Jay Bilas’s NCAAB Bull Case

18:17John:I have always felt like the easiest path forward is to let the institutions do what they want to do. Like nobody's telling any institution of higher learning out there whether they can have a hospital or not, or whether they can build big, lavish facilities. Nobody tells them that. They don't tell them how much to pay their coaches or how much they can spend on travel or what food they can spend on now. Why are we worried about what they pay the players? Do it the same way you do everything else. Because the one thing I know for certain, these schools know exactly who they need to recruit, how much they need to pay, and who they need to put in the game when they want to win.

18:57John:And what this has proven, you know, I always believe this, but I think what the current landscape has proven is fans don't care. They want to win and they want to watch the product. They want to watch their teams and they want to watch these players play. And, you know, give you two examples. Like one is Clemson under Davos Sweeney, who's one of the great coaches of all time. And I don't know football. I watch it. But my understanding is that he doesn't care to go into the transfer portal. He'd rather do it a different way. And my understanding is his fan base is saying, go into the portal if you get better players.

19:34John:Like, you need to get with the times. And, you know, same thing at Marquette basketball. You know, Shaka Smart's one of the truly great people. And he's decided he wants to do it a different way. And fans are saying, hey, man, go into the portal. like you know we want to win the fans want to win and and they clearly they're not turned off by the amount of money that's being paid um they're they're watching at a higher rate than ever uh so all the things the NCAA told us over the last several decades that uh if amateurism goes away people are going to stop watching and this is not what college sports is supposed to be about um I just don't see why that only applies to players and it doesn't apply to coaches it It doesn't apply to flying private and all these other things.

20:24John:To me, it's pretty simple. You're all market competitors against one another. Compete for athletes the same way you compete for everything else. And I don't think – it's amazing to me how the rest of the world can comply with federal law and the NCAA can't. They keep saying, well, we keep getting sued. We'll quit violating the law. It's pretty simple.

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21:56Jay Bilas:Okay, at this point in the pod, let me clutch some pearls and try to defend. You referenced the kids, actually I'll call them men, that played for the G League, played for European professional teams, coming back to college. I'm not going to trot out the student athlete. They're supposed to be student athlete. But I am going to suggest that that isn't necessarily what fans want. I think the idea of people giving up their eligibility and then coming back at an age that is, you know, they're playing against 18 year olds and they're eight years older than them. I saw there was, I forget the kid's name, but he came to Maryland on a recruiting visit.

22:40Jay Bilas:and he was 25 years old, and the message boards were appalled. Like, we don't want this, you know, within College Park. And Maryland is terrible this year. You would think they would want to get better. I would think that you would need to have some sort of rules guarding that, no? Of course you do.

23:01John:But the problem is that the first player that you mentioned, James Nagy, so he's an internationally born player that never went to college. But he went into the NBA draft at age 18. He was taken number 31, I think, by the Detroit Pistons a few years ago. Never played in the NBA. He played in summer league and all that stuff and then played overseas. The NCAA declared him eligible. He didn't have to go to court and get a TRO or anything. The NCAA said, you're eligible. And there are a bunch of international young people that are declared eligible every year by the NCAA that have been pros and made a ton of money overseas.

23:40John:But the NCAA now is drawing a line no longer at the draft. They're drawing it as to whether you have been in college at all. If you've been in college and then you left, you can't come back. And that's the Charles Bediaco at Alabama situation. But, you know, the criticism of Alabama I thought was a little bit unfair. Like, it's not like they went trolling in the G League looking for available talent. Charles Bediaco had played there before. he wanted to come back and wanted to finish his degree and their stance was this is a distinction without a difference like he is no different than Najee or these international players that are coming in and as you know John there's never been an age restriction in college sports we've had 25 year olds forever 27 year olds so I had told somebody recently that look I if the NCAA wanted to pass a rule, one of the things I would consider on eligibility is let's make college sports for undergraduate students only and give them a six-year window from the time their high school class graduates to play their four or five years, whatever the NCAA wants it to be.

24:50John:That seems to me a rule that would be based on principle, that this is the college age, even though there are a lot of students that are a lot older than that walking campus that are playing in the band and doing whatever extracurricular activities. But so if they did that, say the NCAA did that, the undergraduates only, and then the six-year window, BYU would say, well, wait a minute, we've got players that take LDS missions. And that's going to hurt them based on their religious beliefs. So we'd have to make an exception there. And then other players would say, look, I enlisted in the military after high school.

