Transcripts For CSPAN College Sports Revenue 20141130

[applause] it was tremendously helpful, and thank you for giving up all of your trade secrets. Moment to think the National Association of broadcasters, the host of this event today, they have given us this space that is beautiful. When you see what their bar looks like, you will like it even more. Supportive, ase was our sponsor, who felt strongly about the symposium and wanted to give her financial support. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. And so now after talking about journalism, we will celebrate great journalism. Please join us in the bar, and that is where we will have our tribute for a wonderful, esteemed, inspiring colleagues. Inc. You. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] on Small Business saturday, the president visited a local bookstore in the Nations Capital and shopped with his daughters at politics and prose in northwest d. C. Here is a look. How are you . You guys doing good . Doing pretty good. Do i get a discount for that . Visitor discount. Up charge . Neighbor discount. Look at the cute nametags. How long have you been here . Two years. Hello. Oh, chuck is hot. Lets see what chuck has to say. Might be coming out a little fast. Tried to find a photo. I know. Well, some of these are gifts. I hope you can close guantanamo. Well, thank you. Any other issues . [laughter] thank you, sir. Thank you. All right, guys. Happy thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas form on money in College Athletics and whether athletes should be considered employees. Then former secretaries of state at the groundbreaking of the diplomacy center. Aftert, it can that, in conversation on the dangers. On newsmakers, half good shawl, the administrator of u. S. Development discusses efforts to fight ebola in west africa, combating global poverty and overseeing u. S. Foreign aid. Is at 10 a. M. And 6 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Next, a discussion on the issue of money and colin College Athletics. They discuss profits made from sports programs, compensation for student athletes, and possible reforms at the ncaa. The big 12 conference hosted this event at the National Press club in washington. It is an hour and a half. Good afternoon. This is the second of a series of forums on College Athletics. Thank you for joining us here today in washington, d. C. , online, and on cspan as well. The numbers in College Sports are staggering. That could easily be something we are talking in terms of points scored, yards gained, or a number of things measured quantitatively attendance, participation, and money. According to filings with the department of education, in 2011, the most recent year for which the numbers are available, College Sports generated 12. 6 billion. Last year, the university of texas alone took in more than 165 million. Espn is paying in excess of 600 million a year to televise the College Playoff system. The price tag for the ncaa basketball tournament, march 10. 8 billion for a 14 year deal. Athletic departments at many schools, and in fact most schools, operate in the red. The star player on the Championship Team that won the mens basketball tournament last year said that some nights, he goes to bed hungry. So where does the money go . There would seem to be more of it than there ever has been before, but not everyone agrees its distribution has been wiser equitable. Here to help us parse the issues are a handful of men with significant knowledge and experience regarding the most visible sports in our culture, and how they are run. Steve berkowitz is a sports project reporter for usa today, specializing in enterprise stories and investigations. He has also dedicated considerable time to compiling the newspapers College Sports compensation and finance database. Patrick sandusky, the chief communications and Public Affairs officer for the United States olympics committee. He is also a former college athlete, an offensive langman at northern illinois. Chris is the director of athletics at tcu. He has served in that position since october of 2009. Steve patterson is the university of texas athletics director. He was previously at Arizona State, and spent two decades in professional sports. Among other roles he was general manager of the Houston Rockets and portland trail blazers. And pete is a Senior Writer for sports illustrated, who covers College Football and basketball. He worked for the New York Times where he was nominated for a pulitzer prize. A story about faulty academic credentials obtained by talented high school athletes. The big 12 commissioner had planned to be with us today, but he is home, recuperating from surgery. Well want wish him the best. All opinions expressed today are those of the panelists themselves and do not represent the organizations with which they are associated. This is a time of upheaval in sports. A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the players should be allowed to form a union. There was a lawsuit brought by a former basketball player at obannon. That was only a day after the socalled big five athletic conferences in essence broke away from the rest of the ncaa. How does the commerce of College Sports now change . I will talk first with the man involved in overseeing programs at universities. Why dont we start with you, steve . I do not know that it has changed all that much over the years. For a long time schools have competed. It is a part of the american culture. There have been movements to regulate that, going back more than 100 years. I think what we see are greater Student Services, greater facilities, larger coaching contracts, bigger staffs than we had in the past. The reality is we want to provide the best Student Services we can to have the best outcomes from our student athletes that we can. That takes a lot of resources. To generate those resources you have to have media contracts, sell a lot of tickets, and raise a lot of money and sell a lot of merchandise, and all of the other things that provide those revenues to provide those services. I concur with what steve is saying. If you look at it from the evolution of College Athletics, from the time of ncaa, to 1972 is mens athletics is 22 years. Think about the popularity of football today, used to have a unlimited scholarships back in the day. Then it went to 110, 95, and today it is 85. The rise of Florida State, tcu, baylor nontraditional powers have become relevant. Today, the popularity of College Athletics, football in particular, is second to none. Yet we are running a business based on peoples passion, that says that we must have two Revenue Streams to support 20 sports based on your student population. Commerce has changed drastically. How we fund College Athletics has changed, and the idea that we the great thesis we used in my paper, we are put in the position today, what are we providing for our student athletes . It is no longer the handshake. A kid comes to tcu, it is not a it is not a five year decision. It is a 50 year decision. There is tremendous pressure to perform. The demands of winning, the demands of keeping her coach, the demands of providing opportunities for young people are ever greater. We always have to see it evolving. When it really meant, was given what has happened within the last year, specifically within the last few months, the prospect of change. Do you foresee business being done any differently, given the obannon decision, the possibility that your model may change . That is a different question. Without question. One thing you know about College Athletics is that it is everchanging. No doubt about it. Do i believe ace didnt athlete should receive full compensation . Absolutely, i do. When you start to think about the ramifications of the obannon case and the stipend that was put toward, that was good to put tremendous pressure on college athletes, because for us at tcu, getting into the big 12 conference has been great, but our largest donor has been the institution. This opportunity, this newfound money everybody things we received, actually goes back to the university, to lessen our burden on that institution. You look at these programs becoming truly selfsufficient. We are part parcel of an institution. The success of our Athletic Program and the rise of tcu, going to the rose bowl were up to 20,000 for the same 1600 spots. We are only talking about mens basketball and football. How does that affect title ix . We have not even talked about that. You cannot say we are only going to provide opportunities for two sports. What is that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned . Really . I have two daughters that are going to say, pay the piper. How do we do that . This is an opportunity you have to say this is an opportunity for everybody, and we are not prepared to do that. Steve, you have spent a considerable amount of time covering College Sports. The numbers. How do you see the cost of attendance changing and affecting