Four grand?

Yeah.

What exactly did you get out of it? Okay, this woman, so from the outside, she's the mayor.

I don't know how old she is.

She looks fairly young.

38.

38, yeah.

yeah.

Do you expect other conferences to take similar actions?

It's expected that the ACC and, and, and the Big 12, uh, will probably follow the Big Ten's lead.

The SEC presidents and ADs are meeting today, uh, at a pre-scheduled meeting in Birmingham.

Uh, and I've been told that this will be obviously front and center as a discussion point.

And they could conceivably join a similar type rule.

The problem is this rule would still be challengeable in the courts, and the plaintiff attorneys feel like they have a very good case, that they can defeat these rules as much as they could any, uh, NCAA rule.

So the conferences can put these things out.

Given that we are going to continue seeing these court cases go, whether it is these current rules that the Big Ten is trying to make, what you mentioned that the SEC is meeting on, what ultimately do you expect to stick? And I know that's a tough question, but just based on what you know.

So how would you describe this particular moment that we find ourselves in, in collegiate sports?

Uh, absurd and comically absurd at the exact same time, 'cause you can make cracks like Paul did.

Uh, look, this is probably a one-time issue.

It's a one-year issue.

And yes, it is crazy we're signing guys off the Cleveland Browns back to college.

It's a boomerang e- effect.

Um, but this is not gonna probably be a widespread trend.

When you sign a contract to play for, let's just say LSU, and you sign a contract and they pay you $5 million, i- how is that different from signing a professional contract anywhere else?

[laughs]

I'm just saying, something happened, and all of a sudden the Big Ten started winning all the games.

And so, you know, look, um, I said this in the last pod.

More teams are trying to win the national title in the Big Ten than anything else.

I think Michigan's breakthrough was significant, uh, because for a long time it was really Ohio State.

Michigan did try, but they didn't really try.

Not at that, that white knuckle, blood and guts, we're gonna do everything.

Do you like that hire, Dan, Fitzgerald to Michigan State?

country.Starting with amateur leagues

The developmental system in the United States is fundamentally different than every other country.

The US' system, the players that are in it, generally speaking, are from a socioeconomic background, middle class to wealthy, and they also geographically live in the suburban rings around major cities.

They get the best training, the best resources put into them, the best pitches and fields, and the most attention.

And basically, the United States, which has three hundred and forty million people, so there's still plenty of people to create good teams, but they are ignoring all of the talent that exists inside of the major cities or in the rural parts of the country.

Dan says this all-business approach to youth soccer kind of gets in the way of real player development.

The clubs as a business succeed by winning, and to win at age nine and ten, you sometimes have to play the kid that grew faster and is stronger or faster at the time, and you're just kicking through balls, and this one kid is running down the field, and they're running in and scoring, and we win the tournament, and it seems like we have the best development.

That kid may not really have any potential.

What is the Jordan factor with just kind of the chaos that's going down in UNC?

So in terms of this with Lombardi, it's not a factor as far as I know.

That's totally separate.

Certainly she's involved in Belichick's personal businesses outside of the coaching, and she's involved heavily in a lot of that stuff, and obviously she's created a lot of sensation, right? But I do think in fairness it is very, very common at the college level to have a coach's spouse, usually it's a spouse, heavily involved in the program.

And so the last coach, Mack Brown, who used to coach at Texas, college fans will know up there.

His wife, Sally was everywhere.

Miss Terry, Terry Saban, Nick Saban's wife, like they're hosting recruits on the weekend, the moms and the families, the old barbecues at their house.

Fair point.

Hm.

So that alone was clunky, but, uh, I think if you come in, it's still Bill Belichick, right? I'm not gonna say that there's, it's, it's, it's all wrong.

Like I said, some of this stuff could be working.

Um, but it's definitely dysfunctional.

One of the mistakes that I think Belichick made is when you make these switches, whether you're going from the pros to college or college to the pros, um, and we've seen great, great coaches at both levels totally fail at the other.

You have to surround yourself with experienced people at that level.

Take, like, when Urban Meyer, one of the great college coaches of all time, went to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Like, uh, like, what is the, the Jordan factor with just kind of the chaos that's going down in UNC?

Yeah.

And and so any of the schools that feel slighted or if a player signs a deal with a school and they don't live up to it, then he should have he should go to the courts for remedy.

Also, I have no problem.

I'm very much in a free market on this stuff.

I don't think we need more regulation.

I don't think the the NCAA needs more power.

I have I'm fine with it sort of just settling out what we have seen.

Are you shocked at what a colossal disaster this has seemingly been at North Carolina in that year there?

Like, you know, happy to be here, going to go along to get along, but that's not really how he is, is it?

No, it's not.

And it's been when you talk to people around North Carolina's program, but also just people in college football, including recruits and high school coaches and things like that.

This isn't the NFL.

