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Welcome back to the Deal.

I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez, and actually alongside Alex Rodriguez.

It's Monday.

We're here in Dallas.

We just wrapped an unbelievable conversation with the legendary Jerry Jones.

It takes a lot for us to show up somewhere together, but we had to for Jerry.

Yeah, and like Magic Johnson, I mean, this is one that was very close to my heart.

Ever since I dreamt of being an owner of sports, a professional sports team.

Jerry has been my north star and he's been a longtime mentor.

And yeah, he put on a masterclass.

It's an unbelievable conversation.

We can't wait for you guys to hear it.

That'll be out in just a few weeks.

A busy week for us.

We're going our separate ways at least for about twenty four hours.

Thirty six hours.

You're heading off to Minnesota to see the Links play in the semi finals.

What a season they're having.

I mean, how excited are you?

We're very, very excited.

We're playing a very good Phoenix team.

Game two, we were fortunate to win Game one and we're supposed to go to New York together and I had to split because of a schedule.

But I'm very excited.

You know, this is the road to number five, as the team has labeled this year, because we got very close against the Liberty last year and hopefully we can close it this year.

Yet number five being you already have four championships, the most of any WNBA team, and so going for number five under the leadership of Nafisa Callier, what an incredible team.

We are going to reconnect in New York, big Bloomberg event that we're putting on that you're going to be a part of.

We're going to talk about building sports and entertainment infrastructure in Africa with Messaiu Jerry and Adam Silver.

And meanwhile, we're looking at all the things happening in the world of sports.

Nothing bigger right now than college football.

You're Hurricanes, Man, what in the world they are on fire?

I am like optimate, but I'm cautious right because we've been down this road before.

We've had these start, false start, start, false start.

But it seems like we have some momentum going and we would beat a very good Florida team last week at home, and then we played Florida State this upcoming week and that's going to be like the moment because they are our arch rivals.

Yeah, and we talk a lot on this show about college sports and college football specifically.

No one better to talk to them than Adam Brennanman.

He played at Penn State.

He is now a college football analyst and also an entrepreneur.

Fun to talk to him because you know, he clearly is following a playbook that you helped invent, you know, candidly, he talks a lot about, you know, being ambitious in his business dealings.

Also just has some great insights, said some things about where college sports is going and where it should go that I found really really interesting.

So coming up next, Adam Brendman, Welcome back to the Deal.

I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez.

We could not be more excited to have Adam Brennman here with us.

He's an analyst, he's an entrepreneur, former college football player.

So much happening in this world, Adam, as the season gets underway, we are just thrilled to be talking to you.

So welcome to the show.

I appreciate us having me on, Love the show, Love what you guys are doing.

Alex, I've been a big fan for a long time.

The amount of times I've looked at the A Rod Corp.

Website as you've built out your company and sewed it to my team and said, hey, I love what he's doing here.

I'm trying to do it on a much smaller scale right now, but hopefully, hopefully someday can achieve the things you have.

And again, love the show, love all the univis you guys are doing.

Thank you.

So we're talking to you at a great time.

You know.

College football season is just in full swing, you know, the first couple of weeks I have seen some incredible games.

What to you are the big storylines, especially given sort of the business angle that we know you really embrace as you think about college football right now.

The biggest storyline in college football is just the money that's flowing into the sport.

The money has shifted from it used to be just the media networks and the schools getting the money.

Now the players are getting paid as well.

And there's been so much negativity, as you guys know, around athletes, student athletes getting paid in college athletics.

But as we looked at the product on the field, college football has never been stronger.

The viewership's never been better, the game has never been better.

The product on the field, as far as the talent level, has been better.

There's been an effect with the NIL and the money where guys are staying in school longer.

You have players who could have gone to the NFL that stay in school because they're making two million dollars as a starting quarterback.

Think of a guy like Drew Aller at Penn State, should have been a top five pick but stayed for one more season at Penn State, now competing for a national championship.

So for all the negativity and all the talk about nil and should players get paid, and people say and football will never be the same college foot it's not the college football I remember growing up.

Well, it's better than it ever was.

And in college football and the fan bases, the pageantry, there's a reason that college football games have better TV ratings than any other sport.

It's because of how diehard these fans are.

And I think and I alas only only made that stronger.