the way colleges and universities in their athletic departments do business . It is going to be an interesting thing, for how schools manage to do this, whether or not there will be this continuing effort to try to raise more money and generate more money through commercial enterprises, or whether or not this is going to be the kind of thing that perhaps better justifies institutional involvement in supporting college Athletic Programs. The trend has been making Athletic Programs selfsufficient, and this is almost creating a perpetual motion machine. It has resulted in increased pressure to increase revenue, which is in turn making so much revenue generated that the general public, people who are lawyers, judges, are looking at this and going wow, there is so much money generated here that something more needs to be done for the athletes. The athletes are entitled for compensation for the way they are participating in the generation of that money. It creates some interesting questions as to how colleges want to deal with this, and what impact of that will be. Will it continue to further perpetuate this . Patrick, chris mentioned the impact on title ix. Scott was in here earlier, speaking about olympic sports, and i guess you could ask about what is going to become of the olympic sports, the nonrevenue sports. Title ix was the greatest thing to happen to College Athletics, and to the United States olympic team. If you go back and look at the womens games in the london games, if the women of team usa were their own country, they would have finished third in the medal count just by the women alone. We are benefited immensely by the inclusion of women in sport. There is 205 olympic committees in the world. I daresay if we are not the best culture of inclusion in sport, i do not think that anybody can say they are better than us. Title ix has been fantastic for us. However, there is a harsh reality. The stresses and finances of an Athletic Program could come under. Scott said earlier, nobody in these guys situation has ever lost their job because of the poor performance of their olympics program. People Pay Attention to basketball, to football, and the metrics by which they get their donors and fundraising done, and their sponsorships and the tv contracts. There are a lot of implications of the event have negatively impacted supporting programs. Increasing the cost for the universities for their student athletes. You look at how many wrestling programs around the entry have the country have shrunk over the years. The number of gymnastic rogue rams that have shrunk to get that balance. Make no doubt about it that the olympic sport programs are more under threat than they have ever been. That is certainly worrisome to us. The topic of this panel is supposed to be about money. Where does the money go . It certainly has been in the news, todd being suspended in georgia for allegedly selling his autograph. Should a player be allowed to sell his own likeness . That is a great question. I usually cover College Sports from the bottom up. Everything comes through recruiting. That is the majority of where corruption happens, high school recruiting, through boosters and whatnot. There is a black market in College Football. It exists now. You occasionally get glimpses. In basketball, it is fueled by agents. In football, it is fueled by boosters. It is a wink and a nod, a little beast that happens. You have a billion dollar business dedicated on free labor, and this is to fuel the billion dollar beast. I think everyone is happy with the way it is working out right now, the black market existing in the shadows as it does. If you start to allow people to use their likeness to make money, which conceptually is very easy he should be able to make money off his autograph it opens onto pandoras box. Knowing how middlemen work and how agents work you can make money off your autograph. How much, where does it go . I am going to sign with atlanta. There is an autograph business set up, so when you sign with them, you can automatically get this much. When people talk about paying players, there are so many unintended consequences of those who have not sat on the baseline and watched how the world works. I do not i do not think they understand how tricky that comes. Title ix, do you only pay football and basketball . Do swimming athletes get paid for their autographs . If so, what university could afford it will become a bottleneck competition. 10 years ago, football staffs had 17, 18 guys. Now they have 45. Everyone is looking for an edge everywhere they go. In the reality of the application of the it could get very tricky. Even we see these autograph guys who look like your scum of the earth guys trying to make money off of kids. It would open up a lot of really scary doors. It is something that i think, once you get to full cost of attendance, once you go past that marker, it gets really complicated. We saw what the judge set up in this very complicated injunction behind the obannon decision, i think there is some sensitivity behind that. It is why it makes the next round of lawsuits, the ones involving martin jenkins, the player that is represented by jeff kessler, these big cases that could cost the school a lot of money in damages through retroactive deferential between cost of attendance and grant aid, and what the future would be with the ability of athletes to be able to demand whatever they can get, this becomes a really big deal. I think that is why the judge was trying to create some ink something that was somewhere in between. As pete said, it is a very difficult issue to balance. The lawyers that litigate that case even now are trying to decipher what the judge meant in certain ways, in the way the ruling and injunction were set up. Cost of attendance, there is a model the federal government prescribes at every campus, set to a number of meetings. It is calculated differently everywhere. At our school, it looks like full cost of attendance might be as much as 4000 or more per year. Per athlete. At some schools in our conference, even ones in the same state, they do not have the same numbers. It is a calculation that is not easy to come to for all the campuses. I want to go back to something you said earlier. At the end of the day there is this misperception that the labor is free in College Athletics. That is not accurate. If youre a full ride Football Player at the university of texas, the benefit you get for room, board, books, tuition, training, meals, fees, and medical, it is 69,000 a year. That is taxfree. You add taxes on that, that puts you at the top third of the Household Incomes of the United States. If youre a basketball player it is 77,000 a year. I do not think that student athletes are being taken advantage of when they are in the top third or quartile of Household Incomes in the United States. That is really what we need to be talking about. One of the benefits for student athletes is something you did not mention. Tutoring, networking, alumni, things that benefited me in my career. Frankly, i was not very good at what ball. I was a backup on a really bad team. I had to find Something Else to do. I realized that quite quickly. But the program itself was there for you to succeed, to have the tutors, to have the individualized coaching specialization, to have the networks i still rely on nearly 20 years later. It is nearly hard to quantify some of those costs as a former athlete, who by looking at me you can tell i never went to bed hungry. I was well fed there, and still do and still am. You really get an opportunity to really do more than just playing football. To get an enhanced student fixed experience beyond what the normal student gets. I cannot put a value on that, but it really is wonderful. As the cynical journalist, i will back his point on this. I did a study several years ago, we looked at the value of the mens basketball scholarship. We came out to a figure that is closer to 120,000 when you look at all of the things that he that patrick is talking about, in trying to place a value on the academic support. There are other things that have actual real value that you can tally up the free admissions to games and other things that people do not think about. Did you subtract 6 00 a. M. Practices during spring break . [laughter] i would take that out. You know this way better than i do, but in terms of the demands that are placed on the athletes i think that is where the friction begins to come in. This is some of the stuff that came to light in the nlrb hearing and some of the things we heard in the obannon case, and that testimony of what the athletes do, what they feel they have to do, what they are forced or expected to do, and the nature of that tradeoff. And how all of that works, and the nature of the pressures and demands that are placed on the athletes in relation to the amount of money that is being generated based on what they are doing. I agree with steve paterson, and i led him down the road