College Sports Confidential

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1:08Congratulations. You made the varsity podcast. My name is John Aranda and I'm putts sports correspondent and the host of the spot. Today, I'm happy to have Nicole Arbach on the varsity again. Nicole is the lead college football and basketball insider for NBC Sports, and she's going to help us make sense of all the chaos that's happening in college sports right now. From a Bill in D.C. to Brennan Soarsby to the competition between the Big Ten and the SEC. But before we get to Nicole, today is Sunday, June 21st, and here's what I'm watching. I'll tell you, I am fascinated by YouTube's interest in sports.

1:44And I'm starting to get the sense that they may not be as aggressive in buying sports rights as we originally thought. After all, it made a big bid for the NBA's national rights that wasn't accepted. And it didn't get the NFL's five-game package that was on offer earlier this year. Those games went to Netflix. Meanwhile, YouTube cut a deal with FIFA for something called the Creator Cup. That's when a bunch of YouTube influencers are going to play in a soccer tournament in Central Park that's tied to the actual World Cup. I mean, why spend billions on rights fees when you can create inexpensive ancillary content that YouTube already knows works well on its platform?

2:25After all, what most distinguishes YouTube from its competitors is the amount of free content that draws viewers to its service. Hours after any NFL or World Cup game airs, you can go to YouTube to watch the highlights or parts of the game, or in some cases, even the whole thing itself. The thing is that YouTube wants sports, but it doesn't need sports. And that posture may allow traditional broadcasters one less competitor to compete with, at least for now. OK, now let's get to NBC's Nicole Auerbach. nicole are back i could have i could have you on just about every week and we could talk about uh the disarray the the chaos in college sports i i want to start with because you cover you cover everything right right now off the field uh going on with college for you what's the biggest story in college sports right now?

3:23Well, up until last weekend, I would have said it was Brendan Soresby. As that was progressing before it reached a fever pitch and he ultimately decided to go to the NFL supplemental draft and we can get into all of that, I was telling people I just thought it was undercover. I thought it was by far the biggest story of the offseason and people were kind of just waiting to see and not talking about it to the extent that they should. And obviously that changed over the last weeks. And now I guess most people would still say it's what's going on on Capitol Hill just because of the broad impact that it could have on the future of college sports.

4:02But these things are never certain. They move slow. There's a lot of significant pushback to the current Senate bill, the Protect Act. so you know you can kind of just combine that with the CFP expansion conversation and I guess I just say like the dynamics with the big 10 and the SEC and the rest of college sports everyone's trying to figure out what this thing is going to look like five ten years from now the dynamics between those two conferences and between them and the rest of college sports are just endlessly fascinating so I think like I would just kind of combine a lot of it into that as my most interesting topic right now it is and everything you said in its own right is front page stories uh out there let's start with capitol hill because i am a uh i'm a total skeptic about this uh this act i mean it there were nine no votes coming out of of committee which is which is somewhat significant we are right now uh you know mid-june uh with an election coming up the midterms coming up in november uh i i had a source tell me i think he counted them out the 39 days legislative days left to you know get this on the floor debate it and then potentially pass it uh and um my sources suggest that there's a very little chance of anything happening before november maybe there's a rider that gets put onto something you know in a lame duck session but uh but but that seems unlikely given the bipartisan there's bipartisan support for this bill but there's also bipartisan in opposition to the bill so it's uh it's um uh it seems like uh it's a big story i've never covered an industry that's looked to congress before to say help us please uh and and and so that that makes it an even bigger story what like as you approach how do you how are you approaching this story so first of all i'm glad that you put out that opposition and and those comments from that source because I do think there has been so much incremental reporting around this bill.

6:11And, you know, games for all of these congressional folks are very aggressive. And so you're getting like every little tidbit and every statement of support. And the way that some of it has been talked about, and again, this time of year, it's typically pretty quiet. I do think there was a lot of kind of celebration, victory lapping, a little bit of like it going through markup and getting this far. And it's not even, you know, obviously taken for a full vote on the Senate floor. And then you have to go through the House. Like there's just so many steps, as you pointed out, also a time crunch.

