Show Me the Money, Pt. 1: How College Football Players Get Paid Now

Seth Saunders: Yeah, yeah fire up the grill crank the speakers loud Saturday's feel holy in this college crowd Seth and James on the mic preaching gospel truth talking rivalries legends red black gold and blue from their valley lights to the camp Randall cold they're telling stories They never get old ain't no bench warm hearts on the show tonight They're walking on proud on the stadium lights. They'd prefer walk on no scholarship still putting it on from the church of tailgate hands Welcome to the preferred walk-on show, the People's College Football Show. I am your host, Seth Saunders. Appreciate you being here. You know, we are in a changing landscape as it pertains to college football. Obviously a lot of those big changes have happened in the last five years. The main one being that players are compensated now. We are in the NIL era. We are in an era. post-house settlement with new roster limits, all these different things, right? And there's been a lot of news lately about the conversations around expanding the playoff. You know, just came through the first year of the 12 team playoff expansion. Now there's talks of shifting it out to 16, 24. And I kind of want to dig in to all of that and what's behind all of that. And look, man, like hand up, I am not the smartest guy in the room. So sometimes there are things about the game that we love that I have questions about, and I found myself starting to have more and more questions about the compensation side of college football and inherently college athletics and trying to figure out like, where does the money come from? Where does the money go? How are the kids getting payouts? How are schools navigating this new 20 and a half million dollar cap? And how do we reconcile? The numbers that we hear about this $20.5 million cap versus the best schools have rosters that are worth 30 million, 40 million, whatever it may be to build a competitive slash elite roster that can compete for a CFP birth and compete for national titles. so, man, I was just curious because I didn't know the answers to a lot of that. And so I figured that'd probably be the case for some of y'all as well. And so I wanted to put together some episodes digging into that and just trying to create some pretty like plain English structure around that. Just so if you're in the barbershop or you're at the tailgate or whatever it may be, you can have a conversation about this stuff. And obviously, man, if y'all are listening to this and you have extra questions or there's things I mess up and you can give more clarity on it, man, I'm all for it. I'm trying to figure all this out and learn all this. So really a lot of this episode is me just trying to talk out where all this sits now and give some framework for how everything's going. So let's just start with like you know, show me the money, right? Like how, how are college athletes, how are college football players getting paid in today's landscape? And how does that look differently than it used to? Okay. Obviously different in a lot of ways, but I think what I'm thinking of it is, is traditionally you were a scholarship athlete, you came to school, you got your tuition, room and board, books, all those types of things that was all covered by your athletic scholarship. And so getting a full ride was like the crown jewel. You know, and here's the thing with, the new payment structure and kids getting compensated, scholarships are still in place. So let's think about comp in three buckets. right. Bucket one is traditional athletic scholarships. So the things that I just talked about your tuition, your classes, your food, where you lay your head down at night, your books, all those different things. There was a lawsuit back in 2021 versus the NCAA. that also provided for some different types of benefits. I think up to like six grand a year. So that's kind of the traditional scholarship pool. And that's all still in play. So if you are rostered on a college roster as part of the post-house settlement now, it's 105 roster limit. And all 105 student athletes can be on full scholarship. right. Used to be an 85 scholarship limit that's shifted now. So now it's 105. And all 105 athletes on the football team can be on a full ride if the school has the funds to support that and supply that. So that's a big difference, a big demarcation point. And we'll talk about this, maybe not this episode, but in a different episode, how that changes roster dynamics, how that changes something that's obviously near and dear to my heart, the walk-on, the preferred walk-on. How does all that look different now with these 105 roster limit caps, you know, whereas it used to be. Maybe your school would have 120 kids, 125, 130, something like that. Different structures now, but that scholarship, that's one bucket. Bucket two is the house settlement. And again, I'll keep referencing this. I'm going to do some different episodes on these things. One of them, I will get into the lawsuits that have kind of created the current system that we sit under and some of the lawsuits that are incoming to continue to shape this landscape. And one of them was the house settlement. The house case was one