Ep. 33 - Pay for Play: The Dangerous Reality of Seven Figure NIL Deals

Downtime is a profit leak but operating in a system without rules is an absolute financial hazard. The traditional model of amateur athletics is dead and anyone still clinging to the romanticized idea of the pure student athlete is actively ignoring the billions of dollars driving the machine. John Nabors from Inside Arkansas joins the show to break down how collegiate sports rapidly transformed from a tightly regulated amateur system into an aggressive, corporate entertainment enterprise.

We sit down to unpack the structural shifts that permanently altered the landscape of American sports over the last few years. Our conversation hits heavily on how conferences completely stripped the NCAA of its governing power during the pandemic, the sudden legal normalization of pay for play models, and the massive financial strain placed on university athletic departments trying to balance Title 9 compliance with escalating football expenses. John also delivers his secret sauce perspective on the current arms race, explaining why a lack of a professional style salary cap makes the modern NIL landscape completely unsustainable for boosters and schools alike.

The unglamorous truth of this transition is that we are setting young athletes up for immense personal failure. When a 21 year old player pulls in millions of dollars on a one year transfer deal without any infrastructure to manage it, the drop off at age 23 into a normal job market is devastating. Viewers will walk away from this episode understanding the raw market economics dictating which sports survive, how the recent Indiana football national championship completely shattered the traditional blueprint for winning, and why the entire collegiate sports ecosystem is operating inside an unstable financial bubble.

If you care about sports economics, institutional power shifts, and the reality of name image and likeness contracts, you will get a lot from this. Make sure to subscribe to the Radical Moderate podcast and share this episode with anyone tracking the business side of sports. Which part of the current collegiate business model do you think is the most unsustainable for universities long term? Let us know in the comments below.

Transcript

Welcome And Why College Sports Changed

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back, everybody, to the Radical Moderate Podcast. I am your host, Pat O'Brien. This week, uh we're gonna dive into sports. I have John Neighbors, who is the owner of Inside Arkansas. He has been uh a sports fan and reporter and and grinder in in the biz for about 14 years. Welcome to the show, John. Yeah, it's good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

You know, usually I'm the one doing the podcasting and everything. So it's nice to be on the other end of it to where uh I have someone hosting, and then I'm the one that has to answer questions. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Well, that so the tables have turned on you here, and uh what we're gonna talk about in this episode is the business of college athletics. And we're gonna, for those who are like, oh, sports, Path, that's now I'm listening to you. I I want you to think about it from the standpoint of, you know, there's economics to all of this. And uh, in my opinion, sports in college level is probably going a little bit more from what used to be a socialist type model where we're trying to keep everything even and get a lot of people involved to more of a capitalist type of model, but it's always been a business, whatever the rules are. So, you know, kind of opening question. Let's go back, say, a year before COVID, 2019, COVID is going to have a big effect on what happens in college athletics, like it did with everything else. And then what's happened in the last two to three years? What is the state of college athletics as

COVID Exposes Who Really Has Power

SPEAKER_00 1:40

it is an enterprise?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Well, it's funny you bring up COVID because I felt like going into that COVID year of 2020 with college athletics, you ended up really seeing who had the power. It wasn't a matter of, oh, well, we always thought the NCAA had the power until then. Everyone kind of knew who actually had the power, but when you got to see it publicly, and it was about the conferences, it was about the SEC, the Southeastern Conference, uh, the ACC, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the major conferences, they had the power because if you remember, they were discussing about whether or not they were gonna have a season. Uh that was on the table. Uh, and then even the Pac-12 and the Big Ten came out and said, you know, we're gonna look maybe towards having a spring season, uh, but for fall, we're not playing. Well, then the SEC is like, no, we're playing. Then the ACC is like, yeah, yeah, we're playing too. And then the Big 12 said, yeah, we're playing. And then it made it all change. Where everyone's looking like, so I guess the NCAA didn't decide. They shouldn't they be the ones that decide if there was play or not? They had no power. And so that really triggered everything to where it's at today, to where it was no longer about, well, it's the NCAA. They are the ones that run this thing. No, the conferences do, because the conferences are the ones that sign the television contracts with these networks that makes all the money. And as you know, money is what give gives you power and gives you the decision. So I feel like that was the triggering of, oh, yeah, they are actually in power. They're gonna do what they want to do. And now you've seen so many ripple effects from that time.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Well, and you know, so you bring up the NCAA, and for those who are more casual listeners, they have been, supposedly, anyways, the governing body of college athletics since the time all this started. And, you know, if you I was thinking about uh the movie about Marshall when they lose their, they lose their football team in a crash, a great movie. And they they wanted to play freshman was one of the solutions to have a team, and they have to go to the NCAA. And and it's very dramatic. And it looked like the NCAA was God. And maybe back in that era they were more so, but you you make the point, money runs everything. And so looking at pulling some quick stats, it looks like right now, college athletics is about a $20.5 billion industry from the expenditure standpoint. You get quite a bit of that money comes from television and those sort of things. But then also uniquely, universities are kicking in money. Some places have a student fee. Students who aren't even going to go to the games are paying. From the perspective of, we'll talk about the

