Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Sporting Class: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bracket

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

John Skipper, who is not on this season of The White Lotus, goes behind the scenes of his failed bid for "the evil empire" to steal the rights to March Madness. David Samson, who is trying very hard not to sneeze, takes on the haters of the MLB's money-printing series in Japan. And, yes: Pablo is more valuable than a test pattern.Subscribe to Nothing Personal with David Samsonhttps://davidsamsonpodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by Draft Kings. Draft Kings, the crown is yours. And today we're going to find out what this sound is. Oh, I'm old to Cinderella again. It's so great when St. Francis gets in. Right after this ad.

You're listening to Draft King's Network. Are you done shoving food into your mouth? Are you good? Yes. I somehow it is just it's not the word I would use for Mr. Samson's eating style shoving food in his mouth. He repackaged his candy into a popcorn bag. Well, I don't like sticking my fingers in the candy bag and then in my mouth and then back in my own candy bag.

So I take out of clean hands candy, put it in a separate container that there were no paper cups here. All that was available was a paper popcorn bag. Wait, so wait, what are you concerned about? with your own fingers going back into a bag. Are we really? Okay. My fingers are just as dirty as your fingers. Well, I certainly do not transfer.

It never would occur to me to have a problem. It's the difference between you and I. It just occurs to me. One of the differences. Just one of them. And the differences make for an excellent relationship. Excellent. Not the point.

going. Not to point this dirty finger at one of us in the room today. Just don't touch me with it. Well, John, it's going your direction because we've been getting some viewer mail. And people have noticed that your voice is all over one of the great television shows that's on right now. Are you watching the White Lotus? I have been pressed into watching the White Lotus. We watched it this weekend. Are you aware? Are you a body double by chance? Well, are you suggesting that I look like that guy, Timothy Ratcliffe, or Ratliff, I think they're using in the...

Suggesting. Or that I sound like him, or he sounds like me. By the way, I suspect I'm older. You are older. So that mofo would sound like me, not vice versa. Well, just for the record here, Timothy Ratliff is, in fact, the character's name, Jason Isaac's... Jason Isaac is the actor, and that mofo in any event sounds like this. My grandfather was the governor of North Carolina.

My father was a very, very, very successful businessman. Thank God he's dead. Oh, both my parents. Thank God they are dead. Thank you. Well, since I don't hear myself speak, which is true, I know it's hard to believe, but I don't actually understand how I sound. So it's hard for me to understand if that guy sounds like me.

Well, you have a draw. Oh, no, no, I have a draw. But that's specifically a North Carolina. I mean, that's what he's going for is the point. Oh, it's very specific to very close to where I grew up. I mean, they are from Durham, North Carolina, about 70 miles north east of where I grew up. And, of course, I find the most interesting thing about the show is, of course, who's the greatest douchebag in the show? The Duke guy.

Yeah. In fact, the two. In fact, the father is a Duke guy. And the older son is a Duke guy. The mother is a Carolina graduate. And by the way, I would judge her accent, Parker Posey's accent, is spectacular. And it really does sound exactly like somebody I know.

So every time I hear her speak, she's got it. She's also got that mouth curled downward. She's got that thing about, well, they're not decent. They're not decent. So they do a pretty good job with it. And they got the, I don't quite understand why they expect the rest of the world to care about the rivalry between North Carolina and Duke. But it's like a little Easter egg for me.

And they had a big problem this week. Jason had to... Spoiler alert. No, it's in the news. He got into some trouble. The actor who plays a real-life story. A real-life story where he almost got canceled when he was talking about the size of his penis and he didn't want to answer any questions about it.

And whether it was real or not, that's why I asked whether you were a body double, but you didn't get the jokes. Oh, you're right. He didn't respond. Whatever. Thanks for keeping the show going. Well, just to talk about how the sausage gets made, I guess. It was a fake penis. They're all that.