Yeah, well, I mean I got to just talk a little University of Miami because I'm going to geek out a little bit.

We've suffered for a long time, and you know, I was telling Jase, I sit on the board at the University of Miami for the last twenty years, and we were fortunate to get back to quarterback from Georgia, which I think you got.

To run four million bucks.

I've been really on a high because Notre Dame played Miami for the opener.

I had to watch Catholic versus Convicts.

I'mvol in it right now.

Disappointment or we kind of we have a real shot with the University of Miami.

Give me your thoughts.

Miami has a real shot.

And you look at the ACC and Miami's the top team in the conference right now.

I don't even think it's really that close.

And you think about Carson Beck and how he's playing that quarterback.

He's a guy who's played a lot of football.

He has the experience.

I also like a guy who's been through some crap in his career.

It hasn't always been pretty, it hasn't always been good.

But sometimes guys who have talent but there's been issues for whatever reason.

Sometimes you just need a fresh start.

Sometimes you just got to go somewhere and have someone new who believes in you.

And that's what Miami's been for Carson Beck.

I mean, he's a guy who played at Georgia, was a big recruit, so much excitement and talk every single year, never quite got to that pinnacle, and now has this fresh start at Miami and you can see the confidence he's brought to that team.

He's brought a lot of confidence in swagger to this Miami program.

The Notre Dame win beating South Florida, who's a top twenty team Week three of college football season.

So I really think Miami's got a good roster.

Mario Chris Ball's built that team the right way that he built it in the trenches through high school recruiting, not just through the transfer portal.

I love Miami this season, and their path to making the playoff isn't all that hard.

They may not play a ranked team other than Florida State the rest of the schedule, So I'm a big believer in Miami right now.

Now, Carson Beck has to keep playing well, keep taking care of the football, and avoid some of those mistakes and have plagued him last season In the last couple of years.

But I'm happy for Carson back more than anything else because he needed a fresh start and it's always cool to see the positive part of the transfer portal.

You get a guy who gets to have that kind of second part of his career and thriving at his new school.

Love it.

So, Adam, let's keep with this because to me, this is like the single most interesting business story in the world of sports is college sports right now.

But when it comes to college football, Carson Beck great story.

We love to see it.

You know, he doesn't go to the NFL.

You know you mentioned Duraler as well.

What are the knock on effects of this, you know, what are the effects that maybe we should be thinking about from a business perspective, from the businesses of the individual teams and the schools you know, this world so intimately, like, what are the things we may not be seeing that you're seeing as we think about all that money coming in.

The biggest shift that's happened in the last year or so in college sports, aside from just nil as a whole, has been revenue sharing actually coming to college sports.

So what's happening now is these college athletic programs can pay athletes directly out of the revenue they're getting from their media deals and through the athletic department.

Every Division I program in college football, probably the same in basketball, has opted into revenue sharing where they have a salary cap just like the NFL does, where they can pay their athletes in year one, it's twenty point five million dollars a year.

But the interesting part is you still have nil that's outside of that twenty point five million.

And that's the business story that gets really competitive here, and how do you get to a level playing field And that's where the frustrations come in for a lot of coaches.

You have all these schools, let's just stick.

With a big tan Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, USC, all of them are saying, hey, we're going to pay our play our athletes twenty point five million a year.

That's a revenue share agreement getting paid from the athlete department to the athlete, and they have to perform services for that, just like a normal contract would be.

Now thethn department has to split that between sports.

So I would assume probably three fourths goes to football, say sixteen million of the twenty million goes to football.

Now, what happens is when everyone pays their players twenty million dollars, well, everyone's pretty much back in zero because there's no competitive advantage for any program.

So what's happening is Ohio State and Ohio State says, we got to pay our guys more than Penn State pays their guys.

We're competing for championships.

So now you have what's really true nil outside of the revenue sharing cap in IL, which is the businesses doing deals with the athletes.

What the arms race is right now is what schools can create true commercial NIL programs that get their athletes paid more than just the revenue sharing money.

So it's it's some of these schools are trying to put together a pool of donors or businesses to say we want you to do that are real NIL deals with all of our top athletes that we want to come in here so that the quarterback can make maybe two and a half million instead of two million, and then you can compete in the transfer portal with all of them, which some coaches like, some coaches don't like.