that was pending after the Austin case was finalized. The Austin case went to the Supreme Court after the Supreme Court ruled in Austin. Everybody kind of saw the writing on the wall and was like, well, we probably need to settle this out. And so that's where the house settlement came from. And that's what created this 20 and a half million dollar, I don't know, you know, some people have called it like a salary cap or a cap. Essentially it's like, it's revenue, school revenue payments, all right? So the school is writing the check to the athlete and the athlete's cashing it. And just to be clear on this, because this was something that I didn't have a lot of clarity on, but this is not something that is just football, right? That 20 and a half million is spread out across the athletic department. And we'll talk a little more about that, because we'll talk about what the allocation is amongst the different athletic programs in an athletic department. But just keep that in mind, okay? So this is bucket two. This is the house settlement money, that 20 and a half million dollar figure we've heard so much about where the schools are physically supplying the money. All right. This is not through the NIL. This is not through collectives. This is coming straight from the institutions themselves. All right. So that's bucket number two. And then bucket number three is the bucket everybody got familiar with post 2021 post the Austin case post kind of the beginnings of everybody seeing what was coming. And that is essentially direct compensation. So third party compensation, NILs, collectives, endorsements, all of those type things. And now post house settlement, that picture has changed too. And we'll talk about that. may not get into collectives and NIL today. I think that may be something I do on an episode next week in this kind of continuing series. Let's call it the show me the money series. That's what we're going to do here. So this will be part one of that. And I really want to hone in. and focus on the school revenue piece. I think the athletic scholarships bucket, the old school mechanism, I think that's pretty straightforward. Look, that's all still available. Kids can still get their education paid for. So that's all still in play. And look, man, I don't want to discount that. Okay. That is a very valuable bucket that I think does kind of get discarded. All right. You're talking, if you're an out of state student at some of these schools, I mean, the price tag's huge now. know, higher education got crazy. You're talking 50, 60. $70,000 be out of state students, some of these schools. Dude, if you get a full ride, go play ball, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, whatever it may be. Hey man, incredible, right? Tons and tons of value there and you're getting a free education. I still think that's a big deal, but the one that I think has a ton of meat on the bone and one that I just didn't have a ton of clarity around is the house settlement piece. And that's the 20 and a half million dollar pop, just to reiterate. And my main question that was where does the money come for that? So if I'm the University of Georgia, if I'm the University of Texas, where am I generating the funds for this 20 and a half million that I can pull from for football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, whatever it may be. Okay. And essentially there's three sources for that income. All right. There's the conference TV deals, which is massive. There's the college football playoff payouts, which are separate from the conference TV deals. And we'll get into the mechanics of that. And then third. is kind of the traditional piece that we're used to, which is donor money, premium seating money, all those type things, which are still extremely important and vital to athletic departments getting these funds and being able to supply payments to their athletes and make it enticing for them to come into the school. So keep all those in mind. And I want to start with the TV deals, because this is the one that we see publicized at the time. I think people are even probably familiar with some of the numbers. as it pertains to the different conferences. But just as kind of a broad base, we've obviously seen the game and college sports change drastically in the last five years with conference expansion. You've got a quasi super conference in the SEC that has added a ton of players. mean, really it is a super conference. There's a ton of schools in the SEC. And then you have the super conference in the big 10 with coast to coast involvement, teen schools, whatever it may be. ⁓ massive amounts of consolidated school power in these two big conferences. And then obviously you saw the necessary then expansion into the ACC, big 12 adding schools. And the reason for all this guys, as it always generally is, it's about the money, baby. And the money in this case is the TV deals. Because if I'm the big 10 conference or I'm the SEC, the more schools I have means the more games I have. And the more games I have means the better package. that I can go take to ESPN, that I can take to Fox, that I can take to CBS or NBC or whoever it may be and say, hey man, I got all this inventory. We're gonna have all this