And so that was the conversation that was had, which was, is that, you know, Marguer Qualley, when she does prosthetics for substance, does that get criticized more? When Mikey Madison does not, does that get criticized less? Are they forced to do it? He was defending his right to a prosthetic penis. He was trying not to talk about it. And he made a quip where he mentioned the names of the actresses, Marra. Greg Wally and Mikey Madison, he got in trouble and then had to release a statement while Mike White was quivering with fear of this could impact his baby. So there was an immediate

statement, a completely crafted statement by Chris's PR. I love a statement. And he backtracked it. And then he threw one out there for all the women out there saying, you have it way harder than I do. Well, you're not trying to make a pun there, are you? No. I'm trying to make a point. I would hope that for his sake, if he was embarrassed potentially by the suggestion that his... He wanted his acting to talk, not the size of his prosthetic. Right. Margaret, by the way.

You make her French. Did I say Maggie? You said Marguerite. You said, like, Margot or something? I may have said Margo. Your accent is also confusing to me. It's sort of a Wisconsin accent with a hint of New York. With notes of vanilla and oak and gravel.

Cat piss. So we bring ourselves here today very conveniently on the subject of March Madness and in fact North Carolina and in fact Duke and in fact the guy sitting next to us who may or may not sound like the guy

with the prosthetic penis because John when you watch the tournament and the tournament is by acclamation I believe the greatest postseason product in televised sports You can debate that. David is wondering if you should debate that.

If you're talking in total numbers, there's just way more games than the NFL playoffs, but I would assume NFL playoffs would be the greatest. I would assume the World Cup is even greater than that. The soccer World Cup, I would put number one. By a factor of two and a half. Okay, so now we're playing for second. But continue, please.

The prospect, though, of single elimination cultural rivalries, executed by teenagers being their own special TV product, John, that has been in the hands of CBS and also at the earlier rounds, right, Turner as well. How jealous did that make you as a president of ESPN? It did make me jealous. We wanted it. It also made me angry at the time

because we at one point made a very, strong push to buy the tournament. I literally cannot remember. If I do remember, I don't mind mentioning the name because it was a reasonable guy, but there was somebody who was in charge of selling the tournament at the time. We had met with the folks at the NCAA, Greg something. And I had a meeting in the park during the Final Four in Indianapolis. It's right outside the hotel everybody stays in and made an offer to buy the tournament.

We proposed immediately taking the tournament to 96 teams. We also proposed televising every game. And before we made that offer, remember in the days before that, they actually regionalized the early round games because CBS could not show but one game. So we thought we had an extraordinarily compelling proposition. We will expand the tournament. We will pay you more money. We will put every game on.

Did you offer ABC? I do not remember that, David. It's a good question, and it would have come up at that time. They would have asked probably. The answer is probably yes. We probably agreed we'd put the semis and finals on, but I don't know that. And we were laser focused on with drive value to ESPN. But we not only made that offer, I stood in the park in Indianapolis and said,

and by the way, if anybody else offers more, come back and see me. Because we were prepared to do, as we've discussed before, David, which is we'll pay the most money, we'll show more games. I've always believed there was, as there always is in college athletics, a committee that was going to make this decision. I know because I talked to some of the committee members that one of the, that they were quite loyal to CBS.

And CBS had done a great job, got no problem with that. I usually found that money trumped loyalty. And by the way, doing a better tournament, more teams, more exposure. And that is the time that TNT saved CBS because they went and said, why don't we do it together? We can put all the games on.

They did not offer more money. So ESPN, your offer was the precipitating event that led to them having to figure out, okay, how do we compete with a network that has all of these other networks also? Well, what they realized is they could get more money by showing more games. And they had no way to do it, which is CBS. So they had to go with the cable partner, which is why there's games on True TV. And the question is, for John, is ESPN, you would have gone Deuce and then three and then four? So what WBD did is they had different channels that they stood up by putting games on that actually helps them get more fees from distributors because true TV, you got to have it.

Every March at least, you're going to see games. And ESPN didn't have that issue because you would just have it all on ESPN networks. Yeah, we may even have had ESPN3 at that point, which allowed us to put, you know, multiple games on. So we could have done, I believe, a better tournament. We also owned the regular season. We had 1,500 regular season games. We made the assertion that, look, it's where people go to watch college basketball. You got college game day.

