The Ryen Russillo Podcast - The NFL GM with Robert Mays, Plus NCAA Transfer Guidelines | Dual Threat With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Russillo talks with The Ringer's Robert Mays about the position of an NFL GM, how the job compares to GM positions in other leagues such as the NBA and MLB, and how sharing executive power with coaches can affect the job (0:10). Then Russillo talks about the NCAA transfer rules, and both sides of the coin when players lose their eligibility when switching schools (23:05). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, welcome to a surprise edition and we got two more of these for the dual threat podcast. We'll pick it back up again once the football gets rolling along and joining me today from the ringer, a guy that's joined me a bunch of times here. It is Robert Mays. What's up, man? All right. Not too much, man. Thanks for having me. I always love doing this. Yeah. So there's a couple of things that I wanted to get to, but I do always love the GM stuff and how the jobs differ and how baseball's GM job has evolved into this thing where they think managers are the most pointless things ever. And when you think about it, if you're a baseball team, why wouldn't you spend all of this money on a baseball team like why why wouldn't you spend all

of this money on on a baseball gm as opposed to like a backup second baseman and that you know a lot of this stuff is shifted so a lot of this stuff is important um the nba gm you could argue is more important than the nba head coach but ultimately it's so much a player's league that you could also make an argument that it may not matter who the hell is running the team but in the nfl we have seen kind of this, I don't know if it's a power shift, Robert. You wrote about this a couple weeks ago. How would you best describe right now

how the NFL GM position has changed and maybe lost power? I think the appeal of it has deteriorated in a little bit of a way because, I mean, you look at what happened in Houston and the idea that you have Bill O'Brien who, you know, they go nine and seven every year for the most part. It's not as if they're winning 11 games in the division and going deep into playoffs. And he's gotten two coaches fired in two years because he's the one that's consolidated power there. And I think you see that in other places. I mean, Adam Gase stayed

in New York. I mean, he's the one that got hired recently and they fired the GM. Steve Keim is the exception to that rule. But for the most part, I just think you have these coaches that wield more power in these organizations than the guys building the teams. And that makes these jobs not as appealing as they used to be. If you're somebody looking at the Texans job, if you're Nick Casario, for instance, do you really want to go to a place where a guy got two coaches fired in the last two years? Or do you want to wait for a job that's better than that? And I just feel like all of these gigs that would open up have so many downsides that, and especially when you consider that these guys really get one shot. There's so few repeat GMs in the league. So I just think that it's really important to pick the right spot when you decide to get that job. And not that many of the right

jobs are coming open. But at the same time too, like, how do you wait on that? How do you, if you haven't had the job before, there's very few people that go, well, you know what? I'm going to turn this one down because it's not a great fit when you've worked your whole life for this. So I'm not pushing back on your point, but it just, it's hard. It's hard if you've wanted to do this your whole life to not take a situation that, you know, probably isn't that great for you. I think that's true. It's a matter of how much you're getting paid in the other spot. It's a matter of how much power you have there. I mean, I feel like what Casario had in New England, what he has still is a good job, but he's probably making less than a million dollars a year. The GM job would be a huge raise. But if you're somebody that doesn't kind of aspire to that level of ambition, if you just like making a decent amount

of money and being the second guy and not having to be a forward-facing person getting peppered by the press, I can understand why you wouldn't necessarily be into that idea. But I do think that this is a career in a world full of people with pretty big egos. So I understand what you're saying. I think most people probably are wired like that. See, that's something I completely agree. Like I love when we'd be doing talk shows and guys would say, why would you want to leave, you know, that town and you're making seven figures and all this stuff. She's like, yeah, but that's not the point. Like none of these guys are ever wired that way. No guy's ever wired to be like, you know what? I don't want to be in charge or I don't want to see if I can do this on my own. I can't imagine how difficult it is for GMs that have to check with the head

coaches. Um, and knowing that, you knowing that no matter what, when it comes down to that pick in the third round, the coach has the final say over me. So is that happening more and more in the NFL now where you feel like the coaches have veto power over what the GMs want to do when they put together the roster? I would say yes. I think a lot of places you're seeing the coaches really drive a lot of personnel decisions. I mean, San Francisco is a good example. And those guys came in on exact equal footing.

