The Triple Option - Florida Gators' Jon Sumrall and Sports Law Expert Mike McCann Join, plus Olympic Celebrations

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

How much do you deadlift? Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II, and Rob Stone get the answer to that and discuss the future of the Florida Gators with new head coach Jon Sumrall. They get into his expectations, mat drills, and Urban's involvement in the hire. We then shift off the field and into the courtroom and were joined by Sportico Legal Analyst and Law Professor at Harvard and UNH (yeah, he's smart), Mike McCann to discuss how to fix the legal issues the NCAA has been facing and give them, or some ruling body, actual enforcement power. The Men' and Women's hockey teams for the US won gold, the guys discussed how sports are the great unifier and looked ahead to the World Cup for hopefully more moments like that. 02:26 Jon Sumrall, Florida Head Coach 28:48 Mike McCann, Sports Law Expert 41:50 It's All About the Gold (Medals) New episodes of The Triple Option drop every Wednesday. Make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube and following on all podcast platforms. Also make sure you’re locked in on social @3XOptionShow on all platforms for highlight moments, bonus content, and to engage with the guys and the TO community. (⁠⁠https://tripleoptionshow.com⁠⁠) The Triple Option is presented by Wendy’s. Get yourself a $4 Biggie® Bites, $6 Biggie Bag®, or a $8 Biggie® Bundle. Now at Wendy’s. ⁠⁠https://m-wendys.app.link/468biggiedeals⁠⁠ #CollegeFootball #CollegeFootballPlayoff #CFP #FloridaGators #JonSumrall #SEC #USA #Hockey #Olympics #TimTebow #Alabama #RollTide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know I love my biggie bundle. With your five kids, how much, how many biggie bundles, Jeannie? We get easy at a hundred for the biggie bites, the biggie bag, times two biggie bundles with Frosties on the side. You know what I mean? Light it. The triple option is presented by Wendy's. Get yourself a $4 biggie bite, $6 biggie bag or an $8 biggie bundle now at Wendy's. Welcome to another edition of the.

Triple Option presented by the Wendy's Rob Stone, soon to be Hall of Famer, Mark Ingram, the second Duce, Deuce, the Hall of Famer, Urban Meyer at yet another golf course somewhere on God's Green Earth. I think you might be in the great state of Ohio right now. As always, thanks for joining us. This week, we are going to talk Florida football with their brand new head coach, John Summerall. We continue our quest to find answers to what is ailing our sport by bringing in one of the brightest minds in sports law. And we're going to wait. that flag, guys, and tip our hat to the gold medal winning U.S. hockey teams. That's right, plural hockey teams. As always, appreciate you joining us. Remember to rate, subscribe at Apple

Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. We are on social media at 3X option show. New episodes on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. We ask, we encourage you to submit questions across our handles. You can also drop them in the comments on YouTube. We want to take time this offseason to really connect with you, our listener, our viewer. And we want to know what you want to see, what you want to talk about on the show, who you want as a guest. We are taking any and all inquiries. And speaking of guests, we have one that our coach has been trying to get on for a little bit right now, the brand new head coach of the University of Florida. Gators, John Summerall joins us right now. Good morning,

coach. Thanks for taking a break from Matt Drills to join us on the triple option. We'll get to Matt Drills in a second. But I want to make sure you're involved in this conversation, but I'm going to let Urban start it, right? We got two Gator head coaches right now, and I know Urban, you were very involved in the behind-the-scenes hiring process of Coach Summerall. So take us through some of the timeline

and Coach Summerall, feel free to chime in and maybe fill in some of the blanks or at least spice them up for us. Well, welcome, Coach Summerall. And Scott Strickland, the AD at Florida, and I've become pretty close over the last couple years. And I went back this year for the Hall of Fame, you know, on campus celebration and we had a lot of conversations about you know Florida's a unique place like

all big time places every place has got their little niche and Florida's a ford is a tough job it's a demanding job and it's got to have the right individual and so I got involved I spoke to some other coaches and and and then finally they asked me to do some homework and when someone asked me to do my homework I am and I started watching interviews because I think how a person handles himself in front of the camera in front of the team is very important. I'm not even sure Coach Summerall knows this, but I did some homework and had a friend of mine gather about 10 interviews that he did, and I had them pick them because I didn't have time to run through all of them. And then I talked to people that you coached against. Then I put out the film. And the first

then I watch with special teams, then I watch their defense, and then I watched the offensive the line and and I wanted to see what, because I have very strong opinions of what Florida need, what winning programs need. And then I'm, then I got him on the phone and it was a done deal after that. I, I, uh, I talked to him and Mark, you'll appreciate this. In this day and age of everybody talking about transfer and I all contracts, all that nonsense, it's not nonsense. It's real, but we're talking to a coach and all he talked about is a strength coach, a green beret, a guy that he believed in. All he talked about, I believe, and I don't believe. I know. I know. this, and I know Mark, your former head coach, Coach Saban, believe this, you go win that damn

championship in January, February, March, April, May, June. People think you get ready in August. You don't get ready at August, not in major the highest level of college football. And Coach Somerall blew me away. And I call it Scott Strickland back. And there is one issue, Rob, and that's Coach Summerall's wife's in Auburn, Tiger. Oh, that's a big issue for Mark, too. And I don't want to get too much in the woods there because that's his business. But when I heard that, then I flipped the hat on backwards and I put on a recruiting speech. And I went after his hat. I went after his ass now.