We should have it over here. At the – where they had the discussion of where they should go. There was loyalty to CBS. And they're also – and I do know this, that part of the conversation was ESPN's got too much. and we don't want ESPN to have everything. We insisted on going to 96. And they did the great thing that the NCAA always does, which is they do something dumb,

which is, let's go to 68. It's like, why would that be the response to, let's go from 64 to 96, right? And 32 teams will get a buy, first round by, and it'll be great, there'll be more games. And they decide to go, though I'm the beneficiary at Carolina. You can have that segue. That's right. Well, how do they decide to go to 68?

It's a ridiculous number. You would never go to... Really went to a 16th measure. Yeah, just like a fractional increase. By the way, David, are you amused that John's philosophy in every instance when it comes to college sports and his reign atop all of it is, can we get more teams into these playoffs? Well, that's clearly what they're trying to do. What amuse me about what his last monologue was that his view of the reason,

the only reason he was turned down. It's like being the best-looking guy in your class and the best-looking girl turns you down. You're like, oh, obviously she's interested in tall or short or fat or skinny. It can't be me. It's not me, it's you. So John's position was very simple.

Hey, I was so good at my job and so big this network that they didn't want to give me more. Well, he said it. By the way, if you took a couple of Venusians and said, here's proposition A, here's proposition B. Gee, you're going to get more teams in. You're going to get it on home college basketball.

You're going to get more money. And this other one. But these guys have been great. They're nice guys. There's no doubt it was a better offer. Option B knows what Greg's last name is. No, no. By way, Greg Shaheen was in charge.

charge of it. And, but he was not the guy in the, um, in the park. No, he was not the guy in the park in a trench coat? No. Because it sounds nefarious to me. No, no. He was a committee member and I, he was sent to sort of get our last, last and best. Which you said to him, by the way, what a great negotiator are. You said to him, this isn't my lester best, my last or best. Please, come to me. Come to me with some made up offer from someone else and I'll beat that too. Well, no, that wouldn't have happened. You just said, come to me with whatever I did. I said come back. Did you ask for it in writing? I actually knew the people involved and I do not believe they would have lied to me. If they would have, perhaps it would take an advantage of me, but I would have had the tournament. And as with all of these things, it would have been very profitable

and very good for our business. And we wanted it. Was ESPN ever asked to join CBS? So my first thought is, if he can't be to join him. So CBS was clearly looking for a partner that had the ability to distribute. It would have made sense to me, though, in the world of playing nice in the sandbox, ESPN would never do that. But having ESPN partner with CBS, why would that be out of the question? It would not have been out of the question. At the time, CBS was looking to cut expenses, I believe it was run at that point by Les Moonvez. Les Moonvez was quite skeptical that they should enter into a new, very expensive deal. And I must give Sean McManus, and David Levy credit,

they banded together to keep the evil empire from taking the tournament by, and T&T took the lion's share of the money, too, and did not, and got a final, I think like in year four or something. So CBS didn't want to give up the semis and the finals, but they ended up doing it. They're now doing it going forward almost every other year.

Yeah. TBS is going to have eight final fours, think in finals in the next whatever 20 years 10 years the agreement runs through 2032 and yes CBS and tbs will continue to alternate coverage of the final four every year but look this is just the tonnage on this obviously we're talking about uh I mean it was originally in 2010 a 14 year 10.8 billion deal uh and the eight additional years of the contract worth 8.8 billion nearly matching the value of the original uh for 14 so the point being Is David going to survive?

Yes, he is. I was going to sneeze, and I made the sneeze a cough thinking that's better for a show. And I don't know which is better, actually. No one ever taught me that. If you're not watching on YouTube, David was what looked like to me

doing a dab. Have you ever tried to move a sneeze to a cough? I don't want to get you off course, but I made a decision, and I didn't know what to do. So you caught me mid, and of course you brought it on to the show. If you're going to sneeze,

I'd appreciate for you. go into the other one. Oh, I'm an elbow sneezer. You get a popcorn bag and sneeze into that. I do that with anxiety. The women's tournament, John. The women's tournament, when you were considering all of this, just to give perspective here, that was not the business that it is becoming, obviously.

The business now, by the way, is regular season ratings up 3% from last year on ESPN, 41% from two seasons ago. So, again, you, you... You are somebody who is also now involved in the business of women's basketball, which we'll also get to. But the women's tournament looks to you like what, as it concerns the college game. The women's tournament is spectacular. In fact, we've had, I think ESPN still has the women's tournament, and that is sold through the NCAA in a big package of other tournaments. The men's tournament was taken out separately.