by saying free labor. But these guys have it good. I spent 200 days on the road on different campuses. I see that they go to bed hungry narrative is one of the alltime false narratives that could ever be eventuated in the history of college. If you look at the math of these guys, there is no way, if he is going to bed hungry, that is his own fault. That is what, coast to coast, people told me. Ive spent a week behind the scenes at Mississippi State, and let it tell you i gained five pounds being in their building. These guys come off the field and they have shakes specifically made to their flavor taste, weight gain, weight loss and they go into the practice facility. There is a snack bar. Some of that is because the rule was changed. The ncaa denied it, but that headline became a toxic thing. I think it is good, by the way. These athletes should be fed, if theres one thing they should never limit it is feeding athletes, taking care of them, medical care, those a sick rights. Things are changing. It is a great thing for everybody. I do not think you will get Anyone Around sports to disagree these athletes should not be taken care of to the fullest, but napier going to bed hungry i think that is completely and utterly false. It is a misuse of what they are given, if they have gotten to that point. I think this narrative, that said, probably has something to do with it. The establishment is making millions and millions of dollars. In essence, there are kids who in many cases, from come from nothing and have their noses pressed up against the window and saying, wheres mine. That is not fair. You have to say outside of the g. I. Bill, College Athletics provides the largest need case needbased merit aid in the United States. Firstgeneration if you look, i came from a Childrens Home in taos, new mexico. My out was through sport. The second year they dropped the sport, because they had to enact title nine. They dropped mens track and sport. Luckily, Santa Barbara picked me up. I got back into sport. I try to help young people get a degree and change the world. Last year we had 85 kids graduate from texas Christian University. Only one went pro. Only one went pro. Think about all those other kids that are going to go out and do phenomenal things, but we focus on a napier who did not have enough munchies. It you knew what we give them, holy cow, there is no way he is starving. Youre giving him a full ride to go to school, to make a decision. A lot of time those kids are firstgeneration kids, never had an opportunity to do something. Had two kids graduate from texas last year. Took them 5. 5 years to graduate. They got done playing in four, but we continue their education until they earn their degree. We do not talk about those stories. We lost our voice to say, what do we provide in College Athletics . Where are we headed . We look at all of this money over here, and we look at the 523 campus athletes and what they are doing throughout their lives, and that is part of the problem. The few that got their nose pressed against the window i am not talking to the masses. When you come to my campus, you come to my students and say, you are getting a raw deal . They say, no sir. I cannot believe i am getting this opportunity. I cannot thank you enough. You guys have the greatest renown for doing things that create most of the revenue that support a lot of the other athletes. In some cases, they are also guys whose fiftyyear decision after they get done with School Results in tough circumstances for these guys whether it is medical, whether nor not they did not get educations that enabled them to get jobs. We did a story for years ago that talked about guys who talk to us about getting degrees that resulted in them not being qualified to take off to do something meaningful in their lives. I mean, i think there is a flip side to it as well. I understand on a broader basis that there are a lot of people who are in sports outside of football and basketball who would tell you this is the greatest thing. That is a cynical view, though, which is your job. My job is to tell you it is half full. I wake up, my cup is overflowing with College Athletics. I do not think somebody who asks questions necessarily looks at the glass as halffull. I am a sociology major. What is he doing . The way i grew up, it was a phenomenal major for me. That is what i wanted to do. A criminal justice major, or whatever they may be in, social sciences. Especially at tcu, there is no major you can hide in. 8000 students, 13 in a classroom, we are a little bit different. I still look at that as an opportunity for that one individual to leave their place and go to school and get whatever degree it may be. Are they better off than where they were . That is a key question. Are they better off than where they were, and can become a productive member of society . I think i read a statistic the other day that, if i am not mistaken, 27 of the United States population has a College Degree, 27 , 28 percent, right in that area. Think about that. Your average lifetimes earnings are 1 million more. 72 of the u. S. Population does not have a College Degree. That individual, is he better off than not having a College Degree . I think it is somewhere between the two points. I remember being a freshman offensive lineman, and he asked us what our majors are were going to be. I said i was going to major in english, and he said are you sure you got that right . I said yes, and he said then you better not get any bad grades this semester. I said, i think i will be all right. Thanks for asking and caring. There were guys that mailed it in academically, and there were guys that went on to get degrees. And there were guys that got 0. 0 grade point averages and got kicked out of school. I saw the whole gamut of that, and you are given at least the opportunity. And i know theres a lot. Reasons why or why not People Choose or dont choose, im not trying trying to say that everyone has the same situation. But while that can happen, theres also opportunity for the athletes as well. Jimmy, this is what i think is interesting from an academic piece. Were just seeing the general competitiveness at american colleges and universitieses just spiking at an alltime high. I saw a statistic at a major Football College that the senior class thats graduating now, a third of them wouldnt get in as freshmen now. So you have the admissions competition being as tough as ever, but the Football Team is essentially on a plane here and here. And i think thats why youre seeing the stuff at notre dame and other places. I think its incumbent on the university a lot these places have Million Dollar centers, but that gap is not getting any smaller. Its going to be harder to get into school and if you want to be competitive in major College Football youll still need to get in kids who barely qualify. And i think that will create a lot more situations than weve seen now, at the places who are actually end indicating the educating the kids, who arent just putting them in i independent studies and pushing them through. The places that have a little academic soul, and you can debate how many do and dont, youre going to see kids failing and youre going to see the pressure, kids cheat, kid do different things. Because i think thats inherent to the situation. You have a bunch of kids with i know it is a sliding scale. You have 850 s. A. T. Kids in the room with 1400 s. A. T. Kids, they dont fit. The inherent pressures, they are inherently rising. So thats one of the problems we see on the bottom line. What i give credit for you dont hear Athletic Directors saying they should be allowed to major in football. You go to school for dance, you major in dance. You go to school for art, you major in art. You go to school for football, they want to know why youre being hidden in organizational studies. Not that anybody here is an organizational studies major. I apologize. That is not what they are advocating for across campuses. Theyre actually advocating for them to be part of the students experience, and to your point of 85 graduates, one went pro, youre not saying guys this shouldnt be part of your routine. This should not be part of you developing as a young woman or a young man. They are making a part. I give them a lot of credit, not just advocating for doing away with classes or making all the classes specific to your sport. So steve its easy to have the discussion revolve around the less than 1 of student athletes that can go on to be pros. Even if they go on to the pros they have an average career of less than four years. They then have to figure out how to live for 50 years on average after that. The university of texas has been one of the top three baseball programs in the country, we average less than one student athlete a year that goes onto play in the major leagues. In all the years we average about three, maybe four that get a chance to be on an nfl roster. So out of the 500plus kids that weve got on our campus