Good recruiting speech, Coach. John, I'm proud you're a Gator, man. Man, I appreciate that, coach. Yeah. You know, what Coach Meyer just talked about in our conversation on the phone, we spent a lot of time talking about really behind the scenes, what it is day and day out to run a program. It wasn't, like he said, NIL, RevShare, Transfer, Portal. Are those things real in our world? Yeah, they are.

But that's not what I'm passionate about. And I am passionate about our players getting paid. I'm great with that. Like, they deserve to be paid. I'm good. I'm fine with player movement, but I love the offseason. You know, the season, it is what it is, the works, the work, the weeks are the weeks. Monday is a Monday every week and a game week.

The same type of flow of the day. But to coach's point, like our head shrink coach here, Rusty Whip, a green beret. And we say this all the time. This is a Navy SEAL thing, not a John Somerall thing or Rusty Whitt thing or an Urban Meyer thing, but you don't rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of your training.

And so our world right now is like, hey, you get a brand new team. We got 50 plus new players right now that have never been in the swamp on a game day. And so how quickly can we get them connected? And really, that's only forged through adversity and maybe the offseason work you put in in the matrioles and you have to make it hard and so we've been grinding in that those conversations

with coach mire that that first one was really cool for me um to his point he put on the recruiting hat a little bit like look as a college football coach i'm 43 all right coach mire 0102 you were at uh Were you at Bowling Green or Utah then? Bowling Green. Yeah. I was a player in college. I, like, that became a GA. And I was a GA at Kentucky when Coach Meyer was a head coach of Florida.

And so as a young coach, I looked at Coach Meyer and I'm like, man, that's what the standard of this profession looks like of how to have success and how to do it the right way. So your phone rings and you may be a candidate for the University of Florida head football job. and Urban Myers on the other end, you're like, I got chills. I was like, man, this is real. And I did have options. You know, there were other things out there. I've had options the last couple of years when you have success. That comes.

But, man, the University of Florida is a special place, championships for the expectations of the standard. And that was set by going back to Coach Meyer and Coach Spurger. Yeah, man, coach, that's awesome, man. I'm happy for you. And obviously, we know that recruits. is a huge part of this job. The Under Armour All-American game, it was this weekend. There were several multiple recruits that already talked about the impact that you and your staff have already made.

What has been your approach to the recruiting and is Florida number one priority on that list? The state of Florida with this hotbed of talent. It always starts at home. Yeah, I think your recruiting efforts begin at home. Now, they don't end there, but they begin there. And so we have to win at home. We've got to do a good job in the state. We've got, we're very privileged and fortunate to be in a state, Mark, that we've got great players here.

High school football in the state of Florida is special. There's a lot of talent. There's good coaches all throughout the state. We do have a brand also that's national to some degree. So the Florida logo carries weight. I don't care if you're in New York or California. Yes. If you see the gator head or you see the script gators, it's real.

It means something. So we have the ability to recruit nationally at the same time. But it does start at home. And our approach is, man, we're real and we're authentic. Like, I'm not the type of guy that recruits a kid and they come on campus and all of a sudden, they're like, man, why'd you change? Like, I ain't changing. And in recruiting conversations with every young man that steps in my office,

sometimes my assistant coaches are like, are you trying to recruit that guy or de-recruit him? Because I ask all of them, I'm like, hey, if you're tough and you love football and you want to get coached, you're going to love being a Florida Gator. If you're not tough and you don't love football and you think you've got all the answers and don't want to get coach, please go somewhere else. Yeah. Like do not come here because I want guys that are passionate about their growth and development.

That doesn't mean everybody's always a finished product when they come here, but it's about are you open to being grown and developed? And so I think guys feel that transparency. They feel the energy. And the one thing I'll say, Mark, is like a head coach, Coach Meyer can tell you, this gets a lot of credit and a lot of blame and deservedly so. But I do feel strongly I've hired a really good staff. And that's allowed us to get in on some of these recruits because your coaching staff,

your assistants, they really are the ones that are out there pounding the pavement every day, making sure the right guys are being brought to the, brought into the building. You know, I'm going to go off script here a minute. This toughness conversation is, first of all, it's entreat. It is the way to win. I don't, I'll argue with, you know, you can. throw the ball all over the field if you're soft-ass team at some point you're going to blow up. And one of the things I would always challenge our team and staff, I want to find out about a

coach's toughness and a player's toughness well before the third quarter against Florida State or against, you know, LSU, because it's going to surface at some point. This day and age is much different. You've got to transfer when kids can just, you get too hard on them, they leave. I don't heard stories. How do you teach toughness in 2026? Yeah, you know, coach, I'm a firm believer that mental toughness precedes physical toughness. Like the mind tells the body what to do.