So we've always had that. It was always good business. It was always fun. it's become better because the level of competition is so much better. The big problem of the women's tournament 15 years ago, and I use that as a rough measure, was that you knew that Tennessee and Connecticut and a few other teams were going to dominate.

Yes. They would frequently win their first round games 86 to 38. And there just wasn't a lot of competition. And there weren't a lot of big stars. There were a few stars, the league now has competition. There are actually upsets. There are lots of good players, and you have transcendent players that people want to see. The men's tournament, everybody wants to see Cooper Flagg. In the women's tournament, you've actually got Paige Beckers and Jujuwai

Wichens. So you've got real star power. The fact that it went up 3%. The 41% of course is a Kately Clark. Clark effect. What you have, and I think we had a discussion here about this, I remember what my point of view was, which was this was, this was, this was, not this Caitlin Clark phenomenon was going to be built upon and was not a one-year phenomenon. That's the news here. That's what has happened. We don't know that that's what people are looking for right now. In the postseason. The regular season so far, though, built on that increase. So he blew by something that I just wanted to stop on and examine where the women's tournament as part of a package, that's a really critical point. So when you're meeting someone in the park

in a trench code and the assets you're discussing are the men's tournament. you're talking only about the men's tournament and there are multiple bidders billion dollar bids when you're talking about the women's tournament the people in the trench coat need to give you a little more they need to open the kimono so what ESPN did because they're looking for program in order to justify distributor fees they need stuff so what they do is in addition to getting the women's tournament they throw in a bunch of stuff that the NCAA on its own would value at zero I mean I'm being cruel but it's very little. And ESPN's willing to do it

because they want the women's tournament because they don't get the men's. In return, the NCAA gets to go to its members and say, hey, I got water polo a TV deal or fencing or soccer or whatever such sport gets locked in that. Well, there was some value, the women's softball,

the college world series for the men's baseball, both very valuable. And those deals with the NCAA were great deals. I forget. We paid. Well, I'll give you some numbers now. So this is the first year, actually, under the $8-year $920 million contract extension between ESPN and the NCAA, the women's tournament specifically valued at $65 million per year through 2032.

The men's tournament, by comparison, $1.1 billion per year. Does that, I mean, I think that we should just understand that we can talk about equality, and there's a whole big thing about equality of pay as it relates to WMBA. and NBA or WNBA and unrivaled or college programs on the women's side and the men's side, the market spoke and it's just not close. So to keep David's math in order, right? So 65 a year, million, nearly twice as much as a $34 million average payout in the previous deal, and yet still compared to the $1.1 billion, not close.

And so when you're out there getting a package, yes, the College World Series and your mind, is valuable because you get the programming of it. You get the sort of the feel good in Omaha. I understand that. It's amazing. But obviously, the NCAA, when they're evaluating it, they put it in the pot and you overpay for the pot because you've got all of the abilities to distribute and the need to distribute it all.

That's how a deal gets made. It's a perfect partnership, BSPN for all of that pot and NCAA. Well, the pot, the overall pot was of great value, right? There's a lot of programming. And for college sports, of course, no matter what you're showing, the uniforms of what people tune in to see, other than where there are big stars, like in the women's tournament or in the men's tournament.

But there really aren't even any big stars in the College World Series. I mean, you're a baseball guy. There's a few each year. Every now and then. Every now and then, you had what was it, Cat Phillips who played women's softball. She was a big enough star. I had that wrong. The pitcher, the underhand pitcher.

Yeah. Cat, gosh. Yeah, I don't think Phillips is right, but Cat is right. Yeah, yeah, Cat Osterman. Osterman. You did have stars emerge, but if the, for instance, if you did do the women's volleyball, which was quite popular, the men's lacquerque, quite popular, field hockey, all those did pretty well on television. What are the numbers for field hockey?

