Ep. 102: The Most Powerful Man in College Sports? Cody Campbell and his Plan to Save College Sports

Welcome to sports wise, a podcast about sports in the law with your host, me, Gabe Dalton, Director of the Two Lanes Sports Law program, and co-director of the Two Lanes Center for Sports. On this episode, I'm joined by arguably the most powerful man and one of the wealthiest in college sports, Cody Campbell, Cody is co-founder and co-CEO of Double Eagle Energy Holdings, and Chair of the Board of Regents of the Texas Tech University System. Cody joins to discuss his plan to save college sports, including allowing the pooling of college football TV rights and captain spending on athletes and coaches. Here we go. Welcome to the podcast, Cody Campbell, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, you have done a remarkable job of getting your views out there in the public on how to fix college sports and what else, college sports. So let me do my best to quickly summarize what I think your message is, and you can tell me what I'm missing of anything, and then we can dig into some of the rest of the stress. Okay, overall, you have a fear that the new ecosystem of college sports is going to potentially lead to the elimination of Olympic sports, women's sports, because there's just going to be so much money spent trying to chase football and basketball success. And that one way to help deal with that is to amend the Sports Broadcasting Act, to include college sports, to allow them to pool their revenue. They can then increase how much they're making, and it seems like your estimates are around an additional $7 billion, which can then be put back into, among other things, Olympic sports and women's sports. And a new entity could be created along the lines of US OPC that would be federally authorized to govern college sports that could put certain restrictions in place. And the college athletes would not be employees, but they would be given a significant voice at the table, and that the current system where the conferences are running a lot of it, they are too self-interested to protect college sports overall. Is that a fair? Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think that, you know, what I see what everybody else does, which is a system that's in chaos right now, but I think that the issues that have garnered headlines like the NIL deals and transfers, and that kind of thing are not really the underlying primary problem. The primary problem is money. It's that there isn't enough of it to pay for the things that we are doing. And so that puts especially women's sports and Olympic sports at great risk, because, you know, a lot of people don't know that football and to a much lesser extent, men's basketball are the only two sports that make money, and those two sports pay for everything else. And so as the differential when revenue grows, as deficits continue to grow, which in 2024, the average budget deficit for an FBS school is $20 million per school per year, these schools have to start making tough choices, and so they look at cutting costs. They can't cut costs in football and men's basketball, because that's where they make their money. So they have to protect their profit centers. That's also where they get the exposure that they need to help drive enrollment and online engagement and those kinds of things. So they're going to make sure that they are competitive in those two sports, and so they look to start making cuts to the non-revenue sports, which are the Olympic sports and women's sports. And ball and ball swimming, track and field, soccer, baseball, softball, you name it, those sports start to get cut, and we have seen those sports get cut over the last couple of years. The problem was compounded this in the summer of this year, because the House DNCAA settlement was reached, and that was a class action lawsuit that started in California in 2020. And the NCAA in the conference came to the table with the plaintiffs and agreed that the student athletes would now be able to receive money directly from the athletic departments from their revenue. And so they set a salary cap, and this year the athletes are getting paid up to $20.5 million out of athletic department revenue. So you had an average of a $20 million budget deficit before in 2024, and now you've just added an additional expense, and another $20 million on top of that. And so these schools are going to place where there is enough money to cover things that they need to do. >> Although most of the schools, and certainly the significant majority outside of the power four are not spending $20.5 million because they can't afford to, so it's a small sliver of those schools. But let me go to the idea. >> But they're all spending it what they can, and they're all looking for ways to spend more. And one way that they can find it's been more is they can cut a sport that loses money. And since you're going to run it like a business, which these days it is a business, you cut the parts of your business that aren't that are losing money. And that's just the rational thing to do. But that is not something that any of us want to see. We don't want to see opportunities reduced for Colombians and for women, and we have to find a way to preserve the entire system and recognize that there's, it's more important than just the games we play. Number one, there's a lot of benefit that the country drives from college sports. But it's also more than more important than just money. This is about opportunity, this is about education, this is about social impact on communities. It's about our Olympic development system. And so we have to make sure that we take the perspective back up a little bit and look at the value of college sports as a whole and not just the monetary value of it or whether we, when it was a football game, it really is much bigger than that. >> So let me just stick on that Olympic pipeline thought for a minute because there is a lot of discussion that not only are we worried that this is going to impact collegiate Olympic sport participation, but also is going to impact our Olympic development and ultimately hurt us on the medal stand. And that we're going to be less competitive worldwide because this is our feeder system for Olympic sports. What about the, and so some of this additional revenue could go to support that. What about the idea though that a lot more athletes