Ratings, Streaming Access, And Sports Betting

SPEAKER_00 4:20

growth. Is it your perception that college athletics was a bigger deal, a more popular deal in 2019 or now in 2026? Well, it depends on who you ask.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

If you're asking the common fan of college football specifically, because that is the most popular, but we can even use the example of all college sports, then the common fan would probably say 2019, because that's when they felt like it was still what they were used to, what they were grew up with, where it wasn't about pay for play for a lot of these players. It wasn't about all these other things that it's turned into. It still felt like there was a little bit of a purity to it for amateur sports. And now the numbers speak for itself where it is more popular now. College football, it ratings-wise, has never been more popular. And, you know, the networks that are signing on deals, like their ratings have never been better. And there's a lot of different reasons behind that. But if you ask the moneymakers, if you ask those powers at B, they say right now it's never been popular. So it depends on who you asked. In my opinion, I think, I think the money aspect right now, and because of the access that you have to watching college sports, to where, you know, you may not be on ESPN or CBS, but you're on ESPN Plus, and now people can watch it all over. People all have access. You have smart TVs to live stream. And I think because it's more accessible now than it's ever been, it makes it a lot more popular than it's ever been.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

When did betting on sports, you know, really not in terms of like going to Las Vegas, but in terms of being able to do it on your phone, on apps. And when did that really start to kick in?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

I mean, it really felt like in the past four or five years. And I know it's different for each state. You know, there are some states that still don't allow sports gambling from your phone, from an app. And there are some states that allowed it from the get-go as soon as you could. And there were some states that voted on it and that ended up happening. And there's some states that say, well, we only want these uh sports betting apps to be allowed. Like there's just everybody's different. And I don't think, at least from being able to pay attention to it, that any state has had access to sports betting on their phones and whatnot, and then reverted back to saying, no, it's only growing, it's only getting more states. Well, you know, Arkansas obviously a few years ago was that, but even Missouri has added it recently. Uh, Texas is one that doesn't have it, but they're getting close to being able to add it, which obviously we know the state of Texas is huge. So those are just a few examples, but a lot of these states have added this to be a part of their repertoire and has really elevated that to where somebody may not watch college football, but hey, on a Saturday in the fall, when they're normally not do anything, they can make a little bit of money. Suddenly they have an invested interest in it. And it makes a huge difference of people paying attention to the sport more so, not because they love their favorite team or anything. It's more because of they have the interest in making money and watching these games and being a part of it that way too.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Well, and I think probably uh to also the extent of I think there's people out there who make a $5 bet and it just turns into entertainment, you know, like it as opposed to watching anything, uh, when you got $5 on it, some people have a mentality of just, I want to win as opposed to lose. It's not not necessarily about the money. I I'm thinking about a specific friend that I have who who was going crazy recently during March Madness with the basketball. And and I said, How much money do you have on this? Like, it's not about the money. I'm like, I need to know how much money. I have a $2 bet. I'm like, okay, this is kind of ridiculous. But entertainment, and and it to me, tell me if you agree

