- 2 days ago
Dawg Nation Daily Host Brandon Adams speaks about the SEC fans not wanting a 24-team playoff despite the coaches and AD's potentially leaning that way, if ESPN is leaning on the SEC to fight back against expansion to 24, what sort of rules and limitations the SEC is looking for, how badly the CSC is failing college athletics and NIL, and awaiting for something big to happen to change the future of sports and TV.
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00:00Brandon Adams joins us on Tuesdays at this time, host of the Dog Nation Daily Podcast.
00:04Follow him on Twitter, assuming he hasn't been hacked by the Russians.
00:07I have not.
00:08I did see one of our close friends, though, was, and I'm sorry about that, Mr. Randy.
00:12Why are people so sorry?
00:13It's okay.
00:14Well, they're worried about you.
00:15They think that they hacked.
00:16They got you.
00:17They got you.
00:17Oh, yeah, man.
00:18I'm all right.
00:18I did, for the very first time, the other day, got one of those DMs, because everybody's
00:23always like, you know, hey, vote for me for these podcast awards, which, hey, I don't
00:26vote for anybody for anything, so there's not a chance I would ever do that for anybody.
00:28But that was the one person I would do it for.
00:30The one person.
00:31The one person that I would do it for.
00:33Okay.
00:34Yeah, and that's how they got me.
00:35The one person.
00:36I hate it.
00:36Yeah.
00:37I hate it, too.
00:37It is what it is.
00:38I hate it, too.
00:38But he's got a new one, so he's up there.
00:39There you go.
00:40Yes.
00:40And it sounds like you're good, so that's good for you.
00:42I'm all good, yeah.
00:42I don't open any DMs or anything like that, so I'm all good.
00:45As active as I am in the DMs, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
00:48Never, ever answer DMs.
00:49I do all of them.
00:50So many listeners have so many questions.
00:52Yeah.
00:52You know what I mean?
00:53I'm the customer service representative for the midday show.
00:57I'm thankful that they do, because I answer all of them.
00:59All right.
01:00Greg Sankey had his introductory comments yesterday.
01:02He'll speak with the media again today.
01:05I know Kirby's talking right now.
01:07What did you make of what you've heard thus far from the SEC meetings?
01:10Yeah, I think Greg Sankey's got to do a better job.
01:12I mean, look, yesterday in facing the question about, hey, what do you think about the fact
01:17that at least the best we can tell, a lot of this is anecdotally, the fans are not
01:20really in favor of a 2014 playoff, and he basically shrugged that off as saying, well, that's
01:25not necessarily scientific, and that would only be one data point we'd consider anyway,
01:29which is a pretty wild thing to say.
01:31Now, in fairness to him, I don't know that what he meant was necessarily conveyed by what
01:36he actually said, but the whole reason for his existence is to be a spokesman on behalf
01:40of the SEC.
01:41He is the public face of the league, and frankly, in this battle to decide who gets to shape
01:48college athletics future, he's losing, and as a pro-SEC guy, I'd love to see him step
01:53up and lead a little better, lead a little more forcefully, speak a little more clearly,
01:57but right now, that's just not what he's doing.
01:59What would you like him to say?
02:00That's what I'm saying.
02:00It seems like, is he, how do you phrase it, Andy?
02:04Is he doing it for the greater cause of the SEC, or is it, I don't want to be pushed
02:09around by this guy?
02:10I think the problem, Randy, is we don't really know right now what the greater cause of the
02:13SEC really is.
02:14In the case of the Big Ten, we do know, they are the ones that won the 2014 playoff, and
02:18they're going to get their way.
02:19I would suggest the clarity with which they spoke about that is one of the reasons why
02:24they're going to win.
02:25I'll tell you who I liked, if you want to go back to last Thursday, right before the
02:28holiday weekend, some people might have missed this.
02:31You know, University of Georgia President Jerry Moorhead at the Georgia Athletic Board
02:34meeting for the spring, he was openly speaking about, maybe we'll go our own way, meaning the
02:40SEC, we'll do some self-governance.
02:41And I said, go where?
02:43Listen, you don't have to cooperate with the rest of the country.
02:47The SEC happens to be sitting on the most fertile soil in all of college athletics.
02:52It's where the most talent resides.
02:54It's where the most passionate fans reside.
02:56College football is bigger business in our part of the world than it is anywhere else.
02:59You could just close the borders and say, we're going to be a regional sport in this region
03:05of the country, and the rest of y'all can figure this other stuff out.