And I do think going back to the mat drill component, we make that challenging. We make it something that's almost unattainable. And we put the guys through, it's an accountability contest. You know, I'm a firm believer that most football games, they're not won, they're lost because somebody will tap out. Yes. Like somebody will quit. Somebody don't give in, right? And so for us, to your point, I don't want to find out in September who's going to tap out and what's going to make them tap.

I want to find out in February. I want to find out, I want to make it as hard as we can now so that we get to the games. I mean, we're tested. We've been there. And are there going to be some unique things that we can't present to them maybe here in our own facility in February? Yeah, we can't put another team out there that they don't know who they're going against day in, day out. but we have to challenge them. And I do think some people in this world of transfer portal or NIL have gotten maybe a little bit cautious on pushing guys to that line.

But for us, and here's the deal, I'm never trying to break our players. But I am trying to make them stronger. And what becomes strong becomes unbreakable. And so I want to see how far can we go to make them so tough that they won't tap out. We talk a lot. We're gators around here. man, we want to get into the deep water in the fourth quarter, and we want to be the ones that are comfortable in that deep water.

Like we're very comfortable in our surrounding when it gets in those situations. Am I the only one who's feeling like I'm having a flashback to 2005, and I'm listening and looking at a young Urban Meyer? It's not just me, right, Mark? It's a guy that I want to go play for. I'll tell you that. A hundred percent. Coach, I think you feel in the same way,

and I think that's probably why you like them so much. Um, Coach Summerall. Here, I'm gonna add this because I, I just love this conversation. Whatever your mind tells you're gonna do as an athlete or a coach, you're gonna do. And if you get him, so, you know, I used to say, we're gonna callous them up. We're gonna, you know, scar them up a little bit. And by the time we hit that third quarter against Georgia in the cocktail party, you're a scarred up dude.

I mean, you're, you've been through it. You're not, you're not in uncomfortable. Like you just said, you are in the deep water, but you know what? You've been there. You're battle testing. And the best thing is, and I won't name names, but in the SEC back in the day, I knew the teams that once we got them in the deep water, we had their ass. But then I also knew the guy sitting to my, you know, Sabin's teams with Mark Ingram.

I also knew that that deep water, there's going to be two people know how to handle it. You know why? Because he was trained to handle that shit. And that's who I love about this coach we got at Florida and Coach Summerrell. So I appreciate it. Hey, real quick. So how do you, you know, you got a completely new roster. They come in, you said half that team has not even jogged on the, you know,

one of the best stadiums, if not the best stadium in college football. How do you try to indoctrinate them with the history of Florida football? I think you have to educate them on what this place is about and expose them to maybe what the history is. And I think there's that component to it. there has to be an appreciation where, man, being a gator means something to you. And so some of that's through maybe storytelling or exposing them to guys that have been around this program. That's why, you know, coach, I can't wait to get you back here around this team.

You know, you're coming back to speak at our coaches clinic, which fires me up so our coaches can even get some of that education. Very, very fortunate. I hired Bam Harbin who played here in the late 90s, early 2000s, and I hired Phil Trotline to be our O-line coach who played for you, Coach Meyer. And so you've got some guys in the building that have, you know, touched and been a part of this program and some special times as well. So they understand that.

And so they can even help me understand it because I think if I don't know it, then how do I expect our players to know it? And so I have to get myself informed on what this place means and what it's about. It is a special place. As quickly as you can get the guys to understand what it means to be a Florida Gator. as quickly as you can get them to have connectivity to each other and care about each other is when you have a chance.

And so, you know, we're going to talk tomorrow as a team. One of our core values is love. And like, I'm not talking about purple skies and butterflies or seeing a pretty girl on campus. I'm talking about, man, the old G.K. Chesterton quote, the true soldier doesn't fight for what's across from him. He fights for what's behind him. Yes.

Like we've got to create a culture here where our guys care so deeply about each other and they've been through so much shared sacrifice together that they understand what it means to be a gayer. They have an appreciation for the guys that have come before them and understand the history of this program and how special it is to be a part of this program. I feel like we need to do a DNA test to make sure there's no Meyer blood running through you, Coach Summerall.

Hey, I take that as a compliment. You should. It's a hell of a compliment. He has a day. And to your point, And to your point, I've never worked with Coach Meyer, but I've watched him from afar. Like I've studied as a young coach

when you're developing who you're going to be, and I'm myself. You know, I can't be Urban. I can't be Coach Spurrier. I'm not them. But you have a great deal respect for the guys that have come before you. And I've watched how they've moved. I've watched how they've carried themselves.