I'm no idea. Come on. What do you value field hockey at? we were at a moment in time where if you put on a test pattern ESPN did about 250,000 viewers so if you're gonna Which is why the people in the parking lot decided not to go into business with you Think about what he just said

He would just as soon put up, pay for zero Put up these squiggly lines As someone who once hosted a test pattern on ESPN Not feeling great That is demonstrably wrong actually I insisted that we program 24-7-365. While many people on cable television were still putting on vacuum cleaner commercials at night,

and my tenure of getting content, we made a decision that we were going to have real sports on, 24-7, almost no repeats. We took off all the hunting and fishing that used to appear on Saturday morning, And you'll remember the days when women dancing on the beach in aerobics classes used to be on Saturday morning at ESPN. And we took all that off because we could afford to. And it did matter over time.

And you didn't get to the $250,000. We never really had a test pattern. You didn't get to that until people knew when you cut the channel on, you're going to get sports. You're not going to get a vacuum cleaner commercial. Sometimes you'll even get Pablo. By the way, I think it is. those sucks less than the other. Not by much. I think it is still the case you can get paid sponsored programming on some of the cable

sports networks to this day. That is a formative part of my childhood, by the way, just like infomercials, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the QVC products that I was suddenly very familiar with. But I do want to get to the joining of these two products, actually from the NCAA's perspective, because part of this deal, the extension, the timing of it that was interesting, was that they run through 2032. So this is lining up the men's and women's, which would allow ostensibly the

NCAA to negotiate simultaneously, and what does that unlock? Does that sound familiar to you? Does it sound like the NBA and WMBA by any chance? Where you lock them up, you get them at the same time, and then you go to ESPN or Turner

or CBS, and all of a sudden it's one buyer. Just throwing it out there. You can then assign any value. you want to the women's tournament. But the women's tournament will be more valuable as it goes up. The more essential foundational question is, will the NCAA be selling it in the next round? And why would they be? Have they demonstrated any significant ability other than the men's basketball tournament

to extract real value? Who would be able to extract value out of field hockey? But this is, I want to actually make this point even more clearly, though, because John is saying something that is, I think, not obvious to most sports fans. The NCAA does not run the college football playoff. The NCAA, when it talks about all the things that it's engaging in litigation over with former athletes, it's really revenues from March Madness. Like, because of the pie of television products, it's mostly March Madness.

So I don't know the exact numbers, but you said it's an average of 1.1, but they're deep into the deal, so they're paying north of 1.1. 1 billion. They distribute, it's findable, but I think they distributed somewhere between 250 and 350 million dollars last year to the schools. Now, do the math on that. Let's assume it's 350 to give them the benefit. That means that there is 750 million dollars that's not being distributed. Why? Because they're paying for a big administrative, body in Indianapolis. They're not paying $750 million for admin fees.

No, no, I didn't say it was admin fees. I was about to want to have this great discussion with you because what you're saying is what will replace the NCAA, you need a governing body. Unless the SEC says, hey, we got 14 in, we're going to try to go to the network. We'll do our own postseason tournament. The conference tournament on steroids will combine with a few other conferences, make a super conference, not go to 98 teams. we'll go down to 32 teams and we'll just make it the best of the best.

Well, I think you're headed in the right direction, but it's not quite right. Look, colleges, athletic departments, college presidents have demonstrated that to get more money, they will do pretty much anything. I don't know why. There's already discussions with SEC and Big Ten sort of bullying into, we're going to get more guaranteed slots in the college football playoff. So they've got the mindset already that we're going to keep other people out. Why wouldn't you create four super conferences, 64 teams, and that's your governing body. Your governing body is we run ourselves like most leagues do. Who else has

FIFA, and you see how great that works. Who else has a governing body, which is an independent third party. The NFL does their own thing. NBA does their own thing. Major League Baseball does their own thing. Why don't four college conferences go? We're going to do our own basketball tournament, 64 teams, and we will now, we'll sell that for a billion and a half dollars, and we'll divide that among our schools, and we will further separate the haves from the have-nots. I hate that. Literary reference alert, animal farm. And why do you hate that? Because you want a Cinderella to get in. St. Francis is in.

The lowest rating. It's so great about John. That's literally what I... He asks you a question, but then he answers it for you. And also, if you're not watching on YouTube, fluttered his hands around. Oh, I want to send a little to see. It's so great when St. Francis gets in.