Six-year contracts, came in together the same year. But you can definitely see Kyle Shanahan's imprint on how they built that roster. And I just feel like those coaches are so important to sustaining success. You know, guys like Andy Reid, guys like Sean McVay. I mean, Shanahan, in my opinion, is kind of in this mold, too. That play-calling offensive head coach that really shapes who your franchise is and how you can be good on the field consistently, those guys just seem to have more say over time

than GMs that they may have even come in with the same year. So what's the list right now? O'Brien is able to win, what, two power struggles here. Yep. Um, Gase, I have to imagine, even though he won the McKagan thing, which is so weird and how fast it all goes down, but is Adam Gase now reporting to Joe Douglas or is Joe Douglas going to have to listen to Adam Gase? It seems like it's probably going to be Joe Douglas having as much power or more power than Adam Gase. I wouldn't put Gase in that list. It's just kind of the timing of it was just a little bit odd. I would say McVay is probably on that

list. I'd say Shanahan is on that list. Weirdly, Mike Zimmer has a lot of say in how the Vikings build their roster. You know, Rick Spielman's very well respected, but I think Zimmer has gotten a whole lot of power in Minnesota. If you want to keep going, I think O'Brien's there, obviously Belichick. Sean payton is has a huge hand in how the saints are built i mean his kind of ascension to a different personnel role with that franchise has really affected how successful they've been you've seen how well they've drafted as of late i mean that's a team that really has a piecemeal front office because mickey loomis does both gm jobs andy reed is there even though he doesn't have nearly as much of a hand in personnel

there as he did when he was in Philadelphia because he doesn't necessarily want it. But I would say that's kind of the short list if I was building it just off the top of my head. So let's examine the Dorsey one there a little bit. Now, when he's out at KC, and Reid, you know, like, you know, if it's going to be Andy Reid as your head coach, like he has, I always think the Andy Reid criticism is interesting because part of it was Philly. Part of it was obvious clock management things that did not work out. But if every other coach

seems to rave about the way this guy designs offenses, and by the way, as an old school guy evolves to put together what we just saw this past year, then he must be doing something right. But yet Dorsey has done what he's done now with Cleveland. How did that divorce happen? And is that just another example of essentially like a guy can lose a job who's still great at doing the job? Yeah, I think that's the best example because John Dorsey did do a really good job assembling that roster, but you can't lose Andy Reid. Andy Reid is the DNA of that entire building. And if you talk to guys on that team, the reason that they have the success they do, the reason they are what they are in pretty much

every level is because Andy Reid's DNA is in that entire team. And you just can't risk losing that. So if you have any sort of struggle between those two parties, John Dorsey, who did a great job, is probably going to lose his job. So that's a really good one because I feel like Dorsey wouldn't be the type of guy you'd expect to lose out on something like that. But when you have a guy like Andy Reid, what are you going to do? He definitely deserves to have kind of the trump card in that entire situation because of what he can build. Is it even worth bringing up the Rivera-Gettleman one? That's a good one too, I would say. I would say that Ron Rivera, again, it's these guys that have been there for so long. And Rivera's in a slightly different conversation. He's closer to Zimmer, where they're not that offensive head coach that really builds one side of the ball that is the most important in sustaining success. But I definitely think that he's probably in that second tier with your Zimmers and a couple of those other guys. Marvin Lewis was in there for a little while. He had a huge hand in personnel. He was probably closer to what Gettleman and

Zimmer were, even if he had more say in how the 53 went. But there's definitely a second tier that Rivera's probably in. Okay. So now we go through all of this stuff and you start doing it. You go, well, in football, and I guess I'll make examples of the other sports here in a second, but is it actually the right way to do the job though? Like, why would you ever want to be so in control that you were putting together a roster that your coach doesn't want? And, you know, the NBA, I guess I'll back this up a little bit. Like NBA scouts always tell you, like, there's nothing better than when the NBA staff starts watching the NCAA tournament when we've been watching those players all year long, right? And they'll see a guy and they go,