25:28John:I served my country for four years. Now I can't play college sports and pursue my degree. So we'd be making exceptions in all these areas. And that's often where the NCAA gets into trouble. It's the rule and then the exceptions they have that allow athletes to challenge it. And it's really hard to justify some of these rules. As you know, the transfer restriction, it used to be before the portal that if you transferred, if a player transferred, the player would have to sit out a year. That was called the year in residence rule. And the theory behind it, I mean, it wasn't sinister or anything, but the theory behind it was that the player needed a year to acclimate him or herself to the new school.

26:09John:Well, that makes zero sense when freshmen are eligible. Like, why would a junior that has three years of college experience need to acclimate him or herself to a new school when a college freshman who has zero years of experience can play right away? There's no acclimation needed. So they couldn't justify the rules that they had. And I think they realized it was going to hurt them in court when they were fighting over money. And so that's how they came up with the transfer portal.

26:40Jay Bilas:I still have so many more pearls to clutch. So bear with me, Jay. The NIL, the idea of paying players, especially given the amount of money coming in from, you know, ticket sales and from, you know, media rights and sponsorships. I don't know a lot of people that begrudge that. A knock-on effect of NIL, in addition to the transfer portal, is it seems like we're seeing a lot less Cinderella. So this benefits the Blue Bloods. It benefits Duke and Kentucky and a lot of these bigger schools who can raid the mid-majors to get better players out of the transfer portal and they can have more money to pay them.

27:27Jay Bilas:Is that a potential issue or a problem?

27:32John:The transfer portal is more of a problem than the NIL portion of it. certainly there are going to be players that have that, that do really well in the mid-major level because they might've been under-recruited or they developed more than, than people thought they would. And they're going to, they're going to transfer up to play on a bigger stage, part of its money and maybe for some, all of its money, but, but a big part of it is the bigger stage. And one of the, like, I think that to me, John, that's the positive part. One of the positive parts about the portal is that why should a young player who was under-recruited out of high school be stuck at that level for his entire career when he's proven he can play somewhere else?

28:18John:So take Dalton Connect, for example. Dalton Connect went to, he was in Northern Colorado, and I didn't know very much about him. The only reason I saw him play at Northern Colorado was I was watching tape of games where there was a future NBA player playing against Northern Colorado. That's how I learned his name. And, you know, he turned out to be a great player for Northern Colorado, and he transferred his last year and played at Tennessee and became a first-round draft pick. Would that have happened if he stayed at Northern Colorado? Perhaps not. But, you know, how could we say for the benefit of the entire enterprise, well, we want to do it at the expense of these players?

28:57John:I'm okay with that. And one thing, John, about competitive balance is, you know, whenever NCAA people bring up and, you know, administrators, coaches, they bring up competitive balance. If they really wanted competitive balance, the schools would revenue share with one another. Like they're not going to do that. Like the SEC and the Big Ten, they're not sharing their money with smaller conferences. They're not going to do that. So but what they're saying is we want competitive balance, but we want to do it on the backs of the players. Like the players need to take less so we can have competitive balance because we're not going to take less.

29:33John:Like we're not sharing our money. They need to share theirs. And that's a nonstarter for me.

29:39Jay Bilas:You know, you, by the way, I'm out of pearls to clutch so we can continue on. But you did mention the Big Ten, the SEC. They're by far the two dominant conferences in college sports right now. Do you worry for your Duke Blue Devils and the ACC or the Big 12 being able to compete with those two big conferences?

30:06John:No, I think they have been competitive, but I don't I don't I'm not overly concerned about that. I mean, at the end of the day, this is this is all competition. And the decisions these institutions have made, the conferences have made, have all been intentional. Like this didn't turn into a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry because, you know, I'm showing my age here because Ed McMahon knocked on their door. You know, they built this up to be that. And, you know, it's funny, like nobody worries about the mid-majors when we're talking about coaching salaries. They're not saying, hey, this is unfair that that Duke can pay Coach K 10 million and in Michigan can pay Jim Harbaugh or Ryan Day at Ohio State.