every year, there might be a couple, three, four, five that go on to play. Our job is to manage positive outcomes for our student athletes. Folks come in with all kind of gpas and s. A. T. Scores, we do have minimums now, we do have core courses that are required. One of the things we dont talk about here is the problems in education leading up to college. Where we rank in the world compared to english skills, math skills, science skills you compare us to other countries in the planet were in the 20s, so were not doing a great job there, frankly. So youre right. As the g. P. A. And a. C. T. And s. A. T. Scores go up, i could not get into the university of texas today. I went there twice, graduated twice. My son is there, my daughter. I couldnt get in today. Thats whats going on at universities all over america. What i wanted to get to before was how do you manage that. What do you do as administrators now . We make sure that we hire the right kind of people that can provide the kind of services to our student athletes, whether its academic support, we spend more money than any other university in the country in academic support. We make sure we got oneonone support, we make sure they get through and stay on track to graduate on time if they can. We provide services for them to come back if they dont graduate on time, say theyre a baseball player and want to try to make it after their third year, they can come back and finish their degrees. We had about a dozen Football Players that came back last year and finished their degrees. And we make sure we have career counseling for them when they leave the place, we make if they get injured we provide medical services for them, up to two years after they leave, to make sure theyre healthy. So we provide these kind of services to make sure we manage positive outcomes for our student athletes. I think you left out pep talks. Matthew mcconaughey is a huge benefit for the university of texas. The reality is we laugh about it somebody like a Matthew Mcconaughey, its oftentimes much more important than a that somebody has a chance to meet somebody like red mccombs who is a great entrepreneur and can help kid get a job and start and foster their careers. Thats the kind of thing you mentioned earlier that you get at universities, you get those kind of contacts, those kind of tools and meet those people and go on with your career. Chris, you wanted to add something . No, were good. [laughter] let me ask a question that may seem like blasphemy. Do we need the ncaa . You need something. It always amused me that the idea of these schools are going to break away from the ncaa, to which i respond what are they going to do . There is inevitably going to be some type of a structure, i think, that schools will want, and once you create a structure the whole thing is geared around the idea of everybody trying to keep everybody else from cheating or doing something to get an advantage over somebody else. And so whether it is under the ncaas office or some other entity that we havent thought of a name of, seems like theres going to be some sort of underlying governance, something to hold the enterprise together. Conferences seem to be taking more and more autonomy. Back to the ncaa, do you think you need the federal government . There are a lot of people go back to the day. We are the ncaa. Institutions make up the ncaa. They are a governing body. We need them. Theyve done a great job for us in terms of academic reform, the compliance reform, the mission of what were all about. It really started out with safety at one time. It was formed in 1906, with football injuries that came up. The things that have happened, weve needed them and theyve been great for us, but weve done a poor job of talking about why we need the ncaa and what they do for us. We make them up, our leadership is on the board of directors. A lot of our membership serve on the ncaa. Theyre a necessity. Whatever form you talk about, with autonomy or not, the ncaa is a necessity. Conferences really took power, if you will, when the tv contracts broke up in 1983, and the president said football. College football is not part of the ncaa. Part of its eligibility and compliance, that is it. Football is outside and conferences have taken over that realm. There was a void that was left through the antitrust of Television Way back when. Now were put in a position we have two different entities, the College Football over here and the ncaa. Theyre still governed by us as members. And today were looking at the economic model of it, which is big numbers. And if we would have been back, i want to say, in 1985 they talked about adding the cost of attendance to the membership. We had to go to full cost of attendance, and our membership and today were looking at the economic model of it, which is big numbers. Couldnt agree, because at the time the ncaa bodies we were division ii. 400 institutions. Division ii and were going to division i at the time, we had the same legislative power that u. S. C. Had. Theyre two different schools. They do not even make sense, in terms of the economics. But youre asking them to vote on a bill about the cost of attendance. They couldnt agree on it now. Today, because of the economics, we can do that. That seems like a perfect opportunity to transition into a discussion with the big five and this new model that were going to see. So the College Football National Championship, we mentioned it before, and im not sure if ive got the numbers exactly right, i thought they were estimated at somewhere over 600 million a year from espn. How is Going Forward with this big five model, how is that going to affect the economics with big pieces like this Television Contract for the football playoff and for march madness . Whats the future world going to look like for your schools and perhaps for schools like the one that you used to work for, San Luis Obispo . Think about this. Texas Christian University weve been in five conferences in 16 years. Were like nomads. When we started out, we were with the southwest conference. They broke up. And at that time we did everything we could to get back in the big 12. That was our goal. We have been on the migration pattern. We hit a perfect storm, we hired a chancellor that has a vision thats second to none, we hired a football coach that were 111, and we go to the rose bowl, and our campus has grown, and we are back to the place where we are today, where we wanted to be, and were in. And that is fantastic. Yet it is daunting, because i thought once we got in, boy, it would be a calm ocean. Theres more turbulence now than ever. I look at my members in the Mountain West conference and conference usa, and they are outside saying, hey, what about us . I was just there a year ago. I was there five years ago, and i understood their plight and where they were going. In our place, our faculty wants to be harvard monday through friday. Our fan base, alabama on saturday and texas christian on sunday. And i suffer from adult a. D. D. , so i cannot serve all three masters well, but think about that. Think of the pressures. And youre running a business based on peoples passion. Its crazy. We talked about this a little last time. What do you say to a school like fresno state which is a highly competitive football program, but now is on the outside looking in . But they are not. Explain. For the next tranche of schools our Television Revenues for the College Playoff went up a little less than double. For those schools big five. You are talking times five. For those more resourced conferences it went up a little less than double. For that next tranche of five conferences, their tv revenues went up five times what they were before, so theyve caught up in terms of the amount of revenue. And when you look at it relative dollars. Percentage or dollars . It takes a lot less money to get five times, 10,000, than it does if you have 200 million. That may or may not be a valid way of looking at it. Im not disputing that theres more money there for everybody. But, you know, the impact of that and how much more there is outside and how those schools then make up that gap, i think is going to be an interesting question. And what does that result in . What does College Athletics look at as a result of that . Fresno state how did those schools tailor their programs . Will they be able to tailor the those programs to do certain things . This somewhat was touched on earlier. Where will how will the money be allocated and what will be the impact of that on Athletics Programs . Those dollars are more important for those schools than they are for us. For us, all the distributions are 22 of our revenue. The rest, we generate on campus. What i am saying is, if you look at the relative allocations, it is twice as much for the top five conferences, about five times as much for the rest of them. The reality is if you look at where the eyeballs are generated, it is the top five conferences. It is not the next five, or the