You don't draft a player.

you have to recruit a player even now with nil and revenue sharing you're paying these guys you have to convince them to come to your school not the other one and there's nothing about north carolina other than bill belichick that makes you say boy i really want to play there so you have to have some kind of charisma some kind of be nice be nice to this coach be nice to the mom be nice to all this stuff and I don't know every specific thing.

I'm sure occasionally he is, but the overarching thing is he's not like the other guys.

about that.

What is the Jordan factor with just kind of the chaos that's going down in UNC?

So in terms of this with Lombardi, it's not a factor as far as I know.

That's totally separate.

Certainly she's involved in Belichick's personal businesses outside of the coaching, and she's involved heavily in a lot of that stuff, and obviously she's created a lot of sensation, right? But I do think in fairness it is very, very common at the college level to have a coach's spouse, usually it's a spouse, heavily involved in the program.

And so the last coach, Mack Brown, who used to coach at Texas, college fans will know up there, his wife Sally was everywhere, Miss Terry, Terry Saban, Nick Saban's wife, like they're hosting recruits on the weekend, the moms and the families, they'll hold barbecues at their house.

So it's not unusual for the family to be heavily involved in that stuff.

I do think sometimes Certainly, Jordan was like filing Freedom of Information Acts against the school, trying to figure stuff out.

Fair point.

Like like what is the the Jordan factor with just kind of the chaos that's going down in UNC?

So in terms of this with Lombardi, it's not a factor as far as I know.

That's totally separate.

Certainly she's involved in Belichick's personal businesses outside of the coaching, and she's involved heavily in a lot of that stuff, and obviously she's created a lot of sensation, right? But I do think in fairness it is very, very common at the college level to have a coach's spouse, usually it's a spouse, heavily involved in the program.

And so the last coach, Mack Brown, who used to coach at Texas, college fans will know up there.

His wife, Sally was everywhere.

Miss Terry, Terry Saban, Nick Saban's wife, like they're hosting recruits on the weekend, the moms and the families, the old barbecues at their house.

Fair point.

I realize you don't cover Congress, but you do have a pretty good idea of how this works.

There is some, some optimism that, that some of the, some of the work that's been done, it was kind of dead two days ago when, when Senator Thune basically said, it's not going to come to a vote, which was, you know, now going to really push it past the election.

And you don't know who's controlling all these brands, everything gets shaken up.

And that's kind of been the problem all along with this is every time they think they get somewhere, uh, Washington gets involved and there's new senators, new Congress, the whole thing.

So, there's potentially some movement that is going to make it at least agreeable to the SEC and Big Ten.

That does not mean it will pass.

It needs to be agreeable to a lot of people, and it's not like every senator is going to do whatever the Big Ten and the SEC want.

The SEC, it really didn't come up much last week in Tampa, but they are the main holdout at the moment.

This is another strong headwind for his timing.

I think we're, we, we, we know the movie Hoosiers.

And in that movie, you have Norman Dale, the coach, he, leaves the college ranks.

He'd been run out of the college ranks and he ends up at this farm town hickory trying to, you know, take what he knew his old school style at a lower level and it would work and nothing's going well early.

And he runs into this woman, this older woman in town, if you remember, and she talks about how the sun doesn't always shine on a certain part of a dog every day.

But then she says, but mister, you ain't seen a ray of light since you got here.

And I would put that in the Bill Belichick experience.

Carolina comes out in all cotton uniforms in Ireland, we'll know what's happened.

What did you find out in the process of reporting this that kind of leads you to believe the thesis that we have an issue that's bigger than when the games get to the World Cup stage, Dan?

Well, I think one of the things that a lot of Americans do is say, you know, if only our, our greatest athletes played soccer.

And they say, hey, let's, l- let's say LeBron took his talents to the US Men's National Team, that type of idea.

Or at least started training that way.

That's not really it.

We have good enough athletes on the field.

Our athletes look just like their athletes that, of all these teams competing.

Yeah.

You wrote about pay for play.

Yeah.

Look, let me start with the best athlete thing.

It is just not, It completely misunderstands what soccer is, and it goes to an American concept of the combine mattering.

It does not matter how fast you can run a 4-4, or could LeBron James do it, or Saquon Barkley, or what if we did this and we trained him.

It's like golf.

Soccer is a micro-skill game.

They only recruit the club scene because that's where the most players are.

That's true

... we just sorta give, "Eh, you know, whatever's going on, we're just playing" And then, then we are now moving into this, like, VAR is being...

VAR came in because, like, just clear goals, right? Go- You know, 'cause they would just miss goals.

The ball would bounce behind the, the line and then spin back out, and so it's like, "Okay, we need to VAR that" Now we are doing this, and you could find a penalty on almost every play.

And so we take this very imprecise sport, and now we're pres- pr- we're, we're breaking it down, and, and you're not supposed to look at VAR at, at freeze frames, but they did.

