SBR Vault - Conversations with Mark Emmert and Ted

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Prime. From shopping to streaming to saving, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com slash Prime to get more out of whatever you're into. Let's step into the sports business radio vault and look back on some of our favorite conversations. This week, we look back at two of our favorite interviews with Mark Immert, the president of the NCAA, and Ted Leoncis, owner of the Washington Capitals. Now, enter the

sports business radio vault. Now, here's Brian's interview with Mark Immert, from the sports business radio road show in New York City from December 2017. Without further ado, let's welcome the president of the NCAA Mark Immert. Give him a hand. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate you being here. So my birthday is December 15th, and my research tells me yours is on December 16th. How is it worth? Thank

you, you too. We have a good research. Thank you. Now, this is good. We share the same birthday time. Great to be here in New York with you. Let's start off by talking. We've got students here in the audience. I know that you were a president at University of Washington. You've been a chancellor at Louisiana State. Just a state of education. Cause you've been an educator

for 30 plus years. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it's a kind of precarious time. Trikely for a higher ed in the United States. Overall, there's never been a time where a college degree was more important for successive young people, or not so young people in their, their lives and their careers in the need for continuing education and constantly reeducating. For the workspace of just for life

has never been more important. Simultaneously, we're seeing states, federal government and a variety of other places pulling back from support of universities and colleges. This wasn't anything we wanted to talk about on our list. The tax bill may or may not be passed has a number of changes in it that could diminish support for universities and colleges. How do they survive? Well, they raise tuition. Well,

that creates all the problems of student debt, etc. And so we need to find better ways to support our colleges and universities in the current model. And universities have to be way more attentive to cost for students. Torsham costs and all the other expenses that come along with it to make sure that what has become really mandatory to have a successful career in many, many fields

is available to as many students as possible. That's my higher ed pitch for the. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Because again, you're now the president of the NCAA, but you sat in the seat of the college president. We start our road shows usually by talking about your career path and going back to when you were a student, you went to university of Washington. Yes, I know

you went to Syracuse and got your PhDs. Yeah, I got my PhD at Syracuse. Syracuse and so maybe I be here. We've got some students here in the audience. Take us back to when Mark Emerald was a student. Did you envision one day that you'd have a path through sports? Or did you think it would stick more to education when you were in school? Yeah, well,

I when I was an undergraduate, I didn't have any idea really what I wanted to do. I always had visions of things, but I grew up in a very, very modest household. Nobody in my family went to college graduated from college. Didn't really know people that went to college and suffered teachers. And my doctor was a working class community. Great place to grow up. Had a

wonderful childhood and great parents, but you know, nothing that would suggest this guy is going to become president of his alma mater. Always knew I'd go to college just because my parents said, of course, you're going to go to college. I tell a joke and it's actually not really a joke that everybody and all the males in my family were were skilled laborers. They were wonderful.

And I was a great craftsman and still do beautiful, beautiful work. Had to make great lives and careers doing that. But my dad once saw me with a welding rod laying a welding bead. And he said, son, you need to go to college. But it wasn't a compliment. It was like, you have no talent. Do you understand this? So I went to college. And I was

every parents nightmare. I went to college at 18 and never left. I mean, literally never left. So I got to college, give my bachelor's degree. I took two weeks off, started a master's at Syracuse, hadn't been west of the rock east of the Rockies. So I went to Syracuse thinking I was going to downtown Manhattan. And I want to be I want to think Syracuse had

a great experience. Syracuriously decided with the encouragement of some faculty that I should become an academic, which was really not anything that I never even conceptualize. But I knew that I loved it. I had an intellectual work. I had some great, a couple great professors at Washington that got me excited about political science and history. And it had a professor at Syracuse pulled me aside. I

like somebody. People, you have one professor that really has an impact. Pulls me aside and says, you, you ought to get a PhD. How was Wildert? Why would I do that? Well, because you're kind of a natural with this. You're good in the classroom. You do great researches. Have this kind of interesting analytical brain. And I was blown away by it. So I did the only

sensible thing at that point. I moved to the Wind River Indian Reservation in the middle of Wyoming. I just I checked like two years, I guess, kind of had my peace core moment. And then got married to my childhood sweetheart. And then convinced me that we needed to go back to Syracuse, went back and and I finished my PhD. And then just started at kind of

traditional academic career. But got involved in administration at a very, very young age for an administrator and and found I really liked it. And in the back of my mind, I'd always I'd always wanted to go back to Washington, preferably. To do some great things there. And we literally wandered around America like academic vagabonds and and then ultimately I wound up as a pro-host and then

chance would Connecticut at UConn. And and then I went down to LSU and had our Southern posting, which we absolutely love and learn what SEC sports are all about. And and then and then got this amazing for me, amazing opportunity to go back and run while the water. None of that was was leading me toward this chair right now. Right. But at each of those stops

along my career Colorado. I saw the power in the impact of an athletics on our campuses, on our students, on our communities. Saw what could happen when it was done right. Saw what could happen when it's done poorly. The positive effects and the negative effects it can have. And and saw the enormous leverage that you get in terms of changing educational opportunities through sport. So at

each of my venues, I was I was more engaged in athletic programs and typically I was in the middle of the year. School University Leader would be because I thought it was really important. And, and I believe I was I'm right in that. And and so here I have a Washington and yeah, I'll do a very happily in scods doing that work, loved it. Back home

figured I was going to do that for the rest of my clear. And and got in MP has been president of the NCAA. He'd been president of University of Oregon and president of Indiana. Right. The university leaders around the country really liked the fact that the president of the NCAA was a university president, a former president. And miles very tragically got ill and died and really

like nine months time is really awful. Great guy. And and so everybody all the presidents who were the ultimate deciders on these things said, we want another president to to be president of the NCAA. Call me up and said, you know, you'd be really good at that job. And I said, no, I really don't think I want to do that. I think what they persuaded me

that this was all about having an impact on higher education and half a million students and even K 12 education because of the way we can shape policy. And so I made the decision to make another change. And I'm and turn out to be a really good decision to take on this role. And I've been enjoying a lot most days. So November 2010 is when you

stepped into the rule as president of the NCAA. I heard a really interesting quote the other day from Jim Boe Fisher at his introductory press conference at Texas A&M. I can hardly wait. What he said. And I agree with this. He said, our football team is the front door step to the Texas A&M University. A lot of people see this university through the prism of the

football team. And he said, I take great responsibility in, you know, shaping the view point of people through the football team to the university. Is someone who was the president of the university and now president of the NCAA? Do you see how, you know, I talk to students all the time to say, I pick my university in large part, not just because of the academics, but

whether or not I can also be a student athlete or even I like written for Duke's basketball team, or I like written for Texas A&M's football team or USC's baseball team. Do you see that as well? Well, I in the in the small world category, Jim Boe Fisher. He stole that line from me. He was, he was, he was, he was, when, when, when I hired

Nick Sabin, we brought in Nick Sabin to Ho Chi Dela Choo. His first hire was Jim Boe, was offensive coordinator. So I spent a lot of time around, around Jim Boe. He's a great guy. I think he's going to do very, very well there. And we taught, and I would, when I would introduce all my teams, you know, and, and because I believe it is true,

that more people know their university. In most cases, through the prism of their sports program than anything else, they, they may not know anything about the university's academic programs, but they know something about their sports programs, especially for the big high profile schools, like an A&M or LSU or Washington. So, so yeah, it is the, it is the front porch that, that, that the way in

which people know your school, if that program is working really well and reflects your values and the things you want the world to see. It's a good reflection. If that program doesn't reflect those values and people are misbehaving or, you know, then, then all of a sudden, now they know you through a, through a different prism. When I was at LSU, we, with, with Jim Boe's,

our offensive coordinator, we won a national championship. New York Times asked me to write an op-ed form. And, and you know, they, the New York Times generally doesn't ask people at LSU to write op-eds on higher education. Because they, you know, they, they, a rough higher ed issues, they tend to have a regional blasts. I'll put it that way. And it doesn't necessarily involve Southern universities.