How do you make sure that doesn't become just pay for play where then you kind of don't even have a salary cap anymore, and you're just funneling money through donors to athletes like what was happening in the early days of NIL.

So it's pretty chaotic, and the money's going to keep flowing in.

And you guys know the amount of money that these teams are making on football and men's basketball, and so women's basketball had a lot of places that it is worth it for them to try to fundel this money to the athletes because the product is so great.

The conferences are consolidating to get the better media rights, which means more money will fall back to the schools.

So the money continues to get more and more massive in college football and college for US.

Adam, that's a thank you for that.

That was a very very good explanation.

I mean, it's such as movies so fast and you said a lot.

I just want to make sure that I get this part clear.

So I'm clear on the twenty point five rev share, right, and that's split among all sports, And you said three fourth we'll go to football.

That sounds about right.

Is there a cap outside of that?

So in the situation of a quarterback, can you just spend the unlimited amount of money kind of go up to like another forty or fifty million dollars for the roster.

The short answer is yes, But the nuance in this is that the school is not allowed to facilitate that payment.

So it's so similar to alex when you played Major League baseball, you had your contract with the Major League Baseball team, but you also could do a brand deal with Nike or Adidas or Pepsi or That's what's happening in college football.

But because the difference is there's recruiting in college football, so you're not just drafting players and then trading them and then doing a free agency.

You're recruiting.

So that's where pay for play comes in.

You're now trying to recruit the players.

So the more money you pay them, the easierness to recruit.

So these schools that have the twenty point five million dollar cap, they're trying to get that incremental money above and that's the gray area where this isn't happening.

But for example, if Penn State has a massive donor, Terry Pagoula, the owner of the Bills, like, I'm sure they'd love for him to be more involved than a nil.

But say he wanted to be involved and he said, I could buy whatever roster we want here, so he could go just you know, pay all these athletes through nil deals, get them to go to the school.

Who's to judge what the fair market value is of that deal?

Because that's the nuance To directly answer your question, Alex, the deal that's outside the cap has to be fair market value and go through a clearing house from the NCAA.

There's a group called the College Sports Commission which was put in place after the House settlement in college sports and after revenue staring came in that said anything that's outside of the revenue staring cap has to be fair market value, has to be true commercial nil to avoid the schools just saying, hey this donor just pay this guy all this money to come to our school.

But who's going to tell Phil Knight at Nike what fair market value is.

He's going to say, I'll pay the guy whatever I want.

It's worth it Tnike and to me.

So that's the nuance of it all.

There's no cap on true nil because who's the talent athlete?

You're not worth three million dollars a year to this company, but the making sure that it stays fair is the biggest challenge right now facing college sports, and that's the arms race.

I interviewed I flight director at Ohio State.

He's straight up said the biggest arms race right now.

It used to be facilities.

Who has the nicest facility in college sports?

Now it's who can build out the best, true, true commercial nil outside of their athletic department and you can do it the fastest so that they have a recruiting advantage.

Well, I mean this happened so Alex's older daughter is a student at Michigan.

I mean Michigan played this brilliantly, right, I mean they had a donor you know, who came in and essentially was able to pay their quarterback and woo him away from LSU.

Right, he was committed LSU and now he's at Missig.

He's the starting quarterback at Michigan.

Do I have that right correct?

Yeah?

Bryce Underwood, he's a great player, going to be going to be one of the best quarterbacks in college football.

And Michigan got a bunch of donors together and just sole them away basically when he was in high school.

As a recruit.

So the legality of all that, and that was pre revenue share.

So that was when it was just straight nil collectives.

These schools weren't allowed to be part of it.

It was what the donors were.

The donors could be part of it.

The donors could pull their money together through collectives and pay the athletes.

So that's what happened with Bryce Hunderwood and Michigan got their quarterback of the future.

Yeah, I mean it's why, Alex.

Isn't it wild to think about?

I mean, this is like so radically different.

I mean you must see it, Alex, you must see it.

Even in you know, being on the board of Miami, like it totally changes the governance of it of a school.

Like it couldn't be more different than it was.

Yeah, and Adam, it's interesting what you said about, you know, players get more motivated because of the money.

When I was seventeen coming out of Miami, I was the number one pick in the country and I signed for one point three million.

And I agree with you because I also had a coach that had and iron fist and his name was lou Panela, and he never made you feel like you were the special kid on the block.