are coming from other countries to come play at our colleges and are then competing in the Olympics for countries against the U.S. And so we'd essentially be funding the Olympic development of athletes from other countries. >> Yeah, I think that's something to think about. I don't think that's really in the purview of the legislative process right now. I think that's a different issue to be honest with you, but the bottom line is 60% of the American Olympians are in the last Olympics were current college athletes. And we are the only country in the world that houses its Olympic development system in higher education. And we don't have one outside of that. Other countries have their own state sponsored, you know, Olympic development programs. They use taxpayer money for it. And so if we don't have Olympics works in colleges, we don't have the development pipelines. Regardless of what happens with the foreign athletes, we're not going to have any American ones. If we don't let say this system, I think that that is a controversial issue for sure. And I understand you're coming from the two sides of it. One side is you want to have the highest level of competition possible here. And so you want to bring in the best athletes in. The other side is that you want to give the most opportunity to the most Americans. And so there is an argument that you have there. But I think that in this case, you know, we can only solve so many problems at once. >> Okay. So to the Sports Broadcasting Act and the couple points here, one, and you've talked about the idea that there's maybe an additional $7 billion in revenue can be unlocked by pooling rights. And part of that is that you believe that they have undervalued and under marketed and under sold volleyball and softball and baseball and that they could generate more revenue if they created separate deals for that. And you've also talked about how scheduling could change for football to generate more revenue. So just explain and whether it's 6.5 billion or 7.5 billion, it's a lot. Can you explain how the pooling of rights would lead to such a significant increase in revenue? >> Yeah. So firstly, we have done this study. We have the hard data that shows that it will create an extra incremental $7 billion per year of revenue into the system. But the empirical evidence is in the pro league. So the pro leagues all have the right to pool their media rights under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Now, a lot of things have changed. It's 1961. I don't even think we had cable TV back then, and it's crazy that we were governed by a law that was enacted that long ago. But the empirical evidence, if it's impact, is the NBA is the best example. The NBA has half as much viewership as college football. Half as many people watch NBA, but the NBA makes twice as much money as college football does. And that's entirely due to the fact that they can pull together, use the monopoly power to negotiate better deals, firstly, but then also optimize their scheduling. And that's what we've seen in the NFL is that the NFL will purposefully put certain games in certain time slots so they don't cannibalize viewership. They would never put two marquee matchups competing with each other at the same time on different networks. And college football does that almost every weekend. And we need to optimize a schedule to create more time slots, but also just ensure that we are maximizing viewership and not cannibalizing it. And so that would require coordination between the conferences that would require control by a centralized authority in college football around when games are played. And that's sudden the NFL has done exceptionally well, and they make many multiples of what college football does per viewer, per avid ban, by whatever metric you want to look at. It's all because of the fact that they pull the rights together, they make good deals, and then they do the most they can to maximize the product that they have. But if so, if we stick with that analogy, because I'm just trying to figure out how it goes to seven billion more, with the NFL, they do schedule a lot of games against each other some that the Sunday. They do, but they know which they don't schedule the big games on top of one another. They try not to, but they think about schedule ahead of time from a regionality standpoint too. They might play two big games at the same time, but they're going to have one that people are in the West Coast, one on the East Coast, so they're smart and commercial and how they schedule. They only have 16 games. That's right. And so some of it's inevitable in college, but it could be a whole lot better. And like another good example is everyone should be playing on week zero. Everyone should play on an Army Navy week. Now maybe we have a special slot for the Army Navy game because it has a lot of history and addition. It's important. We need to extend the season a little bit and add an extra biweek in there, maybe. There ought to be more games on Wednesday night, Thursday night, so we can have more time slots for games to be played and viewership to be captured. People want to watch games, those nights. You know, we're good games, those nights. You don't need to put, to share broadcast rights for that. The SEC could decide to do that. And the SEC could say, look, we know that some weeks there are- The SEC doesn't control when they broadcast the games. But the, so the network controls when they broadcast the games, but how would pooling the rights change that? You're not going to have the competition between the networks if you do it. So there, there is no question, I mean, I can share all the data with you, but there's no question that we do not optimize our scheduling as it stands right now to capture the most viewership. Yeah. Okay. And the bottom line is there's a lot of minutia in it, but there, you know, what our data shows, there's about a 30% upwards revenue that comes just from schedule optimization. Okay. Then one other question on the Sports Broadcasting Act, as you mentioned, 1961 law and the act is pretty clear and all the courts that have looked at it since, that it only applies to over the air free television and that if you try- That's not exactly right, but they, you know, they have, it's now being applied essentially everything, but there are, that's, that's disputed, but it's been applied to cable. It's now trying to apply, the