Entertainment Myth, SMU, And NIL

SPEAKER_00 8:00

or disagree. Has college sports, and we'll focus in on football, at the end of the day, has it always just been entertainment or or was there a time where it was something more than that?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Well, I think it's always been entertainment, again, to the common fan, but you know, I always think back, this was really before I was born. But uh, you know, the the SMU, uh, Southern Methodist University had a very prolific football team and football program in the 80s because they were part of the old Southwest Conference. And we know that an SMU in Dallas in the 80s, a lot of money there. Well, before it was always just all about football teams and everything. But then with that, they ended up getting what the NCAA gets called the death penalty because they were paying for players and they got caught where they shut down their entire football program. And it kind of set an example to where a lot of teams laid off of it. But the point of this is that during that time, it was even in the 80s more than just entertainment. There were people that had investment into it. They had billionaires, millionaires having investment. And in that particular story, there was even the governor of Texas that had connections into it. So, you know, it's been entertainment to the common fan, because that's what they care about, but to many people behind the scenes for many years, it's been about the money, it's been about the investment, it's been about the return on the investment. Uh, but nowadays it's just uh a lot more legal to do it. But I think there's always just been an element of it, you just didn't see it as often.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, and I mean, there's a lot of stories about players getting cars and this sort of thing, stuff that was hard to trace. To kind of without going into the specific legalities of it, but name, image, and likeness has been on the scene now for several years. And it what it seems like is that it's simply turned into what you called pay for play. I know there's supposed to be rules around it, but like anything else, if there's uh if there's something on the interstate that says you can only go 70 miles an hour, but everybody drives 100 and there's no police out there to do anything about it, what what there's a sign that says it's 70, but what is the real speed limit? I think that's kind of what NIL is and has become, that that nobody feels like they gotta follow any rules. There's no consequences. But I wonder if the veneer of the college athlete, you know, like the walk-on who's getting his scholarship, but then stays at a university for four years, like the the rooties of the world, if you will, from uh at Notre Dame. I do you think that that added to the legend and the branding of how college how college athletics was presented to people? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I think it was more about uh seeing people from all different backgrounds, from all different areas, uh getting an opportunity to where uh obviously you have to be gifted, you have to be good, but it's you know, in the in the NFL, for example, the NFL is in major cities. It's New York City, it's Chicago, it's LA. Now, those places have colleges too, and college sports teams too, and universities. But places like Mississippi, places like Oklahoma, places like uh Arkansas, or even in some cases, Louisiana, or, you know, various places, they don't have those pro teams. And if they do, it's in the big city. But what about the people outside of it? It is able to connect a community and in some cases a very large group and large state of communities to come together and root for a team that's not professional. And because of that fact, people felt more connected to it because these are college kids and it's five years to play four. They're gonna be in and out over time. But, you know, if you just collect it all together and you have the same type of situation that these other schools do, like it just feels so pure to people. And they love seeing uh young, 19, 20-year-old kids try to pull themselves off the bootstraps and start being really great at something, especially it's something they care about, because all of us could see ourselves when we were that age and how, you know, we listen, we would love to have been that. We would love to have been the athlete and to just put on that helmet and that jersey and run out and the thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people screaming our name. It's something we all want, but we didn't get it. But hey, we're rooting for these kids and these guys to go out there because it's just, again, it's about the connection and the relatability that people have to the sport itself.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

I had a basketball goal behind my house uh when I was growing up. And, you know, Michael Jordan was big during that time period. And I actually owned a pair of Jordans, but I played basketball in them. I didn't just walk around to try to try to look good in them. But it it took me back to thinking when I would be dribbling and I'd take like a 18-foot shot, it was 3-2-1. I shoot, and I was playing for the Arkansas Razorbacks. And I thought Michael Jordan was great and I followed him, but I never wanted to be Michael Jordan. I wanted to play for the University of Arkansas because that's what I saw on television and you know, my friends, very cultural. Uh, you know, so I think the allure of it there, I th I think the the nature that almost anyone could be a college athlete, you know, that if you just worked hard enough in some sport, maybe not uh football or basketball, I think it added

Title IX Versus Market Economics

SPEAKER_00 13:25

a lot to it. Let me let me uh turn to a direction of I mentioned kind of capitalism versus socialism. So tell me what you think about this. You've got a lot of factors here with college athletics that would not exist in professional sports or really anywhere else. You've got something called Title IX, which uh was enacted, I think, in the 1960s, kind of started, you put, you know, gaining steam in the 1970s through enforcement. But basically the idea was if there were on a college campus, say 300 boys who got a scholarship to play athletics, you needed to have 300 girls be able to do so also. And there was parity there. And I think it probably whether someone was playing volleyball or golf, tennis, you name the sport, it was a way to get somebody to go to college and better their life. It seems like that is really at odds now with what's going on because that was like, let's try to make everybody equal, at least from an educational opportunity. It seems like now it's more uh pure capitalism. What do people want? What are people willing to pay for? If they're not willing to pay for it, cut it. What do what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