30:52John:hey, they can make eight or nine million. What about Central Michigan? And what about East Carolina? Nobody's saying that. It's only when we talk about players because that's what wins. All these great coaches and they're great, none of them can win without great players. Now, some of them can lose with great players, but they can't win without them. And what has been proven to me is that no matter whether we say it's through NIL and you can't pay any more than a certain amount of revenue sharing, whatever it is, they're going to find a way to pay whatever the market requires to get the best talent so they can win.

31:35John:That seems to me beyond even any doubt, let alone reasonable doubt.

31:42Jay Bilas:Jay, you're killing the demos of this pod bringing up Ed McMahon in the publisher's clearinghouse. Come on. Here's money away now. I don't even know. Ryan Seacrest. There you go. Yeah, he's young still, right? Another topic about college basketball that fascinates, it appears that the expansion of the NCAA tournament is on a fast track. You positive for that or not?

32:12John:Well, I don't want to say I don't care, but I'm not worried about it. because they're going to do it if it's in their interest to do it. I can say just from a competitive standpoint, I don't think it should change. That the tournament should be hard to get into. It's a national championship event. It is not a banquet to hand out participation trophies. And I get the thing about we want more people to experience it and all that. But if everybody gets in, to me, it diminishes the experience. It doesn't make it better. they're only they're they're going to do it for the money and if if the rights holder can clear the space and make money off it they'll do it and one thing that i've always believed is that the ncaa tournament is idiot proof like they no matter how hard they try they can't screw it up it's too good of an event so you know i played in the first 64 team bracket in 1985 like it was you know my sophomore year we had a bye in the first round we didn't play a first round game We had a bye.

33:15John:There weren't 64 teams back then. When I was a kid growing up in L.A., watching UCLA play, it was 32 teams and all of them were automatic qualifiers. Like you had to win your conference to get in. And they realized, you know, when Maryland in 74, when Maryland and NC State played, and they were one versus two and one of them couldn't go to the tournament, the loser couldn't go to the tournament. Then they realized we can't do this anymore. But I don't think it helps. in my view. I don't think it helps to throw banana peels in front of the best teams and have them play more games. They play six games already.

33:51John:I'm not in favor of that, but they're going to do what they do and whatever the NCAA decides will adjust to it, and it'll still be a great event. But I don't think it's necessary.

34:04Jay Bilas:So I love having you on here. You have very well, I mean, it's your job, but you have very well-thought-out opinions on college basketball and how you think college basketball should move forward. Let me turn this a little bit and say, five years from now, as somebody that observes college basketball and knows the people that are running college basketball, what is it going to look like? How are we going to be watching college basketball five years from now? What's going to be different?

34:33John:I think it'll be, if the NCAA can kind of get its act together, whether Congress That's a big if. Okay, that's a big if. It is a big if. Yeah, we've been asking that question for about 100 years now, if they can get their act together. But there's too much at stake, in my view, not to act boldly in putting together coherent rules that serve the business. And, you know, at least we've dropped this ridiculous notion of amateurism that held us hostage for all those decades. But I think if they passed a few rules and let the schools do what they want to do and compete like any other business could compete, this could be extraordinarily good.

35:15It's great now, but it's only going to get better. And, you know, like to me, I love the NCAA tournament.

35:26John:I love the Cinderella thing. I think it's all fantastic. But what really moves the needle is when the big shots play against one another. And, you know, we've got a game coming up with Michigan and Duke, a non-conference game being played in the middle latter half of February. And it's going to wind up being one versus three. We should do more of this. We should move conference inventory into December and play more non-conference games when people are really paying attention after football has wound down on the field. I think that's a big part of what the future is going to look like. and it should.

36:05John:I'm really bullish on where college basketball is headed. I think it's great where it is now. You know, the fact that more people are watching now than watched five years ago, when the NCAA claimed, you know, amateurism is the reason people watch, lets me know that if we nail down some of these business aspects of signing players to contracts, So so there is a business transaction that locks them in, not a rule. It's their choice to do a contract that locks them into a place, not not some arbitrary unilateral rule from the NCAA. I think things get nothing but better. Yeah.