oh my God, this guy's amazing. We got to go ahead and draft him. You're like, okay, yeah, but you didn't see him struggle through conference play like yes he's put together a couple nice tournament games but now you're doing this small sample thing i've been watching this guy for two years i get 60 games it's just you're you're wrong you're wrong on this but the coaching staff's like no we're right but ultimately the basketball formula is how many of the top guys can we get on the same team and then figure it out afterwards so it's not not like, oh, I want pass first guys, or I want tough rebounders, or I want all these, I want this specific style of play. It's about just getting the best players. Baseball is actually probably easier to figure out like, hey, this is what this guy does over a three-year

stretch. Let's grab him. Let's not grab this other guy who's declining dramatically and all these new analytics, spin, velocity, all this different stuff. But in football, even if you're the general manager and that's a name or we're used to thinking that that person has all the control, you'd just be doing a disservice to your own job security, I imagine, if you started putting together a roster the coach doesn't want in the first place. Well, you have to have massive job security to do that.

Like Bruce Allen can lock Jay Gruden out of the room because Bruce Allen's never getting fired in Washington. But in other places, that's not. Is that what happened, by the way, with Haskins? Because that's what I've heard. I heard that Jay did not have much say in who the players were that they picked and who the players were that they signed,

which is a great way to build your roster. Wait a minute, just back up on that. Think how insane that is. It's nuts. If that's all the way true that it was that, no, we want Haskins and we'll let you know who we drafted after the draft coach. It's nuts. If that's all the way true that it was that, no, we want Haskins and we'll let you know who we drafted after the draft coach. It's nuts. I think that when you've seen teams that eventually start to be more successful, Atlanta was kind of like that. When Atlanta was

getting built under Dimitrov when Mike Smith was there, there was definitely not a well-worn path between those two sides of the building. And then when Dan Quinn got there, he gave a massive presentation in his first week to the personnel staff. He's like, these are the types of players that we want. And you can see just kind of that symbiotic relationship play out with the types of defensive players they've drafted. And I think that's what you should do. Saying that, it's a delicate balance because you're right. You don't want that coach coming in saying, Oh, I love this guy. You know, I cannot believe that we can use him like this in our offense. And I think San Francisco is kind of like that right now. You know, to draft a guy like Jalen Hurd in the third round, when you already have a pretty loaded, crowded group of

skill position players and nobody on defense, I'm not sure I love that, even if Kyle Shanahan is salivating watching that guy. So I think it's tough to find the right balance between those two things, but I definitely think you need to try to find it. More with Robert Mays in a second, including, does he think the Redskins are the worst setup for an organization between front office and coach? And also, I'm going to talk a little bit about transfers in college football with a new decision coming out this week. But first, I want to remind you about Golf Digest School. This is an awesome deal, man.

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That's 30% off an annual subscription. That's golfdigest.com all access and use the promo code dual for 30% off today. So as we kind of explain that out there and into detour a little bit from what we're doing, is, is Washington, the worst setup then from front office to coach. I think from the ones that have been there for a while and the new ones are kind of hard to understand, you know, who knows how green Bay is going to go. Who knows even if Freddie kitchens was there last year, how it's going to go? Who knows, even if Freddie Kitchens was there last year, how it's going to go in Cleveland?

But for the coach that's been there for at least three, four years, I would definitely say that's the hardest divide that I've heard about. Okay. So the Belichick one, I've always, like back to when Pioli was there and when Pioli left,

that was such a long time ago, but people would go, oh boy, that's going to hurt. Pioli's been awesome. And then I was told, no, Pioli's good, but Belichick's calling the shots here. Pioli executes the plan. That's all it is. Hey, I want this kind of player. All right, Scott. It's like, hey, these are the kind of players you said you wanted. And then Belichick's like, all right, I'll go ahead and do this. How has that worked beyond all the salary cap stuff that they've been lucky with, with Brady and everything else? But how does it work where it feels like the guy just has a plan that everybody else around

him, and now it's been Nick, is executing this and it stayed this consistent? I think it's because he does have the final say. And it's all about, you know what he does, though? It's two things. One, I feel like it's important to have people in the room that are going to say no to Belich does have the final say. And it's all about, you know what he does, though? It's two things. One, I feel like it's important to have people in the room that are going to say no to Belichick in the right scenarios. Because there are times, I feel like, where he does some weird stuff in the draft. But when it comes to everything else, I just think he does such a great job of empowering

everyone in the building to understand that they should be looking where no one else is looking. And that's, I feel like, what Nick does such a good job of is understanding inefficiencies, where the league is zigging where they can zag. And that's what he does. And I think if that's kind of your organizational mindset, it's easy for people to kind of sift in and out of there and maintain the same approach.