five thereafter. So i think those schools cut a good deal, and they are better off today than they were before. I think the gap has always been there, and this power five branding has just perpetuated the perception a little more. I mean, the financial gap has always been huge, and while i do have some empathy because those power five, recruiting wise, are going to have to fight, they were havenots two years ago. They just werent quite defined as havenots. If you extrapolate out the playoff scenarios from the past 10 years, some of those havenots would have been in. You would have been in at tcu. You finished at the top four. Three or four times. What im saying is i think theyve actually done a poor job in the football playoff of letting somebody know if a boise is a 130, they can still get in. Again im not going to say that doubled the access, but the whole point is their lot in life is pretty similar now. What theyre fighting more is perception. And i agree with steve that you can parse numbers and say five times as much. Its easy to be cynical about that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day theyre about where they were before. Theyre going to get more difficult over time for that gap to be overcome. The gap thats occurring now between texas budgeting and other schools in the fbs or within division i, every year that gap grows wider. And wider and wider. Does that mean its impossible for Savannah State to be able to compete on any level . Maybe yes, maybe no. I mean, there have been teams in baseball and other sports that have risen up and done some pretty cool things. And for sure all those opportunities will be there. But i happen to think and there are a lot of people who have bet a lot of money who are really smart businessmen that the the schools like texas at the moment, schools in those conferences, believe it or not, are actually still underleveraged as business propositions. Companies like i. M. G. Are wagering a lot of money that those businesses are underleveraged. Uconn just reupped with img. People running i. M. G. Are not in the business to lose money. Theyre paying these schools a lot of money thinking that they will then be able to commercially recoup that and get even more money. How does that cycle continue to go and what is going to be the impact i think is a really i interesting question. Where does all this go . If you look from us and i have a unique perspective of where we were in terms of the economics. Where would you rather be . Of course. Steve just told you how great life is at fresno state. Would you rather be in the Mountain West or big 12 . Big 12, thank you very much. That is why we are here. However, you look at from this perspective though. Economically when i was in the Mountain West conference and things were happening to the place where we are today, one is perception. Two, the big boys. But i was the new york yankees of the conference. We had the biggest budget, we won, we were it. Today im in the big 12, i have the lowest budget. Theres a huge gap. I have a 100,000 seat stadium. We roll in at 45,000. The economics within the 64 are still great. But were in a position now where we wanted to be from our particular institution in the big 12. That was the biggest, and best conference in our region. It made sense. We were brethren we have been playing texas since 1900. Our record against baylor is 5151. But the idea we have been playing these schools for a long time. And when the conference shifts were now playing san diego state, they have no regional draw to us. Yet the television, the american eyeball has determined that these five conferences drive all the traffic. Think about that. They drive all the traffic. Were a little bit david and goliath. In terms of us beating wisconsin in the rose bowl, that was a oneoff. The terms on any given saturday look at the ratings who is driving that traffic. And if youre School Running a school, an Athletic Program, based on peoples passion and wanting to do whats right for your institution, for us to get in the big 12 is the right move for what we wanted. For our president , for our student body, everyone who wanted this, i can look at and say, wait a minute. Media will say, there is a have and have not. That has been going on. The little guys, theres only two schools that made it into the power 64, if you will. Us and utah. That is it. Its an interesting dynamic when you think about our brethren going, where would you rather be . Every one would rather be in the big 12 today. It comes down to those institutions deciding what kind of investment, from the various constituent groups of that university, how much they want to invest. It could be from the school, it could be from the alums, it could be from other donors, from the student body, from businesses. You know, northwestern is not a big school, tcu is not a big school. Were going to have a heck of a battle on thanksgiving. I dont know whos going to win. But if the schools want to create an environment over whos going to invest in athletics because they perceive theres a value for the university they can decide to make that investment. What they cant do is not make that investment and sit on the outside and criticize the system, because theres plenty of schools who have made the conscious decision, we are not going to invest. And some of the most successful universities in the country. The ivy league is not going to dry up and blow away. Chicago hasnt disappeared. They are great universities. So its a matter of where you want to make your investment. And what your priorities are. What does the future look like then for the schools that choose not to make the investment that the 64 making . What do you think . I dont think theyre going to be in a position to take advantage of the eyeballs that chris is talking about to drive the interest in their university the same way the schools are that decide to make that investment. That is an investment that is being driven thats a chicken or egg discussion. I am prepared to make the investment if you let me into the big 12 and i get tv money. I will invest in the athletic row graham. No, no. But in the meantime, how am i supposed to make that happen . Do i run up student fees . Could be. Do we take institutional money and drive more of that into the program . Could be. Those are the kinds of questions that schools are having to start to grapple with. Are you going to ask the government of the state to do this . You look at the program in hawaii i realize that is an outlier program on a variety of levels. But that program is facing unbelieveably difficult choices. And there are state legislators in that state who felt the solution is that the State Government ought to help support the Athletics Program there. And you can debate that on a Public Policy level and whether or not thats a good investment by the state of hawaii or whether it isnt, but there are a lot of these decisions that get made that create financial situations for people who dont have a say in it. For example, on a student fee basis. Whether or not the Fee Structure for university, for students, ought to be driven by those kinds of conversations. You know, i think that raises some really legitimate questions. Its getting a little too either or. Of course tcu wanted to get back into the big 12. Thats where their roots were from. We beat northwestern earlier this year, northern illinois. We can trade notes later for thanksgiving. The fact of the matter is when you look at my school they left the maac thinking they were going to do bigger and better things. They went independent and then years later traveled through the big west and other places. They came back to the reality that the maac was the perfect fit and they wanted to focus on being part of a strong midtier conference. It fit. It fit the students, the student athletes, the fans, and the graduates. Theyve been focusing on that as a school, and one of the downsides is that a school that size dont have the robust programming, if i am looking with my olympic hat on, of sports beyond to the number of levels lets say texas or texas christian does. But they did feel comfortable that was where they wanted to be as a school and theyve been pretty successful in terms of winning Football Games and being part of what felt right for their brand and for their university. They dont have ambitions to be the next big 12 Expansion School or part of the big 10. Or Something Like that. So i dont know if every school is trying to be in or out. To steves point in terms of an investment. I was at rice university, Athletic Director from 2006 to 2009, and i remember being interviewed. This is my fifthyear anniversary today at tcu. Five years ago, i am in a board room. They asked me two questions. Can you raise money for a football stadium and can you get us into a bcs conference . That is coming from a board of trustees and a chancellor. Now, i will agree to anything. Whatever you say. Why do you want to do that . Because you