36:48Jay Bilas:How great is you have one versus three? It's Michigan versus Duke. And that gets me to like, just speaking as a fan, one of the things that I've always called for in terms of expanding the tournament is I would make it look like the FA Cup. And just invite everybody and play it throughout the season. Because one of the things that really frustrates me, again, I'll use Maryland as an example. We finally got to our playing Georgetown again. That's a rivalry that the fans really care about. well, we're not playing QW, we're not playing AU, we're not playing a lot of the local people that are the games that I think people really care about.

37:25Jay Bilas:Because, you know, you have to schedule the cupcakes early and get the win so you have 20 wins so that you get to be an eight or nine seed or whatever in the NCAA. Something that I don't think will ever happen. But it's something I've always kind of advocated for because the FA Cup, especially that third round in England, is always a lot of fun to watch.

37:45John:Yeah, I mean, there are things that we can do like that and have more of these, you know, maybe put multi-team events in February. Because as you know, John, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is not looking at, they're not looking at league games. They look at the games as individual entities. So it comes down to who did you play and who did you beat and how many quality games did you play? So now if you have a conference that doesn't give you a lot of resistance, then you're going to have to play a better non-conference schedule. But the hard part about scheduling is all these teams need to play a certain amount of home games, not only for their fans, but for them to make money.

38:27John:And then they have their league games and then they have games that are made for TV and maybe they're playing in the ACC, SEC challenge or something. So that's dictated to them. There aren't as many opportunities to play games you might want to play as people think. So scheduling can be difficult, but I think the more the big brands play against one another, the better things are. And, you know, part of this is my experience as a player back in the dark ages. But, you know, like when my teammates and I get together now, my former teammates, you know, we don't talk about the cupcakes we played.

39:07John:We talk about the games that everybody thought mattered. And I just don't know a player out there that wants to play against more cupcakes. They want to play against more big shots. And they want to go on the road and play at Allen Fieldhouse or play at Breslin Center. It's the coaches that don't want to do it. And so, yeah, so I think the more of those games, the better. And I think it'll only elevate.

39:33Jay Bilas:Yeah, never will I say. Do you remember that Mount St. Mary's game back in, you know? Hey, I want to talk about your ESPN career really quickly. Like I said, you've been doing it for, you know, going on 30 years now. I think a little more than 30 years, college basketball. Just recently, you started, you added in, you're doing some NBA stuff as well. Not how different is the game? Everybody watch it. People listening to this know that the game is different. How different is it for you to sort of prepare? I mean, because it does appear to be totally different, almost radically different games.

40:11John:Yeah, the preparation is the same. You know, I watch a ton of film and so I prepare the same way, the way I prepare my scouting reports for a game and all that stuff. So that's that's no different. I think the thing that's different is the pace of the game is substantially different. You know, college is a 40 minute game. The NBA is a 48 minute game. And it's a 30 second clock in college, 24 in the NBA. So there are more possessions in an NBA game. And as a result, I think and I may be the worst offender in this, but I think in a college game, you tend to dissect every play and an NBA game. You're not doing that.

40:49John:There are too many plays. And so the broadcasts are really comfortable. They're very conversational in a lot of ways. And both are really enjoyable. Now, you know, on the floor, like the NBA is a better game, in my view. And I don't think that should be controversial. I know I said it a couple of years ago and some people got offended on the college side. I love both. But, you know, it would be like, you know, watching college golf versus the PGA Tour. I mean, you know, the NBA is better. The atmospheres are better in college. Like the arenas, there's no Allen Fieldhouse in the NBA, and there's no Cameron Indoor Stadium.

41:30John:So the atmospheres are substantially different, and that's one of the great things about the college game is the entire package of it. But I'll tell you one thing, when you do an NBA game, the hotels are a lot better.

41:46Jay Bilas:Really, with that ESPN money, you're saying it's the Ritz everywhere, the Four Seasons here in D.C., I'm sure. I'm sure of that. But when you call a game, you're always so good about calling it the way you see it. And you rarely pull punches. If you're calling like a 17-year-old Cooper flag for Duke versus, you know, a multimillionaire Cooper flag for Dallas, do you find that you're taking it easier on some of the college kids than you would on the pros?

42:16John:No, no. I've never noticed that difference. I do hear some of my colleagues from time to time, if criticism has to be meted out, saying, hey, they're pros now. You know, the college players are pros now. So we can say this. I mean, you could always say it. I mean, we're not we're not, you know, if somebody makes a mistake on the court, you know, a mistaken judgment on a play or there's a flagrant foul or something. It's the same on on both levels for me. So I've never I've never felt that. I've always felt like you can be critical but mindful that, you know, these players that when they're out there playing, they have an opponent.