So, I, you know, I wrote a story, the headline of which was if I remember it right, you, you already know more, my quarterback, but let me introduce my astrophysicist. And so, I was able to talk about using sport. I was able to talk about, let me tell you what the university is all about. Yeah, we win in football. But yes, we also have the highest

graduation rate in the SEC for our football team. And also, we're doing all these other things. And this is what we're really about. So it becomes this really important vehicle for communicating who you are, what you values are, what you stand for. It's, it's not just a, you know, brand marketing device. It's, it's a very powerful way to explain to people who you are, what matters

at that school. So he shambles right when you, when you see, I mean, gosh, in the last couple of months, especially when I see some of these salaries that the coaches are making, 10 years, $75 million for Jim. Yeah, not bad. Um, do you ever shake your head? Because I see, you know, college football and basketball. And I get it. Cause these are huge ambassadors for

the universities. They're big brands in and of themselves. They're getting donor support. I, I connect all the dots. But, you know, is someone who took over in 2010 to now, I mean, the salaries in the, the multi billion dollar industry of college sports is certain. Certainly around, I've exploded. And I think it's, it's got lots and lots of people scratching their heads, wondering how do the

economics of all this make any sense. If I go back to, um, fall of 2000, I guess, 99, uh, yeah, 99, uh, when, when we hired Nick Saban at LSU, we hired him. Again, if I have my memory, right, for $1.2 million. And I got beat to death while we're paying him an outrageous salary of $1.2 million. You can get him a multi year contract. Um,

I forget whether it was three or five years, but it wasn't multi year deal. One point. $2 million, uh, second highest in college football at the time. And, and now his offensive coordinator makes more than that. Uh, you've got multi million dollar position coaches, not multi million, but million dollar position coaches. You got baseball coaches. Last I saw in the SEC. There were six or seven

baseball coaches that are million dollar coaches. Now, I think all of that was unpredictable. Yeah, I think it raises all kinds of questions and people's minds and it, and it, it's, um, driven by all kinds of things. It's driven by the profound desire to win that programs have. And they, you know, that gets spread across the whole campus, across the community, crossing alumni base. And so

they're willingness to support very, very large salaries, uh, you know, come into play. It's driven and put in part by, I think an inherent risk a version around hiring coaches and ADs, uh, that, that, you know, look, we, we need to win. I don't want to take a risk. If I'm a president or an AD, I want to get a higher a known quality. So I'm

going to steal a coach from a good program and bring it. Well, how do I do that? We'll offer more money. And so you get a, you get a bidding war for a relatively small number of people. Because they don't want to take a risk on a coordinator that's never been a head coach. So, you know, so it gets conservative. I think that's a real problem

for diversity, you know, as well. So it's harder to get, um, coaches who are, um, minority coaches. It's hard to get women coaches and do in some fields because everybody wants to hire, you know, a winner. The winner's approval and commodity. Well, that means that they look a lot like everybody else. So I think it's, it's, it's a cycle that we got to figure a solution

to. We don't have any, we, the, um, the NCAA, the universities don't have any vehicle to cap salaries. There's no legal way to do that. So the way to cap, uh, expenditures on sport. There's a lot of people that talk about, well, maybe you go to Congress and you get an any trust, uh, ruling so that you could say, you know, cap football, not salaries, but

expenditures. Schools can only spend $X million on football program. That would be interesting. But it's also illegal itself. So that have to be a change in the law to allow. That to occur, but it, it's a really interesting problem right now. So the toothpaste is out of the tube. So to speak there, there's probably no reversing this trend with coaches. And then, you know, you couple

that. And I know you get asked us a lot. But, you know, and I know that I've seen some of your recent quotes about when people say, well, gosh, look at all the money. The coaches are being paid, but then shouldn't the players. Yeah, shouldn't affairs be played. Yeah. At, well, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, well, say, you know, one of my thoughts

on my show for the last 14 years is, and I get the whole title line thing. And I have my daughters around here, somewhere. Uh, so I support, you know, women's athletics. But it seems like football, a basketball or the revenue generators on a college campus. Is it time that we treat those sports differently and those athletes differently than the rest of the student athletes who

aren't generating that same revenue they're not on TV as much? What's your solution? Yeah. So I, that's one of the common scenes. And I think it's something that, you know, is worthy of and deserves a really thoughtful conversation. Because it's not, it's not as simple as saying, well, look, you know, coaches are making five million, seven million, 10 million, whatever they're making these days. So therefore,

that's a lot of money and you need to, therefore, you need to pay students that those two decisions really have to be decoupled. The real question is, do you want the universities want to have their, their athletes, their student athletes be employees of the university earning salary? And, and it doesn't matter what the salary and some people say, yeah, every year, you'll read an analysis that

says, look, if you took the money that football programs make and you didn't NBA model and gave half of it to the athletes and half to the, to the university, what does that look like? And by that, everybody could make $100,000 or whatever, which is probably arithmetic truth. Now, if you're, but then you've got to say, okay, so now we're going to hire football players. Don't

recruit them. You hire them, right? In the marketplace, you pay them $100,000 or whatever them, whatever the market could bear. They, they are now no longer treated as a student for any legal or other purposes. You don't have to worry about title line in that. They're not a model by the way because they're not students anymore. They're employees. So title line doesn't cover employees. You don't

have title line for professors. So now the students are the same as a professor or, you know, administrator or custodian, they're employees of the school. Well, now they're covered by employment law. And if I'm hiring somebody for a hundred grand, I can't imagine why I would hire a 17 or an 18 year old. I'm now hiring football players. I'm going to hire the best football player

I can possibly hire. So I'd probably get the guy that just didn't quite make the NFL or the guy at the Canadian football league or the guy that just got cut from the NFL. So it's a good minor league system. Well, it is a minor league system. Yeah. Well, why would I hire a 17 year old or an 18 year old? Who doesn't know the game?

And oh, by the way, after four years, I have no legal right to fire that guy now. Why? Because I hit 23 now 26. What's employment discrimination? As long as that person's capable of playing basketball for me, he's going to play basketball for me. So he's 36. I mean, you know, I'd, I'd have taken Ray Allen, even when he retired. Still, it's still, my man can

still shoot. I want you to med. He looked right and purple and gold. So you know, it's, it, now it's a completely different thing. I don't know that there's a market for that. The people want to see that. A professional employee playing at a university's colors. Who has only some tangential relationship to the university. People go watch, here's my theory. And there's a lot of public

opinion data to support it. People go watch college ball to watch college athletes play ball. And I have a really good point proof quite with basketball. There's something out there called the G league. Which is the development league now called the G league for Gatorade because that's there that the NBA runs, right? They've got almost now one team for every NBA team. I think there's 26.

I'm or something like that. The worst and most coaches, I haven't found a coach that disagrees with this hypothesis. The worst G league team in America. And I have no idea who this is by the way, because I've never watched one. And I, how many of you have ever seen a D league game for a few? Right? Right. You all care about sports, but four of

you have gone to a D league game. How many of you think you could name all 24 of the D league teams? Little on their mascots. For our listeners, not one hand is not one hand went up. The worst of those teams, the worst of them would win our national championship in basketball. The way better basketball players. The just, just not quite good enough for the

NBA. So the attraction can't be the worst. We want to see the best basketball players because nobody, not nobody, they get very small audiences. They, they, they're very little media exposure. None of us know who the champion is. I sure don't. So it can't be about, I just want to see the best basketball. It's, I want to see the best college team. The best D league

G league team. If we put them after the, after the final four last year Carolina wins. We say, okay, now let's have a match with that best G league team. It would be a blowout and everybody agrees with that. So, so what people want to see is they want to see college students playing college ball. Right. When we turn them into professionals. It's a whole different

prison. So, so I don't, so that model that doesn't work that it can be just a direct translation. Now does that mean that we shouldn't do we higher education. University shouldn't do everything we can to support students. Absolutely not. We have to do that in my book. And I've been pushing along with a lot of other people to get the rules changed to allow anything that

is tethered to education happens to be a legal term now that we can do to support students. I think it's great. And I think we need to look at liberalizing our rules and everywhere we can to support that kind of structure. And we've seen a ton of changes in the past five years that I think are really good. That is a fix the coaches making too

much muddy problem. But, but it's, we got to be careful. How we change the bottom. That's well. And in one of the things, you know, I've heard you speak about is is it 2% of all student athletes who play college athletics. Make it to the pros. So it's the elite of the elite. So at the first set of division what? Okay. If you count division two

and three as well. It's like under a percent. So the point is the importance of an education and getting that education and going on and doing something. I love your guys as commercials that you run. During March madness and some of the football games that you're going to major in being a doctor or a lawyer. And you can still be a great student athlete. But it

doesn't mean you're going to be an elite athlete. So my friend Ken Schroppschier just wrote a book about really helping the student athletes maximize their opportunities around education while they're in school. You know, whether it's getting them that tutor or making sure that they have ample time to, you know, pass their courses and complete their degrees and things like that. So it sounds like that's really