03:07Well, we're going to do our own thing by our own rules and do it our own way.
03:12They probably won't do that.
03:14But I do like the idea that Jerry Moorhead, the University of Georgia president, is at least
03:18speaking about a really big vision for what the future might be.
03:23I do wonder, kind of getting back to what Randy was asking there, is you understand what the
03:29Big Ten is attempting and sort of what's the best for them.
03:33Is Greg Sankey sort of trying to defend the contract and the money, the fertile grounds
03:41that ESPN and other broadcast companies have sort of helped create with the money?
03:45And I know the talent and all that, and the passion too.
03:47And that's stuff that I wish was being taken into account, but isn't.
03:51Like, they don't care what we think.
03:52Genuinely, they don't.
03:53Even though all of the money comes from our eyeballs and our attention.
03:57Is he defending that, or is he mad that he's getting pushed around, or is he thinking about
04:04what's best for the greater good?
04:05Like, I just think there's so many questions.
04:06Well, I can tell you this.
04:07He ain't thinking about the greater good.
04:08That's the one thing I know is not.
04:09But I think there are two things going on.
04:11A, as you pointed out, they still do have a contract with ESPN.
04:14And ESPN also currently controls the college football playoff.
04:17So there is a desire to serve ESPN's needs here and not rock the boat too much.
04:22But the other thing is, one of the issues that Sankey is probably dealing with is, is
04:27the SEC coaches, we're led to believe, are not very happy about this move to a nine-game
04:31schedule.
04:31So part of the reason why the SEC is probably going to eventually go along with the expansion
04:36of the playoff at 24 is because the coaches, upon agreeing to expand their conference
04:41schedules, were told that playoff expansion was coming.
04:43But the SEC would have preferred an expansion to 16, which now nobody else wants.
04:48So Sankey's got the issue, as the representative of the SEC, where, okay, maybe ESPN would have
04:55benefited more by keeping the playoff at 16.
04:57Nobody else wants that.
04:58But the SEC coaches are saying privately, we want, and also publicly too, we got to expand
05:04this playoff because our current conference schedule playing the nine-game slate the way
05:09they will this year is just simply too hard.
05:11There is a simmering revolt among SEC coaches who are just not happy about the fact that
05:16the conference schedule was expanded.
05:17Why does it sound like they're whining, B.A.?
05:19It does sound like they're whining.
05:20It just sounds like they're whining.
05:21It's a nine-game crowd.
05:22It's going to be so difficult to navigate.
05:24It sounds, I'm glad to hear you say that.
05:26It sounds like they're whining.
05:27What we found out is, we used to think that the ongoing battle of, we sort of thought it
05:31was like labor versus management.
05:32The players were labor and the coaches were management.
05:35Come to find out, the coaches themselves are just another faction of labor.
05:39They've got their own grievances.
05:40They've got their own complaints.
05:41And they are essentially arguing the same way that the player agents sometimes argue
05:46on behalf of what they think might benefit the players.
05:49What else is on the table in these, I know they're not going to decide, and he made that
05:53pretty clear.
05:53They're not in a rush to decide anything right now.
05:56Maybe dragging their feet is their best course of action as far as playoff expansion goes.
06:00What are some of the other big picture conversations happening down there besides going from 12
06:05to 24?
06:05Well, one of the things that's come up today is, and Mike Elko's already spoken, Steve
06:09Sarkegan's already spoken, as you're saying, Kirby Smart kind of speaking in this moment
06:12where we're also speaking to each other right now, is there's this thought of, does the
06:17SEC really want rules?
06:18Because I mentioned a moment ago, Jerry Moorhead says, hey, maybe we'll break off.
06:22We'll do our own thing.
06:23We'll make our own rules.
06:24But the problem is the SEC programs don't follow the current rules.
06:28I mean, Texas, LSU are obviously spending NIL money in excess of what they're supposed
06:34to be spending on the basis of this CSC that's supposed to be scrutinizing the NIL deals.
06:39Tennessee probably is too.
06:41I mean, there are a handful of SEC teams that are a little more aggressive with that than
06:45others are.
06:45And so some of what the coaches have been talking about today is, you know, are there any rules
06:52that anyone will actually follow?
06:54And so that's one of the other issues that comes up of, okay, so, you know, there's
06:59theoretically some rules in place.
07:00A lot of the SEC teams don't seem to care to follow those.
07:04Is there anything that can be done about that?