It was in the contrary and because of him, because of his coaches style, which it resembles like a Nick Saban right, like just a great coach, but very tough, all of my fundamentals, made sure you were accountable at every inch of every single.

Day of the game.

And he has a big, big time print on my career.

So the money was not a negative.

It was actually a neutral or positive.

Like some of these athletes.

I would hear all the time from coaches, old school guys say well, you pay the players one hundred a million, four million a year.

These coaches are guys who have kind of been around the system a while have said and said to me, if I got a million dollars, I'd stop working.

How is this going to motivate the players.

They're just going to show up and get their check and go home.

And I found the exact opposite.

The money has motivated these players even more.

There's no better motivator to show up every day on time, to practice, to put in the extra work, to want to perform well, to ensure that you're getting paid your million dollar a year contract you have with a school, and to also get that next contract, get the year two revenue share deal.

If a player is making two hunderd grand one year, he's going to want to make four hundred the next year.

So I think it's actually enhanced the product in college football.

It's made it all better.

It's made it more well rounded, where you also have more balance in the system.

Now, I mean college football.

College athletics has been such a big business for everyone but the athletes for so long, and now finally the athletes can be part of that business.

They can partake in the upside, they can get the reward in for the hard work they're putting in.

I think it's been a big positive and it's really actually made the athletes work harder because there's a financial incentive at stake.

All right, let's talk about the business you're building, or one of the businesses you're building.

The college sports company.

You found this a few years ago, clearly you know, seeing part of what was happening.

It's only accelerated since then.

Given how using your word chaotic it is, how do you build a sustainable business in this?

And how much has it changed what you were trying to do as you're constantly I'm imagining sort of evolving what you're aiming for yeah.

The college sports company came or started based on really two pillars.

One was that content is king and everyone wants to do content.

I was just finding as I was creating content myself and building a platformal line telling stories about football, breaking down the game, people were coming to me athletes and college athletes and schools and said, hey, we want content.

How do we do content?

We need to do content.

At the same time, every school now and every NIOL collective has a revenue issue.

They're trying to figure out how do we drive more revenue because think about it, every school has a new twenty pointy five million dollar bill they got to pay every year they didn't have last year.

So all these schools are like, man, we need more money.

How do we drive more revenue?

And that's where kind of the epiphany came in that the best way for schools to thrive in this era of college sports is to think an act like a media company.

It's to create content with all the athletes they have currently at their schools.

It's to create content with the former athletes that want to be part of the program.

Think about how many former athletes want to be a media Well, let's use them and let's build these school specific media networks that we can then monetize to drive revenue for the school for nil for paying the players themselves.

So that's how we started.

It's evolved since then.

As you guys know, this landscape of college sports is crazy and you have new legislation, new rules, But we work with schools all over the country and work with their athletes to build school specific networks, media networks, have shows that each of those networks, and then we monetize it through sponsorship, advertising, events, experiences, e commerce, everything that a normal media company would do, and then we share that revenue with the school or with the NL collective, and that's the solution for them.

So the schools are getting brand building, their athletes get to be part of content, and they also are getting revenue on the back end.

It's been fun.

I mean, the.

World of college sports and sports itself has become really an asset class.

People want to invest in sports, people are excited about sports and college sports.

I think the shift in what college sports looks like it's only becoming more professionalized.

You know, Adam, it reminds me of how private companies are staying private longer, right because it can lose more capital.

You don't have the quarterly earnings, CEOs can really think about long term or enterprise value versus like what's going to be great on the next quarterly call.

I think about a player like Anthony Edwards who plays with us, and it was a number one take out of Georgia.

He would have made probably who knows, maybe tens of millions of dollars over the course of four years, and the whole course of the Timbulls may have been completely different.

I guess my question and is I'm sitting here in our facilities with the Minnesota Timbos in the links, and as I think about how should we I'm asking for your advice here because you're right in the middle of college sports.

How should we be assessing players?

Because if a player's making three and a half million dollars, is he going to have the same motivation to be great in the NBA or the WNBA.

Because this is a new I think I can relate with players, but it's, like Jason said, radically different than when I played.

How would you think about recruiting players?

Yeah, I think athletes that are getting paid a ton of money in college are just as motivated as anyone else who is trying to make it with their career.