6:42And so I do think that there has been, you know, momentum or at least like a conversation around it that feels different than some of the other bills that have been proposed, certainly because it is bipartisan, because of the names attached, because it's coming out of the Senate. I understand all of those things. But I have always said with all of this, there are way bigger fish to fry for anyone who is an elected representative in DC. There's always so many more important things. And it's kind of surprising they have spent as much time as they have on this, especially, you know, like during the war in Iran, like there's just been a lot of real world issues happening.

7:22So I'm, I'm always helpfully skeptical on this stuff too. And one of the things that's really funny about where we are with this bill is that you You have the big 10 in the SEC that are still opposed to it and could impact representatives of states that they have schools in and their levels of support. But also, it's just a funny dynamic of a lot of these people have been saying, we need Congress. We need Congress. We need them to help. We need them to swoop in, give us protection. Basically, we need Congress to save us. And then you have certain people being like, wait, not like that. Like, we don't like that that part of it.

7:54and this is what happens when you try to put this in the hands of of the federal government like they may include stuff that you do not like you don't get to control exactly what the legislation includes so that part is also like just personally funny to me after years and years of begging for help so it's so hard because as you said like you know uh the it has a lot of support out there uh in in in the college scene but it doesn't have big 10 and uh and and uh like so so it's very hard to talk about uh you know like what does college want out of this bill but i'm going to ask you that question anyway like like if you can if there was one monolithic college sports like what does everybody agree on in college that they want to see in this bill Oh, that is such a hard question.

8:47John, you know, like everyone has different priorities and different interests. And that's why this stuff becomes very difficult. It's why, you know, the Big Ten and the SEC have a different view of it than, you know, the Big 12 and the ACC. And that, you know, everyone's discussing language around, you know, freezing conference realignment and preventing super leagues. But here's what I would say to this about like, you know, generally speaking, college sports. I think people would like to have the ability to have some rules and to be able to enforce them. So that's why you hear people asking for like, even if it's narrow, but some antitrust protection.

9:25That's why there's parts of this bill that have to do with transfers, which is something I don't think you necessarily if you said 10 years ago. Yeah, Congress should be making a transfer rule for college sports. You wouldn't say that. But that is where we are because they feel like they cannot enforce transfer rules. And I personally think if you could change it so that you can only transfer one time for free and then you have to sit or there's punishment, I think that would drastically change the landscape because it's the unlimited free agency that affects the money that we talk about with NIL and rev share deals and just the threat of constantly changing schools and just having these bidding wars all the time.

10:07But that's part of it. So that's in this bill. But also just like actually having a salary and being able to enforce it. Like those are things that a lot of people, I think when I talk to them, they like those ideas. But right now, you can't really enforce them. And so that's what if you said, hey, college sports, let's make everyone under 110. What do they want? They want rules that everyone has to adhere to, even if they don't personally like them. But they want rules that kind of at least may not like even the playing field, but at least like define what the playing field is and who is eligible to play and when they can move to different schools.

10:44So let me play devil's advocate here. Because I come at this, and it sounds like you come at this, with like, college sports is on fire. We need to set up transfer rules, NIL rules, in order to make sure that everything is sort of on a level playing field. If you look at the business metrics of college sports right now, TV ratings have never been higher for the for college football and for college basketball sponsorship and the the money that all of these um uh colleges are getting from from sponsorships are as high as they've ever been and i think that if you're with if you're in the business of college sports i think you have a case to make by saying there's no problem i know some people might not like it but we're seeing no evidence of people not liking it and and and fleeing the the college sports we're not losing fans in fact we're we're gaining fans we're we're seeing we're seeing players you know uh instead of going one and done to the nba sticking around for for several seasons is there any sense within the college administrations of you know everything actually is kind of okay well everyone who's still working in college sports i think understands that like they're just like okay the world is changing under our feet every day.

12:07But we're adapting and we're trying to figure it out. I agree with that point, though. That is what, you know, especially players' rights advocates are saying. Like, there's nothing wrong with the system. It's existing. People are watching games. You know, people believe that they're fair. There was always that argument from the NCAA in court for such a long time that people wouldn't watch, be compelled to be fans of college football if they knew they were getting paid. And obviously that has been proven wrong in space. So it sort of reminds me of that a little bit of like, okay, well, the sky is falling, please help us, please help us.