NFL is trying to apply it to streaming. They've tried, but they've lost. They got hit with a $4.7 billion verdict because they pulled their rights for Sunday ticket. And the major baseball lost on, on, on, or at least with the case was allowed to proceed and same thing with NHL, most courts that have looked at this have said Sports Broadcasting Act is only applicable to free over the air broadcasting. So assuming that's right and you could say maybe they can change that aspect of the law, but assuming that's right, does that get you enough to just add college sports or do you have to expand the act to cover streaming and cable and pay TV. I think that you want to, you definitely want to start with just including college sports and allow them to apply it as the pro-weeks have applied it. And that's the assumption that we make in our studies is that basically things stay the same in the act except college is just added in there. Now, do I think it needs to be modernized otherwise, definitely, a lot has changed. So include cable for the police to and streaming and just, and I'm not the person that that probably is the expert in terms of how all that needs to be done, but yeah, the thing is that's antiquated. So why would we want to give the NFL a broader monopoly? I'm not saying that we, I'm not saying that we would. I think that there is an argument to made a very strong argument that NFL consumers are having to pay too much to watch their teams. I think that's what they're hearings and Congress about that right now. They cost, if you want to watch your team for every game, on the different subscriptions you have to have and all the different things to do in order to be able to watch them. So I think that's something that needs to be looked at, but at the very least, through what we're talking about with performing college sports and trying to give them a chance, we can make a massive difference just by giving them the rights as interpreted by the courts that the pro-weeks have under the Sports Broadcasting Act as it currently stands. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, and because there are as many calls to eliminate the Sports Broadcasting Act for pro-sports, because they don't want the leagues to be able to put all these restrictions in place and make it so difficult for fans to-- I think the positive thing about it is that in the NFL, at least, they figured out 30, 40 years ago that when the Green Bay Packers are strong, on the Cincinnati Bengals are strong, that benefits the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. And so they realize they recognize, yes, they compete with each other on the field, but they are business partners with one another. And again, your point is about it, there are only 32 teams and there are a lot more colleges, but at the end of the day, we're all in this thing together, and competitive parity, honestly, just competitiveness, I don't even have to be parity, but just competitiveness and survival of the other programs, other than just this small view is very important to the success of the long-term success of the sport and sustainability. Do you have a concern at all, or how would you avoid it if the goal is to maximize revenue through this pooling of rights, if the networks or the schools or whoever say, what generates the most revenue is when LSU plays Alabama and Michigan plays Ohio State and Texas Tech plays BYU. But these other schools, we don't really have any need to show them because nobody's paying for them. So what about the concern that this might look more like the NFL where you go down to 30 teams or 40 teams, they share all the revenue that they're making, but the other schools don't get the quality programming time because all the big games are spread throughout the week and the networks say, we don't really want to show ball state versus no offensive ball state, but two small throws. Yeah. I know what you're saying. So the president issued an executive order this last summer that basically said no school can cut any sport or any spots, so that to maintain their scholarship and roster levels based on what they did in 2024, he had to do that because schools were cutting sports left and right for the reason that we discussed earlier. And I don't think that the Congress should legislate specifically what commercial measures are taken to maximize revenue, but instead objective should be said. Number one objective is we're going to preserve all the sports, all the scholarships, all the roster spots in all the schools. That's number one. Number two is in an effort to do that, we're going to maximize revenue, however it's commercially reasonable and possible. And that may be, that could go down, that could do a lot of different directions. But ultimately, we're going to want, we want to preserve the opportunity that these sports provide. I personally think it's just as important that a kid that's the high temperate ball state, the opportunity that here's he gets is just as important as the kid that plays football at Georgia in terms of the impact that it has on their lives. It's also equally important in terms of the leadership development that our country benefits from 60% of American CEOs have a college sports background, 94% of women in C-suite roles have a sports background. It's, there's this entity, this institution has a massive impact on our country that I don't think we fully appreciate. And so the goal, the number one goal, whatever we do, legislatively ought to just be baseline is preserve everything. Right. Inside the tools, sports broadcasting act being one of them, to the governing body, whoever that may be, whether it's NCAA or a new one, to maximize revenue and use commercial, commercial reasonability and business sense and just common sense to do that. Right now, the system that we have, it's fractionalized and the way that we've broken up the regionalization, the conferences and all that. There are a dozen different things that have happened that have caused our revenue to not be optimized and people who are thinking long-term, people are thinking about the overall greater good and overall well-being of college sports need to be the ones that are in charge of making those decisions. It shouldn't necessarily be Congress, but the way that the courts have played, the things have played out in the courts, Congress is now the only one that can grant them the power to