Abe Madkour, Austin Karp, and John Ourand take a deep dive into the topics that dominated this year's SBJ Intercollegiate Athletic Forum presented by LEARFIELD and what storylines will resonate in the future.
Abe Madkour:
This is a special Morning Buzzcast coming to you from SBJ's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum presented by Learfield at the ARIA in Las Vegas. I'm Abe Madkour. In this special Buzzcast, I'm joined by John Ourand and Austin Karp. We were all together in Las Vegas on the afternoon of Tuesday and all day Wednesday. And gentlemen, it was highlighted by NCAA President Charlie Baker's, I would say kind of not coming out party, but it was his first big address to, I think, many members of the college sports business. And of course on Tuesday, they dropped his memo to the division one leaders about his suggestions since being in office since March about steps the NCAA can take to really try to, not right the ship, but take steps to solidify collegiate sports. And that was the overwhelming topic of conversation, didn't you think, John?
John Ourand:
Yeah. Abe, I want to get back though to your interview because you've interviewed the president of the NCAA, Mark Emmert every single year here.
Abe Madkour:
For more than a decade.
John Ourand:
This is the first time you were on stage with Charlie Baker. What were your thoughts? What kind of president do you think Charlie Baker is?
Abe Madkour:
Well, he has a different style than Mark Emmert, okay? And he is a politician, so he knows how to work a room, he knows how to engage with an audience. He has a stature to him just by his overall comportment. He just looks like a leader. And he feels very comfortable in this role, even just being in the job for nine months. And he basically looked to the audience and said, "This is a conversation starter. We have got to move this forward. And some people aren't going to think I went far enough, some people are going to think I went too far, and that's just fine for me and let's have the conversation." But he's very direct. I think that he had a lot of people quite, not impressed by him, but I think a lot of people left the room feeling that the NCAA has quite the strong leader right now.
John Ourand:
My takeaway is that the panel right after that, when we had the commissioners of the ACC, SEC and the Big 12 and Commissioner Sankey of the SEC made a point to say that Charlie Baker's a leader. Charlie Baker didn't share that with any of the commissioners before he put it out to the press, they heard about it from their lawyers, they heard about it from certain press reports. So you want to talk about a leader, this is a different sort of leader that's trying to push out the conversation starter.
Abe Madkour:
I thought that was a very interesting undercurrent from Greg Sankey saying, "I got this forwarded. I wish that we were more included in this process and we were all kind of surprised." But I think there's also a lot of little jockeying going on at intercollegiate athletics, and there's some not territories that want to be protected, but there's some areas that if we're going to do this, let's do this together. And even University of Georgia President Jere Morehead said on Wednesday, "Hey, to move this forward, we need the SEC and the Big 10 on the same page." And I thought that was an interesting undercurrent as well. Austin, what did you take away?
Austin Karp:
I agree that more so than in any other conference, any other intercollegiate athletic conference that we've done, everyone was kind of worried about their existential future. Can they survive? Especially you heard a very measured approach from the Group of Five commissioners. I thought it was very striking to hear Gloria Nevarez when she referred to the language in Baker's memo, or specifically referring to the subdivision language and how that is going to be a trigger word among many in the NCAA membership. So I think you saw a lot of people just responding and thinking about it for the first time, Baker's memo, at our conference. So it was very interesting to hear a very, very, very measured approach and protection of everybody's future from their comments here.
Abe Madkour:
You know what else they all want? Help from Congress. And I think that we're going to have to see... And it sounded to me from the talk today that there's a lot more optimism that Congress is finally understanding this existential threat to the future of college sports unless they act.
John Ourand:
Abe, you used to live in DC. I live in DC, I've reported about these types of issues for decades. I have never seen a business or a group look to Congress to save them or look to Congress for help. I find that to be stark. I can't believe that they're doing that. There's the law of unintended consequences, when you involve Congress, that always comes into play.
Austin Karp:
Well, I think Baker wants a little bit of what some of the... College sports is so professionalized now, he wants a little bit of what these professional sports have, and he said it point-blank. He wants just a little bit of antitrust exemption, just some of what those professional sports have been protected by for so long.
John Ourand:
Well, that's also interesting, college sports is professionalized. My interview with Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital talked about how college sports was not professionalized at all, and he's somebody who has invested in professional sports teams for decades, and now he's not as interested in most professional sports leagues because, these are my words, but they appear to be overvalued. What the value right now he sees is in college. He thinks he can go into college, he can help all these stadiums get upgrades on location. They can do things around the CFP in terms of the media rights deals. Instead of having all these different conferences trying to go to all the different networks, they could be more like the NFL and put everything together and get something bigger. So the idea that college is professionalized, get ready, it's going to get professionalized a lot more.