12:44But, you know, again, the games are being played, everything's existing, people are watching, people are engaged. And I think that's been that, you know, we've had people asking for help from Congress for like, six, eight years now. And, you know, there's different points where it felt like maybe a little more urgent, okay, so you get all these different states with their own nil laws that were trying to like one up each other you know like okay maybe you do need a federal law that preempts them but we kind of in this world where everyone has slightly different rules and and laws and and it works it still works so i think um that becomes part of the the lack of urgency around it because the system is existing and there is a lot of money in it and when people say it's not sustainable it sustains into the next year and people spend even more on things.

13:31And that's why like the interesting thing that happened in this past couple weeks with Brendan Sorsby was that one felt different than some of these other like quote existential crises that hit college sports. This was like questioning the integrity of the competition. And I think that one could be different than everything else because all the other changes had people watching the games, believing that they're, you know, as fair as they could possibly be still being engaged and expanded playoff, more teams, more hope, more excitement throughout the season. All of that stuff existed. And so, yeah, I think you would say, and especially for players, because people always want them to push for collective bargaining.

14:10I mean, the system worked well for them right now without those rules, without that structure around it. So yeah, I think there's a lot of people who are like, hey, people can claim it's kind of broke, but it's not really. Yeah. Although people that listen to this podcast have heard me go off on this before, but I'm a Maryland graduate. Last season, we had 15 brand new players and an entirely new coaching staff. And I went to the games. I was rooting for the, cheering for the laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld would say. And then this year, I guess we're going to get like three or four returning players.

14:47I don't even know. But it's just this constant switch of like, I would love to have a Juan Dixon go from freshman to senior and get paid and stay there. And it helps me as a fan develop a fandom. You brought up the Soresby situation. Anybody listening to this point of the pod knows exactly what went on there. He gambled on college football games. He gambled on Indiana games when he was a player at Indiana, though he didn't play in those games. He was suspended by the NCAA. He sued. A judge in Texas took away the suspension. They were going to have a rehearing, but that was going to come after the season.

15:36so he was set to play for for texas tech this season i i think a two-game suspension but he was set to play uh during the season and almost unanimously the entire uh college world erupted except for texas tech i was really surprised that texas tech took the aggressive belligerent tone against against the entire uh and the the entire college sports world did that catch you off guard as well so i figure this out because i'm with you they it felt like the texas tech brass were shocked by the reaction that everyone else had and the two maybe shocked my goodness right that that everyone else was upset that you were trying to play a player that was permanently ineligible by the NCAA ruled.

16:30I think that they did not necessarily think this injunction was going to be granted. Like, I think that that maybe came as a surprise. And then I think they thought maybe people would let them play Brendan Sorsby. And it was a, it will be taught in crisis PR classes, like everything that happened in the week after, where you have the athletic director trying to talk about how, you know, for Brendan Sorsby's mental health, like he needs to be the structure of a team and the program and our support, which the logical follow up question is, okay, so can't he do that without playing on Saturdays, right?

17:07They weren't addressing that part. And then you had Cody Campbell, billionaire, donor, you know, again, it's a wild world, John, where we all know the names of the big donors for some of the big programs in college football. We never used to even know our own biggest donors for our own schools. And now here we are knowing Cody Campbell. And he's out there saying, you know, well, it's like, what about them? It's, hey, what about Penn State? And people still played them after the Jerry Sandusky scandal. And, you know, what about, you know, players who are accused of violence against women who play college football?

17:42And it became very ugly and very toxic. And I think that the arguments that you were hearing were not being made in good faith. And so you had schools threatening not to play them. You had the Big 12 feeling a lot of pressure from its other 15 schools to act. And I think they had some options. Obviously, they ended up filing a lawsuit after the attorney general, Ken Paxton, fired a letter of support of Texas Tech. And the Big 12 was like, all right, great. Here's an avenue for a lawsuit because we have First Amendment to sanction our own members. And like this is a voluntary conference that they're all part of.