viewership. And so, hey, let's up that check a little bit. Let's have the payouts to our conference come a little bit more. And so the TV rights, not something that's owned individually by any of these member institutions, TV rights are owned by the conferences. So the conferences are negotiating that, the conferences are trying to find highest bidder, best package, all those things, okay? Which the SEC and the Big Ten recently just renegotiated and both scored massive deals, all right? And I know amongst the SEC traditionalists, me included, you it stinks now not turning on the game at 3.30 and hearing that SEC on CBS music, but this is what happens, okay? It's this constant kind of power struggle for these conferences to be as powerful as possible and to get the biggest bang for the buck. when they go into these bargaining rooms to get their deals. And so what does all that mean for what we were talking about earlier with funding these athletic endeavors now? Well, so if I am a Big Ten school or an SEC school, which both of those TV deals were massive, right? To the point where if I'm a member school in the Big Ten, the payouts, I believe last calendar year were somewhere between 75 to $80 million of school. In the SEC, it wasn't far behind. Evan had 75 million somewhere in those approximations. And then ACC was around 45 million. Big 12 was around 40 million. So we're talking massive revenue pots for these different conferences, but you can even see within the power four, those numbers you're talking about with big 10 and SEC and then dropping down to big 12 and ACC, big gap there, right? A lot of disparity in what these member institutions are pulling in from the TV rights deal. Look, I'm not discounting, it's still a lot of money. right. But if you're looking at kind of the baseboard, the foundation for how these athletic departments are trying to create a war chest to then be able to dole out whatever the percentages are going to be of that allocated amount of money from the house settlement, this is where it starts. All right. Is the TV deals. And so again, this is the reason for conference expansion. This is the reason for conferences changing the traditional network partnerships that they've had. and trying to figure out something different. So that's point number one. Okay. And that's a big one. All right. And, I guess it's hard to say this because it will change and there's still more meat on that bone, but the train's kind of already out of the station on that. All right. Conference expansion has happened. Those deals have already been negotiated. The one that I am way more fascinated about currently is the CFP payouts. All right. And this is the one I didn't have as much education on. And I found it fascinating once I started to dig in on it. With the new 12 team playoff, all right, they renegotiated the TV deal as a necessary part of that. Again, because the inventory was higher. When you had a four team playoff, not many games, right? In the CFP systems, obviously the monies are lower. With a 12 team system, way more inventory. So they renegotiated everything. So in year one, the CFP deal was for $1.3 billion, all right. And this is kind of how some of that shakes out and why there's so much jockeying, A, to get people into the field. So it's why you see the SEC and Greg Sankey stumping for teams to get in. It's why you see the big 10 stumping for teams to get in because there's value there in those conferences, placing teams in the dance because they get paid. So, so keep that in mind, but I want to talk about this base payment, right? Cause I didn't know about this, but there's something called a base distribution that comes with this CFP deal. So CFP deal itself is 1.3 billion and just base distribution. All right. This not even counting if conference get teams into the dance, just base distribution power for each getting $110 million each from the CFP structure, 110 million a piece. All right. That's if you don't remember, that's bigger than all of the TV deals that the schools are getting. Not, not collectively, right. But like The member payouts are 70 to 80, 75 to 80 a school at the top level. They're getting 110 off the top from this deal too. Okay. So then, and this gets paid a little different with the TV rights deal, conferences allocate that evenly with the CFP deal. Each conference does it a little bit differently. Now with the base distribution, they're generally splitting that evenly amongst the member schools. All right. So if you're a power four member of a power four conference, you're taking your 110 million. And then we're going to split that pod according to how many member institutions that we have. All right. So you're getting a chunk of the pie there. Now this is important to me because we cover and follow a lot of the G6. How's the G6 fit into those base distributions? Obviously not as well as P4. Okay. They get 155 million aggregate. Okay. So P4 is getting 110 each. G6 is getting 155 to split. All right. And that split is, I couldn't find great information on it, but They're essentially cutting that pie up and sharing it. All right. So remember that base distribution. And now let's transition into the second piece of that pie, which is conference payouts