07:06And the answer very well, maybe no.
07:09When you say and describe what you were just talking about as far as Texas and LSU and
07:12these things, they're spinning over the proposed allotment, right?
07:19How are they getting away with that?
07:20Because they don't think that what you call the CSE, which is the body that's supposed
07:25to scrutinize the NIL deals, they've hired the accounting firm Deloitte, which the office
07:29is just actually right down the road here, they've hired this accounting firm, consulting
07:34firm, and any NIL deal in excess of $500 is supposed to be judged on its fair market value.
07:41For the player?
07:42For the player.
07:43So it's got to be what they call like a real NIL.
07:45It can't just be pay for play.
07:46It's got to be, okay, you did a TV commercial for Dr. Pepper, therefore you got, you know,
07:51fair deal.
07:52But the programs are like, man, they're not going to stop us from doing an NIL deal.
07:57A, we're doing so many NIL deals, they can't all be scrutinized anyway.
08:01And even if they did scrutinize it, they don't treat it as anything more than just a suggestion.
08:07So this organization that was established after the house settlement, a lot of these programs
08:12have said, we don't believe this is a real thing.
08:15And as it turns out, their assumption was probably correct.
08:18This is just going to call for speculation, but you're as dialed into this stuff as anybody
08:23is.
08:23Love to speculate.
08:24So give a guess, give an estimate.
08:26If we're somewhere in the middle of where kind of all this started with playoff expansion
08:32and NIL running amok and all of this stuff and whatever the end is, whatever they're
08:39going to sort of decide on and expanding is enough and we have enough, enough is enough.
08:44Where are we on that road?
08:45Are we halfway there?
08:47Yeah, halfway is.
08:47I feel like my kid's asking me, are we back yet from Hilton Head?
08:50Yeah, we're not three quarters the way yet.
08:53I just feel like there's really, there's something big is going to happen.
08:58It's either going to happen with the way these games are televised.
09:00Keep in mind, you know, the future of like say Fox and ESPN and these television entities
09:05is not certain right now in a world in which they're competing with like say Netflix, Amazon,
09:10these much larger companies for NFL rights, for instance.
09:14So that part is uncertain.
09:16Also, what happens if the price of putting the football roster together continues to go
09:22up?
09:22At a certain point, it's going up beyond what the current revenue for college football
09:26is.
09:26You know what I'm saying?
09:27I mean, like, so you're going to get to the point where is every football team owned
09:32by like a private equity?
09:33Because right now, college football is clearly a business.
09:36It obviously has customers.
09:37It has a workforce, but it really has no ownership.
09:40You know, no one really owns college football.
09:42Is that going to change?
09:43Because it feels like that's the next big thing or among the next big thing, maybe not
09:48the very next, but among the next big things to happen is if the cost of business is going
09:53to continue to go up, then it's going to take someone else to run this because it's just
09:57expanding beyond the current borders of what we can even conceive of college football as
10:02even being.
10:03Doesn't everyone know when that stuff happens, the end result is the thing sucks?
10:06Yep.
10:07Like every time this happens in a big industry, the end result is the product ends up sucking.
10:14So somebody said this.
10:15I wish I could give them credit.
10:15I don't remember who it was, but it's a really good point.
10:17The problem is the current athletic directors, university presence coaches, they're all
10:22renters.
10:22They don't own college football.
10:23They're treating this sport the way you treat a rental car.
10:26You know, you let it get beat up.
10:28You let it get dinged up because eventually you're just going to give it to somebody else.
10:30Right.
10:31And that's the problem is the current stakeholders of college athletics, typically speaking,
10:36are just not in it for the long haul.
10:37Right.
10:37That's what we were talking about earlier is these guys want playoff expansion so they can
10:41get that one big raise and they get bought out.
10:43That's right.
10:44They'll take their car back to the playoff team.
10:46I know we were 22nd.
10:47Right.
10:47All right, great.
10:49Fire me.
10:50Now you take the car.
10:51Yeah.
10:51I use the emergency brake the whole time.
10:53Tell them everything.
10:54Exactly.
10:54I didn't even use the pedal brake.
10:56If you rent a car and you get a scratch that's less than a quarter of an inch long or
10:59something
10:59like that, they don't even question you about it.
11:01You're right.
11:02Yeah.
11:03That all sounds good.
11:04That all sounds good.
11:05Brandon, we appreciate it.
11:06Good to be with you guys.
11:06Good to be with you guys.
11:06Good to be with you.
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