No, I I think that's absolutely the case because I believe that in principle and what it was trying to do, you know, Title IX did a lot for Rue, because again, it was like providing incentive for, say, a lot of females out there where if they played sports without any sort of opportunities to get a college education from it, what was the point in it? I mean, yeah, it could have been fun, it could have been a hobby, but in a lot of cases, sports when you're younger can be fun. But at a certain age, you're like, this may turn into an opportunity, an opportunity to get a college education and to have it paid for because college is expensive. It always has been, uh, depending on where you go, but uh it opens up those doors for you. And you people wanted to have that for everybody involved. But just like anything, over time, the money starts to take over. And like right now, college football of all the college sports is by far the biggest thing. I mean, it is the makes the most money of any sport in collegiate athletics. College basketball, men's basketball is up there too. And but that's about it when it comes to making the money. But as the longer you go on, the more money that everybody's making. And the schools are starting to make money, the conferences are making money, coaches are making money. They're getting they're making millions of dollars to be fired. Like, I mean, they these buyouts are insane. So, like everybody, everybody involved was making more money, an inordinate amount of money, especially at the high level, except the athletes. And at some point in time, it felt like that was just inevitable when it was going to happen. And so when that floodgate did open up, suddenly the sports, like the women's sports, that even though Title IX was there, they were being funded essentially by the football program. Because the football programs at most major schools make all the money. And I think the one of the math is about 90% of the revenue that comes in the athletic departments and in most schools are from football. And that pays for all the other sports. Well, suddenly, where it's like, well, we're having to pay all this more money, we're having to have all this more money. Where are we going to get it from? Suddenly, no one's really that big on paying and having these other sports that are losing money just having them there. So it's caused a huge problem and a huge conundrum of these administrators and boosters and everybody and being chancellors of schools to decide what do we do here? Because we want to make money, we got to make money, but we also want to compete. But do we need to compete at all these sports? Well, if we don't want to compete at these sports, which one do we choose? Well, if we choose these, do we upset certain people? There's just a lot of moving parts to where there's not one correct answer to it and everybody's just going a lot of different directions, which has caused a lot of chaos.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, I think when you're when you're talking about the the how quickly the sport has changed, I think we've really moved to pure market economics very quickly. And so the quarterback of a team is gonna always gonna be the most important person, can can you know, has the best chance of deciding whether you're gonna win or lose a game. And so the the premium play, there's not a lot of people who can do that position. I mean, there's a lot of people who can try, but it you have to be very cerebral. You need to be experienced. There's physical uh attributes to it. And then some people, you know, like a guy like Tom Brady, who's arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, he wasn't even that good in college. I mean, he was fine, but you didn't know what he would become. So the the work ethic and all that, and because of it, like any position, the uh the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, that person is highly compensated. And so I think those marketing and omics have changed very quickly. And it does seem like there's only so much money to go around. Although, let me ask you about this.

Boosters, Cuts, And Unsustainable Budgets

SPEAKER_00 18:25

It feels like right now the money is kind of unlimited. Talk about that for a second. Like, where is all the money coming from to fund this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Well, that's the problem, is it's not a very sustainable model. I mean, it's just not. Uh, a lot of the money has to come from, in most cases, boosters, donors that uh normally would fund university athletic departments for new facilities or for uh, you know, travel for the teams and everything, stuff that was making the teams go. Now they're the ones that's kind of having to be relied on to bring in the money to just put together the best team. It's it's kind of like we used the example of the SMU football team and what people were doing way back when that's what they had to become. But it's a lot more difficult because there were still a lot of schools during that stretch that weren't doing that. Well, now everybody's doing it. And so you have to find unique ways and creative ways to make the money. But as you know, I've always said, or I've always said this too, uh, nobody became a millionaire by being dumb with money. Like they're they're not gonna just they're not gonna just throw money needlessly at something. They need to have some sort of return on investment. Well, if you were giving to private donations or foundations or anything like that, there was incentives behind it. Usually you get your name on a building or you get certain tickets and and and selection of where you sit, you get all these other pros and cons of benefits, but with the NIL model and the pay-for-play model, there what well, you don't get any benefits because it's technically not supposed to be made for that. So you're not publicly going around being like, we paid this player, this, this player, this, because it's technically not supposed to be that, but you know what's going on. So the money is having to come from wherever means you can find it. Sometimes it's through dollars and boosters, sometimes it's through, you know, the conferences and how much they make on television. You bring that. Sometimes it's in uh cutting and laying off a lot of employees, or sometimes even just cutting sports, apparently. So you try to find the money wherever you can have it. Uh, but the problem is that you know there's always so many sports you can cut. At some point in time, it's gonna not be there anymore, any more sports to cut. And same thing with any layoffs. So schools are having to be very creative and innovative of trying to figure out how we can sustain this at the at the highest level, but also taking care of our athletic department, taking care of the employees, and taking care of all the other sports that are there, because as it stands right now, a lot of these major conferences, they require you to have at minimum 16 sports on campus. And with Title IX, of course, you have to have the same amount of uh scholarships for female athletes that you do for male athletes. So you can't go under that or yes you lose your football subdivision status, which basically bumps you down to where you're no longer a member of a conference, to which you no longer make the money. So it is a very sit, is a very crazy and chaotic situation that you just can't sustain. And that's why I know they're trying to do things and put things into law to try to help it. I don't know if it ever will, but they're all trying to figure it out as we go along.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Well, it it seems like a bubble. And