via CFP participation. And this is tiered by level. So let's start round one. You just get teams into the dance 4 million bucks. Okay. So if you're the sec and Georgia gets in and Alabama gets in, however many teams the sec gets in. Conference is getting 4 million for each of those teams, all right? They win and go to the quarterfinals, conference gets another 4 million. So advancing matters, making it as far as possible matters. Now you get to the semis, the conference payday goes up to 6 million. And then again, if you make it to the CFP title game, another 6 million. So 4 million to get in the dance, 4 million to make the quarters, 6 million to make the semis, 6 million to make the title game. So escalating monies. So if you're the conference. You're obviously very, very interested in a, not just getting one team as far as possible, but again, another reason why you want to have as many in the dance as possible is so, Hey, maybe we get up all conference title game. So more money for the conference that way. The other piece of this is each school per round gets a travel stipend from the CFP. So they get 3 million bucks per school to cover travel costs, logistics, all those type things. All right. So lots and lots of money there to be had now. Why is that important as it pertains to these recent conversations about expansion to 16 or gasp expansion to 24? Because the money baby. Look, if you go from even a 16, all right, the inventory of games increases. So then you get to renegotiate the TV contract and you get more money. Baba, you take that to 24 and you double the field. And now you're looking at maybe two on-campus rounds a game to have inventory in that pocket. You're talking a whole nother level of money. Okay. Some of the estimations out there, some of the approximations people are throwing out that if they went to a 2014 structure, TV deal would approach somewhere in the four to four and a half billion with a B, four and a half billion with a B annually. That's going to start getting chopped up between conferences and participating institutions. And you don't think those round by round payouts are going to go up with that? You're talking a coup for these conferences when it comes to money. All right. And so those member institutions sit in the same pocket. They're going, wait a minute. If we get a 2014 playoff and we get six teams in our payoff numbers are going to go up to here. In addition to whatever our base distribution figure ends up being. Cause think about this. If it's 110, 110 million per power power for school now at 1.3 billion. And you're talking at a 2014 playoff. It's 4 billion. let's four X that. each Power 4 conference getting 410 million annually just for existing from the CFP. Look, man, that's difficult thing to sell to your membership. ⁓ we shouldn't do this. So I know there's a lot of like traditionalist talk and a lot of talk around, ⁓ gosh, this will devalue the regular season and it's going to do XYZ and probably going to lose conference championship games and all these things. Okay. And look, I'm not trying to be like pessimistic about this or discount any of that. I am as much of a traditionalist as anybody and I love those things. But what I'm saying is, guys, this is a win, okay? This is not an if. This is a when is this going to happen? So be prepared for it. The numbers that I have seen, there's no reason why it's not going to happen. Everybody will get paid. And recent history has shown us that's the Trump card, baby. They are going to make decisions based off where that money flies. And so, especially, especially if you're the SEC and the Big Ten, There's a lot of money out there to be had. Now, here's what I think it gets interesting because obviously if you're the SEC and you're the Big Ten, you're the bigger players. You're the ones that have the bigger TV deals. You're the ones that can show bigger eyeballs from TV viewership. So inherently, when you start to go into these CFP boardrooms and conference rooms to have these negotiations around the next TV deal, don't you think you're going to go, hey, wait a minute. I don't think the ACC and the Big 12 should be getting the same payout, the same base distribution that we get. We should be getting more of that pie and short transition to a different sport. But there is a book called, ⁓ I'm going to mess this up, called The Club. And it is about the rise of the premier league, English football, okay, English soccer. And let me just tell you that the parallels between the evolution of that structure, which was a regional, beloved and traditional conglomerate. of clubs in England, okay, that then transitioned into this superpower of a sports league that is the biggest sports league in the world and had the TV contracts to back that up. And the parallels between the metamorphosis in their league and how things have changed. then now how the top six, the old six, the most quote unquote most important teams in that premier league structure going, hold on, hold on, hold on. We're the teams putting the asses in the seats, but everybody else is getting paid the same amount of money we're getting. Something doesn't feel right about that. And so they've had to make some concessions on that and figure out ways