I watched Coach Myers teams compete with a grit and a toughness that's never been compromised. They always fought and have a great respect for that. And another person, we got, we got spikes in the building, which that's a whole difference. Or we could have, hey, we could have an hour long podcast on spikes. Be spikes. Yeah. But he's here so in the building.

So, yeah, I'm honored to sit in the same seat, Coach Meyer sat in. So let me give you something that Urban likes to say. One of his phrases, he's got a lot of them. And you'll probably start picking up on him. You know, you can be fast, but you got to be fast, fast. You got to be elite, right? you want to lead people. One of his favorite things when he's looking at a program, any program is he'll start it off by saying when you pop the hood on this team, right? So we're going to pop the hood.

You pop the hood on the gaiters when you got there to Gainesville. What did you find underneath that hood that needed fixed or that was running really smoothly? Yeah, I think there were some things going well. You know, I think academics has been really good here. I told the team here in my first team meeting in January, they had a 3.6 GPA. I told them I'd be okay. came with a 3-0 and more than 10 wins. Like, that'd be fine with me. But, but, but there have been really good people brought into the building. Like, I don't, I think sometimes an urban can, can speak to this, having walked into a new programs at times, there are good people in this building.

There were, the guys have been recruited here. I think there's, they're of high character. You know, where I feel like we've had to really push the envelope here and developing this team is in the wait room, doing some of the. dirty work, maybe to Coach Myers comment earlier, becoming a little bit more callous. You know, I think it maybe, it became a little too casual or a little too complacent, a little too comfortable. And so I think those things are probably where we've needed the most attention.

That starts at the line scrimmage. We got a long way to go, man. Like the first workout we had here when we deadlifted, I went in a deadlifted with the old line like I did the workout they were doing. And I'm sitting here going, this is not where we need to be as an SECO line yet. We're going to get there. It's coming. And there's been a ton of growth just in the last two months.

But the weight room, the strength, the physicality, the toughness, that's where probably I feel like we've needed attention. I think you have to love to compete too. And so in our matting drills, the way we've got them set up, you're paired with another guy all morning. And there is a freaking winner and there's a freaking loser. and there's a freaking loser of every rep. And it's scored.

And 20 minutes after the matrials are over, it's on every TV in the building, posted everywhere. So you can find out, were you a winner today or was your ass a loser today? And because you got to compete every day. I think that that's where we have to grow, is we have to grow to where our competitive edge is so fiery

that we hate losing more than we like winning. Like, you have to be pissed off and hate losing. And so, I think creating that is probably where we've had to spend most of our time and attention. It's not on athletic traits outside of the weight room and strength. I think the strength component is one where maybe I was a little bit underwhelmed when I popped the hood where I'm like, hey, this team's got to get strong. How much can you deadlift right now?

I'm probably like 345, 335. I'm not going crazy. Look, I'm 43, bro. Like, I'm not doing anything like back in the day, but I like to still make sure that if I get into a fight, I can beat somebody's ass. Hey, got to stay dangerous at all times, Coach. Yeah. Got to stay dangerous. What was your deadlift record?

Oh, God. I don't even know. Yeah, there we go. Coach, you'd be moving some furniture when we'll be in them hotel gyms, man. I'll be seeing you. Not deadlifting. I do the old man. No, Coach Romero, man.

Obviously, we always talk about some of the changes that we'd have in this moving landscape of college football. We know the transfer portal has been moved to just once a year. Obviously, the college football playoff format, that is kind of a lot. come out, changed a little bit. Now, what would you change in college football? You're the head of college football. You're the commissioner of college football. What is one thing that you would change if you were in charge of college football?

I love to get the calendar shifted back toward the national championship game was closer to January 1. I realize because of TV and the NFL games in December, we've moved some of this back. I love the expanded playoff. I'm great with it. Doesn't bother me at all. that there's maybe more access. I think it makes the regular season.

You know, when Urban was coaching, you had two losses and you were out, which... One sometimes. Now, what's changed in our world, obviously we've gone to nine SEC games, which has made this league even more brutal almost. And so not that it was easy before. And so I do think if we could start the season,

maybe everybody week zero, start to play off a little earlier, those sort of things, I think would be helpful to get the end of the championship season closer to January 1. Maybe not January 1 exactly, but close. Close. You know, I'm not mad at the one portal window because what I do like about it is it allows me to know in January, I got my team. Yeah.

And I'm able to callous that team, like coach said earlier from the jump. And there is no April-May roster movement. The only frustrating part there is I really, I was very successful my first year at Troy and at Tulane in a lot of parts because that second portal window. Because what I got to do is go through spring practice. Find out where I still had some holes or deficiencies because you may think you landed it right in December. But it's so hard to get it perfect because you don't even really know your own team, much less what you're trying to bring in yet. And it's speed dating in the portal. And so I think that the second portal window for a first year head coach is not a bad thing

because you could go through spring ball and figure it out. But I'm okay with it for the long haul of college football because I do think calming down it being free agency almost year round is good. And then going back to the calendar piece, I do think there would be, you know, the NFL's got this thing figured out where like coaches can't move until the season's over, right? And so the biggest hurdle I had this year, Mark, man, I was I was a head coach of two programs for three weeks. And you want to talk about sleep?