It's great on the St. Francis campus. I guarantee you all the broadcasters are going, oh, my God. Can't you just put... By the way, they'll get it. us to the controversy out of North Carolina. The broadcasters are going. This is, of course, it goes back to North Carolina.

Everybody's going to bring Bubba. But the people to blame are, if you are the broadcaster, you want the best teams. I would go to a 64 team tournament. You're going to try to say, I influenced it. I didn't because we couldn't. Why would I try to say that? Now you're answering questions and you're actually saying affirmative statements. Frankly, Pablo, I think you and I can have the rest of the day off.

I think we just give John the show, let him ask you. the questions, answer the questions, and then say exactly what we're going to think. Because if you were doing that, I would say what I was going to say to you is that you deny all the time that you had nothing to do. Hey, the Marlins, they're in. That's great. No problem. We love them. We're so happy to have them. It's horse hockey. You would prefer to have just North Carolina. You'd prefer to have North Carolina and Duke do everything. Well, I would actually prefer to just be able to declare that North Carolina has one every year. That would make me the happiest. I now realize that David and I are doing the thing where he sees the Marlins and I see Davidson.

I see Steph Curry. David sees the Marlins. I see George Mason. You know, like the idea of the under, I mean, as much as there is a poetic, you know, vastly non-the-lens montage thing we can flutter our arms about. The whole magic of why I said by popular acclamation, this is a special thing, is because, in fact, it is the underdog. capacity. You know how much money there is in the two words, upset alert? Upset alert is a foundational concept of the March Madness tournament. You still have an upset alert. You put 64 teams in. They are the 64 teams that make up

conference A, B, C, and D. And then when the 15 seed upsets from the SEC upsets the number three seed from the Big Ten, that's an upset alert. And it's two teams that more people care about. And forget for a minute whether it's a better aesthetic event. What do you think any of the college commissioners and presidents care? They want more money. We haven't we talked on this show over and over? The fans are never considered. They're not doing Cinderella for you, Pablo. I know. They, when they can, if they could look at, instead of splitting up, the individual conferences end up getting 35 million, 40, 50, 60 million. If you could look at splitting up a billion and a half, that's $375 million distributed to 16 schools.

So I'm not suggesting I think it's more poetic or more interesting or you can't, you have these beautiful stories. I'm just suggesting the economic value of that. 375, I can't quite do the math with 16, but it's close to $25 million of school. So you think if somebody could get those guys in a room and go, why don't you do this? Well, why would they do it? It's the same reason why the Yankees and Red Sox don't split off and form their own league, because they've threatened that before, and the reason they never do it is they recognize that actually no one wants to see a season or a world or a league where it's just the elite teams

from two or three cities. That's called the World Cup. That's called the playoffs, the NFL playoffs. But you need a league. Well, you have a league. You have 64 teams. And, by the way, there's another beautiful thing, which is they can't play,

the outset is playing football, and they can only play each other. So now every week you're getting 32 games that are good games. What are the games? By the way, you love those underdogs. So you must love when Alabama beats, State, 56 to 3.

And when... Right. This is his programmer talk. So he's talking about he wants those playoff type games with those same... It's why you see Red Sox Yankees Sunday night baseball every Sunday. That is what the dream is of someone in his position. But that is the dream of someone who doesn't have ownership of a league or of a team because it doesn't actually increase the value of your program if you're shrinking down all

of the possible opponents and putting yourself in an ivory tower like that. It's why they've never done it. So if you knew that every time Alabama played, they were going to play a division one team from a major conference. Would that make you happy or sad that you're going to miss Alabama beating up on some poor school for a million dollars? I think that when it comes to the regular season, actually, I'm okay with John's plan to bolster the strength of schedule. Totally cool with that. the whole point of college basketball, though, I think is to reinforce the first word in the name. And maybe, John, your position is merely that we are so past that at this point that it's naive to argue for a replication of what college is, meaning that Auburn is actually in the same world as Alabama State.