to keep the top level of the pie chart happy while keeping the league structure together. And look, I just, we are following the same exact path in college football. So if you love college football, regardless of whether you like soccer or follow English soccer or follow professional, whatever it is, I'm just telling you. Just from a structural perspective, from a money perspective, it's almost exact in how these two things have evolved together. So if you love college football, you owe it to yourself to read that book. Cause it's kind of like having Nostradamus's, know, transcripts about what's going to happen in the sport that you follow and are passionate about. And I say that because that big six in the premier league is not much different from a parallel perspective to what the SEC and the big 10 are. in the college football structure. They are the big power players. And at some point, those two conferences are going to go, we should be getting more money than everybody else because we're more valuable. It's just going to happen. And it's especially going to happen when you're talking about the potential for a $4.3 billion annual CFP deal where everybody's drawn off of. And so I'm just really, really interested to see how all of that plays out. And I want to wrap back around because I think one of the big things that the common fan has talked about is something I've Thought about a ton as well as man. love, I love the conference title games. Conference title weekend is one of my favorite weekends of the college football calendar. And you know, it's, it's just become these big time properties that each of the conferences has. And so the way they negotiate the TV deals, it's not like the conference championship is a standalone. So it's hard to really value what that would be worth in a one-off teaming negotiation with say ESPN or CBS or whoever it may be that's going to broadcast that. But. There had been some folks who've tried to work some numbers around about what the value would look like. And let's look at the big 10 and the SEC, because they have the two most valuable conference championship games. You'd probably say as a standalone, those games are each worth somewhere in the realm of 50 to 60 million to those conferences. And look, that ain't, that ain't nothing to sneeze at, right? That's big time money. But when you start throwing around numbers like 4.3 billion, and you're talking about base distributions that could look like 400, 500, if the SEC and the Big Ten make a hard line and want more, maybe 600 million annually. That 60 million starts to look like peanuts, man. And so I think at some point, the leaders of those conferences and the member institutions to go, hold on, hold on. You're telling me if we run a 2014 field, we'll get an on-campus game where we can collect gate and have folks supporting our businesses. And we're also going to get a bigger annual distribution like. Why are we going to have this song and dance in Indianapolis and Atlanta for a conference title game? Like it doesn't make economic sense. And so you're noticing a theme here. This is all going to follow the money and it's all going to end up being whatever the conferences think is best for the purse. And so, man, I just think it's where it's going. So yeah, that's kind of where that sits. All right. And given how much money is involved there and how these conferences, how these different member institutions, again, this all goes back to how are the athletes getting paid? The member institutions need this money because this is how they're filling the coffers for this 20 and a half million. And look, man, that's just comp. Okay. This doesn't even touch. And there's a great, I'll link it, but there's an incredible article, or maybe it was just like a memo that Louisville released, essentially giving a state of the union. on Louisville athletics and how things have changed drastically in the era of player payment and how it's affected their landscape as a provider of intercollegiate athletics. And sadly, if you love college sports, the end of that story, the end of that memo is essentially A, we're losing money every year. B, we can't sustain this much longer. And C, if things continue as they are, we're going to have to start cutting programs. Now they're not going to cut football and baseball. basketball, obviously, and probably not even things like baseball and women's basketball, but other sports, they're going to be on the chopping block. And so this is the changing landscape of college athletics and football sits at the top of that chart. Okay. Because most of the money is flowing through the football side of things. All right. Now, third leg of the stool for this 20 and a half million dollar pot for the universities. And this is one that's direct to them. All right. This is not determined by conference payout. This is not determined by what the CFP deal is negotiated, any of those things. All right. This is the traditional arm of funding for an athletic department and that's donor contributions and ticket sales and suites. Now you've noticed last five, 10, 15 years, premium seating, ticket sales, suites, different types of, let's say experience metrics at the home stadiums or the programs that you