He kept saying, "There's capital out there and there's capital willing to invest in college sports." And that's exactly it in terms of sophisticating the business. Another interesting point about Charlie Baker was when we asked him about what the NCAA needs to do better. Besides getting stuff done, he also said getting to know their fans. And I know that there are a number of vendors probably in that audience when he said, "We need a database of knowing every college fan there is out there and what sports, who likes women's sports," and you know that he's going to be pitched by a number of these companies who think they can do that. But it just shows that, I would say the Indianapolis office of the NCAA doesn't really have its arms around, to a comfort level of understanding who their fan base is and how to reach them.
Yeah, and that's my takeaway from this entire two days of this conference is that, I don't know if I mean this like I'm going to say it, but nobody knows anything right now. It just feels like the college sports business is in upheaval right now. Every single panel session touched on NIL, nobody had any answers for how that was going to progress. Most of the panel sessions touched on sports wagering and the real problem that they have on college campuses with people that are doing sports betting and nobody has any good answers for how to put even guardrails up for that. Again, I'm going to go back to Gerry Cardinale, professionalizing a lot of the sports business that's around college athletics. My takeaway from these two days more so than any other time that I've come to this conference is that if you're a fan of college or if you work in college athletics, get ready for existential changes to the business.
Abe Madkour:
I thought your point there about the session that you had on sports betting with Jamie Pollard and Joe Castiglione and others, I thought it was one of the best sports betting panels I've ever listened to because there were real situations and specific incidents that Jamie Pollard could talk through about sports betting on college campuses. And then what Charlie Baker said what keeps him up at night is sports betting, as he called it, it's rampant on campus, and then there was on X a lot of people saying, "He's absolutely right. It is rampant on campus." And you asked Jamie Pollard, "Who's betting?" And he said, "These young 18 to 22-year-old mostly men just doing these, what, $2 bets day in and day out." And one of his peoples bet up to $38,000.
John Ourand:
Bet up to $38,000 on $2 bets. And the problem is, there are two problems, one is they asked all of the people that were caught in this sports gambling, "How much did you wager?" Nobody came within like $10,000 of what they were wagering. They were so far off because they just thought that they were doing $2 bets. So the students thought they were betting a couple thousand dollars, but no, it was $38,000, it was $40,000. The other thing that they found to be really interesting when they would ask these students, "Do you gamble?" And they're like, "No, I don't gamble. I bet on sports." They don't view that as gambling. And there's a big unknown about where this is headed.
Abe Madkour:
We have been doing this conference for more than a decade, easily more than a decade, two decades, I'm dating myself, but it always seems that the sky is falling when it comes to college sports year in and year out. But yet we see the business, I would say,stronger than ever, interest, stronger than ever. Let's end with this. As you leave this conference, there was a lot of, "We're at the precipice, we're at a tipping point and it could get really bad," that was a theme throughout these two days. How did you feel about the state of college sports leaving this conference?
Austin Karp:
I thought that yes, there was a sense of fear out there in college sports, but also that Charlie Baker might be the right man at the right time, coming from the right background in the politics and using what he learned as a public official to now come to the NCAA and build consensus and modernize it. One of the things that he said that really perked in my ears, particularly regarding women's sports, was if they're able to get the data and really get to know their fans, they can build the biggest database of women's sports fans in the world. But more importantly, I think what everybody, if there was consensus on anything in the room, it was that everybody wants to avoid a situation where there is an employee/employer relationship that comes college sports.
John Ourand:
I'm very bullish on the future of college sports. I think the people that are worried that it's going to fall off a cliff are afraid of change. And I think that if you listen to the money and if you listen to the administrators, college sports is going to look, act and feel much different. There are going to be lots and lots of changes coming in, but I go back to the Gerry Cardinale interview, it's undervalued and it's a great place for people to put their money right now.
I will say we do need to watch Congress to see if they act at all. And if they don't act, the courts will act because you have that House versus The NCAA case that will be heard by Claudia Wilken, and that could be treble damages of north of $4 billion, and that is when they say it could really do some significant harm to college athletics.
Abe, I can't let you sign off yet because you're not going to mention you were awarded a WWE title belt engraved with SBJ'S logo.
Abe Madkour:
It was a special moment to get the WWE title belt to end this conference, and I felt like a champion.
John Ourand:
By the way, we're going to have pictures in the magazine. Abe was holding the belt over his head. That was great.
Abe Madkour:
Well, I guess I was supposed to put it around my waist like a belt, but call me naive, I didn't really know what to do with it, but it was a great, great gift and it'll be hanging shortly in the Charlotte headquarters of Sports Business Journal proudly. So thanks for bringing that up, John. It was fun.
And it was a fun and interesting couple of two days here at the ARIA in Las Vegas at SBJ's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, presented by Learfield. This was a special Morning Buzzcast for Thursday, December 7th. I'm Abe Madkour joined by Austin Karp and John Ourand. Stay healthy, be good to each other, we'll speak to you tomorrow.