I'm thinking of a football player specifically.

I won't mention his name that I talked to who who made a comment to me He made like eight hundred grand the one year he was in school, and all he was talking about was how hard he wanted to work because he wanted his next deal to be two million dollars.

And I just kept thinking.

I kept coming back to that because the average person, you would say, hey, this guy's eighteen years old making eight hundred grand.

I mean, the things I would have done with eight hundred grand when I was eighteen in college.

Like, I see this perspective, and it's like, man, like you taste it a little bit, right, Like you get that taste in your mouth, and then you're around people who are making even more and more and not.

I think that's just human nature.

Like now that I'm postplaying in my business career, the more I'm around people who make more and more money, the more motivated I get.

I'm like, oh, well, that guy figured out how to make that much money.

Why can't I figure that out?

I really think that you have these guys who make all this money in college, they know what the top echelon looks like, and I still think that they're going to want to get there, whether it's money motivation.

I also think that if there is an athlete who was good enough in college to work their butt off, avoid distractions and get to that pinnacle of college sports, they're going to have that same attitude in professional sports that's in their DNA.

At that point, they're not going to say, hey, I made four million.

I think I'm going to just just ease out.

Like in their DNA is that there's greatness within them.

So I think it's finding those guys.

The guys who can have consistent excellence in college desplained how much money they made, are ones that are going to be are going to be great professionals.

I do think that there is a new shift in sports where like when I was playing football, if I would have told my coaches that I wanted to start a podcast or have a business on the side, they would have like laughed me out of the room.

Right.

It would have been like no.

Like Bill O'Brien was my head coach at Penn State, he would have been like, dude, like you just messed up.

That play on third down.

You're not starting a podcast like Learn Your Play, where like nowadays, it's way more accepted, and I think it should be like where athletes it's cool to invest as an athlete, and Alex You've been a big part of that.

I think like the shift in that athletes are entrepreneurs, athletes are businesses, Athletes create content, Athletes can be venture capitalists and can start businesses and can invest in their hometown and can buy real estate.

All that is cool now and it has shifted completely, and I think that's an amazing thing for the athlete because for a long time, it was almost no matter.

What your sport was.

It was kind of like, hey, if you talk about that, it's kind of like you're not focused on your sport and you better just shut up and play well on Saturday or play well on Sunday.

So, Adam, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to ask this question because I've been thinking about this so much.

The whole notion of you know, you went to Penn State, had a great career there, you played for a great coach in Bill o Brien you just mentioned.

I think about going back to something you mentioned earlier.

I love Georgia Tech football.

I love Brent Key, I love Haines King, the quarterback.

You know, this is a guy who's been there for several years.

In the case of Haines King, you have a lot of situations where quarterbacks, especially, but other players as well, especially you know, wide receivers and whatnot, they get a better deal, they move on.

There is not the continuity within a program.

This is something that is candidly like the transfer portal, so sort of shifting gears has chased a lot of even very success full college coaches, you know, out of the game.

Nick Sabans essentially sort of threw his hands up, and there have been other examples of that.

He is sort of the most the best known.

What do you think about that, this essentially sort of unlimited free agency that's happening.

Is that going to be how it is going forward?

What do you think?

Yeah, it's a great question.

The transfer portal has gotten absolutely bonkers.

Every coach stays up at night having nightmares about it.

Like anything in business and life, things were so far in one direction right that they were so far in favor of the coaches and the administrators and the media companies and anti player that when you get that far out of whack, a lot of times you.

Can overcorrect the other way.

Yeah, and I think what's happened in college sports is we've over corrected in benefit of the players.

Like we've gotten to the point where players can transfer as many times as they want.

There's multiple transfer portal windows in college football.

There's not binding tracks for the players, like if the players are going to get paid two million bucks a year, like there should be a contract that they play in the bowl game, and there are now with revenue sharing that they show up on time to practice.

They're not getting that check if they skip a week of workouts, all those kind of things, just like he would in professional leagues.

So that has changed with revenue sharing where there are now binding contracts with the players interest.

But the biggest piece has been the transfer portal windows.

Those contracts still don't keep players from transferring, but now the issue in college football has been that there's multiple transfer portal windows.

So what's been happening is there's a window after the season in college football where players can transfer, and there's also a window after spring practice before the season starts.