love are changing. And they're changing because the programs have to, they need to be able to charge so that they can bankroll the program is essentially where it sits. Now is any of that good for the common fan? No, it's not. All right. I have four kids. If I want to take my family as six to see a college football game, I mean, it's, we almost can't do it because if you get into ticket costs, parking, what the lodging will be in the different towns that you go to that weekend, like it's just, it's, it's becoming cost prohibitive for the average fan. which stinks, okay? Like there are parts of this that I hate, like I loathe, but I'm doing this episode and I did this research because man, I just want to know what's going on. And like, I wanted to have a base of what's happening in our game and be able to understand sort of where the winds are blowing and how that's going to change the experience for us. You know, like I think for all of us, we'd love to just sit down and be naive about it and just turn the football game on on Saturday. afternoon or Saturday night or Tuesday night if you're a Mac fan or whatever it may be, right? And just enjoy your game and you know, they're doing it for the love of the game and all this. Look, man, it's just not the way we live anymore. Okay. And so I'm doing this episode series because I want everybody to have a basis of knowledge about it. And I'm trying to learn and get a basis of knowledge myself. And so yeah, like, look, if you're looking at donor contributions and ticket sales at big time universities, your Texas's, your Alabama's, your Tennessee's, your Ohio State's, your Michigan's. know, you're, and again, it's hard to get hard numbers on this stuff, but you're looking at, they're trying to pull a hundred million, 125 million, 150 million from those channels. And we'll get into this more in the next episode in this series on the actual NIL arm and how kind of the over the top funds are coming that don't get covered in this 20 and a half million dollar pot, but. It kind of made things difficult once all these collectives form, because traditionally, if I was going to make my donation as a big money donor, I'm going to make that to the athletic department and then they're going to use it based on either how I've tabbed it or how it best fits the athletic department. That's not necessarily the case now because you were kind of hit up twice. Like, ⁓ we still want you to make your donation to the athletic department, but also We need you to make a donation to the collective too, because we got to fund these NIL deals and fund player payments. And I think there was a lot of donor fatigue and I'm still interested to see how that's going to play out. think that's going to be a continuing storyline about folks going, man, y'all are in both my pockets. I can't keep doing this every year. Like I'm giving y'all I can give you. So, all right. So that covers that portion of the pot. All right. That is where the money is coming from for the institutions to pay their rev share part of the pot. So as I was looking through that, had a secondary question, which is if there is 20 and a half million, ⁓ that's not going to football. So how's that split up? And from what I could find out is the 20 and a half million is split amongst the programs within the athletic department as a whole. Now, as you can imagine, the revenue sports are going to get the bigger chunk of the pie, football especially. So if you're at a football first school, you're looking at getting somewhere between 65 to 75%. of that nut. So let's say you're a Texas where you're on the top of that, that marker, you're talking 15 of the 20 and a half million dollar pot is going straight to football off the top. All right. And then the next biggest getter is going to be men's basketball and they're going to sit somewhere in the 10 to 15 % pocket. And then it's going to be women's basketball at like 5 % or somewhere in there. And this may be different school to school. Okay. This is just some prognostications based on certain schools. And then that remaining 10 to 15 % then gets spread to everyone else. So if you're men's and women's track and field, if you're men's baseball, if you're women's softball, if you are a women's volleyball, all these different things, right? Men's and women's swimming. The piece of the pie that is getting split between you, everybody's getting like half a bite. Whereas most of the pie is going elsewhere. And so that's one piece of it, is that allocation is not as clean as you would think. And so then I had a secondary question on that. which was, if that is the case, and that is how they're currently allocating it, how does Title IX play into all of that? How does Title IX interact with the house settlement and the house created $20.5 million school spending cap? And the short answer is the house settlement did not address it directly. So there was no proclamation made on how Title IX would interact with... the parameters of the house settlement with how the 20 and a half million was allocated. So if it comes to be, and this is long and convoluted and complicated, but there was initially federal regulations put in place that said it would apply, but then those were retracted and