So because Belichick is at the top kind of maintaining and just ensuring that that's how they think about things, it's easy to replace guys when other organizations would have a difficult time doing it. In the NBA, there's an example like with Palenka, okay, where he had to do the Anthony Davis deal no matter what because everybody was anti him after this past year. And then, you know, the Heath Ledger story happens.

Like, this stuff happens. It becomes part of the perception where everybody's going, wait a minute, this guy has no clue what he's doing. And the NBA GM job can be about survival and going, I'm going to make a trade that I know isn't even that great, but it may just find a way to salvage this. Stan Van Gundy did that with the Pistons and the Blake Griffin things. Like I'm probably getting fired anyway, after being in charge of this whole thing, having GM and coaching duties. So I'll just make this trade. Is there an NFL example of that? Is that perhaps, I mean, that's not what Jason Light is doing in Tampa.

It feels like Jason's like, all right, new coach and a last ditch effort to make the Jameis Winston pick work out. I don't know if there's a similarity of what I've just explained with the NBA examples or if that relates whatsoever to Tampa. I think Tampa is a unique case because for them, Jason Light's going to try to spin, well, I just got the right coach in here. Let me try to find the right quarterback next year. So that's how you can kind of extend your stay. But in other places, I think the comparison that you're trying to make is about staying with the status quo. It's about not making huge risky moves.

So for a team that has a B-plus quarterback, let's say, so like with Jacksonville, for instance, or if you consider how you filled the buttock Prescott, Jared Goff, these guys that are going to be coming up for extensions. I feel like the things that ownership and the personnel departments want to do is kind of maintain what they have. It's to say, oh, let's just keep going with this because if I give this guy a three-year extension, maybe I'll get to keep my job. So I think it makes teams less risk averse because they're trying to keep their job. Job security is a huge part of this, but in the NFL, I don't think it leads to huge risky moves. I think it leads to safe moves that you can kind of sell your owner on. I mean, look at the Giants. That's all that is, is the owner wanting to maintain what they have and not do anything that's hugely outside the box.

So Gettleman's told, hey, status quo here for a little while. But then what's the Daniel Jones pick? So that couldn't have been ownership. I think that's probably just it's time. I mean, they held on to Eli for two years longer than they should have. And they probably have seen the writing on the wall, but they should have seen it a long time ago. So I assume that holding on to Eli and just everything that happened with the benching,

they were furious. That's an ownership thing. I really do think a lot of these owners don't want to do anything radical because they just fear it. I mean, so many teams do the safe thing all of the time. And I think that a lot of that is driven by ownership. And a lot of that is driven by GMs wanting to keep their jobs. So the future of this is what? Right now, the top of the food chain is the offensive-minded head coach. We know that with all the recent hirings. That person right now, that profile will have the most power with an NFL franchise, correct? Yes, I would say that's number one.

And when is that going to change? When half of these guys get fired in 18 months? Yeah, I mean, with all of these movements, there are always terrible hires that come out of them. I still think it's the way I would roll the dice if I was trying to hire a head coach. But no matter what, one of these guys, whether it's the floor, Kingsbury, maybe even kitchens is going to flame out in terrible fashion because that's just how it goes. I don't think that disproves that it's the right way to build, but I do think there are going to be some terrible outcomes here.