Like sleeping, I wasn't. Like, we had, I took this. You're in a playoff. Yeah. You're in a playoff and then you're building a program at the same time unanimously. It's like, I took this job on a Sunday. All right. After the last regular season game, I had a Monday morning practice,

which was really a Tuesday practice, which is a physical, like, that's the meat and potato's practice of the week, the first one, because we were playing on a Friday night, flew here after that Monday slash Tuesday practice for a press conference, flew right back that Monday night because that Tuesday we had what was a Wednesday practice because we were playing Friday night. Yeah. That Wednesday, we had signing day. I signed 18 guys here at Florida and I signed 14 at Tulane when they had no head coach in

place for 2026 season. I was overseeing two signing days. which was two days out from a conference championship game. And we play a conference championship game Friday night, which is to get into the CFP. And so like that week, what all was going on, it was maniacal. I'm like, this makes no sense.

I'm trying to hold the roster together there, hold the roster together at Tulane so we can play in the CFP, sign guys at both schools, put a staff together here, give direction to my staff at Tulane. Like, that stuff, just the calendar doesn't make sense on those things to me. I think we could clean a lot of it up. I got one more question, coach, and that's the scheduling.

When I was at Florida, we played Florida State. You play Florida State. That's a rivalry game. You throw nine conference games on top of that, and top to bottom, the SEC, I still believe the best conference in college football. However, you saw Indiana play Old Dominion, Kinnasaw State and Indiana State.

Do you have a philosophy? Is Florida State here to stay? And then with the other two, Do you just, I mean, and I know Miami shows up every five years, I think. One year we had Miami, Florida State, both top five teams, and then, I mean, it was ridiculous. What's you, what's your, you and Scott's opinion on scheduling? I think Florida State stays forever. Like that one, I don't know that it moves regards to how many games we go to.

I do think if your ultimate goal is to play in the CFP, it's smart of you to evaluate what's worked in the past. You know, my, my, my last year at Troy as the head coach, you know, we, we, and SMU was still a G5, G6 school at the time. And Tulane, where I ended up going next,

were probably the three best G6 schools. But Liberty got in because they were undefeated. And they had played conference USA games and only other G5 games. We were playing two, two power four schools at Troy. We were playing Kansas State and somebody else. We were playing real games in our nine conference.

So I do think some uniformity in the non-conference would be helpful. You know, our league has a mandatory one power four game outside of the nine. It's everybody in our league has to play one P4 out of conference game. Big Ten does not. I think it's helpful for the selection committee if we're all doing the same type of scheduling. You know, that the AFC and the NFC, they go to the playoffs. They don't go play an XFL or UFL or UFL or USFL team to figure out who gets in the playoffs. So it's like it's cleaner, it's simpler where our model is a scheduling.

It's like, all right, what matters more being undefeated? The other component to it is you want to challenge yourself and be battle tested. But it's also nice when you can maybe go through a year and find a game or two where your team doesn't have to play every stamp of the game as a starters where that was the biggest challenge I had last year at Tulane, our non-conference last year at Tulane, all right? We open up with Northwestern, Big Ten team. Yeah. We win the game 23 to 3, but my starters had to play every snap. All right.

Then we play South Alabama, who's been a solid G5 team, didn't have a great record last year. Then we go play Duke, all right, the ACC champion. We beat them, but our starters had to play every snap of the game to win that game. And then we get a layup in game four. We played Old Miss. All right? So it's like our non-conference schedule was so brutal. My biggest fear of urban was where we're going to get the conference play

and going to be worn the hell out and not be able to go win the conference because we were beat up. Coach Summerall, great conversation. We appreciate the time. And we are wishing Urban Part 2, all kinds of luck and success in Gainesville. I have a feeling you're going to find it and find it quickly. It's Summerall Part 1, Coach. Summerall Part 1, Meyer, Part 2.

I love it. It's like a summer movie blockbuster chain, right? Like part two coming your way this summer. Coming your way this fall in Gainesville. John Stormwall, the head coach, University of Florida coach. Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate your time. Coming up next, we have our first lawyer on the show. Sports law expert for Sportico, Michael McCann, cleans up some misconceptions and walks us through the legal hurdles out there as we try to fix college sports. Lady. Welcome back to the Triple Option, presented by Wendy's, Rob Urban Mark, back here with you. And we are joined right now. This is going to be a good conversation. Michael McCann, Sportico-legal expert, associate dean, professor of law and sports director

at the University of New Hampshire, also visiting professor of law at Harvard. He knows everything there is about sports law, right? Mike, is that the basic way I can sum it up? Sports law. Yeah. I don't know if I know everything, but that's a great description. Okay. All right. Well, you're our sports law expert right now for sure. But, but Urban has become kind of a junior expert in sports law. And the burgeoning lawyer, Urban Meyer, has got some questions for you, right, coach? Hi, Mark, Mike, before we get started here, what's your record against Yale? We got to, you are what your record is.