there's been no court case around it that has gotten across the finish line. There was an appeal. almost directly after the house settlement from a group of female athletes saying that title nine should be applied and it's not currently being applied. But here's the kicker on that. At this is my understanding of it. That suit is only applying retroactively. So it's saying any of these payments that are being made for past athlete participation, where they should have gotten paid via this house settlement, that's what that pertains to, but nothing really forward looking yet. And so. That changes things drastically because if it comes to be that Title IX is applicable to the house settlement, then the allocation of that pie that we just talked about has to change because you're going to have to put more money and put more resources in a more equal way between the big chunks you're given to football, the big chunks you're given to men's basketball, and then creating some equality with that as it pertains to women's basketball, softball. women's swimming, women's diving, volleyball, all these things. Okay. So that is something really, really interesting to watch and track because the question is going to come down to are the rev share payments that the house settlement laid out? Are they athletic financial assistance that falls under title nine? All right. Like scholarships have been deemed to be, or are they market-based compensation that are outside title nine proportionality requirements? That's going to be the issue. All right. Somebody eventually probably sooner rather than later. And look, man, there may already be one pending, I just don't know about it. Is going to bring a lawsuit that the crux of it is that issue right there. Is should the house settlement figure, should Title IX be applicable? And that's something, I mean, these different athletic administrators have to think about because it'll change the way that pie gets sliced up. So again, another thing to consider is what happens on the Title IX side with this. And gosh, guys, there's so much stuff. with this to dive into and we will do this as the series progresses because there are things you don't even think about like taxes. Okay. If I am a student athlete that's getting recruited by a school in Texas, they have no state income tax. So I got to consider that because the way the structure right now is all these athletes are being 1099. So they're getting tax federally, they're getting self-employment tax and they're getting state tax if they're playing for institutions in states with state income taxes. And so obviously if you play in certain states, California, you're getting hammered. with taxes. And so whatever you might be seeing on paper that the kid is receiving, they're not clearing remotely close to that. And so just so many inner workings on this. All right, last thing for today. And this will lead into what I want to talk about for the next episode. But that is we've heard different news stories or read different news stories that talk about an elite seat, like college football roster now, one that is competing for the CFP, competing to win a national title. They gotta be somewhere in the 25 million. 30 million, we've even heard that 40 million is the going rate for an elite college football roster. Well, so my question then is, if what we talked about earlier is that football, even at the schools that are paying the most out of the rev share pot, are only allocating 15 million to football, all right? I'm not a smart man, but I can do simple math. 15 million ain't 30 million, all right? 15 million definitely ain't 40 million. So where's the rest of the money coming from? Okay? And this is where the NIL and collective deal comes in. whereas it used to, and look, that landscape has changed drastically post-house settlement because they put some parameters around what would, essentially what would pass the muster as it pertains to a real NIL deal, a real brand deal. And so this is, I think, probably the most interesting part of the pot now. And there was a case last week. ⁓ involving athletes at Nebraska and an NIL deal that was set up. And one of the mechanisms that the house settlement set out is, is that if you have an NIL deal and it's over $600, all right. So let's say Jim's Tire Barn comes to me, the quarterback of Nowhere University and says, we want to pay you a hundred grand a year to be on our commercials in town. And we want to put you on the billboards for the year. And we want to put your poster in our shop and we want to pay you this. Well, I got to submit that now. to something called NIL Go. And NIL Go is involved, or I guess the arm enforcing NIL Go or evaluating these deals in NIL Go is Deloitte. Like the same Deloitte that is, I don't know, what? Like the fourth largest accounting firm in the world? I could be wrong on that. But I know it's something like, it's massive, right? Like I'm pretty sure Deloitte's people does all the Oscar tabulation. So same thing, okay? Deloitte is the one looking at and evaluating these deals in NIL Go and going, okay. Do they meet certain parameters? And we'll talk about what those parameters are on the next episode. But essentially what happened in the Nebraska case is, these