Yeah, that's my, I can't tell you which two are the flame outs. I can only tell you two, three of them are going to be like, oh, that was a disaster. So my bets probably in Cincinnati, that's where I would put my first bet. Taylor. Yeah. I would say he was my number one candidate. I mean, he's, it was a part of a great staff and they did a great job building that offense, but no point in talking to him in the times that I have was I like, Oh, this guy's just a ball of charisma. He's going to be a great head coach. And some guys aren't like that. You know, Andy Reed's not like that, but I do think that he's never come across that way to me. So my, my money would be

on him. But again, I have no idea. I'm with you. Okay, I have one more thing that I want to ask you. I want to ask you about something that just feels incredibly outdated. But if teams can get away with it, they're still going to keep doing it. But before we do that, heads up, folks, because you know what's coming. It's part of a 600-year Polish vodka-making tradition. Belvedere vodka is all natural and made with 100% non-GMO Polska rye and pristine water. Belvedere has championed Polska rye vodka and superior natural ingredients since its inception and continues their mission with its new Belvedere Single Estate Rye Series. Smagori Forest and Lake Bartezek are two distinct tasting vodkas, both from the unique terroir and expert craftsmanship.

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estate rye vodkas on the rocks or in a delicious cocktail today. Belvedere is a quality choice. Drinking responsibly is too. Bobby wagner explain to me what the seahawks are doing and this isn't exactly anything new by the way and trying to figure out how to pay him i don't know what they're going to end up doing it just feels like this is not going to go in the way that it has with some other stars where they're saying we're going to franchise him we're going to go in the way that it has with some other stars where they're saying, we're going to franchise him. We're going to kind of see if we can play this out and avoid it. It just doesn't feel like the right move with somebody who's been the

centerpiece of your defense for so long and is such an identifying player for your franchise. When you not only have one, it just feels like that's not going to be the way they treat him. So if they don't do that, I'll be curious what the negotiations look like. It's complicated by the fact that he's representing himself. So I feel like in that part of it, he may just say,

I'll take the highest paid linebacker contract and that'll be fine with me. But what I wrote today is that if you're looking at a player like Bobby Wagner, why should his ceiling and what he deserves to get paid be the highest paid linebacker? When Aaron Donald came up and he was getting the franchise tag and he was not necessarily hitting the open market, the Rams said, we're going to make you the highest paid defensive player because that's what you're worth. And when I look at what Bobby Wagner's impact is on that team, why isn't he getting paid more like Khalil Mack and Aaron Donald and these $20 million defensive ends that are less than him than CJ

Mosley. And I think that's all the stuff that they have to consider here over the next couple months as they figure out what they want to pay him. Yeah, that would make sense because this whole thing, going back to the, who is it, Jimmy Graham, where do I line up, Tony Gonzalez, the DN versus defensive interior, and you just be like, no, we're allowed to pay you this because you're this and this and this. At some point, you have to just be able to say, I shouldn't have to go on the national average of what my position is. Absolutely not, especially when you consider how I think linebacker value is changing. This isn't a league anymore where your middle linebacker is playing downhill and is a run defender first and foremost. First

of all, you don't have a middle linebacker anymore because you only have two linebackers on the field at all times. So those guys have to cover way more ground and coverage. He's an awesome pass rusher. He's just a defensive player. And if you look at how much teams are throwing in the middle of the field now, I think around the Patriots and the Chiefs are both around 40%. They're near the top of the league, and they're the best offenses. Why wouldn't you pay the guy who defends that area of the field a little bit more?

These outdated opinions of what certain positions are worth and how they affect negotiations and stuff. I just think it's time to kind of step back and consider, even if you do play that position definitively, how has that position changed as the league has changed? Thanks as always, man. You can check out Robert May's stuff on The Ringer. Talk to you soon. Thanks, bud. I want to spend a few minutes on college football transfers and that story and how it kind of relates to everything because people are losing their minds on this one. And