No Salary Cap, Big Checks, Big Risks

SPEAKER_00 21:20

going back to the comparison about the National Football League, which is probably it does maybe $22 billion in expenditures, they have a salary cap. So basically, in that the I know that um I don't think they quite do this in Major League Baseball, but I know they do it in the NBA. But basically, there's it's a very professional and the owners own the league, and then they say to themselves, how much money is in the pie, the economic pie? And then we'll go to the players who are the content of that, and they'll say, We want to talk and we'll split this revenue, but we're Only talking about X revenue, like we know what the revenue is, so and then it just becomes are the owners going to get it or the players gonna get it. The difference with college athletics, there's no salary cap. So I I don't what do you think? Or I don't know that you could you've seen a contract, but what is the most money that you have heard about that you think, hey, I think that's a legitimate number that a college athlete in the last year or two for a one-year deal, because they can move around too. That's a whole other topic. For a one-year deal, what is the most money that you think somebody got paid?

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Uh, I'd say anywhere between five to seven million dollars just for the one year.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

One year, one year, 21-year-old. Uh, yeah, you I hope they know how to manage that money when they're did you know how to manage money when you were 21 years old?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

I didn't even know anything at all. I didn't know how to go to school and go to class at 21. But no, they don't. And that's and that's what makes it pretty scary for them. Because a lot of these cases, too, Pat, is like you have players that are making that much money. More often than not, they're not professional, they're not gonna go pro. They're not because they're not, if they were gonna go pro, they would go pro because the NFL or the NBA or whatever, they're still gonna pay more to go to that. But a lot of these players are saying, like, listen, I know I'm not a professional athlete, but I'm a really good college athlete. I can be great here. So I'm going to try to stay in college as long as I can, make all this money I can, and then figure it out later. The problem with that, and a lot of coaches have brought this up, is that okay, you got a guy who had a great freshman year. He transferred to another school, makes another million dollars. And then after that, transfers another school after the next year, next another million dollars. You know, it really adds up. Suddenly, his final year of college, he's making five to seven million dollars. Well, then what happens after that ends? He's got to go get a regular job. And I'm sorry, if you're not going pro, last time I'm checked, unless you were, I don't even know if there is a degree you could get in where immediately you're making five to seven million dollars, but there is not. Yeah. So it's like suddenly you're like, well, you should manage your money better. But now it's like, well, I was I have this lifestyle I'm trying to live. And I'm 23 years old. I can't go out there and get the $60,000 a year job. So it causes a lot of these young kids, which they are kids in a lot of ways, but these student athletes, to set them up for failure once they leave college. Because a lot of them don't even get a degree. So some of them do, but a lot of them don't. So it's like, what do you do? You just got used to imagine just, yeah, you get millions of dollars every year, and then suddenly you're 23 years old and you got a and you're you got nothing. It's over. So it could really cause major problems for a lot of these athletes. And we know we haven't seen the long-term effect of it yet because it's so new, but there could be a long-term effect where a lot of these kids end up, you know, going down bad paths and and end up really never establishing themselves in society. And it could end up causing problems where they end up broke or any or even worse things.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I I think everything you said is gonna happen. It's a question, when is it gonna happen? And we were kind of talking earlier about, I think we didn't use the term, but I I feel like it's kind of this has become kind of an arms race. And this is what happens in bubbles is that in it, even the smartest people who say, you know, you're not stupid if you know how to make a million dollars. But even the smartest people tend to think, you know what? I'm so smart that I'm smarter than when I give money to the athletic department over here at school A, I'm actually smarter than this other person who's giving the same amount of money over at university B. My money's smarter than there. And yeah, maybe it's all gonna end at some point, but right now I'm riding the wave and I know when to get out of the bubble. I I've never seen in the history of the human race where that type of thinking paid off. You know,