18:18And then that applied some pressure as well and eventually got to the point where, you know, Brandon Sorsby decided not to try to play college football. But it was it was a crazy week. And it was just really stunning to have a school that is part of a conference, part of the NCAA, arguing basically that one season, the immediacy of this season where they believe they could win a college football playoff because they upgraded at the quarterback position. Should take precedence over what is best for college sports at large, which is fairness and breaking the number one rule, which is don't bet on your own team, and us believing when we're watching a college football game that people do not.

19:01People who are directly involved in it, who have information because they've been in quarterback meetings all week, are not directly going to make money off of certain outcomes tied to that game. and we don't have to watch Brendan Sorsby if he throws two picks in a game, wonder if he bet the under. Like, you just don't want to be in that situation. And so I think ultimately it's like a major sigh of relief across college sports that Brendan Sorsby is going to the NFL supplemental draft and we're not going to be dealing with this on a weekly, daily basis throughout the college football season. But it really was an uproar that I have never seen before, like that united from all different corners of the country, all different levels of college sports.

19:40that everyone reacted the same way.

19:51There are a ton of questions that come off of your answer there. Texas Tech. What does this mean for Texas Tech? I mean, they took on the conference. They took on the NCAA. They took on the entire sports landscape. what what's some where could we possibly see some blowback happen to texas tech because we look you and i have covered this stuff forever there will be some sort of blowback at some point yeah and i mean we've seen like schools in litigation against their conference like florida state and clemson very famously trying to sue the acc over their grin of rights recently um but yeah this does feel a little bit different um and especially just with how united the conference was against this behavior um i think that you know for the last few years i mean everyone's seen texas tech pour money into all of their pro softball football like their basketball programs um and you know like really elevate them but the interesting part about what you're saying about like where can we see blowback it might not be immediate but like this is a conference and this is someone in Cody Campbell who want Texas Tech to be included in whatever the future is for like major college football you know if that is a breakaway if that is a super league um you talk to people in the Big Ten the SEC the first thing that they always say if their if their commissioner called up Cody Campbell and said hey you want to come to the SEC he would drop all of his you know his fights his commercials his support for the the Protect College Sports Act so you know I don't think this helps their chances on being included.

21:30Like you watch it, what they did to the big 12 conference and the way that they comported themselves. I don't think if you're the big 10 on the SEC, and about 10 years down the line, like, hey, we're looking at new members. I don't think they're looking at them and saying, wow, they'd be a great partner. Like that just, that was a headache. That was a problem child. And so I think that's something that I think about coming out of this. And then also I think about this protect college sports act. Cody Campbell is a big part of it. He was on a call with Danny Levine after markup, kind of, again, doing a little bit of a victory lap, but like, obviously, he's in Ted Cruz's ear.

22:05Obviously, there's a lot of pieces in there, including, you know, voluntarily pulling media rights and certain protections that are favorable for Texas Tech that would, again, try to help them in this new world, a Super League breakaway from the Big Ten, the SEC, et cetera, et cetera. And it just it feels weird to have him continue to be the face of that while also supporting someone who the NCAA deemed should have been permanently ineligible, like really challenging that ruling and that decision by the NCAA by supporting that athlete as they then sued. They were not party to the case, but obviously they were supporting Brendan Sorsby and his ability to potentially play in the fall.

22:48So I just think of those things. I think of that backlash for someone who's been, really had their neck out there on certain issues in college sports, tied to something that was really, really unpopular across college sports. I think that will make people, you know, someone put it to me, they just said like, Cody Campbell's True Colors really came out during all of that. And I think that is something that people will have a hard time forgetting, especially as he's kind of, you know, continuing to force himself into certain rooms. meetings and to solve the future of college sports. I also, I want to dive in something that you said when we first started talking about this, and that's, they're going to be teaching this in crisis PR classes, you know, over the next decade or so.

23:38This is going to sound like kind of an obvious question, but what did PR wise, where did they go wrong especially um okay so i think there were a couple things it felt like they were all on different pages um you know you had the head coach speaking to donors and fans and saying you know like it's it's not like he you know killed anyone you know like you just had like there's a lot of flippant language i didn't mean the laugh there i'm sorry yeah no no but again it was just sort of like i can't believe that someone is saying this as part of you know the defense. And then again, Cody Campbell saying like, comparing it to the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, he used to situations where people actually accepted their punishments and dealt with punishments.