where the emphasis is best spent on the student athlete. Is that? Yeah. It's sure what I think. And you know, part of providing them everything that they need to be successful is not just success on the court or on the field. They need and deserve that too. Obviously because some of many of them too many actually aspire to be professionals when they have little probability of

that. So we survey our students on a regular student athletes. On a regular basis, what some of the interesting facts are that about three quarters, around 75% of division one men's basketball players, three quarters of them say, I'm going to be a professional basketball player. When it's less than 2%. So 73% of our guy to be disappointed. Division two, half of them say I'm not at

the professional basketball player. And it's, I don't know of a division two professional basketball player, but I'm sure there's been some even more amazing. 24% of division three basketball players, men's basketball players say I'm going to be a professional basketball player. It's zero. And it's rock hard zero. So, so we, we've got to make sure that they have every opportunity to perform in their sport, the

very highest level simultaneously with helping them understand that. Yeah, okay, pursue your dream, but odds are you going to make a lot of odds are strong. You're going to make a living like the rest of us. So let's help you in that preparation. So, we've got to, that's providing you with all the academic opportunities you need. And we got some work to do there. We can

talk about that if you want. Trying to get this time balance right because that's really, really hard. We can talk about that if you want. Making sure that they have the kind of academic support in a classroom that they really need given the time demands that are on them. Making sure that people are honest with them about their curriculum and they're getting the kind of courses

that they deserve and need to be successful in life. So we've got, we've had a lot of success and graduation rates. Every division one school in America. And I don't know the day to free your schools, the three that are represented here, but for virtually every school in the country, student, NCAA student athletes have higher graduation rates than the non athletes. And that's something we're really

proud of. Now, they still got issues. They, they may not always have time for the major they want. They may not have time for internships and and work experiences and study abroad to prepare them for their career. And we need to work harder on that. And we're doing some things this year that have helped a lot. But we need to do more there. But the graduation

success right now has been climbing. It's record highs by a long shot. It's that part of the model is really working. Time management is hard because you're practicing a lot. You're playing games. Very weak example here, but I went to Loyal Lemurrimon and I was the radio broadcaster for the basketball team. So even though I was a plane, I was missing class because I was on

the road with the team all the time. So the importance of tutors to me and people who helped me keep up with what I was missing in class was very important. If I wanted to graduate in four years, which I ended up doing. But, you know, if you're one of these student athletes, that time management part is really difficult. Yes, hugely challenging. You know that. So

one of the things that we did started this about three years ago had our student athlete advisory committee. So we have national student committees and then campus and conference committees had to be then structure some surveys so that it had credibility to the kids themselves. And that we conducted a forum because we're, we know how to do those surveys. And we've got a ton of data

back from the students themselves. What do you want in terms of your time? And whenever I'm on campus, I get on campuses as often as I can. I meet with all the athletes that are there. All three divisions talking to them about what's working and not working for him is amazingly consistent. They don't want to spend less time on their sport. Competitors, they will do whatever

they have to do to have that starting position to get faster, to get stronger there. They, they, they don't want to take time away from their sport. But does that couple with what you said earlier, where some of them have the false sense of. I'm going to be the guy that goes pro. So I'm going to spend as much time. So it's for absolutely. But even

with even with the women's softball player. You know, they know they're not going to play professional softball. That's not like there's not a career track for that. They don't want to spend less time on their sport. They want to win. They want to, you know, we keep, we keep saying, no, we want you to not lift weights for this. I got a lift weights. I can't

not lift weights. It's almost where you have to lock them out of the gym sometimes to control some of the time. Now that isn't me. There's not abuses with coaches. There are unquestionably. There have been abuses where coaches have unrealistic expectations of their time because the coaches want to win the coaches job securities about winning. And they push kids too hard sometimes clearly. We were able

to change some of the rules. I want to bore you with the rule changes this year, but to cap the time demands that coaches can put on students more realistically, both during the week, during the day, during the season. To give them more time and opportunity. It seems to be working this year. We're going to have to go back in and try and find some ways

to get more blocks of time. Students want blocks of time where they can do that internship, especially they get into their junior senior year. They realize, man, I guess I'm not going to go to the league because now they see that they're not like that good. I got to go job. I've been accountant. I got to be a radio guy. I got to be whatever I'm

going to be. And then we need to provide those opportunities. Having five years of support helps a lot. And many athletes, of course, are five year students. So that can help enormously. You're listening to sports business radio. We'll be right back after this. When it comes to your health and longevity, you hold nothing back. You understand what it means to push harder. Reach farther. And go

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your pocket for limited time. You can get 20% off the entire inside tracker store. Just go to inside tracker.com forward slash SBR. That's inside tracker.com forward slash. Now back to sports business radio with Brian burger. On a transition and talk about the state of basketball. Little background on me is years ago, I did the media relations for Nike all the market camp. And for the AAU

events that Nike put on. You're going to be the next Michael Jordan that build an AAU team in seventh grade around two or three kids. So I've seen the promises that have been made. I know you've got the commission on basketball that you started. Condoleezza Rice, Grant Hill, David Robinson. Some amazing people on it. And I've seen you say that, you know, what's going on right

now is unacceptable and that it needs to change. How do you clean this up? Because from where I've sat and walked over the last 20 years, it's kind of a mess. Well, it's not kind of a mess. It's a complete mess. And the first thing we have to do is be honest about that. Right. Now college sports in America have never been stronger. In any way

you want to measure the metrics of performance, whether it's the academic performances or the or the athletic performances or the interest of audience or any way you want to make or participation rates of men and women. That's all at record highs. So you don't want to throw the baby out with a bath water. There's a ton of things that are wonderful and exciting and we have

to acknowledge it. But there's also some stuff that's an ugly underbelly of it, especially those sports where there's where there's high levels of financial opportunity for a very limited number of kids back to that 1% that are going to play professionally. And there's a lot of people that want to cash in on that, right, through that through that performance. And so we've seen an evolution, really

a devolution, in my opinion, in a number of areas of critical relationships. So the first one is, I think we've got to be clear about, and these are the, these are the, this is the charge that we've given to the commission. When I put together the commission, like brought these people together, I said, the board and I agree here are five things that we've got to

find solutions to. The first is, what's the relationship with professional basketball? If a young man and his family want to play professional basketball, and that's it, they don't really have an interest in going to college. And they shouldn't, they don't need to, you don't need a college degree to go play professional, any professional sport. They're ought to be an avenue for them to go do that

without feeling like they've got to go over here to the NCA and play for six months. Let's be honest about that. And then, and then jump back out again. That doesn't, that's not serving anybody's interest, right? Frankly. And, and so, you know, working with the MBA, these are their rules, not ours, got to be clear about that. But we, we need to have a professional track

to become a professional basketball player. We have it in every other sport, basically, except football. So let's help with that, if we can't for a young man that wants to become a professional basketball player, but also wants to go to college and get a college degree. Great. Come on. Let's, let's do that. And let's help you in that transition. There's some things right now that don't

work about that, too. We come back and talk about. And then for a young man who comes to be the best basketball player, they can't, but they know, or they're not sure they're going to be a professional basketball player. Great. We want you to, but we also want you to get a great education like the others. So this kind of three tracks there. But we got

to have that first one be really clear. If a dozen to 30 young men and their families say that, and that's kind of where we are. And that's one and done now that why am I going over here? I don't want to be over here. You hear it all the time. Well, I don't, then don't do that. We don't want you to be forced to go

put on a uniform. You don't really want to wear for six months. That's, that's not a student athlete model. It's just a, it's it, you know, it's a model. It just doesn't make sense. Let's, let's move those young people to a place that works for them and their families. So we got to, we got to fix some of that relationship. That starts to deal with some

of the concerns that you drive it. The second piece is we, it's closely related is we've got to change a relationship with agents and advisors. The young people in my opinion need to have, this is true in all sports, that they need to have people who can provide them with on. The most objective advice about the probability of being a professional athlete, that families can trust

and they believe in. And the people are not unscrupulous folks that are just trying to use that opportunity for their own advantage there. There, there, there's a lot of good agents out there that are honest people that can really be helpful. We need to create a system, modify our system and our rules and work with the players association and others to, to, to clean that. Morass

up and, and let them have a relationship that makes sense and, and that we don't immediately declare you ineligible because you talked to somebody that gave you good advice and made you those are way for us to help set up a system where they can get that kind of honest advice independent of us. This isn't our job because they wouldn't trust it. They, they needed from

a trustworthy source. We got to change that agency relationship. We, we do need to change the relationship with the shoe companies. So we have a great, business marketing relationship with the apparel companies works well for them works well for, for college sport. They get to promote their brands, a good positive relationship for the most part with, with our schools. That's all great. These are some of