But that, to me, is entirely the appeal of March Madness and the tournament. It may be, but it's not, it's, we've already decided it's a professional sport. They get paid. They do, but you, the current offer, you're saying a billion dollars is where they are in their current TV deal for the 68 member tournament. Yep. In a deal that you have acknowledged that you would take over today if given the opportunity and still running the SPN. Today, you would want to do the tournament exactly as is. As much as you complain about it, you would take the 68,

seems right now. I think I'd take 65, 67, 6, and 67. Even if I knew that North Carolina, even if I knew North Carolina was 60, no, no, I'm telling you my preference. No, the 68's ridiculous. But no, I'd want 96. It's never even been a consideration to expand the tournament to that number. Oh, no, it has been. Because. It has been. So, I want to hear about this, because why would they, why would they not taking the money? Beyond John in his Watergate parking line. lot with a trench coat. Has there been momentum to 96 teams outside of you? I know that the NCAA has discussed it several times, and it will happen at some point

because they'll want to get more money. And then we'll argue about... But you were offering it 10 years ago. I know. So what do you mean it'll happen one day? It will happen one day. You were already in the market offering more money for 96, and it was turned down, and we're here all these years later, two extensions later, and it's never been put to 96.

It's because of the beauty of a committee. And the committee decides that the right number to go from four, and this is now back to the football, is four to 12. The right number to go to is eight or 16. So you're saying that's a vestige of the politics that's not going to be irrelevant because the haves and have-nots are already very evidently one or the other. He's saying something even more. I'm going to speak for him.

He's actually saying that his view is in 2032, it's not going to be the NCAA. who's going to be negotiating a new deal on behalf of men's college basketball. It's going to be an entity controlled by what he hopes is going to be four power conferences. I didn't, by the way, I'm not hoping for it. I'm expressing my opinion that with this amount of money at stake, the halves are going to decide we want to keep more of that money. And we're going to keep more of that money by restricting who gets into the tournament and by the way, and 96 is too many teams in a way, right?

It's too many. You've already got... So you're backing off the 96? No, no. You're confusing my personal what I won't from what I think will happen because of the influence of money in the game. So we're distinguishing between John Skipper, man who is trying to maximize the financial incentives of everybody

as the president of a media empire. and now John as normal North Carolinian. Family, head of a family. That's right. With a large tournament field. My grandfather was a governor in North Carolina. And my father was a very successful businessman. And they're both dead.

And thank God the Lord took them. How much money is going to the players in your scenario? Well, there you go. you could solve some of the NIL problem by taking half of that money, and now I'm just making this up, so I might be thinking something stupid. You take half that money, and you just say, every team gets this amount of money, and you stop the craziness of having these events

where a thousand players go into a portal and go to the highest bidder, which means that's a worse having. I thought you love that. That's pure free agency. Well, I'm not necessarily for pure, I wasn't really for NIL, but they've decided they're going to pay the players. They've ended up with a system which is ridiculous. It means that, you know, your local car dealer can go buy you a quarterback and you're better. Wouldn't it be better if you took that money from the NCAA basketball tournament and actually set a wage scale and said,

here's what players are going to get paid so that you don't have this ridiculous, you know, nine players out of a 12-person squad going to the portal and you're a fan and you now no longer even know who your team is? He confuses me. I assume that if I had to know John Skipper, that he would be a huge fan of the portal, of a person's inalienable right to maximize their profit-making ability as a worker in the fields with their backs burning in the sunlight.

As always, David... They usually play inside. You underestimate sports is preeminent socialist capitalist. Exactly, I'm a socialist capitalist. He tries to tell me that, and I don't know what he means.

I don't understand. It just makes him feel better, I guess. I would like to ask you both, what is burning inside of your brains beyond capitalism, socialism, and all of that? because David, you've had a big week on nothing personal talking about the business of now international baseball. Is that where you want to go?

I would like to talk about international baseball because there is money to be made and baseball was cashing checks this week and there was a lot of domestic criticism and it's so misguided by people in the media or just haters who don't understand how you could play baseball at 6 a.m. New York time each morning, Tuesday and Wednesday.

But the fact is these games were not for the U.S. As shocking as that sounds, these games were for Japan and for the Japanese people, and they were 7-10 p.m. games in Japan, and MLB printed money. The Dodgers won two games against the Cubs. Is that what you're about to ask? No, I was going to say,

why is anybody upset about that? What's a problem? Oh, people have gone crazy over. Now you've watered down opening day by starting the season. These are real games. These count in the standings. Regular season games where MLB made as much

money in these two regular season games as any other regular season games you can make. So of course they're going to go to Japan because Japan keeps pain. I don't understand the objection. People, I have no objection. People object to 6 a.m. start times, 3 a.m. in L.A. if you're going to watch the game. They can't watch it in America conveniently. Aren't there 162 games? Are there people who are...