actually go and accomplish that. But I don't think that we have enough media experts in the U.S. Senate to put the right solution, and also it just gets politically complicated at that point. Let's make it as simple as possible, and also as we don't want to necessarily force anything down anything anybody's throat, I think we also need to recognize this is going to take some time. The, there are existing TV contracts that Congress, you know, I guess technically could cancel, but they probably shouldn't and probably won't. So we have to let those run out, they all expire at different times. Right. So this is going to take a long time to actually implement, but over time we need to have a body that's set up to make good commercial decisions and run the thing like a business because it is a business. We professionalize the cost side of everything. We're paying the players, paying the coaches a lot of money, but we still have this amateur model for revenue generation, and those things just don't match up. And so that's what has to be addressed to this legislation if it's going to be successful. I want to get to legislation in a second, but tell me, so if under your model the school's all agree, all right, we are going to maintain the same number of sports we had at whatever date you pick or require them to do, which is going to be now 16, but whatever requirements you put in there can't get, can't cut any scholarships, can't cut any teams. And then there's an influx of let's just use a hundred million dollars for each school because of the new, the new TV deal. And is any of that going to be required to be spent on Olympic sports beyond maintaining the sport and maintaining the scholarships? Because what's to stop Ohio State from saying, oh great, we've got a hundred million dollars, now we can spend 99 million more on football. And then you're in the same position where you can play football in the field of thought on that. And the USOPC has been pushing for a certain percentage of revenue to be required to be spent on women's sports and Olympic sports. I don't hate that approach, but I do think that at the base level, very minimum, you have to make sure that you maintain the roster spots and scholarships spots. And that's a protection that has to be in the legislation. And if it's not, this thing isn't worth anything. And the path we're going on now, we're going to pass the SCOR Act, and I think the SCOR Act needs to pass, but the SCOR Act, I suppose I support passage of the legislation through Congress, through the House, but there has to be a lot of work done on it in the Senate because as it stands right now, it just essentially solidifies the status quo. And the status quo is not sustainable financially for almost everybody. Like even Ohio State, they want to put ball national championship last year and ran a $29 million budget deficit. So even they are looking at their athletics programs and saying, "Do we need to cut things?" And Ohio State is like a generator of tons of Olympians. We can't have them falling down either. We need to find more revenue for them. I think we also do need to talk about cost control. This issue around these massive coaching buyouts and these ridiculous contracts, which all emerge from an agency conflict that I can explore more if you'd like to, but those have to be some limitations placed there as well. In the case of an MSU, a lot of that's going to go on the back of the taxpayers, and that's not what anybody wants. These state universities, when they have a big budget deficit in their athletic department, they're putting student fees, tuition dollars, and taxpayer dollars in to cover it. There's no reason for that if we were just smart and commercial with how we made money off the sport. They'd be self-staining, but also if we didn't do these stupid contracts, we wouldn't have these problems either. But what happens is you find an athletic director who's on the hot seat, and so he decides to just roll the dice. And they're all on the hot seat. They're on the hot seat. They're all concerned about the next year or three years. And the way they think it through is they say, "I'm going to make this ridiculous contract for this coach because I got to get him and give me the best chance of winning." If he comes in and wins, then I'm going to get a lot more revenue, and donors are going to give money for some more tickets. We're going to better appreciate all that stuff. We're going to get more money. If he doesn't win, I'm going to be fired anyway. And then the school can just deal with the consequences of the contract, and so that's why those decisions get made like that. We have to provide some kind of protection in the law and some kind of limitation on how much money can be spent on coaches. And I think a great way to do it would be to say in total, the coaches cannot be paid more than the athletes are paid. So you would be supportive of caps on coaching compensation and-- Absolutely. I think that a great coach is worth a lot of money, but at the same time, it's just gotten out of hand. And I think even most coaches would agree with that. Most of them did not get in it for the money. They're happy to take it. Right. Because they love the game, or they love the opportunity to develop kids and help them to read their potential and things like that. They didn't do it to make tens of millions of dollars. And they can still make a lot of money, even if you cap it that way. But it's just, as it stands right now, and the trajectory is bad, even still, in terms of the contracts that are being written, but we have to put some kind of cap on that. There's nothing that-- Yeah, the Knight Commission put out a report last week, I think, that there's already been $180 million committed to FBS head coach severance payments for coaches that have been fired this year. Yeah. And it'll be totally an over a billion if you added up for the last 10 years. And so that's paid-- that had an $80 million as paid for by either sports being cut, women's sports and other sports being cut, by tuition dollars, by student fees or by taxpayer dollars. Those are the sources of that money. That's where it's going to come from. It doesn't just appear. Yeah. But it's interesting, because there aren't a lot of people who have said, let's cap coaching salaries and athletes' hours. It's mostly around the athletes. And I think that's what's gotten the NCAA in a