What's your record against Yale? It's good. It's really good. It's winning. Yeah. All right. So I've recently been involved in some conversations. And I keep saying, until we fix this enforcement arm of college.

for it's called the NCAA. And I'm not throwing stones, but they've become a toothless organization because they don't have the power of subpoena. So the investigations take forever. It's time consuming. And then also, anytime they make a ruling, you see it all the time, they get litigated and they lose. And so there's a lot of things to get fixed.

Mine, number one, on the hit parade to me, is to fix this enforcement arm. You don't need new rules. The rules are in place right now. But if there's no enforcement, you see that around a country. If there's no enforcement, it's chaos. So the term that comes up, and I kind of looked it up, I've been asking, but to hear from you, and I think our viewers and listeners would love this, to get antitrust exemption. I hope I'm saying this right.

What does that mean and what's the process? Yeah. Thank you for the question. You're right. The lack of enforcement is the big problem. That's the fundamental issue why there are problems in college sports is that the NCAA hasn't or is unwilling or feels like it's going to be sued when it tries to enforce its existing rules. And as you said, antitrust is the big question. Antitrust in this context means

colleges and conferences are competing businesses, right? They compete for faculty, staff, students, money, grants, marketing, all of that. When they get together and collude through the NCAA, which is a membership organization, and they prevent any one of them from paying athletes in some form or another, that's an antitrust problem because they're competing. It's like would two gas stations call each other in the morning and coordinate prices? If Amazon and Target and Best Buy and all that, they got together to coordinate prices, that's the fundamental problem.

So the challenge for the NCAA is that when there are rules saying you can't pay athletes for either NIL or for their labor, it presents an antitrust issue or transferring, right? All of these rules have come up in court. And the big problem for the NCAA was that in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case that had nothing to do about NIL, nothing to do about athletes playing sports, the Alston case was about colleges getting together to limit how much they can pay athletes for education. And once the NCAA lost that case, the court said, you don't get deferential review anymore.

So we've seen an avalanche of litigation since then. So to your question about an exemption, what the NCAA wants is an exemption from antitrust law, for a statute to say it's not subject to antitrust law. So colleges could collude without being sued. But it's problematic. And we see there's a lot of political pushback. It looks like it's favoritism. Why don't other businesses get that?

What are some of the consequences? Should an entity that's being sued a lot get a break from the law that governs it? There are big questions about that. Right. Okay. So what other professional sports leagues have antitrust laws and could that work in college sports? So the other leagues, NFL, NBA, all of the major pro leagues are governed by antitrust law. But because they collectively bargain their rules with the athletes who are unionized employees,

there's a labor exemption. And the labor exempt is called the non-statutory labor exemption. I won't go into it, but very basically a bunch of Supreme Court cases. say when management and labor get together and agree on rules relating to hours, wages, and other workplace conditions, we exempt them from antitrust. That's the reward for management. If you agree to work with the union, you get a break from antitrust law. So baseball has its old historical antitrust exemption for certain things, but that's not at issue here. So colleges could get that if the athletes were A, recognized as employees.

and unionized and then bargain with, bargain with them. Okay, let's go here now. So college football, let's focus there for a minute. Is that even, when I hear these conversations, in your opinion, is it even a possibility? And if it is, what's the process to get antitrust exemption? So through the labor route, it would be, let's say power conferences agreed that the football players are employees.

So that's step one. That doesn't solve the issue because at private schools, it's governed by federal law, the National Labor Relations Act, but then in some public universities, they're governed by state laws. And in some states,

it's very difficult, if not impossible, under their laws for public university employees to unionize. So there are some states that are not as friendly to labor as others, basically. So one argument, And whether this works is an open-ended question, but would be the conferences would be the entity that bargains with the players union. The conferences are private. So they're governed by federal law.

They would represent, you know, Southeastern Conference negotiates the CBA on behalf of SEC schools with the football players. And whatever they agree to, that would be exempt from antitrust law. So that would deal with NIL. That would deal with the transfer portal. If you go commit to Alabama, you got to stay there. I mean, that could be a rule. It's like free agency, right? Restrictions on free agency.

They could also have eligibility rules. So we don't see former players from pro leagues trying to reenter or players not leaving. All of those could be collectively bargained and antitrust law goes off the board. Process, process to go there. Is it congressional? No, it wouldn't require Congress. It would take the individual member schools. So let's say that takes Southeastern Conference.

Let's say the Southeastern Conference schools agree that the football players are employees when they recognize them. Then those players would have to agree to join a union. Now, if they don't agree to join a union, then this doesn't work. So there are hurdles to it. But let's just play it out. Let's say the players then say, okay, we'll agree to a union and the union bargains with the Southeastern Conference.