the smartest marketing people in the world. You worked with them. They're really, really good. They got to be able to figure out how to sell shoes without having to bribe a kid. Right. You know, that, that can't be part of the business equation here. So we got out, and this is hard because we still have ongoing investigations with the Southern District of New York. So we

can't engage with them right now. Tell all that. Dust clears. But we got to find a way to work with them, to work with the fifth fourth thing on the list, the summer basketball, a basketball model, grass roots, whatever you want to call it, to change some of that dynamic. There's important rules for them to play and developing youth sport, but youth basketball in America today

is has no oversight process. Nobody's in charge of it. We don't want to be in charge of it. I don't think that's the NCA has room. But there's no structure right now. So it's this free for all. And, and we, the NCA need to work with our coaches about when and where they have access to youngsters and at what age and control that more strictly than

having it be the shoe companies role of, of playing that taking on that business. And this and, and we got a week craft all of that. And we can do that. We can make, we can't, we don't control everything there. Of course, nor should we. But there's a number of changes we can make. They'll have a profound impact there. And then fifth. Lastly, we've got to,

we being the, when I say we, I don't mean the NCA national office. I mean, we in higher ed, the universities, because it's a, it's a decentralized decision making model. We've got to be serious about what the schools want to hold each other accountable for. And, and, and what level of, in a number of areas right now, accountability, the schools really want to use the national

office to, to engage in some of the, the enforcement of some of this activity. So this, that's a long way to dance. No, it's very good. And we have got to do this. This is, I mean, we got to be really clear. This is on our shoulders. Yeah. Nope. There's a lot of people that want to step in and solve it. No shortage of people in

Congress. They would love to step in and run college sports. No shortage of people out there saying, you know, we can do this better. If the universities, which is to say the NCA, can't do this themselves. All the other options get pretty ugly, pretty fast. So this is on us. We got to do it. It's our responsibility. We got to do it in real time. So

if I gave you the magic wand, and you could turn the NCAA and anything that you wanted it to be, enforcement, the peanut power, whatever it would be. What would that governing body look like? Well, I'm going to give you what some people in your audience and the students here will find maybe less than satisfactory. I wouldn't change it all that much. To give us subpoena

power means you got to turn it into a government agency. That's only me get legal subpoena power. So now we're branch of government. I'm not sure that I know of a lot of, with all due respect to government and politicians. I can't think of a lot of things that have been improved by giving them over to the federal government. To operate. It's not a dig atom.

It just means now we've got a whole different dynamic going on here. So I don't... It's a self-regulatory system of universities holding themselves accountable. I think that's the way it's got to remain. But will having said that. Well, I think yes, it will. Having said that, we do need to come up on the enforcement approach. I would wave the wand and say, for dealing with the

10% of the cases that are really difficult, add the surer relationships, we need a new model where we actually go in and say, okay, fun. We're going to have an adversarial relationship perilous. Take off the gloves and let's do that. And that would be, I think, advantageous for everybody. We can change that model. Maybe that's an arms-length model. Think of what a... The drug... The drug...

Anti-doping agency. That's an independent nonprofit. Doesn't have anything to do with the Olympics. But it oversees all of the Olympics. So maybe we need some little thing out there that's kind of what I like to oversee the most egregious of cases in college sport. But don't turn it into a government agency. I think the other piece that I'd love to see is it is... I'd love

to see the schools come together. And this is where you wouldn't need congressional action. To come up with some kind of model where you can balance out expenditures around sport. Back to... This isn't about coaches pay per se. It's about this huge imbalance that's going on right now around what schools can spend versus what other schools can spend. And the model's getting really, really disparate. What's

the story about that lot, especially around the sport of football? Basketball? What has happened in basketball, too? I mean, you look good. Jimbo's contract. So one of the quotes I read was that this was paid for out of donors. This wasn't paid for from the state institution or taxpayer dollars. So it becomes the halves and half nots. Because not all the donors have that kind of

money to pay the football or the basketball post. So there is kind of this uneven advantageous given to some of the schools that drive huge revenues that were have big donor bases. Because they can go out and hire that caliber of the football coach at that price tag when some of the other schools they can't compete. Yeah. And football is a game where numbers matters. Big

complex game. Right. Obviously you got a lot of coaches. You got to get all your great coaching staff aroused. It's an expensive game to be successful at it. And the revenue is skewed now through the college football playoff, which I hope you all know we don't run that. We oversee obviously football, but the CFP is a creature of the conferences, which is fine. That all works

well. But you got five conferences and the top half of the schools and those five conferences that are really pulling away economically. And, you know, obviously wants to take money away from anybody. But it is creating a schism around football that's challenging to manage on. I guess a few more topics. I want to hear. I'm going to hit with you before we open it up to

the students and the audience. So make sure that you have your good questions. Ready. I'm Ian Oregon. And we've seen, you know, Willie Taggart just left University Oregon. We've seen coaches leave. Coaches can pick up and go at the drop of a hat. I mean, I was watching Willie Taggart post on social media earlier in the week. Go ducks. We're treating him the next day. Assigning

at floor to state. Go seminal. So I think one of the problems that people have is coaches. I can do that. But if I'm a student and I commit to you as a coach to complete student athlete for you, I can't. I'm locked in to my scholarship. Do you ever see the rules changing? I mean, I get the downside of letting students become free agents and

move around like the coaches do. But I also think there's a number of student athletes that I've spoken with. And the coach is a large part of the reason they choose that university. Yeah, I think that transfer rules are clearly broken right now. And they have to be changed. There's a, we always put together committees, right? Because you got to pass everything through our complicated legislative

projects. But there's a group working on that right now. So I suspect I hope I'm actually confident that we'll see changes by this summer around the transfer rules. I think they are heavily skewed in favor of coaches and programs and students are disadvantaged by that. It needs to be fair. Coming up with a solution. And that's, you know, that's the right one is, it's complicated. But

that's no excuse for not fixing it. And there's a lot of proposals on the table right now that I personally like a lot. And I think they're going to some of many of those things will get passed. My daughter, Cecia is in the back of the room. Give a wave. So she's 12, the first trip to New York. She's very excited to be here. But I

look at women's athletics more closely because I have a daughter. I'm not sure. How do you feel like women's athletics is doing? I'll tell you that the final four for women's basketball last year. That was one of the most exciting events that I've seen. So, and I see the TV ratings going up. Are you happy with the progression of women's sports on their collegiate campuses at

the D one? Well, I'm really happy about many things that we got some real challenges on a couple of other cases. So, you know, what we see in terms of the success of women's participation. We're seeing continued growth. There's still more men playing college sports than women. But in our championships, we run NCA runs 90 championships. In those 90 championships last year for the first year,

there were more women participating in our championships than men. So, we're seeing positive trends. The audiences for particular women's sports are moving up really nicely. So, our women's basketball final four, women's final four was fantastic. Wonderful audiences in venue and on media. It was great. But also we're seeing it with women's volleyball. Our women's volleyball championship is becoming incredibly popular. If you haven't watched women's volleyball

lately, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It's such a great sport. And then our softball championship, the softball world series in Oklahoma City is becoming very popular. Great game for audiences, quick, energetic, fun, great athleticism. So, we're seeing that. Where I'm really dissatisfied is with women's progress in coaching ranks. More variety of reasons. Some known, some unknown. The number of women that are coaching

progress for you women that want to be professionals in the sport. We're seeing some significant progress with women athletic directors. And with women commissioners, seeing very little with women of color. A lot of work to do there. And we're, we're trying to make that all easier. But again, you got to remember, the NCAA is a collection of 1100 colleges, all of whom make their own hiring

decisions. Right. And we can't pass a Rooney role. We would have recorded that. We could. But because these are all individual schools, individual states, they all have their own labor laws. They all have their collected bargaining laws. We can't, like the NFL say, thou shalt interview minority candidates. We, we, we know we would have for could. Best we could do is say, we want all of

you to put your hand in the air and promise that you're going to do this, which we did two years ago. And, and so we, you know, we got a bully pulpit. We work that. We work on developing young women and minority coaches and administrators. And we've got to do that. We've had some by success there. But we're getting really good success on the student athlete

side. We got a lot of work to do on the administrator coach side. We talked earlier about a, a WADA like organization. I see JT Barrett, the quarterback at Ohio State plays in the Big Ten championship game. He has surgery on his knee six days later. He's back playing the NFL and NBA have gone to models where there's the independent outside. Doctors consultants, when some of