little bit of trouble over the last 20, 25 years is whenever they say they need to save money, it's only from the athletes. That's right. Yeah, I mean, whenever the NCAA has became, like, decades ago, this organization that all I did was, like, police and punish athletes. And then I do illustrious in schools, and the people that actually commit the crimes by the time they're even investigated in some things enforced, those folks have left and gotten different jobs. And so it doesn't-- they're completely ineffective. And it's because they're just this massive bureaucracy that have 30 different committees and subcommittees that are responsible for room making and enforcement, they're slow. And I like Charlie Baker a lot, the head of NCAA, I think he's a good person, and he had great intentions taking that job. He didn't create the problems, he's trying to fix them. But the system is just inherently broken, and the setup is so bad that I think we need to start over with the blank slate. And again, just with modern realities in mind, and recognize the fact that this is a commercial enterprise in this play. And so we need to have people that have commercial capability and capacity in roles where they can help guide the sport and the direction they need to go so the whole thing is sustainable. And they also care about more than just football and men's basketball. I mean, that's another problem that we have. So the reforms that we've made in NCAA have just given the big conferences more control that's the only reforms we've made, and have made football and men's basketball more prominent. And at the expense of the smaller schools and the expense of the non-revenue sports. So that is what has happened. And so if that's the idea for how we're going to reform the NCAA and just continue going from that direction, things are going to get worse instead of getting better. So I don't want to overstate this, but you were originally opposed to the score act for the reasons you've already mentioned, is that what you're talking about? I still don't like the contents of the score act, but I am in favor of the score act passing because I think we've got to keep it moving. And I think it forces the issue in the Senate. It forces them to pay attention to it. And we got to keep progress moving along. I don't think the House is the right place to work it all out because it is multifaceted and complicated and in a smaller, fewer people involved in the Senate. And also the need to get 60 votes there and make sure that we are paying attention. The bill is not going to pass if the smaller schools aren't benefited because they all have senators, their states that are not SEC states or whatever they're not. They may have a Republican Senator that senators that may not vote for this thing. If it doesn't, comprehensively solve the problem and benefit their university somehow. They create a more fertile ground for a compromised solution that can actually work to fix the problem. And so you have said that you would like to see a combination of the score act, the safe act, and it sounds like maybe some representative bomb gardeners act in terms of restriction coaching salaries. But what I was saying earlier is that, again, I don't think I'm overstating this by saying that your influence helped get the score act to where it is now and that when you reposed, others were opposed, but you've been able to get some more people on board. And as we move forward and as now Congress is back and the shutdown is over, what do you see? Because you are uniquely positioned. There may not be anybody more influential in this space than you. So what do you see happening over the next six months? And is this something you think, I know nobody can guarantee it, but is this something you think is more likely than not that we get legislation passed in the next eight, 12 months? I think it's going to depend on how bipartisan are representatives in the Senate are going to be, how much they're going to work together. Really, this should not be a partisan issue. People want to make it on, but it's not. I think everybody wants the same thing at the end of the day, but it's hard for them to work together sometimes. So we have to try to bridge that gap. And so that's going to mean we have to reframe some of it, reposition some of it. We have to, we may have to compromise on some issues and work through that, but ultimately requires conversation. And Senator Cruz has promised us a hearing on this, and so I think that's really important. It's a good hearing. And I think it's important that we have engagement from every member of the Commerce Committee on this is that people actually understand the issues, the problems and what we're actually trying to solve. Just about NIL, I get annoyed when people call it the NIL bill because it's not just about NIL. NIL is a symptom of the problems that we have, systemically, it's not about NIL, right? And so this is a college sports reform bill and it should be treated as such and it should be looked at in a comprehensive way. And I think some people have the idea that the more streamlined you make it and the smaller you make it, the more likely it is to pass. And there is some truth in that, but if you don't dig in and address all the half it doesn't are so different issues that we have, you're not going to solve the problem and you're not going to create a sustainable set up for college sports. So it's going to take some level work in a lot of cooperation and a lot of compromise working together. So. Are you, do you feel overall optimistic? Do you think there's a, again, better chance of it, of something actually passing than not? Yeah, I do. I feel good about it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I know that there are senators on both sides of the aisle that are very eager to engage and have good intentions. And the president is very focused on this issue. And so it helps a lot that you have, that you have a president that is a college sports fan, that has changed the value of it and is going to lean in on it when the time is right. And I think that combination of those factors plus is the public interest in it. People care a lot about this. And we've done a good bit of polling and it's between 85 and 90% of people want to make sure that women's sports and Olympic sports and small school sports are preserved. There aren't many issues that exist where 85 to 90% of