deals got presented through NIL Go, the college sports commission, which kind of sits over top of all this and is run, not run, but the guy in charge with enforcing this is, I'm going to mess this up. What is his name? I think it's Brian Sealy. Brian Sealy worked for the enforcement arm of major league baseball. So. He transitioned from that and he is now the head of the college sports commission involved with determining if NIL deals have, you know, are up to snuff. And the big thing here is determining whether or not it's pay for play versus a legitimate exchange for services. And so the big kind of bombshell about this Nebraska deal is that they determined that for these 17 student athletes, oh, this deal will not fly. I will get into in more depth on the next episode, what that case was and why it didn't fly. But as sort of a preview involved a kind of multimedia rights arm of the university called PlayFly. And most schools have something similar to it. And the idea was, okay, this is a way we can navigate this, get bulk payments out and kind of frontload some of this. And so we can get above that 20 and a half million dollar cap and we'll do it. Where we'll pass through and I'll go and everything will be fine. All right. Well, it wasn't fine. And so now we're going to start to see what's going to happen with all of this. so look, all this in a lot of ways is while, while West, cause it's in its infancy. So we don't know how it's going to play out, but this is going to significantly affect the ability for these member institutions now to pay athletes up to these caps where the market is bearing. A lot to look at. All right. And again, the more I started to kind of dig in this and to try to understand it. A, the more confused I was, but then B, the more I was like, ⁓ my God, this thing is like an onion. Like the more I peel this thing back, the more there is to it. And this is why you are seeing the school that you love and follow hiring a general manager, hiring folks that used to work in NFL front offices, because now you've got to have somebody to manage cap, to manage money, to figure out what the allocations look like in year one, year two, year three. How are we going to maintain and build a roster? How do we deal with attrition? How are we gonna fund player A who had a breakout year and now is getting offers from different schools and all these things, right? And so, and there's still so much on the horizon, whether that is ⁓ student athletes being treated as employees, how that changes things on the institution side, because now they've gotta cover different things, whether it be, you know, benefit systems and unemployment and just, I mean, so many things, okay? And so anyways. This is part one in this, all right? Show me the money series. This is part one. And I went longer than I wanted to go, but I just want you to have a basis on this. And look, all we've covered today is the house settlement cap, the university rev share pot. We haven't even broached the NIL collective side of things, which is changing as we speak and shifting as we speak. So next episode, we're going to talk about the NIL piece. We're going to talk about the Nebraska case. Also. If time permits, I want to talk a little bit about the Alston case and the house case and how both of those things influenced and created the house settlement and the structure that we sit with now. So stay tuned on this, probably be like a four part series it's going to end up being. Cause again, the more I dig on this, the more that I find. And like I said, this is really just kind of trying to scratch my own curiosity and hopefully y'all are curious about the same things and you get something out of it. And if y'all have additional questions, look man, drop them in the comments. Let me know, I'll do some research on it and figure it out. I am an attorney by trade. So digging into this stuff and trying to figure stuff out is, and hey man, don't shoot. I do simple stuff. I'm not one of those attorneys trying to gouge or anything, but yeah, man, I just want to understand the landscape and how it's constantly shifting in, you know, the game I love more than any sport in the world. And I'm sure y'all are probably that way too. So next episode in this series is to be on NIL Collectives. and the lawsuits that have set all this up. Also starting a summer interview series fired up for Friday morning. We will release an interview with a new Montana head coach, Bobby Kennedy. Coach Kennedy was outstanding. I thoroughly enjoy talking with him. He has had an incredible, incredible career in college football. He was so gracious with his time and with the stories he told. So I cannot wait for y'all to hear that. If you follow our show, you know that we are beyond passionate. about college football at the FCS level. And Montana is, you know, one of the premier institutions at that level. So really fired up y'all for it hear coach Kennedy's story and very appreciative to him for coming on the show and very appreciative to Montana for setting that up and all the fine folks there. Tune in for that. And then we will be back with you here next Tuesday to do part two of the Show Me Money series. Until then, earn your scholarship and kiss your nooch.