these for concussion are things. Of that nature, do college athletes need some sort of an outside perspective where someone could say, well, JT Barrett, maybe it's not the best idea that you're coming back on the football field six days after you answered. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the reasons that just I guess three years ago now, I think I got this right. Maybe two. Well,

it was three years ago. Just wanted to affect two years ago. Every school at every division is now required to have a designated chief medical officer. That's not the term, but who does not report to a coach who's chain of command is outside of the coaching staff to be the ultimate arbiter of that kind of decision. So, so a coach can't have his doc say, you

know, we really need JT out there. Right. And so, so we're trying to make sure that there's a chain of command. Outside of that, that coaching pressure that will help with those kind of issues. Now nobody's not going to be able to do that. I mean, if we all know that, you know, everybody knows everybody and and that individual over there knows that why we really

need, you know, that that a quarterback or, you know, this point guard, because she's critical to the team. So everybody understands that. But nonetheless, there's, there's now distance between those people in their career paths, which helps a lot. The other thing that we've done is one of the first things I did when I took on this job is I created the job of chief medical officer

first time in the NCA. Life that we now have a really robust research program going on. To to look at all of the big medical issues that are out there. So we're now running pain for getting drawing all the data out of unequivocally the best concussion research in history. We can talk about that if you want. It's it's helping and informing all of our rule changes

every day. You know, it's we're trying to drive data on it so that that's led by really good medical research and we're trying to eliminate risks to student athletes. We we got to do a lot more work on mental health. I've just been stunned by the amount of concern that our student athletes are expressing college students in general, by the way, around mental health, around stress,

stress and strains of collegiate life today. And what that really means for students. It's it's it's a epidemic on campuses. We're trying to figure out how do we help and you know, we're focused on our athletes. We're focused on our students in general. The specific overuse injury concerns that we know are out there. They're driven by use sport and some right you saw. You know that

does everybody know what Tommy John surgery baseball. Right. We'll see how my old guy. I actually remember Tommy. And that surgery was created for old war and out major league pitchers. Yeah. Right. That's last year. Half of the Tommy John surgeries in America were on high school kids. We got to get to the major leagues. We got to we there's some serious work. It's got to

go on in youth sport. We're seeing freshman show up on campus that are burned out psychologically. They've got we're seen an epidemic of knee injuries with with girls in you know youth basketball and volleyball and soccer. I just you grind in their bodies down. We got to help with all of that. And and that's a role that we're taking on now that the NCA didn't necessarily

you know take his aggressive position. You're listening to sports business radio. We'll be right back after this talent hard work focus and determination got you here. Now take the right steps to prepare for your future and ensure that you stay at the top of your game your business. Your craft Morgan Stanley global sports entertainment is a division of Morgan Stanley wealth management dedicated to serving the

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with my personal wealth management for almost 20 years visit Morgan Stanley at Morgan Stanley dot com. Backslash G S E now back to sports business radio with Brian burger you know and I grew up I played all the sports and the coaches I see now. Who say you have to just play baseball you have to just play basketball or football the specialization and then the burnout

is ridiculous. I mean I do my part is a dad my daughter plays several different things and does different activities. You know and if I had a coach say no if she wants to plan this team chef to play around I would be like. And interestingly I haven't done survey on this earth it's not scientific but just the rand of a sample of coaches and college

that I sit down with. They all want to know when they were recruiting a kid what are the sports do you play. Because they they strongly believe in there's good evidence to support it now medical evidence to support it. That that being a multi sport athlete when you're young makes you a better athlete period. It helps you develop all the physical skills and emotional abilities that

are going to serve you well there's there's evidence suggesting that no kid needs a specialized in their sport until they're well into their teenage years. The idea that you can't be a great soccer player unless you you know start when you're six there's no evidence to support that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that's a great way to be a bad soccer player. Right. And

and mind up E at 16 hating soccer. So yeah we got some work there and and I'm just like that. And our role and it is is critical I think. My last question before I turn it over to the students technology we were talking to Doug Lauder from Boingo backstage before we came out the explosion of technology. I mean you know Doug and I always talk

about when you go to a venue now you expect connectivity as much as you expect bathrooms and concessions stand so. For where you sit and your conversations with college presidents and athletic directors and co-workers how much of the conversation is geared at technology whether it's for the fans or for analytics for the program. It's a constant conversation today. It's it's one of the most exciting sets

of opportunities especially for both your age this convergence with all forms of digital technology is with virtually everything around sport. I can't think of a of a domain inside sport. I'm not a college sport that isn't being disrupted in really interesting ways. Some of you know dislocating and disturbing to a lot of people. If you look at just the way people consume sport media. I spend

a lot of my time in New York when I'm here meeting with our media partners and we're trying to understand how you all and and more interestingly 13 year olds consume sport media. Most people today don't want to sit and watch a game on the table. On TV for three and a half hour. They just they will not do it. Including old guys like me and

just it. We just not geared that way anymore. How do we make that work for the for the fans. How do we use technology around healthcare. Where the technologies and and monitoring what's going on with the human body is becoming really exciting. How do we do it for analytics or performance and make you know people better better athletes. How do we do it with the fan

engagement. You know what kind of analytics. Medical information will will audiences want to see and coaches on the sidelines about what's going on in the game and how just it's it's it's an incredible opportunity. A lot of expense associated with it so that makes athletic directors and others really nervous how we're going to. You know pay for all of this and in venue stuff but you

which have to because it's it's just where the world's going and. It's I think three to five years from now the world's going to look very very different. Okay we have students from Columbia University. Marist University University. And Montclair State University and this is the point of the program where we. Turn it over if you have a question raise your hand. Stay your name and state

your school. We've got someone right up here. Thanks Mark for coming in today Ross. Lookie from Marist College. So you mentioned earlier that an increased focus needs to be placed on mental health with student athletes and. Burning out both mentally and physically and as a division one athlete a Maristops scene at firsthand so. How do you think this problem can be solved going forward. What we're

trying to do I tell you what we're working on is first of all we're trying to. Raise the awareness with campuses athletic directors athletic administrators medical providers for athletes of the reality of all this first of all because many of them. Are there any other coaches are not somebody as you could probably a test or not somebody you naturally want to go to and say coach

I'm really having problems I got I gotta talk to you about. No and then whatever mental health issue you got going on that's. A pretty tough conversation so cool is in that loop that can can be there I've talked a lot of people at small schools that say gee I don't know what to do like a small D three school and I'll say well what percentage

of your students are athletes and a D three school I could be a core. I'm a supporter of the campus well how many mental health counselors do you have four well I signed one of them to the athletes. And you know just a simple thing is that just just think about. How you can get that done we're creating resources. Educational resources that we are distributing out

to schools now we've had a lot of professionals come together and say what kind of. Of tools do coaches and trainers need to even start to understand and think about this because the coaches. And trainers now are sort of the first responders and not to do and so how can we get them up to speed this schools themselves are going to have to make investments. But

we're going to have to elevate the issue help train people. Make sure that young people coming up through the through the administrative ranks and the coaching ranks know that this is just a part of your job now. What are the sides what are the concerns how do you help your students with coaches it's frankly all about performance just say look. You'll have this young you see

young person to prepare for the school. You're a form better and you want to help them become a better student a better athlete. You need to have these tools too and coaches are picking up on there they're they're getting this it's like sleep. All you all students are sleep deprived all of you. You don't even have to tell us no smile and not I know. But

when you can put data in front of you that says you will be a better free throw shooter if you get eight hours of sleep let me show you the analytics. I saw some great data on iguana. He was a you know the worst he had a great as fabulous study where they they mapped you know point to point eight hours sleep turnovers eight hours sleep

free throws eight hours sleep of a field go percentage six hours sleep because you're on the road. It's I mean it's just like a one to one correspondence. So all of a sudden for him getting eight hours sleep isn't a luxury. It's a necessity. He changes whole life because okay. I want to I'm up my three three three three three. I'm a percentage to go five

points sleep. And by the way the same things true with academics. I know you don't believe that but it's absolutely true. You are smarter with eight hours sleep than you are with six hours sleep guaranteed. So there's a bunch of those things are a mental health and performance that we we can use to to influence people to say yeah yeah we got to we got to

take better care of our bodies and our brains. Because we perform better in the classroom and and on the court. Yeah what's your sport right when you swim. Oh great. Yeah you got the shoulder. Right here. Well sure from Mochler say thank for having us. You said earlier you know the problems of paying athletes because of the government makes them employees and whatnot. I don't believe