Americans agree on them. And so this is one of those where I think that if they don't get it fixed, there's going to be some blowback. I think people are going to be really aggravated about it. And so I think that there's going to be sufficient pressure. And the other thing is it's like a very good political issue solving this problem and being a part of solving the problem is a big win for any of these folks. And when any time there's a hearing, any time there's a movement on it, it gets a ton of press and gets a ton of coverage and the politicians love that. And so I think that's something that's going to attract some time and some effort. And so I do feel optimistic that we're going to get there. But I just want to make sure that we get there with something that has been well thought out and, you know, isn't just a politically expedient solution. It's a solution that's actually practical. So you mentioned President Trump and he issued his executive order and there were deadlines in there. Do you know, has there been movement on any of that because it's been quiet relative? Yeah, there's been a lot of work done in the Department of Education and the Department of Justice on it for sure. They've done a ton of research and I've been up there a lot working with them on it and they are very up to speed. I don't know if you saw the president on Pat McAfee a day or two ago, but he's on it. He's very up to speed on the issue. He's even more read in than I thought he was on everything. And so, yeah, they're definitely paying attention to it and working on it. It just hasn't got to the point yet where they can't do just a whole lot of their executive action on this. This is something that does require a conduit. So they're a little bit hamstrung, but what he tried to do from that with through that executive order is buy a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. But the mandate to not cut any sports is still remains an unfunded mandate. The school still don't have enough money to pay for them. So at some point, we've got to solve that problem, that part of it, like we got to think, maybe they can get back for a little while and continue to take money from the school or whatever to pay for the sports. But at some point down the road, we're going to have to find the funding. Okay. Last quick questions because I've already kept you longer than I wanted to for folks looking for signs of progress. Well, is there something that that we should be looking for that if this happens in Congress or other than an announcement that they have bipartisan support for legislation? But any sort of incremental step that would show progress? Yeah. So I think the first incremental step is passes the Square Act of the House, which I think will happen sometime after Thanksgiving. And then it is scheduling of a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee. I think that's those are the next two things that need to happen. And so those are the incremental steps that the next two that I see coming out. Hopefully both of those things will happen by the end of the year, we'll get something going to be scheduled. If not, the hearing actually held, I think it's probably wishful thinking at this point the next six weeks, we're going to get a hearing done. But maybe at least when you get one on the calendar that happens sometime in January. And then that's when real work is being done on it, the time is being spent on it. And I think that's what you need to look for. Okay. Great. And also, if the White House, if they decide to start cleaning it on it harder and being more public about it, which, I mean, based on what the president has said just in the last couple of days, it appears that he's going to do that. Yeah. And are you guys texting every day about this? I don't think that's the president, but I do work. I do. I've talked to him about it a lot and visited him several times in Washington about it and work with his staff almost daily on it. Yeah. There's a lot going on. Okay. Well, one of the issues, you said this is mostly a bipartisan issue. One of the, I don't know if it's a wedge issue, but it's certainly come between the sides a bit is the employment status of college athletes. And you have been on record that you do not believe the college athletes should be employees. Here's my question, the, to summarize why you think it would be a bad idea for college athletes to be employed. Here's what I think is important. I think it's important to preserve the status of the student athlete. Okay. Because only 98% of these kids are not getting big in high-level deals. And so for the vast majority of them, it's college student athlete is an advantage status relative to being an employee because if you're an employee, you're going to have to pay taxes on the value of your scholarship and every other benefit that you get from your student. That would be really bad for women's sports, public sports, like disastrous. And so we got, I think that needs to be the focus rather than saying they're never ever going to be employees or we're going to, is to say, no, we're going to make sure we preserve the status of the student athlete. And even the concept of it is important because at the end of the day, like I said, a very small percentage of them get NIL, none of them are getting enough money to be set for life by the NIL, and even smaller percentage of them end up playing professional sports. And so for 99% of college sports, that education in the student part of the student athlete is the most important aspect. But you're not necessarily anti-employment status. So if it could be that the athlete were an employee, but also a student and an athlete, and the same focus as an education. I think it gets just into semantics. I think that we're overly focused on that. I think the status of a student athlete is a really good thing, like an appositive thing, and there's no downside to it. So I don't know, I do not support unionization of the athletes. I think that would be bad, but I do support the athletes having a greater voice than how the sports are governed, a much more significant voice. I think a big part of the reason we have to probably do today is because the athletes were not ever a part of the conversation. Now do I think-- Oh, they're a part of it, but they didn't have any vote. They didn't have any vote. Yeah, they didn't have any say. And now, you know, the way I've