate wrestling or collegiate swimming. And if I had full power here, I would legitimately say, I think the government, the US government needs to do what most other countries do and have a cabinet level position.

That's like [00:39:00] the federal secretary of sports. And I think the federal government, uh, potentially I have my friend, Victoria Jackson, who's a historian at Arizona state suggested this. I would look at maybe having a national sports gambling tax. And using the revenue from that tax specifically to help fund collegiate swimming programs or track programs to train them for elite Olympic competition.

Now what they won't have the revenue from professional football, I mean from collegiate football or collegiate basketball. And if that's insufficient then we look at whether that's either corporate partnerships or direct federal funding to build a pipeline so we don't lose those opportunities. One of the things that I think even sometimes progressives lose sight of.

It's that for all of the very, very clear and massive flaws in college athletics, they're, they're legion. We could talk, we didn't even talk about eight other of them, it's a different show. But even beyond that, this is still one of the single largest scholarship programs in the United States. It legitimately is an opportunity engine and athletes graduate at higher rates in many [00:40:00] cases than, than, than typical students.

I don't think we, I don't think we want to lose that. as we professionalize what probably makes sense for a relatively small number of athletes. And I don't think that's something you can just turn off without a plan to fix what you break. And that's part of my concern about what's happening here is that the court system might break up this unethical system. You know, bully for Brett Kavanaugh. You know, it doesn't happen all that often. Good for you for figuring this out here. But if we don't collaboratively build a better system. I think a lot of other people will be hurt and that's kind of what I would like to avoid and what I encourage my readers, both fans and industry, to work towards fixing.

Frank Cappello: Well, thank you so much for explaining all of this, especially in such a clear, accessible way. I know that I personally, as a, as an admitted sports dummy, learned a lot about not only how college football works, but all of these now moneyed interests that are all vying for a piece of the pie. So I really appreciate it.

Matt Brown is a journalist [00:41:00] and a sports writer. You can find his newsletter, Extra Points, at extrapointsmb. com. We will link to that in the episode description of this podcast. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.

Matt Brown: Of course, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

today's episode. Thank you again for being a paid subscriber to The Lever. We truly could not do this work without you. if you like this episode, feel free to pitch into our tip jar. The tip jar link is in the episode's description or at levernews. com slash tip jar. Every little bit helps us do this kind of independent journalism. Also, make sure to subscribe to our other podcasts, The Audit and Movies vs.

Frank Cappello: Capitalism. And as always, make sure to head over to levernews. com to check out all of the incredible reporting our team has been doing. Until next time, I am Frank Capello. Rock the boat. The Lever Time Podcast is a production of The Lever and The Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by David Sirota. Our producer is me, Frank Capello, with help from Lever producer, Jared Jakangmayor. [00:42:00]