that they should be paid in the first place but I do believe that they should be compensated in some way shape or form. Is there a way that you can compensate athletes you know in respect to how much money they'd bring into the schools with maybe living style like you know you can't buy them cars but you could give provide the transportation things like that is

there a way so where athletes aren't being paid but they're being compensated for the dollars and eyeballs that they're bringing into. Yeah I think that's a great that's a great question that's a that I think it's a useful way to think about this. It it gets I'll try not to make it a legalistic argument because I don't think that works. I think it's an unsuccessful argument

but there are some complexities around that that I will bore you with. First of all over the past handful of years there has been an effort as in division one in particular to to provide way more resources around a number of the things you're you're describing so you probably well aware of the fact that three four years ago now we moved toward a model that I've

been advocating since I got on the job of providing what's called full cost of attendance so most most schools that have significant revenue around sports not all of them but most of them that have real revenue are providing student athletes with it with cost of living stipend that's what I'd rather five six thousand dollars not a ton of money but it's but it's important so it

covers you know that we can pizza and all that stuff that we'd always hear about. Second we change all the rules around food that might have been harping on for five seven years I guess now that that it's great to have schools compete over who can feed their kids bets. People were saying yeah but that'll get expensive you know school X has got to give them

breakfast and bad and that's great. Give them breakfast and bad who cares if that's attractive to a kid you know computer who can give them the best nutrition why is that a problem so you can say yeah feeding them better taking better care of them in all those ways is tethered to their education and their athletic experience so why not do it. Last year we gave

year before last I don't know the number last year could would have been more wait we distribute our total budget in the NCAA almost all comes from the men's basketball tournament excuse me. So we distribute first of all it's about a round numbers very round numbers about a billion dollars we get 90% of that from the men's basketball tournament the rest from other ancillary things we

only generate revenue in the NCAA from our championships nothing with a regular season nothing with football period it's all postseason and most all of it's men's basketball so billion dollars about a half a billion of that right off the top goes back to all the schools all three divisions but mostly division one because that's where it comes from another hundred billion this last year went to

all the division one conferences for their schools to provide students with support for a lot of the things you're talking about any basically anything that that student needs they need to fly home for a funeral or their mom sick great buy my airplane ticket they showed up on campus they didn't have a winter coat great buy more to coat they need a computer for school buy

a computer what whatever they need they can't buy them a car but they can pay all the transportation they can do any of that stuff they can take them on a trip overseas if they want I know what one of the first things that Duke did is the coach came took his team up here bottom slacks sport coats to come to Wall Street took them all

you took them to Broadway place and you need a New York experience in your life and he used these funds for the so it's it's aimed at exactly what you're talking about and liberalizing the rules so that most of that can occur the second piece that where there's a lot of confusion is around well students can't can't be involved at any work right there they're a

musician and they and they can't make money off their music because of NCAA rules that's nonsense by the way they can you know you can you can today there was a big case you probably followed I mean you heard about it central Florida south Florida forgotten where the the kicker was trying to sell YouTube videos and it became a big causal and the NCAA won't let

me sell my YouTube but that was nonsense there is no rule that says a kid can't go on YouTube and make money there is a rule that says you can't go on YouTube and and show your practice you can't go on YouTube and show yourself in the way for working out you can't you can't show yourself being an athlete but this and was it kind of

doing a stand-up shot enough you saw it it was kind of funny I thought it's pretty talented kid that was perfectly fine no no restriction on that at all but we need to make sure people understand if you want to you know if you want to be a filmmaker while you're a football player great you filmmaker you want to you want us right at book right

right at book terrific so so we do need to make sure everybody understands that those things are available I'm I'm strongly in favor of providing students anything and any opportunity that we can tell their to their education without turning them into a paid employee of the University Wow one of questions University I'm not entirely sure how possible this is but I mentioned it earlier with like

the with the football teams how possible would it be for them like the power of five covers a step of eventually break off into their own to generate more money if that's even possible well there that it's a good question that's often asked there's there's no financial advantage for them doing that that there first of all they can do that anytime they want right so that

a lot of confusion about what the NCA he isn't what it isn't whenever you just kind of a good way to think about it whenever you read in the newspaper we don't read this paper whenever you read it on your Twitter feed somebody saying today the NCA decided X today or yesterday the NCA decided to punish school Y in your mind just translate that to today

the college and universities of America decided X today the colleges and universities of America decided Y because all of those decisions are made by the universities through a complex representative democracy and can be very complex can make me and everybody else crazy but that's how rules are made and that's how punishments are met and out whether it's necessary but a school can pull out of the

NCA any day they want to they're there they're there as a voluntary member of this association right it's not like a governmental entity they can they can pull out so if the five conferences and I spent most of my career working in in those conferences if they ever said like we want to pull football out of the NCA the other schools would say okay if that's

what you want to do I don't think that would ever make sense for them they get all the revenue now that we we have nothing to do with football revenue period we have nothing to do with regular season revenue from any sport that all stays with the conference stays with the schools okay so so the CFP money which is now you know a lot of money

we don't see that we never touch it stays with the conferences stays with the schools so the only thing they would gain by pulling out is a lot of cost because we actually in the national office run all the oversight of football we run all the infractions are out football we run the football oversight committee we run the football rules committee and that all costs a

fair amount of money to run those things so they would have to reinvent it if they wanted to run their own enforcement they'd have to reinvent the enforcement division and create all that on their own so right now they kind of have the best of both worlds so that and they would never pull out in my opinion they would never pull out of the NCA because

the other schools would have to have an other championships work so well for everybody they want to have a national swimming championship where they compete with everybody the the men's basketball tournament women's basketball tournaments are iconic events and there are iconic events important because Butler gets they have a shot in the air to try and beat Duke and nobody wants to take that away Gonzaga gets

to go and play you know for the championship and nobody wants to say oh no we don't want a little Gonzaga around here anymore you know we just want to play nobody wants that so I don't think it even though there's people that say oh it's to their disadvantage I think that's wrong and even when I put on my old University of Washington or LSU hat

I don't think it's a I don't think it's a viable option that I would ever advocate for I said that they can they can do whatever they want to do Luciana Montclair State University there are many concerns about clustering and academics USA today reported finding hundreds of D1 teams over represented in one major at their colleges do you believe that the NCAA's academic rules are driving

these athletes to majors that are perceived as being easier that's a great question first of all academic clustering unequivocally happens right we all get that we we know that athletes student athletes are choosing majors sometimes different than what they would have otherwise right because of scheduling issues because of rigor in some cases right because of you know labs or other things that might be associated with

that major that major that might be associated with that major that major that you know you know there's a lot of things like that that's a lot of things like that that you know you know what they're doing when you're looking at the an athlete associated with that major that make it really hard to do that major while they're being an athlete and and so there's

there's that kind of clustering where they're they're not necessarily taking a major because it's easier for say academically but it doesn't fit their schedule and they they really might want to be a a pre-med major but they just can't make it work and and that really troubles me a lot I think that's really a problem because now we're shaping the rules the practice their ambitions are

shaping their academic choices and and we need to find a way to fix that. The other the other issue you're saying is that you're raising is that yes we have raised academic standards first of all for preparation to get into a D1 program the intent there which seems to be successful so for by the way we did this five years ago I guess but it just

triggered in three years ago I guess it really kicked in was to make sure that kids are showing up for college better prepared academically so they can take on whatever the rigors are we're seeing the graduation rates tick up that suggests that that's working we know that the APR measures and progress toward degree are encouraging students to to be more attentive to their schedules but doubtlessly

we it's hard to get the data to answer your question common sense tells me that that they are clustering some are clustering in perceptually easier majors in order to maintain eligibility and and again part of that's this problem of them assuming I'm going to be a professional athlete right if if I believe in my head I'm going to make a living as a professional athlete well

that I I just care about Stan eligible right and and maybe coaches and encouraging me to take harder classes because he wants me to stay eligible to and and and that's really troubling part of it is we've got to get youngsters to understand before they get to college that look you know keep your your hook dreams alive but also get ready for what's probably not to

be the case pay attention to the school at the high school level it even before you get a job at school level it even before that's where this all begins don't take the easiest class take stuff that's going to prepare you for life and prepare you for college and then we got it we got to both through time demands true greater opportunities post post eligibility so

if a kid finishes up his eligibility but he hasn't finished his degree you know most schools now not all I think it should be all most schools will allow him to keep us hurt or her to keep their scholarship and finish up off here and if you're in the middle of a program that's more demanding or you want to shift majors your senior year great let's

figure out a way for you to do that and if you have to spend another year finish up with the major you want terrific and and go ahead and take that more challenging course I I believe that the concern you're raising is real and I and it really troubles me it's really hard to get at it because it's a it's a campus based phenomenon and it's

it's part of that relationship between a student and a coach and I don't I don't think the answer is the lower academic standards I don't believe that's a solution I don't know that we need to ratchet them up anymore but we do but the solution now has got to be in time and academic opportunities. Typically right give them more time if they need more time. And

what we're making great progress there but it's still not as far along as I'd like it to be. We have time for one more quick question I can answer I can answer short in shorter answers to it. Before you were about Margot Sean from Maris College. Before you were talking about a professional route and set up to go into the NCLI. We're in the European and