So all sorts of procedures went haywire.

Um, and then you, you have this dramatic penalty, which is, you know, an inadvertent, uh, you know, uh, cleat to the ankle, and not only are you thrown out of the game for the int- and you're down a, a power, you could be on power play for the whole game, but you're gonna miss the next one.

[laughs]

six minutes and 40 seconds? Do they round up?

No, they'll be like, oh, well, there's a corner.

We'll give them 730 then.

You know, we'll let them do the final call.

Let's just let them try this last thing.

We just sort of give, you know, whatever's going on.

We're just playing.

Well, I mean, so how big of a sports moment is this right now for this country? Like, how big would a win be?

... journalist you are, Dan

That's right.

I can compare, um, mid-major basketball team world drinking rankings.

Uh, am I surprised that Sour- I think Souersby's camp is trying to throw the, uh, just distract in any way possible.

Um, look, uh- As of what we know from any investigations, uh, so far, there's been nothing to the idea that Cincinnati knew.

There was an alert once that came up, uh, that he had gambled.

They questioned him, and that was the only alert.

I, uh, what, what's the backstory here?

... journalist you are, Dan

... that's right.

I can compare, um, mid-major basketball to world drinking rankings.

Uh, am I surprised that Sour- I think Souersby's camp is trying to throw the, uh, just distract in any way possible.

Um, look, uh, as of what we know from any investigations, uh, so far, there's been nothing to the idea that Cincinnati knew.

There was an alert once that came up, uh, that he had gambled.

They questioned him, and that was the only alert.

Anybody willing to go on the record at Nike?

In the end, it was just brilliant legal maneuvering, and had it not been for that, would we still be knee-deep in this muck?

Yeah, I think the Big 12 did a really good job.

Brett Dormark did a really good job, and there was some some mistakes along the way, too, maybe on the Sorsby camp.

I mean, look, this started with a really unexpected decision by, you know, a Lubbock County district judge.

They brought him in from Fort Worth, but he's ruling out of Lubbock.

And, you know, every sports organization on earth is allowed to sanction its players for gambling and any kind of integrity issue.

it's just a agreed upon kind of third rail in competitive competitiveness, because if you lose that, you can lose everything.

The residual from all this, and I realize you're a sports commentator, not a political observer, but do you think this hurt or helped the cause in Washington, considering Cody Campbell is behind the curtain, allegedly pulling most of the strings?

Yeah.

It's, uh, you know, "My mental health, you have to guard my mental health and my mental health be affected by being punished for my own actions that I admit I did, and do not contend were against the rules." And like I said, you wanna improve the mental health of people in prison? I bet their mental health is better when they get out.

Every time I've seen those videos where the guy gets out of prison after 20 years, they smile.

They don't turn back in, right? They're like, "Eh, I see my family.

Let's go get some breakfast.

I'm feeling pretty good right now." Uh, you know, if you, if you, if you, if you punish your teenager and then you say, "Okay, uh, actually you d- you're not grounded this weekend, it's okay," their mental health improves.

So that is not an argument.

Like he's not-

There's no appeal for this?

There's an appeal.

You can appeal, but it takes so long.

Courts are slow.

Seasons are fast.

So the hearing for the appeal or the actual trial, this is just a temporary injunction.

It's not even like it just says he might be able to win.

What about the flyover? The flyover was

But do you think they have anything in their arsenal that they could do or at least try to do?

I cannot possibly imagine they could, and then let alone the cost.

And they've already discussed, like, oh, we've been having discussions about it.

Like, it's almost admitting collusion.

I mean, I think this is a lot of hot takes from a lot of ADs and presidents.

And I get it.

I get why everyone's upset about this.

something to do with the fact that no matter when you look at Texas Tech, you see a picture of Cody Campbell – Yeah,

All right, Dan, what reaction have you been hearing around the college football world?

world?Yeah, it's furious, Greeny.

Um, I think it, it goes to two points.

Number one, the NCAA right now is the only sports governing organization on Earth that has been prohibited from banning an athlete for sports wagering, let alone gambling on his own team's games.

I don't care if you're talking about NBA, NFL, English Premier League, cricket, rugby, you name it.

Eight billion people on Earth agree that this should be the standard, the third rail, and one judge down in Texas is saying, "Well, let's take a look at it." And so that has rattled college athletics, and really athletics as a whole, because this was just not deemed a gray area, and all of a sudden, uh, Brandon Soulsby's gonna be able to play.

Uh, because of that, the outrage is significant, but nobody can get to the Texas judge.

What would be the-

How did Souersby survive this?

Well, so to the NCAA, he did not.

Yeah, they, there was...

It was clear-cut that he should be banished.

And, you know, I, I...

We spent a lot of time researching this.

There isn't a sports organization in, in the, in the world that doesn't have the same policy.

Um, y- what do you think about that?