thought about that part of it is that like the USOBC has athlete representatives on their board. But these are all former athletes in order to be on that position, you have to have not participate in sports in the last 10 years. So I think a great way to do it would be instead of having 18 to 22 year olds on the board, you have people who are former student athletes that have more life experience, business experience where the case may be, that can be contributing, but yet understand the perspective and experience of a student athlete and be able to advocate for them. And so I think that's ultimately what we're looking for is something that-- But they do have a very significant voice in rulemaking and, you know, setting the salary caps and every aspect of it without being actually unionized because I don't see how that can be practically implemented without just being a complete disaster. So you're okay or not? Okay. You're supportive of a stronger collective athlete voice, not in the context of a union or collective bargaining. Absolutely. Yeah. You had earlier had a quote that you were not in support of private equity and we've had more developments in terms of the big 10 and potential, whatever, if you want to call that private equity or something else, but where do you stand now in terms of the benefit or the downside of private equity being-- I think what depends on what context and what the deal is, but I think what the big 10 is looking at doing right now is absolutely insane. I can't make sense of it on any level because these are some of the strongest, financially strongest institutions in the country. Some of them even have AAA credit ratings or double a plus. They can go out and borrow money at 4% or less. Why would they take capital that's going to cost them 15 or 16% if they hit their growth projections or more? Why would they take that money? That makes-- that just handicapping themselves forever. Again, it goes back to this agency conflict where, you know, the people who are in charge ostensibly are incentivized by trying to do well in the next two or three years. They don't care what happens in the future. So they're willing to mortgage 10 years from now to be more competitive in the short-term. And that's a bad deal. Now, private equity could play a role or institutional capital or outside sources of capital could play a role as we try to transition to a pooled meteorite environment. Because like I said, the contracts do expire at different times and maybe there's some institutions that don't have much borrowing capacity or any. And they need to go out and find some capital to help bridge themselves to the next step. I think in that context, private capital could come in and potentially play a role and it probably will. But it should be done on an institution by institution basis, right? Not all the schools need to borrow money. Some of them are doing just fine. Some of them have donors that are willing to step up for it. Some of them have-- they have other sources of capital that can borrow whatever it is. So that private equity could go out and do individual deals within these institutions that need the help to get through this sort of transition period that we're going to have until we get to the point of sustainability. Ultimately, with the requirement that they have to maintain all their sports. And again, potentially outside capital could allow that to happen by being involved in that way. And people who are worried if Florida State, for example, has a private equity deal and all of a sudden they get all this money and then they spend at a control and then schools have to try to catch up. But as you've talked about, a way to limit that is if you limit how much you can spend on coaches and athletes. So there's no reason to go out and raise all that money because you can't spend it. So it is about changing the incentives. Part of that. Yeah. And that's what I think you want to-- you want to see the government do here. You don't want too many mandates. You don't want too much stuff forced down anybody's throat. You just want to create-- you want to create a platform and you want to empower an entity to make good commercial decisions. And you want to give them the ability to do that. You don't want to necessarily dictate how they're going to do it, but you want to give them the ability to make good commercial decisions. And right now, our setup has all these conflicting agendas and incentives and things that are just screwing everything up for everybody. And that's what we have to-- we need to create alignment and we need to create empowerment for commercial good decisions to be made. And then what the free market and the actual real value of college sports stand on its own. Okay. Last substantive question. You would mention earlier the role of an agent in the coaching contracts said you would expound on it. Can you talk a little bit more about what you meant there? I think agents are-- there's some agents that are great. Like some are doing a good job for the clients. They're educated. They're honest. And they do, they serve a purpose. There's some of them. Such a big but. Such a big budget. Yeah, but there are a lot of them, especially in the college space right now. Right now, agents are not regulated at all in the college space. And so you see kids paying 20% or more to their agent where in the NFL they're a max-- the max native can charge is 3%. Kids sign in all these crazy contracts when they're in high school and all-- like we have to regulate agents. There has to be registration. There have to be background checks. There have to be limitations on the amount that they can charge. Or that part of it has to be cleaned up regularly because right now, there are a lot of scumbags that are taking advantage of the student athletes. And I've personally seen it several times and it's disgusting to me. And how about in terms of the coaching? The coaching contracts, the leverage that small number of agents have. I think-- again, I think that you have-- if you create the cap, then it is what it is. I think that problem takes care of itself. I don't know-- I don't think the agents are a problem. I think it's that, again, you have agents just doing their job. Right. And AD, who makes a bad decision because he has a personal incentive to do-- and then that bad decision and that bad contract is used as a precedent for the next contract that's done