South American model for kind of youth school groups and youth system work for that professional route. We're at the age of 17 18 they can decide to sign with their club but where they can decide to go the college round. Can we have that in America is that possible? Yeah I think I think that's in part what I'm talking about. You know I've had interesting discussions

with lots of people around the whole youth sport area and the relationship with the pros and and there there's already sort of a leaning in the direction you're describing anyway in other sports. So you've got the IMG academies coming out in other sports. So if you're a tennis player for example go on to college may not make sense for you. As a tennis player you go

to IMG academy you play all over the country and even all over the world. Internum should play pro-ams against the best talent and okay I'm just going to go play ball. Because I went through something that looks sort of like the European model but there's not a club in the middle of it. There's not a team it's an individual sport. Same with golf. Hockey's got a

little bit of that already. So the question is do we want to create a model like that in the middle of the year? In basketball then the answer is maybe you know for again for that student who that that youngster I'm talking about teenage kids here that just wants to go see a thing play ball. Okay then let's try that. One of the upsides of that

is it would put him in close competition with professional sport really early and they'd actually realize oh maybe I'm not that good. And that's 75% that think they got to go pro might drop the 10. Which is still five times reality but there's a whole bunch of them that say yeah I think man I'm going to play college ball and get a degree. I would think

that would be really terrific. So we'll see about that. I think the harder question is football. American football. Where you know there there's no minor league that you can't take an 18 year old I'm high school put him in the NFL. That'll be killed. So there's a lot of things that I'm going to do. There's not a model there and when we sit and talk with

our friends in the NFL you know they don't they haven't expressed any interest in a club like model. But could there be an academy sort of model for a handful of kids that want to just they just want to play football. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Somebody wants to be a professional basketball player that's their life's ambition go do it. If your life's

ambition is to be a musician go be a musician great. If you can go to college and learn. You can go to college and learn more about your field and get a college degree and that's what you want. Perfect. We're the place for you. But if you don't care about that other part. Especially if you see there's a burden and you've got a grumble about it

the whole darn time. Don't go. Let's fight another route for that person to play ball and that does look and feel a little more European and Latin. Interestingly in I know this is long with an answer I apologize. But interestingly I've been recently to Europe and Asia where I was where they're keenly interested in college sport because they want to get away from their mod. Right.

Because they're saying no no we want a different track. In Europe for kids that don't want to play professionally but want to play in the college level so there there's a burgeoning interest in college sport over there so it's really interesting question. That is all the time that we have it's time for some thank you's thank you to boy go for being our title sponsor of

the sports business radio red fillets give them a hand thank you. First last first lesson of working in and athletics is always cheer from sponsor. That's right. Tag word with our visualization. Thank you to them. Thank you to the students from Columbia University from Montclair State and from Maris great questions from all of you. Thank you to the players Tribune for hosting us. Thank you to

Eric Christiansen for arranging this for us and last but not least thank you Mark so much for taking the much better to join us this talk. Thank you. So we have recorded this conversation and our producer will have it ready and available later today again sportsbusinessradio.com where you can find our podcast on iTunes. Thank you again so much and laugh and not least my daughter back

there give her a quick wave that's first time she's come to our for event her first trip to New York so it's great for me to have her here. Thank you so much. Underdog fantasy is the easiest place to play fantasy sport. It's also the fastest growing fantasy app in the industry. Your fantasy leagues might be over. You can still play fantasy sports games on underdog

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forget to register with my promo code SBR like sports business radio to get your first deposit doubled up to 100. Must be 18 plus and present in the state where underdog fantasy operates terms apply concerned with your play call 1 800 522 4700 or visit www dot NCP gambling. Now here's Brian's interview with Ted Leonsis from December 2008. My guest is Ted Leonsis. Ted is the

founder, chairman and majority owner of Lincoln holdings a sports and entertainment company that holds ownership rights and several Washington DC entities, including 100% of the NHL's Washington capitals and the WNBA's Washington mystics Lincoln holdings also owns approximately 44% of Washington sports and entertainment limited partnership, which owns the NBA's Washington wizards and DC's Verizon center. Ted Leonsis is known as one of the country's premier businessmen having

held numerous leadership positions at AOL. Ted thanks for joining us this week on sports business radio. Nice to talk to you. So you're an amazingly diverse individual. You're involved in many businesses, entertainment and charitable endeavors. Let's start with your role at AOL. You're one of the companies first employees and really one of the main visionaries for the company. How did AOL lay the foundation for the

new media environment we live in today? Well we were very very cognizant of how complicated and tough to learn and use the Internet was and we really set out to make it very accessible to consumers. And probably what I'm most proud of is that we took very very tough complicated things and made it very simple and we got America online and built a very very big

franchise that had lots and lots of customers and really were the leader in that first generation of development of the Internet. You talk about the development of the Internet now from watching video on your handheld devices to blogging. The way we consume our information is really changed is a pioneer of new media. What's the next phase of technology that we're going to be utilizing in our

lives five years from now? Well I think we're seeing bits and pieces of it right now in the world that you as an individual are in total control of your communications and information. All of the power has shifted to the consumer and away from the high priest of media. I joke we used to talk about 900 channel universes and it's really coming down for me personally

to one channel WTED information and communications and connectivity. When and where I want it and I live in this three screen world television and computer and my phone and you know there's a there's a way that I want to get information and be connected in each one of those form factors. And so this we're going to have to live with this three screen world and media

companies and sports and entertainment companies are going to have to be able to make information. Drinkable at whatever water fountain the individual wants to drink at one of the main mediums that I think is having a difficult time making that information. Drinkable as you put it is newspapers newspapers are laying staff off around the world. What's the future of the newspaper? I mean I've said on

this show that I think you know 20 years from now there may only be a handful of printed newspapers. Well I think the news paper is a great deal. The game is over and I know I'm not saying that in a in a flippant way we live in a world in the internet and new media where you are for more and more for less and less

in print based media and especially newspapers live in the absolute opposite world. It's more expensive to print and ship a newspaper. It's not very environmentally conscious. It's not just a chop down tree and ship them around on trucks. And so Wall Street the financial community has essentially said that the industry is going to zero. And if a newspaper company that had a website shut down its

newspaper today and lost 80% of its revenues its stock price would go up because Wall Street was going to zero. Wall Street right now has said this market will go to zero where the internet is growing and they could show growth in double digits. They would be up. And so I think what you'll see is where it used to be. I publish for my newspaper and

my website is a site. Now you'll see I publish for my website and my blogs and my syndicated media and my newspaper is a site. And I use the newspaper really as a way to promote drive traffic and sell ad packages in my electronic media until that becomes too expensive and then that just goes away. Very, very interesting. My guest is Ted Leones. Ted, let's talk

about your sports teams. How did you first develop your passion for sports? Well, I grew up a poor kid in Brooklyn, New York. My mother and father both worked. I'd get out of school at three o'clock. They wouldn't get home. I had to stay out of trouble until about seven. So I had four hours to stay out of trouble. And you'd do a couple hours of

homework and then you'd play a couple hours of sports. And where I grew up, kids played roller hockey. They played basketball. Roller hockey or just running around with sticks and a can sometimes. Plot and can. Or it played a lot of hoops. And so, no, I grew up loving the sport. I was very fortunate every I was an only child. And every Christmas, my main gift

for my dad would be a 19 game package. Where we'd go see nicks and rangers, games growing up. And so I just love the game. I love the game. And so when I had the opportunity to buy the teams, I just jumped out of this for a chance of a life fun. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a pro athlete. And then at

about age 12, I realized that was never going to happen. It was that kind of the same for you. You know, I listen to people say, well, they wanted to be an athlete or they wanted to be a coach. Did you ever say I want to be a pro sports team owner when you were younger? I was in a plane accident in 1982 and survived. And