42:52John:You know, there's somebody physically trying to stop them from what they're trying to do. So, you know, I've always been respectful of that on every level. But I've never felt like, well, you know, if that were an NBA player, I could say this. And so I'm going to hold back. That's never been in my mindset. But I can understand, you know, people feeling that way. But I've never felt that way.

43:13Jay Bilas:When you started at ESPN, again, it was the mid-90s, did you envision that you'd be doing it in 2026? No. And by the way, Jay, that's like the first part of a two-part question of like, where do you see your career headed from here? Yeah.

43:31John:So part one, I never envisioned I would be doing this this long. You know, I was practicing law full-time when I started my broadcast career. and I started doing radio in like 1993. And I think it was the 93 season. And I thought it'd be fun. It'd get me out of the office once in a while as long as it didn't affect my caseload. I was good with it. And one thing led to another. I started doing TV games and more and more of them. And I couldn't do both jobs as effectively as I wanted to. So I made the decision to try going full-time broadcasting. But I did it having my law degree and my law license in my back pocket, knowing that if I screw this up or if, you know, whoever doesn't want me working anymore, I can just go back full time in my law practice.

44:21So I never felt any trepidation about the decision.

44:25John:But, you know, my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined that I would enjoy my career this much, even with all the travel. I can't imagine having more fun doing, you know, making a living. I enjoy it. Second part of the question, where do I see myself? You know, maybe I make a mistake here, but I've never really thought about that. I've always tried to prepare for what I was going to do, whether it was, you know, getting my law degree and preparing to be a lawyer or, you know, whatever preparation I did on the broadcast side, but I never had an end goal in mind. Um, my dad, you know, my dad told me when I was a kid, I remember him saying, you know, if you want a job, the best way to get a job is do the job you have.

45:11John:And so I've always thought about doing the job I have. And I've had a couple offers here and there to get back into basketball at different things. But I've always felt like I really enjoy this. And so I'm not looking at some sort of different, different position in broadcasting or different place or whatever. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm always going to listen and I've listened to the basketball offers that have come my way. I think it would be, I think it would be kind of silly not to listen, but, but, you know, if I keep doing this at the, you know, the same job for as long as they'll have me, there won't be a happier guy on the planet than me.

45:53Jay Bilas:Jay, can't thank you enough for spending the time here before the big game, the Duke-Michigan game. Always great to see you. Thank you very much for joining us.

46:06John:No, thank you for having me, John. It's always my pleasure. I finally made varsity. I haven't been varsity for a long time.

46:12Jay Bilas:Since 86, apparently, yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you.

46:21Jay Bilas:Well, that was a lot of fun for me. I could talk about college basketball with Jay Billis for hours. I especially enjoyed how he came from the player's perspective. So many people in the business talk about it from the NCAA perspective or the conference perspective or the media perspective. So it was really refreshing to hear Jay talk about all these issues from the player's perspective. So I really want to thank Jay Billis for joining the pod this week. Thanks also to ESPN's Colin Bradley for all of his help in setting this up. Most importantly, though, I want to thank you for listening to The Varsity, an Odyssey podcast in partnership with Puck.

47:01Jay Bilas:I also want to shout out the executive editors from Puck. That's Gobby Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, the great team from Odyssey, Bob Tabador and Patrick Antonetti. And of course, our partners at Nessun, Greg Poth and Matt Colpitts. I'm told Mark Merlaca is still at the Great Wolf Lodge. This guy is going to need another vacation as soon as he gets back. Well, if you like this podcast, make sure to sign up for my newsletter. It's also called The Varsity. Head over to puck.news and use the code word The Varsity. All one word for a 20 % discount. And I will see you on Wednesday.

47:42John:It's a season two playoff race with TGL. Presented by SoFi. Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Jupiter Lynx vs.

47:49Jay Bilas:Boston Common Golf. Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Los Angeles Golf Club vs. New York Golf Club. Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, the Bay Golf Club vs.

47:56John:Jupiter Lynx. Keep up, it's golf. Watch on ESPN, ESPN2, and the ESPN app.