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with college football. So if we think about what kids should get and what they shouldn't get, and that's what we're talking about. As I'm getting older, you start thinking, okay, college age kids are asked to do a lot that are athletes, the platform that they have, the stage that they're on, and it just gets younger and younger all the time. Just look at this Clemson quarterback, right? Younger kids are doing more. And part of me is always wondering, were people ridiculous and not allowing these guys to play more? I remember I did a Nissan Heisman house this past fall out of Penn State. Kajana Carter came and talked, and I started researching because I'll sit in the hotel room the night before, and I'll research the guest. And

you have these two long interviews, and you end up learning all this stuff about guys you didn't know anything about. And Kajana Carter barely played his freshman year. And Joe Paterno was like, hey, sorry, we just don't play you. It's like, this dude's going to be a number one pick. And you know what? We had a mindset in football and it even happened. I mean, college basketball back in the day, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was on the freshman team when he was Luau Sindor. And he was the only, the only team that could beat the UCLA team was the freshman team with Kareem. So, you know, this stuff happens and we do it under the premise that we're protecting the kid because the kid is a kid and they're just not ready for all this stuff. And I think we've seen more and more recently, like all of this stuff was outdated. None of it really mattered. It may be even, maybe adults

thought they were doing the right thing, but it's been proven that you don't need to protect everybody. And sometimes I'm, I'm all for let, let the, let the college. And I'm, I don't know if I'm using the wrong terminology here. Maybe somebody would be like, Hey, you shouldn't call it a kid, young adult and all this stuff. Like, can we not have that fight right now? But you understand my premise. Like we just, we need to accept that people are going to make mistakes at every age of their life and just because you're younger and you're making mistakes it doesn't it doesn't mean that that mistake is going to prevent you from doing like whenever i

hear oh this kid left the nba left college basketball and he went to the nba draft way too early oh where was he three years later he flamed out you go okay but you're doing this thing where you have an excuse to point to a way to label this a mistake only because the kid was young and shouldn't have left school early. But you're conveniently forgetting the examples. And there's way more of those guys that stayed four years, never even got drafted or stayed four years, got drafted, and they flamed out too. There's just as many, if not more, right? So now when we look at college football and basketball transfers, because those are the ones we get really worked up about,

there was a thought at the time to, you know, hey, sit out the year because we can't have this be a free-for-all. It can't be chaos. And I know that I kind of was always like, look, man, the sitting out the year thing kind of sucks. But if you don't have some kind of penalty, then every kid's going to be transferring all of the time. And it's going to be out of control. And yet you're still actually having that. Some of the college basketball numbers, Jeff Goodman's tracked this over the years. It's like, hey, here's a few hundred. It's like, okay, we're at 750 transfers before the deadline is even closed for this stuff. So if you just allowed everyone to transfer no matter what and you didn't need a waiver, how chaotic would it get? The whole reason I'm reading for

Stu Mandel's piece here on The Athletic of why you had to sit out a year, the reasoning for this was that the athletes who changed schools needed a year to adjust to their new university. So the kids now that are getting up at six in the morning to lift weights and 8 a.m. and meetings and then go to class and then after class, they go to practice. And, you know, if you lived with any athletes while you were in college, as great as their deal was, there still was a ton of time. Those guys were gone all the time. And they're watching you go out on a Thursday and they're like, this sucks. Like, well, no, it doesn't suck. Like every girl likes you and your life is way easier because you're an athlete. And I didn't even go to a school that like was littered with a ton of athletes, but it

still worked out pretty well for them. And it wasn't exactly an SEC football school I was going to. All right. So we all get the point there, but I would still have those moments where my roommate be getting up at five in the morning and he'd go to lift and I'll admit that I was actually kind of jealous, but I didn't want to get up at 5 a.m. at 19 and then sit in meetings and then have to go to class and then watch everybody else go out and do all those things. The time commitment, the things that we're asking these kids to do is ridiculous. So, or it was just part of the deal, right? You signed

up for it, you get the free education. So to say, oh, well, you really, you're going to need a year just to kind of, you know, learn where the study hall is and make sure you go to the right cafeteria and, you know, in case we need to pick up some toiletries off campus, you know, six, seven months or so on campus should get you ready. And then you can come back and play football or basketball. Okay. Well, that's a joke. That's not really what the reason was. It was trying to deter anybody who was good at transferring, because if your staff put in all this time to try to recruit somebody that was good, that you even wanted to give a scholarship to, and let's say one of these bigger schools, you didn't want him just to be able to leave. And you felt like if there was that year where he wasn't allowed to play and was transferring,