We negotiate a CBA. So that would work without Congress getting involved with it avoids political stuff. Now, again, it doesn't work if the players don't go along with it. Maybe some players don't want to be in union. You never know. But that would, to me, seem like the way there. And in that case, Mike, would, and we're talking about the SEC just as an example right now, would they then be the ones that were in charge of enforcing all of this? Yeah, presumably that's right.

The commissioner of the SEC? Commissioner of the SEC, it would be like a pro league. It would be like a league operation. So then where is the NCAA in that conversation then if this is what happens? Non-existent? Well, it could still exist. It could still have a contractual relationship with the SEC. For instance, for basketball, right?

We know the NCAA does really well with the basketball tournament. It generates a lot of revenue. Maybe that would be the contractual relationship. But football would be only with the SEC in that example. In that example. So is it possible, A, do you see college athletes across the country and in all sports being able to unionize? Is that something even realistic at all? It would only be realistic if the conference was the entity.

Gotcha. It has to go through the – because the individual schools, you know, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, there are all these state laws that would make it hard for public university athletes to be in a union. And then would it be legally acceptable if there was college football had had their own parameters? Because that's what we're talking about right now. But we forget about the college basketballs and the volleyball and the swimming and the soccer's and the Olympic sports out there. Would that then have to be a whole another carve out, if you will? Yeah.

So there would be Title IX issues. There's no question about it. Because everything I'm describing benefits football players, not not. obviously men, not women athletes. It wouldn't preclude colleges recognizing other athletes out of school from being employees. But in the absence of that, that would be a hurdle. Or some type of statute that says Title IX doesn't apply in the context of a conference as the bargaining unit. All right, Mike, you're on a hot seat, man.

You're at fix it. How do you do it? Well, I think what I just described is. It has a lot of hurdles, but it seems more likely to me to work than honestly, Congress. Look, Congress, there has been a Republican president and a Republican Congress. There has been a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress over the last six years, and nothing passes. Like, they have press conferences and they got a lot of attention, but I'm very skeptical. This isn't a party thing either, both parties.

They haven't advanced legislation on college sports. Maybe they finally do that. I don't know, but it seems hard. So let's say that's a tough route. The other route is let's just keep litigating. Every day, there are new lawsuits, either players that don't want to leave school, or now players that want to come back after being pro athletes,

they're not going anywhere. Those lawsuits are going to keep, and here's the thing. We're going to see different decisions in different jurisdictions. So Alabama court's going to say one thing. Mississippi another, Florida, another, New Hampshire, another. So you're going to have conflicting rulings, or maybe the Supreme Court takes this on at some point and says, here, we're going to decide the rules once and for all. But it's going to, they don't really take a lot of sports cases. They have other priorities, as we know.

So what does that leave us with? It leaves us with a world of more litigation, more proposals in Congress that seem to have traction and the NCAA playing defense now urban you said at the beginning the nc a isn't power it sort of seems like it has its hands tied one thing it could do it could just be active it could be aggressive it could go on offense you know this it's like they're playing to prevent defense right now and they're playing to prevent defense because they're worried about that supreme court decision in 2021 but i would say that decision was about wasn't even about athletes playing sports. Wasn't about NIL.

It was about education-related expenses. We don't know what that court would have decided if the case that involved paying athletes to play sports could have been totally different. All right, Mike, real quick, gut check. Percentage that NCAA college athletics can sort themselves out within the next, let's say, 18 months.

Really low. Almost zero. Give them a year and a half and you're saying almost zero. Zero. We're just going to see more lawsuits. Yes. And here's the thing. If you're a lawyer, this is great. So there you know, keep in mind. It's a booming business. It's a booming business. So there's a lot of incentive to not.

Mike McCann, why resolve it if you're, right? That hurts. That hurts. Mike McCann, Sportico legal expert. Thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate the Intel. Thank you. Thanks for having. Hope we can find some solutions out there. That's all we're trying to give is make college athletics better. Coming up next on the triple option. the U.S. hockey teams have us pulling a little Jim Craig and wrapping ourselves up in the red, white, and blue. Light it. We welcome you back to the triple option presented by Wendy's. Before we skip out, we would be remiss if we didn't bring up and talk about the men's

and the women's gold medal winning hockey teams at the Olympics. Our good friend, Mike Tarrico, capped it all off on this week's sound off. Because of a drought that almost lasts in the half century, those teams are wrong. They are held on to forever. And what happened today doesn't take away from the greatness of those teams or the meaning that those teams have in U.S. hockey. But what you saw today was the build of a generation, inspired perhaps by that team that lost in 2010 in Vancouver to the Sydney Crosby Golden Goal in overtime. Or the team where T.J. O'Shea had all those shootout goals in 2014. That's when these guys were doing what you're doing, watching on TV.

And they were young and they were living the dream. So for all the young people out there, not just the hockey, but all the Olympics you've watched, those dreams are formed now. Go chase them and go get them because our country loves sports and it brings us together unlike anything else. And if you didn't know that, if you haven't been watching the last two weeks, you saw it in Team USA hockey, winning the goal over there are tribal Canada here in Milan to wrap up these 25th Olympic winner games. Wonderful way to conclude the Olympics.