I wrote down a list of 101 things to do before I die. And in that list, I wrote on a professional sports team when a championship. And so, you know, I checked off one. And I'm working hard on checking off the second one. Let's talk about that. Listerman. I was going to ask you about that. But we'll get into that now. You know, on this list,

it's an amazing list. Meet Mickey Manel. Check play one on one with Michael Jordan. Check. Sail the Mediterranean. Check. These millions of dollars for charity. Check. I mean, it's an amazing list by my count. You've done 74 of the 101 things on the list. I mean, how did you come up with this list? You just described that you had a near death experience. But how long

after that experience, did you come up with this list? Well, on the way down on the plane, I was negotiating pretty hard with a higher authority. And I said, please let me live. I promise I'll play offense with the rest of my life. I'll leave more than I take. You know, you do everything to rationalize that what you did up to that point in your life

wasn't enough. And but I realized afterwards that I didn't have a roadmap. But most people, you don't know what will make for a full life. Yet in business, you're always metric. You're always doing goals and visioning statements and the like. And so I just felt that was a way to put something in writing and to drive me towards these achievements of, you know, trying to do

good or trying to have fun or trying to give back. And that if I could live my life by that, that the second part of my life would be more fulfilling than the first part of my life. You mean the list is really impressive to me, A, because like you said, it does establish a roadmap. But it's not just, you know, hey, I want to make

money or hey, I want to do this fun thing. Well, there's some of that. I'll be honest with you. I'm not very proud of the list. It was done, you know, 25 years old and sure it was done like in a day. And I've, I've, it was kind of random. Well, there's family stuff too. I mean, there's, there's real human being stuff on that list. And

and even, even the list has, um, I've tried to find a higher calling in it. I've spent a lot of my last 10 years or so focused on, well, what did the list try to get at, which was, you want to live a life without regret. You want to, you want to have a, um, a self-actualized life. And ultimately, you want to be happy. Right. That's

the biggest deliverable. And so I spent a lot of time in looking at what makes people happy. And, you know, I have come, in fact, I'm writing a book right now on the importance of happiness in all our businesses that we're essentially in the happiness business and sports and filmmaking and even the internet and media and new media business. And and what seems to make people

happy or five things. The first is that they are an active participant in multiple communities of interest. The second is that they have very high levels of personal empathy. The third is that they self express. I was a reason there's so many blogs out there. The fourth is that they volunteer and that they give back and that they feel that they're connected as part of a

team. And the fifth is that they're in pursuit of a higher calling. And what I try to do in all my business affairs and personal affairs is try to run what I'm doing through those screens. And if they, they don't have at least one of those check marks and I won't do them. If they have all five of those check marks, then I'll pursue them with

bigger. What's the name of this book and when's it coming out because I want to go out and get it based on what you just said. It's unnamed right now. If you go to my blog, you can help me take the happiness survey. And that'll help me. And the blog is Ted's take.com. So speaking of higher callings and things like that, I mean, I want to

get to your sports teams in a minute. But you produced a critically acclaimed documentary titled Nanking. And Woody Harrelson was in it. Mariel Hemingway. Hemingway. Talk about that movie a little bit. I've read an article with you recently. This said, you might be done being a producer. You might want to do some other things as far as distribution is concerned. But talk about that project. And

what it was like to be, you know, you've done sports and all these other things. What was it like to work on a movie? Well, I've made two films. The first film was Nanking. And it was a movie about human tragedy, but also triumph about a time in history when the Japanese invaded Nanking China. And the dozen or so Americans in European state behind and created

a safe zone and save 250,000 Chinese refugees. And while making the film, I coined a term called Film Anthropy, which is, hey, you can use films to activate charitable giving and create communities of interest and write wrongs. And then I made a second film called Kicking It. And Kicking It was bought by ESPN. Went into theaters. It started Colin Farrell. And it was a film about

the power of sports. And it was a film about the power of sports to transform lives. And this case specifically soccer. And it dealt with the subject of homelessness. And in the event that's actually going on right now, the annual homeless world cup. And the movie did very well. And we've been raising money. And it really humanized put a human face on homelessness. And from that,

it motivated me to start my latest venture, which is called Snag Films. And it's basically a way that everyone can become a film anthropist. We show free, full-length documentary films. We attach a charity to the film. And then we allow people to come and watch them at SnagFilms.com. And if they like the film and the charity, they can snag that film and drag it in and

embed it into their blog or their MySpace or Facebook. And we can, you know, they're going to have a free page and let all their friends see it for free as well. And so they basically open a virtual theater for us. And we're about four months in. And we're close to hitting a hundred million pages. So it's been a big success. And I think we can

help filmmakers and charities and let people use film as personal expression. What a brilliant idea. Just a few minutes left. My guest is Ted Leoneses. Ted, the economy has declined sharply in recent months. You have a stake in it. You're an NHL team, an NBA team, and a WNBA team. Which league is best set up to weather these tough economic times in your opinion? Well, I

think, I think a league that have salary caps like the NHL, where the revenues are split proportionately between the players and the league, whether they go up or down or best positioned. If you have a long term guarantee. You can't keep contracts. But the variable revenue goes down. Your losses will increase. And so, you know, the NHL, the players are our partners. They're getting 55% or

so of the revenues. If the revenues are up, it's a eight a for everyone. And if they go down, we all share in the pain. And so, you know, I think the NHL is in good shape. I think the NFL is in good shape. And so, I think the NHL teams that have leagues that have teams way over the salary cap and where their revenues are

declining while their expenses increase dramatically. I think that's a bad situation. I want to ask you as the owner of an NHL team. Are you satisfied with the league's current TV deal with versus? Or would you like to see the league make a deal with the network that has broader distribution like an ESPN? Well, I think bigger reach and more money would be great for all

of us. But let's be honest, we couldn't get that in. And versus has been awesome. Versus love the game, versus love the sport there. They made big investments. They're owned by Comcast. They're very committed. And, you know, they've been great partners. And, you know, we're kind of growing together. I have to remember the ESPN 2 used the NHL to build its footprint. And versus is doing

that as well. And, you know, we have to be thrilled with the kind of commitment and expenses and dollars that for us. Versus is paying and they've been fabulous partners. But, yeah, I mean, I'd like to be on prime time, you know, all the time. We just we don't have that luxury. And so we're in this together with versus. And we want to do great by

them. You have one of the most exciting dynamic young players in the NHL on your team, the Washington capitals Alex Ovechkin. He's one of the elite players in the league. What can you and the league do to make him more of a household name and grow the capitals brand? And as well as the NHL brand in the process. Well, I think he's crossing over already. He's

certainly a global superstar. And he's arguably, you know, one of the number one or number two best known NHL players. These MVP's are charismatic. And, you know, what he probably needs is that breakthrough sponsorship national contract. Yeah, some great deals locally. Yes, some great deals with. With hockey suppliers and the like, but he doesn't have that Michael Jordan, that's Nike kind of campaign. Where someone else's

add dollars are helping to build his brand. Right. Last question. You're obviously a go getter. You're very successful. Anything you've touched has been very, very successful. You have a lot of passion. What advice can you give to our listeners to help them achieve their goals and dreams? Well, right now on the advice I'm giving everyone is catch your breath. And remember, it's only money. And that

this downpurn is unlike any others for the positive. It is an equal opportunity value destroyer. We're all in this one together. It's not like there's any pockets, secret pocket of the economy. It's doing very well. Right. And so, you know, it's time for us all to refocus on what's vitally important. What, what matters in life. And I think that's what I'm going to say. And to

make sure that we're focused on those vital few. And, you know, we cut our budgets and cut our time and cut out the noise around the things that aren't that important. And I think we have to do that in our personal eyes as well as our business lives. Great advice. Go to Tedstake.com to read more of Tedstaw. He has a great blog. Ted Leonsis, I really

appreciate you taking time and joining us on sports business radio. Appreciate it very much. Take care. You too. 5G is here. Is your stadium ready? From an immersive fan experience to a fishing game day operations. 5G is transforming sports in entertainment. If you're ready to jump start your 5G transformation, look no further than Boingo Wireless. Boingo is one of the largest operators of indoor wireless networks

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listeners. They are offering a free 5G assessment for your stadium marina. To get started, simply email sbradioadboingo.com and mention this podcast. That's sbradioadboingo.com. Our thanks to Boingo for their continued support of sports business radio. Well, that's it for this edition of Sports Business Radio. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks to our team at Sports Business Radio. Brian Griggs, Josh Blank, Ryan Nakajima and our friends at CG

Sports who power sports business radio. C.G. Young, Matt Amarlin, Nicole Wardle and Calvin Wurz. I'm Brian Burger. Have a great week and we'll talk to you soon. Right here. Here on Sports Business Radio.