in a school that may not be in the same situation so that you get this compounding effect of one bad deal creates more bad deals. And so we have to put a stop to that because it's not going to get any better without some kind of control. All right. For Texas Tech, there have been some who said, Cody is just doing this because he wants to help Texas Tech. And you've responded and said, Texas Tech is going to be fine no matter what. But a question I have is, if we go back to, let's say, 2015, 2010 where there wasn't quite as much out of control spending, there was, but it was on coaches and facilities. But if we find a way to level that, contain it, are you at all concerned that it will be more difficult for Texas Tech to compete with a Texas or a Michigan because of all the history behind certain schools. And Texas Tech, you've single handedly with some of your fellow donors have helped Texas Tech rise to the top. But do you worry that if all things are equal that athletes and coaches and fans might decide to go to the bigger name or traditional historic schools? Yeah. But that's not really at all what I'm focused on. It's that I want to make sure that this whole system is sustainable. And Texas Tech is going to do the things that can to compete and we have things going for us that other places don't. And I think we're going to be just fine and I'm perfectly happy competing with everyone on in an even playing field. But as it stands right now, it's not. It's who has the money. As it stands right now, we have the money. If I were just purely being selfish and concerned about Texas Tech, I'd just be like, let the thing burn down. We sit on the top of the largest wool field in the world, bring it. And we raised $63 million in NIL. We're going to be just fine. And so will all the other schools in Texas because the economy is so strong, the economic growth you've had, the population growth you've had, but everything is working. And plus, people in Texas love football. If you got money in Texas, you're more likely to give it to your football programs. I think it's the kind of poorly kept secret in college sports in general is that if things aren't controlled, then the state of Texas is going to take over the whole thing. Not just UT and A&M, but also if you look at what SMU has done, TCU, Baylor, University Houston, Texas Tech, the whole crew is going to be just fine, but it's the schools in the Midwest and in the Northeast, especially in California, in the West that they don't have the same kind of resources we have. They don't have the same kind of support that we have, declining population, declining student population, economies aren't as strong. I think it would surprise you at some of the schools that as we look at the numbers, we don't think we'll continue to be able to be competitive in athletics in the future if things don't change. I'm not fighting for the West Virginia's with the world, to be honest with you and then because they're going to have a tough time making it if we don't figure things out. I know Oliver Luck appreciates that sentiment, so thank you so much. This is my last question I asked to everybody. The number one piece of advice that I use the most often is when my dad told me, lefty Lucy, righty, tidy for using the screwdriver, what's the one piece of advice that you've used most often? That's part of the reason why I'm so passionate about college sports is that I feel like kind of everything I am and the success that I've had in all aspects of my life are largely due to the things I learned through playing sports. So I was fortunate to be in Michael Eaches' first recruiting class at Texas Tech. So I had five years with him and the remained friends with him afterwards until he passed away. But my favorite thing he said, and I use it every day, he said, and he said it over and over again. So many times you stopped hearing it but it became ingrained in you, but he said don't confuse activity with results. You know, what that meant in the football context is that just because you showed up a practice that day, you know, doesn't mean you got any better. So you need to go to practice to suit up with purpose and improve every day. And so you can apply that obviously in the business world, you can say, I went to the office day, I had some meetings, but did I actually create new value and you can ask yourself that question every day. And if you're honest with yourself about it and it really helps you to make sure that you're creating value. And then by my home life, okay, I'll go home tonight, you know, I'm there at the house, my kids are there, my wife is there, but was I a present father, was I a good husband, a present husband? Those are the questions that I constantly ask myself that I think have made me more successful in everything that I've done. And that's the kind of thing that goes far beyond just the games, certainly far beyond the money. His lessons that you learn through sports are lessons that really, you can't learn anywhere else. Yeah. That's a perfect way to end it. Thank you so much, Cody. I admire how much thought and energy and resources you have put into this. And I think that like you, I very much want to protect college sports and very much value, not only watching Tulane football and Duke and my own modern other places, but also seeing all the Olympic sports that are out there and recognizing how much of a different sports can make in our community. And I still believe there is nothing more unifying in this country than sports, and that's at every level. And so people may have different views on how to get to where we want to go, but I appreciate you be so willing to talk about it and to have so many interesting ideas. And so I hope that collectively we can be successful in achieving our goals of protecting college. Yeah. Same here in the thing I can promise you, I'm not going to quit to solve the problem. So. It seems. The thing I'm learning from playing football is I don't have any quit in me. Yeah. I'm going to be in the middle of the fight until we win. All right. Thank you, Cody. I'd love to have you back on to celebrate the win when it happens. That would be great. We're the next big development. Yeah. Thanks, your time. All right. Thank you, Cody. Take it easy. Take care. And thank you all for listening. And thanks, as always, to my loyal sponsor, the Tulane Center for Sport. See you next time on sports wise.