in this room are going to build that football stadium. That football stadium is 164 million raised. No debt. Donors decided this is what we are going to do. If you have the donor base and you can do that. But this is just my story. This is our story. We had six people who gave us 15 million each, and i referred to it as, we nickel and dime 1 million, 2 million, 5 million. A lot of nickles and dimes. Yes, sir. Youve got to love oil. But the idea was this is way before the big 12 we were in the Mountain West conference. We were heading to boise in the fiesta bowl. This is the ambition of what we needed to do. That was so awe inspiring to have a board with this audacious goal. Working there was fantastic. To have donors saying, this is what we need to do, not knowing what lay at the end of the tunnel. We dipped our toe for a month and that went out we were fortunate to get in the big 12. But the same thing now. Were building a new basketball arena donor funded. Our chancellor challenged our donors the Athletic Program will not be an incumbrence. No debt. We will raise that money. That is a choice. Our donors have really inspired and grappled with. Its been fantastic. And the university now has a 30 million gift for a business college. Donors say were a great institution. We are more than an athletic row graham. Program. But theyve made that investment. That was their audacious goal. I cant speak for others but that was the university our and our culture decided that was important for us. Thats great. That speaks well to the donors, to the universities, to your ability to convince those people to donate. But you look at a school Like University of california which just has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into their facilities, and some of that was simply they had to seismically retrofit a football stadium built over a major earthquake fault. So theres a certain amount youve got to deal with. But the way that kind of financing works is a different setup than youre talking about and where that money comes from. And the california Athletics Department has a model that works for it great now. But if it doesnt and something craters, where is that money coming from . Is that coming from the state . Is that money coming from the students . What kind of impact is that going to have on the bond rating for that university . And the downstream impact on students and the bills theyre having to pay to do all that stuff. I think to me again, as you look down the road, those are the kinds of questions that i think that you guys have having to deal with and administrators are going to deal with and students are to some extent have a voice in and to some extent as customers of the universities are having foisted upon them in order to do that. Thats not true. How many wait. The department of education said you cant do that any longer. For instance, at the university of texas, we had to go market to our students whats now the big ticket at the university of texas that replaced what used to be called the bed tax that everybody had to pay and we wound up with a better revenues, more students buying them, and better product for the students because we had to ask them what they wanted and go sell to them. So its not fair to say youre imposing something on the student body. The reason cal had to replace their football stadium is because their board of regents said you have to fix it now. A very short timeframe. And it was a difficult financial decision for them to make, and a very difficult construction project. Out of the 300 million they spent they spent about 175 million doing seismic which got them no revenue. No improvement in the customer experience. They could have potentially made a different decision. They could have said maybe well go play where the 49ers, where the raiders play. They could have said, were not going to have football any more. They made the decision to keep and fix it. Thats their decision. Im not disagreeing thats their decision but there are implications and situations where students have a very moderate a small voice in whether or not, for example, student fee increase is imposed, where those decisions are made at the governing board level. I think youre misinformed on that. They have to go to a vote. Student body votes on that. Thats not true. There are state institutions where the Fee Structures at schools are decided on by governing boards. There may be student representatives on those governing boards, but thats going to be one vote. Or perhaps there are different vehicles for students to do things. But i think there have been plenty of instances where these kinds of fee increases have occurred where and there is no perfect way. You cant canvass 70,000 students and make a decision. I think every case is different. I think just from our perspective were only talking about where we are today. I cannot speak for every institution. We have chosen to be great in all endeavors. If you look at recruiting a faculty and i use this all the time. If were going to recruit the great chemists and students, we cant use 1950 bunsen burners. You have to evolve. You have to build, you have to recruit the finest students. At tcu, were trying to compete with texas, harvard, yale, princeton for the finest students in the country to come. Big businesses colleges and universities are big business. U. S. News world report will rank, where is my little johnny going to school . We had a chancellor we were not ranked academically. Today we are ranked 72nd in the country. Were recruiting some of the finest kids to come to our campus. But you have to invest in chemistry, physics. And we dont talk about that part of the business. We focus on athletics. You know what . Most universities, we are 3 , 10 of the University Budget. We make up 90 of the media, but were only 3 of the entire budget, and in some cases maybe 10 . But the focus is a small focus when you look at the totality of what a University Budget is. We are so small, but media is such a big deal, we focus on that little piece. So weve established the fact that youre on one side of the fence or the other. Whats the ante if you want to be on the side of the fence with the haves and not the havenots . Youve been on the other side. I couldnt tell you that because you start to look at one of the things for us when this whole thing was a geography. We were in the right spot the right media market. You can think about boise. What are the investments that you would have to make, or that you were part that were part of programs that you were associated with that you had to make . Give us an idea. What chris hasnt said is the dumb luck of the s. E. C. Poaching two big 12 schools that allowed them to come in. They could have built all the stadiums but if the big 12 stayed solid they would still be the yankees of the Mountain West. Texas a m. Always be in the big east because nothing had left and the acc had not expanded. We would be in the big east. We sold our donors we were like the Dallas Cowboys in the nfc east. Traveling east, my friend. But were here to talk about money, so give us some kind of an idea. What does it cost . In terms of the investment . Think about it. We didnt know when we made the investments we made with an unknown future. When we decided doing the football stadium, we were in the Mountain West conference. That was our choice with the idea of, would a new football stadium sustain our growth . We did not know the opportunity would be in the big 12. Its hard to say you have to do this in order to do that. When we were in a position, and i tell a funny story. Never underestimate a college keg party, amen. Im in college with a guy named jamie dixon, basketball coach at pitt. I thought he went to u. C. Santa barbara. I get the job at t. C. U. He calls me up, hey. We concocted getting in the big east in the back of a game against baylor 2009, 2010. They were in danger of losing their b. C. S. Hold. If they got t. C. U. , they maintain their points. So they wouldnt drop. We came in, it was a perfect marriage. Who would have known that a m and missouri were going to leave . We were content with that but all the moves we made happened without the knowledge of what was going to take place in the landscape. We would have been content in the big east knowing what we knew then but once the landscape changes, because of our geography and dumb luck, we were able to get into the big 12. Theres no magical number because boise has done wonderful things with their investments. B. Y. U. Has done wonderful things with their facilities. You look around san diego state, cincinnati, connecticut. These are teams you start to look, you start putting cases part of it was our geography and our investment. Right time, right keg party. And our success. We were successful. Right keg party. Using cincinnati as an example. The cincinnati Athletics Department has an accumulated operating debt in the tens of millions of dollars and paying money every year, the school is paying