And what's been happening is that because of the two windows, it really disincentivizes coaches to be honest with their players.

Because if you have a coach who.

Has a quarterback battle going on at a major program, his obligations to protect his team, to do what's the best thing in interest of his program.

Yes, he may have a great relationship with the player, but his my best interest is making sure that all the best players sail on his team.

Why would that coach name any starters until that transfer portal closes.

So a lot of coaches may have a quarterback battle.

Hey, if they tell one the backup quarterback that you're not going to be the starter this year, that guy's going to hop in the portal.

So a lot of times you've seen this trend, there's like elongated battles of the top positions in college sports, and everyone's like, man, why hasn't school X named their quarterback yet?

I'm like, because they don't want the guy to transfer, so they haven't announced the starter.

There's this perception of a quarterback competition still to the public and to the team, when the coach may really know.

So that's the number one thing coaches are asking for is let's get one transfer portal window.

Let's make it right after the season, and after the season you decide you are either at your school for the next year or you're transferring, and then if you transfer, you get to go through spring practice.

You're there all off season.

But get rid of this window, this transfer window that's after spring practice, which really would help coaches, administrators, general managers build their rosters better.

It would help college sports.

But that's an example of how we kind of overcorrected for the players, and now we're getting back to the center where it seems to make more sense.

So Adam your words, I mean, and I agree, I mean, this is so confusing, and I'm sure our listeners, while you're doing an incredible job describing it, they're still a little confused, right Cotail Now every cocktail party you go to everyone and Jace, you know that because we've been in some of these conversations.

Okay, where does this go?

What's NIO?

How does it really work?

Is it a binding contract?

I guess my questions are oversimplified.

In five years, where does this land?

Is there going to be some type of a salary cap?

Is there sometimes of a formal union that protects the players, that the commissioners can speak to the union at a very high level macro and say, you got to do X for the player, you got to protect the school, We got to do what's best for the sport.

Where does it land in five years?

Yeah, that's the million dollar question.

One of the things I was really eye opening to me was I was at the College Football National Championship Game this past year.

Every conference is meeting about the future of college sports.

The school presidents are all meeting about the future of college sports.

You know, there's the SEC coaches meeting and there's all these meetings going on.

But guess who has no seat at the table?

The players.

There's no one representing the players at the table.

Just like the NFL has NFLPA and the MLB has the MLBPA, and they have their entity or their representation, who's negotiating on their behalf.

The athletes don't have that in college sports.

And the biggest reason they don't is because college sports in general administrators the NCAA has refused to call student athletes what they really are.

They're employees of the school, and that's a dirty topic in college sports.

Right now, there's a lot of debate around are they employees, and if they are employees, you open up this can of potential lawsuits and all these issues with the even pass athletes that weren't employees but maybe should have been classified as employees.

There's a big push from a lot of groups to keep the athletes as student athletes in college sports.

My take to answer your question directly, Alex, is that in five years, we will classify college apple letes as employees and college athletes will have collective bargaining and representation at the table.

There will be collective bargaining for what revenue share contracts look like.

There will be group licensing deals similar to NFLPA and the other players associations.

That's really the cleanest solution.

It's the solution that scares everyone the most.

It's the solution that scares administrators, I like directors and conference commissioners because they don't want to deal with the athletes being employees.

But as you guys are hearing about college sports, doesn't it just seem like, hey, this is an employee model, Like the players are getting paid to perform a service.

The longer we refuse to call them that, the more complicated it gets.

You're like, well, are there contracts?

Are they not contracts?

Are we able to fire the athlete?

Are we not?

Can we cut them?

Like?

How'es it actually work?

I think that's kind of the elephant in the room and all these conversations is are the athletes employees?

And I think the notion that they are currently student athletes is a falsehood.

Yes, some are getting a degree and some are focused on that, but a lot of them, the majority, are focused more so on getting a paycheck and maximizing their value of the school, making the most amount of money, which they should.

I would have done the same thing if I was in their shoes.

Yeah, I had one more question that as you were talking at them.

It really strikes me, which is, you know, there's so much focus from the beginning of the season, from long before the beginning the season now on the college football playoff.

It's expanded, It's probably going to continue to expand at some point.

And this is sort of building on what you just said, does big time college football break off of the nc DOUBLEA?