24:22Like all the people died for that at Penn State, lost their jobs. So it was this almost gaslighting of like, we're doing what's best for our athlete. Like we're supporting him. Mental health is important. He has an addiction. When the rest of the world was like, yes, but you can do all of that without playing him as a football player. And you had these tech fans that were all like, they never said they're going to play him. And you're like, well, they're not going through all this hassle to not play him. They're suggesting a two-game suspension, and that's it. Like, there was the idea that, like, there shouldn't be consequences for the app.

24:59They never really addressed that. And then there was that 22-minute video, like, of, you know, all the Texas Tech brass just repeating their overall points, which, you know, didn't convince anyone of anything. So it felt tone deaf. It felt like they didn't understand why everyone was upset about this or impact the integrity of competitions, if you have a history of betting on your own team. And didn't really address all the other parts. I mean, there's potentially some legal fallout still to come here. I mean, Brennan Sorsby was gambling underage in three different states. He was sending money while living in Texas, where it's illegal for mobile sports betting, sending money to someone else to be a proxy and place bets for him in other states.

25:42I mean, like there's there's a lot still that was not being addressed. Also, as well as these kind of crazy comments of like, well, what about how bad it is if, you know, someone who's who, who, you know, hurts women gets to play? Or there was also the crazy comment from Cody Campbell that was if this happened at LSU, everyone would be fine about it. They'd be like, oh, it's just LSU. But they're jealous of us. They don't want to play us. And there was just a lot that was not what I would have recommended if you're trying to do something that, you know, is going to be unpopular. OK, this is this is going to be kind of difficult, but I'm going to try to defend Texas Tech.

26:18OK, they they did not bring up the suit. Brendan Sorsby filed the suit. there was a judge who's not a Texas Tech alum, but there was a judge that said, you know, that made a legal ruling and everything that Texas Tech did appeared to be above board. Like, look, he's on our team. There's a ruling. And we just kind of want to play him. We understand people are not happy about this, but we're kind of following the law. Does that, did I do a good job of putting good? I think that's the only defense, right? And that's like what they should have just repeatedly said. And I think they kind of did. Kirby Hoka, the athletic director, was emphasizing that and that they were not part of the lawsuit.

27:16I think that it was just to be a difficult situation in general, because even if you are not paying for the lawyers, and directly there in court, we know you're going to play him if this gets approved, if it goes your way. And I don't think anyone assumes that he filed it without their support, without the idea that they would back him and then play him if he were deemed eligible. To me, what's interesting about that defense of, you know, it's an impartial judge and this and that is we've had other cases. I know everyone thinks everyone just runs to the courts now and files lawsuits. And we've seen that with eligibility decisions.

27:59Dad Chambliss getting, you know, more years to play. But I do think if you believe in the system and you say you want rules and you're part of this voluntary organization, the NCAA, and you go through the NCAA process and you can appeal to them directly, which is another avenue he was doing, but you kind of need to accept that, right? So the idea of going around that to try to find a judge to go your way to overrule an NCAA decision is where it's hard to say like, we didn't do anything wrong because you were trying to do something to overturn something that was part of the system you agreed to be in.

28:35And like where there were Iowa and Iowa State players that had suspensions and permanent ineligibility or lost seasons over gambling on other sports in their athletic department, like women's basketball, like during March Madness, they appealed and then they accepted the decision from the NCAA. So like it does happen where you just go through your proper channels and accept it, but they wanted to go the side route. They wanted to try to overrule that. And so that part is like, okay, you can say you care about all of college sports, but you still tried to do something to go against the rules and against the process that was already in place.

29:19all right my final question on this and you started to touch on it a little bit i mean the ncaa appears to be so toothless now like that you can go to a court of law and they You can say in every sport that you and I have covered, like Pete Rose was banned for life, you know, for betting on baseball. Like you can't. This is a red line that no other league allows anybody to cross, which, by the way, is going to really intrigue me with the supplemental draft. Is any NFL team going to want to be associated with somebody that has a gambling problem? It's going to that's really up for debate. But what's the future of the NCAA?