money every year, somebodys paying interest on that debt. That accumulating debt is sitting there. That was a decision made by the university to make that investment. Going back to the question you were asking about whats the ante. And they have done things facilitieswise and so forth. You look at some of whats happened around the pac12 since the new Television Contract that occurred there, these are schools that were established schools and you look at whats gone on within the facilities, the boon in the pay to football coaches, particularly, within the conference. Its a huge, huge conference and these are places that were already in. They didnt have to ante up to get in. They were already there. Youre still playing the game. You look around you know this really well from whats now going on at Arizona State in terms of the facilities and quest for the sport village, that went on there, and all of that was being seeded by that Television Money and so thats with the ante, its in the facilities, its in the coaching salaries and doing all those things. Are you looking at it a little bit too black and white. I know thats what youre supposed to do and you said you were a cynical journalist and oscar wilde said that a cynic knows the price of everything, the value of nothing. We hear about this with the olympics and you hear about the Olympic Games and cost overruns. But people think of the university of texas and what does the Football Team add to the brand value and what does that do in terms of recruiting professors and top students and donors and having Matthew Mcconaughey do his true detective thing on the sidelines for the student athletes. I think theres cynicism in saying they made a profit or they didnt and there werent other ancillary benefits that happened, whether its 50year plan that you reference for the student athlete, or building the brand that is the university. When we have been looking at a potential olympic bid for 2024, if youre going into this with a dollars and cents approach, trying to make money for the first line, its not the right reason. Its hard to say we want a bid for the olympics and be burdens on cities but you have to see a Bigger Picture than the blackandwhite numbers. I understand thats your job to get to the blackandwhite numbers, steve, but i think there is inherent value beyond just whether or not the profit and loss categories for the school and the investments theyre making. Ill go beyond the value youre talking about. You look at the economic engines that these Athletics Departments are in their communities over a weekend in athens, georgia, in oxford, mississippi, in tuscaloosa, alabama, in auburn, alabama, and you look at the amount of money generated as a result of that, to me, if you talk about the Public Policy piece and how thats going. Its just a question there are a lot of questions, is that appropriate, is that what college is that what the College Enterprise is all about. Im not saying it is or it isnt but if you look at the value of these things, you know, the value of the Texas Football Program Every saturday in austin in terms of the numbers of hotel rooms occupied, the number of people sitting in restaurants after the ball game, i mean, you drive up and down interstate in florida after a game in gainesville and the Cracker Barrel is full, you know, every saturday night. And thats thats whats thats whats going on. Sounds like they need better restaurant choices. Im kidding. You look at this real quick. You talk about the academic improvement, where were going. The thing about t. C. U. Seven, eight years ago, our s. A. T. Was where it was. 4,000 applicants for 1600 spots. All of a sudden, the football coach and perfect storm. Now we have 20,000 for 1600 spots. We are the brand of our institution. The competition for our s. A. T. Has gone through the roof. Quality of student has gone through the roof because of the exposure of intercollegiate athletics. Theres a president that dropped sports in the big ten years ago. Longtime member and he said the greatest mistake i made was leaving the big ten. Mainstream kids love College Athletics. Alums love it. You come to a game, were packed every game. Its a wonderful experience. We win, lose or draw. It has become the fiber of our institution and the marketing brand, good, bad or indifferent. For good, its great. For bad, its bad. But we make up 90 of the media and that brand, we were a good regional university. Because of the vision of our institution, our chancellor wanted to become global and through the rise of sport, we have changed the face of t. C. U. I firmly believe that. Every university in the country that has successful athletics theres value to that but when you only make up between 3 and 5 of an institutions budget and you think of the engine that is academic achievement and greatness and youre a small portion of it, we focus so much on the small portion, not what we bring to the table. Lets talk about basketball because were approaching basketball season and we have been talking about football. Is there any difference in the calculus between the two sports in terms of the way it needs to be managed Going Forward given the different i guess the amounts of it being on one side of the fence versus the other . Pete . I think College Basketball right now, jimmy, has a giant problem. The regular season is completely irrelevant. Ill bring both institutions here. I went to the texast. C. U. Game at texas last year. I almost fell asleep. The atmosphere was texas was good. T. C. U. Wasnt. Not at all. Wow. Were great. You name dropped your chancellor so many times, she must be watching. Its a he. Contracts up. I really think that College Basketball if you look at the ratings are flatlined right now. The regular season. When you go regular season. The regular season is completely irrelevant and atlantic 10 coach tell me this summer at a recruiting event that they had League Meetings and the espn person came in and said basically the maac football wednesday night game of the week, toledobowling green throwing the ball around, outrates carolinaduke. Were in an eventdriven culture. Theres so much oversaturation and its one of the negative reverberations of all these media contracts is that everyones on tv and its not special anymore. I have the second cable tier and i can watch nine or 10 games. If you can watch v. C. U. 26 times in the regular season you are missing out on serious west coast hoops. And i like College Basketball. I grew up in this business covering College Basketball. I think its a compelling sport in many ways but there is no juice left in the regular season and i think its somewhat oversaturation, its somewhat the prism through which the sport is covered now where somebody loses a game in december and its like theyre not going to be a three seed, theyll be a five seed. And the tournaments three months away. The tournament is great. Nothing better in sports than the ncaa basketball tournament. Its an awesome beast. It rates well, its compelling on all storylines. The havenot have a chance which will be perpetuated even more but i think right now regular season basketball is an abysmal place. I totally agree with you there about expanding the size of the football tournament which i think would be moving in that direction but thats a different discussion. In terms of the money, uconn, defending national champion, uconn, which has won five titles in the last 15 years, 20 years, theyre not part of the big five, are they . You can get away with it more in basketball than in football. What realignment has taught us is that basketball doesnt matter and its all finances. Follow the money, right . Were in washington. The money follows football. Even a. C. C. , most storied basketball conference, make way more money in football than in basketball. Whens the last time you sat down, im going to defend heather and say im going to watch an a. C. C. Football game today. There might be one or two a season. I went to maryland. Any game on saturday. I keep looking for maryland in the a. C. C. Standings. Theres a few reasons, i think, for that. People want an emotional attachment to their institution or their team or their game so there are a few institutional problems. One i think, quite frankly, both in the nba and College Athletics is the oneanddone rule. I think its bad for College Athletics and bad for nba managers. The only people its good for are the agents driving the top few guys that can make it into the pros after playing one year but it makes it more difficult to establish an emotional attachment with the fan at the university because as soon as theyre attached, theyre gone. The second is the number of transfers. I think it was 40 of College Basketball players transfer after their second year and so we should have fewer opportunities to transfer and quite frankly, we should have a model more like baseball if you want to go to the pros after high school, go. Knock yourself out. Theres maybe three guys a year that