Indiana’s Title And The New Arms Race

SPEAKER_00 25:50

somebody did. So tell the story real quick. Uh, we've we've got a couple minutes left. Indiana University, who is known for basketball, uh, the whole state is known for basketball, and they've won national championships, et cetera. They are not known for football and had one of the worst records in the history of college football, but they hired a coach named Kirk Signetti a couple of years ago, and they started putting a lot of resources in into the program. They won, they are the current reigning national champion. Kind of encapsulate what we've been talking about. That's great for Indiana, right? And by the way, apparently I heard while I was watching the national championship game, you heard a lot of storylines of they have like more graduates than almost any other school in the country. So you're branding for the unit in Indiana University. They won big. Clearly, people lose. But what do you know about the Indiana story specifically in football?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Well, what I know is that they are like, I mean, when you talk about hopefully people can understand this because it's not even like being dramatic. The worst power four, which is power four conferences of the major conferences, the worst college football program ever. I mean, it it's it's it's imagine. I mean, I don't even know if there could be a great enough example to even compare it to professional sports, but the the the long the long shot of Indiana football winning a national championship in football in this millennium was just, I mean, if you could have got the betting odds on it, it would probably have been five million to one. I mean, it was just that level. But they hired a coach in, as you mentioned, Signetti, who's uh a Nick Saban disciple, who Nick Saban was at Alpha Man and the other. There's the connection. Yeah. All right, so but he was, he was there, but was not a guy. He came from James Madison. You know, it wasn't like he was some other big coach at some other place, and he walks in and he just kind of sets the tone for what the program wanted to be. He had people believe in him. He had, he did a great job, whether whether it was him or his staff or whoever, a great job of evaluating talent and to what he fit what he was trying to do. And they basically got the most bang for their buck when it comes to the money and the funding. You know, are they one of the biggest NIL funding college football programs? Maybe now, after they won it, because winning does bring in a lot of money. But I think it was more so of you identify talent and now you know what to do with it and how to make it work in the modern era. And it just the stars aligned for them. And so now uh they have it's almost been worse for every other football program now that they've won. Because before it was always the big boys of Texas, LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, all these big-time football programs that have been around forever, always winning. But the second that Indiana won, the worst football program of any Power Five or Power Four conference, suddenly all these other schools are like, well, if Indiana can do it, we should be able to do it. And that puts a lot even more added pressure onto these football programs to really change some things up. So it's been, it's been incredible to watch them. And I think a lot of fans of schools that don't have the best football programs, they've been like an inspiration almost, like a goal. But it's still like they still got the money. They still were able to put forth the money. They just spent it very well compared to a lot of other schools that maybe spent it not so well. Mixing that in with great coaching and great culture, you get a national championship out of it.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah, you know, uh, I'd

Saban’s Process, University Branding, Farewell

SPEAKER_00 29:20

forgotten about the Nick Saban connection. And to kind of kind of bring this uh episode to a conclusion, there's a great 60 minutes interview of Nick Saban. It's probably 12, 14 years ago, but he talks about the process, which, you know, if you if you look into it, it's just the way that he emphasized every action that you take versus trying to look at the scoreboard and the results. And if you just do the one, two, three steps, you're more likely to have high success. But when they interviewed, uh, I don't know if they have a president or a chancellor at Alabama, when they interviewed him, his focus uh was how big of an asset Nick Saban was to the university writ large in terms of the exposure, national exposure, which then leads to more students wanting to go there and get this tremendous college, full college experience. You know, Harvard doesn't have a good football team. So, like not saying, not saying Alabama's Harvard, but saying for people who want those kind of things in college and can afford it, Alabama's numbers since Nick Saban was hired are kind of off the charts. So with that, we're going to uh we're already, we're already done with this episode. Please, I will ask people to come back uh next week in lesson. John's gonna be back. We're gonna talk a couple other things. But if for anybody who lists who just listened to this episode, I want to say thanks, John, for for coming this week. We have definitely talked about the changing landscape of college athletics and and really how it's probably, I would say, always been a business. And maybe they've just we've just kind of taken away the veneer that, oh, it was something else. At the end of the day, if it if people say it's not about the money, it's probably about the money. Folks, for this week, that is the POV F P O B.