Opening day is a holiday, though. Opening day, you don't go to school. You watch games all day. There's afternoon games as well. And so it waters it down. It used to be the first game of every year. Quick trivia. Do you know where the first game was every single year in baseball?

You should actually know this, Mr. Programmer, who loves baseball so much. And you would never show them on ESPN. So it's not the Yankees of the Red Sox. And it created a whole big thing within the room because the Cincinnati Reds started every season. And you and Coco will check me. The Great American Ballpark. It was not the Great American Ballpark. when this tradition started, but it is now.

Just an audacious name to name anything. And so it would be the first, no, that's it named after a company. It's not named after like, because it's the greatest. Hold on. I'm sorry. Wait, am I wrong on that? I believe that. So, okay, hold on.

In your defense, I am being told that great American insurance group. Okay. Still an audacious name to name your insurance group, but now I digress. Just to me right. Cincinnati, you would never put them on the air. And that was the first game that was supposed to be. That was a thing. But ESPN, back in your day, back in my day,

had zero interest in having the Cincinnati Reds start off of baseball season. And so that's when we went to the defending champions the night before the start of opening day as a way to get a little extra money from you. And that's when we went to actually opening nights and opening days on the same day. Good idea. Good idea. You're such a hater. On this, I am, I think that baseball going abroad to play games solves several problems.

They can go play somewhere where it's warm. My most miserable opening day experience was being at the Chicago Cubs opener and getting snowed upon. And that is a problem. You weren't in a suite at Wrigley? No, I was... You were in the stands? I have John in the stands like he was at Trump's inauguration. In the back, in the back of...

No, no, I think it's quite good, and I'll also say something else positive about baseball here. Baseball is a sport with true international appeal, and I think they can build upon that. They're doing it smartly here, and they should do it. And I'm perplexed, because I think there's still 162 games. I know opening day is special, but if anybody who's a baseball fan ends up the end of the year and goes, oh my gosh, I just wish we had 10 more games.

I'd be shocked. We have approximately, speaking of time and games allotted, we have only a couple minutes, John, for you to say what is burning inside of your brain? Well, since we've pre-planed this, what's burning inside of my brain? brain is, I was assigned that me, I was, I was, I was, I was a sign that burning inside my brain is unrivaled.

I have to disclose that I am, have some level of investment in that league, had a very successful final weekend, and in fact had a very spectacularly successful opening season. Yes, the Rose are the champions. This is Angel Reese's team without Angel Reese, but they are, The newly crowned, spoiler alert. Because she got hurt playing in an off-season non-WNBA sanctioned tournament. Well, it is off-season, but when you say non-sanction, I'm not sure what that means. Are they partners, Adam Silver, your partner?

The WM, neither the WNBA nor the NBA has any financial or perhaps any interest in the leagues. Maybe a negative interest, actually. But no, no, this is no different. We started a league. And it started during the off season. Nobody is prohibited from playing basketball in the off season. It was one of the real concerns. So I don't want to be flipping about that, that people would get hurt.

No one got seriously hurt. And I think Angel Reese was kept out in an abundance of collusion. Thank you. I was struggling with that. But 364,000 people watched this team without Angel Reese win the title on TNT and True TV, which is, again, we'll talk more about this later, but that's just an impressive number for year one of a new thing, a three-on-three league. Most leagues don't even make it past a year.

Some leagues don't get through a full year, and you've done that, and I can't wait for you to announce year, too. Look up what the three-on-three old basketball. football player league what ratings they did big three yeah not quite the same not quite the same not quite is great um but for us here at the great american sports business podcast otherwise known to the sporting class um thank you both right at time can't believe that see you later get your popcorn ready pablo tore finds out is produced by walter a baroma ryan cortez sam daywig juan gilando patrick kim Lohman, Rob McCray, Rachel Miller Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tuminello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems.

Our sound designed by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. We will talk to you next time.