loses the year eligibility, it was some kind of deterrent. And then in the last few years, as more and more kids are transferring, and then we started having situations where it wasn't just graduate transfers, which is even funnier because the graduate transfer in principle was like, oh, this is great. We'll have a kid if he wants to graduate and then can transfer. He doesn't have to sit out the year, but that's not really going to happen that much, except that in football, you've had kids who are on campus almost year round. They're taking extra courses. So they are graduating earlier than the standard four years. So they play in that third

year and they go, you know what? I actually don't like this. I'm a quarterback. I don't like this system. I have a better chance of being a pro or getting drafted somewhere else. This hasn't worked out. I'm going to graduate transfer out here. And the coaches started realizing, wait a minute, so this is backfiring too. So the coaches are trying to take more control, but at the same time, the coaches are getting destroyed all the time by the media. And sometimes I push back on that. I am not an NCAA is the worst thing ever guy, because you know what? I want college football around on Saturdays forever. And I feel like some of my coworkers hate the NCAA so much.

And I'll admit, there's plenty of it that's very screwed up. Do not ask me to come on a panel show to be the guy defending the NCAA. I just don't want college football down the road. I don't know what version of it, but I want it around. And I don't want sports completely destroyed in proving some point where, yes, players should be, I think players should be, um, I think players should be compensated in some way. The likeness thing, I think in theory, everybody likes, but I think that would be a free for all because there'd be no way to regulate it whatsoever. So I understand

the pushback from that. I'm rambling off a lot of stuff. You've heard my podcast before, so just try to keep up. So I don't want it destroyed to prove some point and some people do and they clearly have never been a bad rouge on a Saturday so when I would say hey you know what the coach like the person in power should have more power over and in this case it's not the employee and that's where the compensation argument comes in the student athlete athleteathlete, athlete-student. I've always been okay with the boss having his way. You may not like it, but we all know what we're talking about here that have worked in the world some way. I remember having a radio gig at a place where I was broke and the guy next to me was making a ton of money. And he wasn't really, actually, no, he was doing, he was doing, you know, the best he could or whatever. And then I remember he said something to me and he goes, wait a minute, you're paying for your own gas? I go, yeah, I'm paying for my own gas. And he's like, oh, you're an idiot. He's like, you should be getting your gas expensed.

expensed. I'm like, well, I'm making like 25 grand. So I don't think I'm going to get my gas expense. But you know what I understood is that this guy brought more to the company than I did. And then that was his deal. And I went to complain to somebody about it. I go, Hey, I didn't know like all the hosts got their gas expense. He's like, yeah, a lot of them do. You don't. I'm like, what? Like, yeah. What did you say? What are you nuts? Like nobody even heard of you. You're lucky you have a job on the air. Like I could have just said no to you and no one would have cared. And you would have had no argument. Cause I, you know because you don't even really deserve this one. I'm taking a shot on you because I think I see something. So don't get mad about everybody's deal. Your deal is your deal. If you don't like it, you can leave. That's his deal. So that means I'm not paying for your gas.

I remember one time at a place I worked where we were told to cut back on all expenses, right? No matter what, cut back, try to take two to a cab if you could. We started losing rental cars. We used to have a Friday night dinner before college football games. And then they canceled that because of the recession. And then guess what? When the stock market went back up, guess what? We didn't get back our Friday night dinners, but just things were happening. And you've had times where we'd be on the road and actually the guys that were on the air, you'd think always would get hooked up. We'd be staying at one hotel that was nice, and then we'd go to some function

where we'd have to sit there and speak to a sales team or speak to some advertisers, and then you'd go and you'd be like, well, wait a minute, are you guys staying over here? And they'd be like, no, we're at the Fountain Blue. And you'd be like, what? We're like, what is going on here? Well, guess what?