Like, do we have a world where we essentially create, for lack of better term, NFL junior And it's you know that it's big ten SEC, maybe part of the ACC and Notre Dame.

What is the right business model for college football going forward, given the amount of money and given that the playoff is already the separate entity.

Yeah, well, the number one thing is the nc DOUBLEA has shown a lack of ability to govern anything in college sports.

I mean they were in this position because ncible A refused to act on what they knew was coming down the pipe for a long time with nil.

Clearly, the NCBLA isn't the answer for governance and for the organizational structure of college sports.

I also think that a lot of these major sports like football, for example, basketball, baseball, women's basketball.

If I asked you who's in charge of football, who's in charge of college football?

Like you wouldn't know who's actually in charge?

Isn't Greg Sankee the commissioner of the SEC.

Maybe Greg sankei is the person who's ultimately in charge of college football because he's the most powerful person.

But he's also in charge of the cross in swimming and diving, in field hockey and all these other sports.

There's no leader of college football looking out for the interests of college football, which is different than the interest of college basketball.

It's different than the interests of everywhere else, but we have this set of rules that is kind of the same for each sport.

It's just governed under NCAA Athletics.

What I think the future should look like is is college football breaks off.

Maybe men's basketball does as well.

The major conferences Big ten of the SEC and football break off and self govern themselves and a breakoff from the other group of five programs in college football.

These conferences will continue to expand we've seen tons of conference realignment and conference expansion.

It's not going to stop.

These conferences want the best media rights deals, and the way you do it is you get national.

You go multiple different time zones and media markets, and you collect all these schools and then you sell your media rights to these networks and the better the games are, the better.

If you only had the Big Ten of the SEC playing each other every year one power conference in football say they merge, the amount of revenue from media dollars would be even higher because you wouldn't be playing the who did Miami play Bouthain Cookman or someone you would You wouldn't have these like low level games that no one's watching on you get a revenue for so you would you would have all these great games more revenue.

So I think the solution is continuing to expand the conferences, and then the two power conferences eventually go off on their own as the premier college football entity, if you will knock, governed by the incidable.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely definitely where we're headed.

And the good news is is that college football will still exist in other forms as well, when you know, we love the game and people will keep playing it.

All right, Lightning Round five questions.

We're going to bounce it back and forth.

First thing that comes to your mind, I'll start, then Alex will pick up.

Are you reading, Let's do it?

Okay.

What's the best piece of advice you've received on deal making or business?

I would say that persistence can get you a long way, just will power.

I believe that human beings underestimate their ability to will something to happen, and I think that works a lot and deals as well.

Who's your dream deal making partner?

Can I say, Ox Rodriguez?

Or is that is that a yeah?

Sure?

It would be the first one.

I would go A rod or I would go I'm a big Gary Vaynerchuk guy too, I got that.

Okay, yeah, which team do you want to see win a championship more than any pipe state?

What's your hype song before a big meeting or negotiation?

Oh?

Make me all dreams and nightmares?

Oh?

Good one?

All right?

And finally, what's your advice for someone listening who wants a career like yours?

I think similar to what I said in the beginning, is that you have the ability to will something to happen, and that the number one underrated skill set is proactivity.

Being proactive and not waiting for direction or rating for someone to tell you what to do.

We'll just get up and take action.

Action is the way that you make something happen.

And I think throughout my career I've learned that if you just take action, the luck follows.

I love it all right.

Well, you are a true multi hyphen it Adam Brenneman's entrepreneur, media personality, TV analysts, a former All American tight end, you run the college sports company.

You've got a podcast called Next Up.

So we love following your career.

We really enjoyed having you, and thanks so much for your time.

Thanks guys, Thanks for having me all.

I appreciate it was fun.

The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and me Jason Kelly.

This episode was made by Anamazarakus, Stacey Wong, and Lizzie Phillip.

Amy Keen is our editor and Will Connelly is our video editor.

Our theme music is made by Blake Maples.

Our executive producers are Kelly Leferrier, Ashley Hoenig, and Brendan Newnham.

Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast.

Additional support from Rachel Carnivale and Elena Los Angeles.

Thanks so much for listening to the Deal.

If you have a minute, subscribe, rate and review our show.

It'll help other listeners find us.

I'm Jason Kelly.

See you next week.