can do it. The other 200 guys making the mistake going early are making a mistake and limiting their lifetime earnings. They should stay in college and get a degree. It would be better for the product and the last thing that we have to do is a better job of marketing. Youre right. Our game presentation was terrible last year. And were fixing that. When we roll out our basketball season this year it will be dramatically different looking because you have to go out and work hard to get people to spend time and entertainment dollar to come to one your events. Youre not going to probably have Going Forward in football, youre not going to have one of the havenot win a National Championship but its entirely possible that it could happen in basketball. Why is that . Does it cost less . Need one player. Ok. The game itself . Youre saying the game itself . What about the economics of it . Were here to talk about money. Is it easier to be a havenot in College Basketball . Some of the perceived havenot are haves. Marquette has a bigger budget. Theyre in the big east. You dont even know what they are. We look at have and havenot through a football paradigm exclusively but if you look at a place like marquette in the big east. Villanova, et cetera, its where are traditions. Basketball because of espn and the big east is more Market Driven so schools that have built a good reputation in northeastern cities especially, in the midwest and stretched down, and basketball just costs a lot less. You have 12, 13 guys, you have to pay a coach. The staff is 1 8 of the size. You can do more with less in basketball which is why butler was able to do what it did. In the basketball league, fox put a dump truck of money in the big east to play. They couldnt say no. So i think even though the ratings were minuscule, they barely registered a little blip. So i just think how completely different the sports are financially and steves right, you do need one player. He returned all his players last year from basketball, they have a freshman player who will probably be a oneanddone that that transforms them into probably a final four team. That has been the case since larry bird and you can go through history. Do you think the expansion of the tournament, 69 teams. Do you think that has contributed to this situation . The expansion was to protect some of the haves. Isnt that why they did it . The Mountain West and w. A. C. Split and they didnt want to give another atlarge. I dont know. I should know this probably. But i dont think that small tournament expansion has had a big factor. I think its the number of tv games. Theres so many games to watch. Its really two different markets, right, the viewing audience and whos in arena and we need to do a better job of marketing and selling and creating an interesting entertainment environment because the pros have gotten so good. Be they the major leagues or minor leagues. College really hasnt did as good a job across the board of creating a fun environment for basketball. You go to this guys place, its rock n roll crazy for tennis. Its the kind of thing you have to do for all sports. Make it a fun, entertaining, engaging environment and when you cant get the emotional attachment because people are transferring every year or going pro, its a tough sell. This is part and parcel of conference realignment, keeping track of whos going where and some of that was driven by financial considerations and a lot of driven by football but the trickledown effect on that has been interesting, as well, because youve seen this shuffle continue its way down into various different leagues so youre seeing youre seeing alignments in games between teams that just dont feel familiar in a way. And what conference what conference this year. I think thats had an impact on it, as well, and thats been driven by financial considerations, i think. If i was missouri basketball fan and i was used to seeing kansas, texas, et cetera and suddenly you see kentucky and auburn and florida and all those other teams, and Mississippi State rolls in . I call it the cubicle factor. Since b. C. Has gone to the a. C. C. , theyve had dreadful home attendance in basketball and theres no connection to clemson, to n. C. State. Duke comes in and thats great but when Florida State comes in, theres no reason to care, especially in a competitive market. Thats a separate issue from what you were talking about before which is the National Ratings which really drives the discussion. You, as Athletic Directors, want to create an exciting event on your campus but the National Discussion is driven by how popular things are in peoples homes. Right now College Basketball is having a problem. Can you put the genie back in the bottle . I think it would help if you didnt have oneanddone. What would you like to see . The baseball setup. If somebody wants to come out out of high school, let them go. But if they come to university, they should want to be part of the university. They shouldnt be using it as a onesemester Training Ground to jump to the nba. And that hurts the overall perception of College Athletics when you have these tourist students. When i was at the university of arizona, they had a great basketball brand and you could say basketball was our bell cow and football was an opportunity in terms of the economic budget on an annual basis but oneanddone doesnt hurt arizona or kentucky because the fan base has been loyal to that program. When i came to t. C. U. , we had been to four tournaments in 60 years and when we were in the Mountain West conference, arguably, the Mountain West conference was better than big 12 in terms of basketball depth at one time. But they didnt resonate. Vegas, new mexico, utah, b. Y. U. , san diego state, did not resonate in the metroplex. They were good teams. Didnt resonate. I would suggest as a fan that youre arizona, you can follow those players for four years. They were still oneanddone, players would come and go. Lute olson, every four years he was in the final four. He had an amazing record of getting to the tournament. For us, we were in the Mountain West conference i mean, big 12, we had to invest. We were building a new basketball arena. Why . Because our brand as basketball was nonexistent but if we were going to make any dent in outside exposure, we needed a facility to recruit the finest athletes to compete at the highest level because we dont have a long history of basketball tradition but if you have the shiny new penny and the right coach and they think they do care. Like the new student that sees the new physics building. Same concept in basketball. Were going to make that investment to hopefully you see a return down the road but basketball, the saturation remember when i was running the business out in arizona, we played a cbs game against kansas. At the time, they werent revenue sharing. It was 25,000 for a sunday cbs game. The saturation of College Basketball has gone from big west monday to big east tuesday, every night of the week and now we focus so much on the tournament that in College Football for a moment, every game is critical. Cautionary tale. You got 12 games and you are now watching the media going crazy from, ok, whos in, whos out, whos moving. Its a sixmonth juggernaut of your stomach being tight. I bought a case of pepto bismol because youre drinking it constantly. Every game means something. In College Basketball, you can run through the league, win your tournament and get in. Lose your tournament and get in. Have a magical run in the tournament and next thing you know you got a coach you got to pay. From a fans perspective, i have interest as a fan in random teams because i learn about them, hear their storylines over two, three seasons. Its not oneanddone johnny football. So many people probably never knew kevin durant played basketball at texas. People learned about kevin durant when he got in the nba. What if kevin durant had been there three or four years . That product would have been interesting to watch as a casual fan. The quality of basketball would have been better. Right. But the quality of the product that youre watching. Otherwise, no offense, why would i watch texas basketball . I dont know anything about them. I dont know their players. So as a casual fan you turn into the tournament and duke, north carolina. Magic johnson left after his sophomore year at michigan state. You look at michael jordan. This is not a phenomenon thats recent. Andre iguodala. Its getting worse and more pronounced and certainly at certain schools. Ill admit this, im going to pac12 basketball media day tomorrow and i have to buy at the airport. I cant tell you whos coming back at washington state, at arizona, ucla, maybe u. S. C. But this is my job. And i dont know so the casual fan sure as heck wont know and by the time he does know, the guys gone. How many players have worn a kentucky jersey over the last four years . It hasnt affected their local fan base and attendance. Again, its a different mode