They were in decision-making positions, even though the on-air and manager dynamic is always weird because the on-air people make more money. And I think there's always a manager part of it that resents that on-air guy makes so much money. But supposedly the management person has more power over that on-air guy. But if that on-air guy gets to a certain point, then guess what? No one really has any power over him at all because he's just that good and that important. But that's sort of a different rant that I did. But I'm telling you, there are so many times where you're going to go, all right, well, I am getting screwed in this deal, or maybe I deserve to get screwed, or I'm

okay with the coach who signs a contract who's then able to get the buyout because that's just the way coaches' contracts work. That is their world. It is a good business to be in right now to be a head college basketball or head college football coach with all the money that's pouring into it. And then when someone says, well, wait a minute, why does this guy have to sit out a year if the coach can just decide to leave right after he signs a contract? Coach's contracts aren't real. They're just scheduled payments until somebody else wants to pay somebody else more. So I'm okay with that seeming unfair, but the counter to me on that one is always, well,

wait a minute, if this guy's getting paid and the other guy isn't getting paid, that's not exactly boss employee. So the analogy isn't as good. It depends on what you think compensation really is, because if the education is a zero for you, well, that's not accurate, but I'm telling you that I'd be okay with the players getting more of a slice, but only the revenue generating sports, which ends up being a completely different debate, which is really funny because then when it is, say, a left person politically saying all the kids are getting screwed over, then it's like, okay, well, what are you going to do about Title IX? And then their brain melts in front of you because they don't really know what to do now. They're like, wait a minute. I thought I was figuring out a way to help exploited people,

but now I'm not going to be fair, even though none of this makes any sense anymore. So the whole point that I'm getting to here is actually a very simple one. I'm okay with the free-for-all now. I just am, even though I've been against it. Because the waiver thing was unfair, because it felt like if you could come up with a good reason. Now, let me put it this way. If you could come up with a reason that if you didn't get the waiver, people would criticize the NCAA and the university, then you would get the waiver. I've also read and heard that if you had the right lawyer, you would get the waiver.

So now the NCAA is saying that you have to, they changed it this week, where it's one of two things. If it's the medical emergency to be closer to somebody in your family, which people have used, and let's face it, used loosely about a relative on why they want to change somewhere else. It's like, by the way, no kid is ever transferring to a worse playing situation just to be closer to a sick family member. Like, you know what? I'm going to be the starter as a sophomore at this awesome school and a pro offense with awesome wide receivers everywhere. But my aunt has the mumps and I want to transfer to Toledo now.

Nothing against Toledo. I don't know why I default always say Toledo a bunch of times. So there's one of them. The other one is that when a coach decides to run off the underperforming player, and again, I'm reading for Stu Mandel's piece in The Athletic, the athlete needs to get, quote, a statement from the previous school's athletic director indicating whether the student could return to the team. So I don't know how that makes any sense because as Stu points out, what athletic director is going to admit that the coach actually forced the kid to leave? So that's a weird one. So I'm basically being told, hey, your opportunities run out here.

You're out of here. Okay, well, now can I get the transfer waiver? Well, now our own university has to tell you that we told you to beat it. Like, is that going to happen? So yes, it would suck for coaches. I know no one has any sympathy for these guys because of the money that I pointed out and the freedom of movement that they've had. I'm okay with coaches having more power over players, but the mockery of what these waivers have become or what they're trying to fix now, I know a lot of kids will be showing up and going, you know what?

I don't want to be here. I'm out of here. I remember thinking I made a mistake when I went to UVM. I was there a month. And I go, this place is too big for me. That seemed like the dumbest thing I could have ever said to myself. And so, yes, we can put these things in place to prevent kids from just being young and inexperienced and being fed up too soon. And I know it's, oh, this generation, but man, this is getting real tiring of us consistently

saying over and over again, these kids, this is not new. We've done it every decade forever, talking about these kids today. Yes, it's different for athletes. They're more entitled than all these things, but they're also more important and they're better quicker is my original point of this whole thing. So it's become really the first time in a while where I've gone, yeah, it's going to be a free-for-all and yeah, it's going to be annoying for the coaches and all this stuff. But there's so many things that aren't going in the way of the player and the NCAA continues to put their arms around this and just say no, no, no to everything. And now they're trying to do it again that I'd be okay. I'd be okay

loosening this thing up, not having it sit out the year. And I know it's going to be chaos, but whatever, as long as I still get my football on Saturday, we'll talk to you next week. One more dual threat and a reminder. We're going to be live in Vegas Simmons. I think house is rolling in as well for a little NBA Summer League. So can't wait.