And I know the wins by the women and the men and how they did it. And against Canada, certainly reverberated with all of you guys. Yeah, I'm a hockey guy now. I live in Blue Jacket territory. So I'm friends with a lot of the Blue Jackets. And I remember Johnny Goddrow and when that all happened, and I know some of the guys that played with them. But I'm going to tell you this, Mark, is when I saw the women win the way they won,

I watched him screaming at the TV. and then to watch the overtime, the win by the men's team. But as a sport purist, the guy that really believes in team first, Jack Hughes, when he hit that game-winning goal, I teared up. I mean, like, seriously teared up when I heard. All he talked about is his teammates, his country, and the former players that came before him. And I played it for my family.

We have a group family tax. I mentor kids in Sarasota. We're going to play for them. we're going to have a long conversation about that because I think that's the beauty of sport and also I love our country. I get really pissed sometimes and I hear people say bad things about our country.

You know, for one moment, why not enjoy the men and women? First time ever, men and women hockey won gold medals. And then also the men, that's the only third time mark, 1960, 1980, and then obviously 2000 and 26. So I was blown away. And last thing I'll add is last night I watched,

it's a Netflix show, and it's a tribute to the 1980 Miracle and Ice, Lake Placid. It's one of the greatest sports documentaries I've ever witnessed. Herb Brooks, man, was a bad man. What a motivator. How about the, like you said, Craig, the set of the goalie and the Mark Johnson, the star player in the Ruzzioni. I played golf with him before, who was a stud.

Yeah. It just, it warms your heart. Coach, do you remember the 1980, the Soviet game and then winning the gold medal? Do you remember watching those back then at all? I was on the basketball court my sophomore year at Kaniot, and I remember they stopped the game. Really? For the Russians, what's amazing, it was a Cold War, and this is why this Netflix documentary is so good. The country was a mess.

You talk about, you want to say we're a mess now. This is back in the... The Jimmy Carter area, one was just really struggling along gas lines. And everybody's, they did, they showed everything. They're like, oh, my gosh, look at this. And for that moment, our country became our country again. It was really cool. Yeah, man, it was amazing, man.

You know, there's a few times where our country isn't, like, divided and sometimes pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other for this, and for, you know, the Olympics, the last two weeks of Winter Olympics, we all get to root for our young people, representing our country, man, and doing it at a high level, a high character, high integrity, and to be able to see our women go out there and dominate, get the gold, then to see our men go out there,

dominate, get the gold. In overtime fashion, Jack Hughes, gets his teeth knocked out on a high-stick penalty. How about that? Yeah, get his teeth, he's out there with a snagletooth off a high-stick penalty. Old-school hockey, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You put the foil on. Yeah. And then you just go and finish them off, less than two minutes in the overtime, man, a true folk hero, man. And they had a huge celebration down here in Miami at a finest establishment last night.

Did you go? I didn't go, but I should have probably went. But at a very fine establishment, they went crazy last night. And, man, they deserve it, man. So they made all of us Americans proud. Everyone is chanting USA, USA. That's why we love the Olympics.

That's why we love sports. I thought it was so well said by Mike Tariko at the end of the show, man. because sports truly do bring us all together, and it truly is a way for your young people to stay motivated and find some inspiration. So shout out to the USA women and men's for winning a gold medal. By the way, do you guys know when the next opportunity is to feel that way?

Yes, this World Cup, right? Bango. Just about 100 days out from the World Cup coming to North America, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as host. If the U.S. is able to pull something off like that on the soccer field. If the U.S. pulls that off, this place will be upside down. No, sir. No, sir.

Not even close. Not even close. Not even close. Not even close. Not even close. Not even close. It would. Yeah.

The country would be sure. It's not even in the realm of possibility. It feels like the 1980 team, right? Nobody thought these college kids could do it. You know, against mighty, you know, USSR, right? And they were able to pull that off. This would be something of an equivalent. Yes.

You're going to have that chance to wrap yourself in the red, red, white, and blue in just about a hundred days time when the U.S. men's national team takes the stage at the 2026 World Cup. If you want more on the American Soccer Team, you can check out our sister podcast, Unfiltered with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard. Coach, I've been telling you for a while to get those tickets to the World Cup. I know you've got connections. Mark, I know you're working it down there in Miami.

I'm working on a connection. So if you got any connects for me, plug me in. I got some guys. I got some guys. Games in L.A., Seattle, and then back in L.A., those are the guaranteed ones for the U.S. man, it is going to be. Paraguay is going to be there, Australia, and then a TBD.

It is going to be something that, Coach, I can't wait for you to experience it this summer. I cannot wait for mid-June for you to throw yourself into the red, white, and blue. You will not talk bad about soccer once you go to one of these. It's going to change things. Well, you'll probably still have a few moments, but that's all right. We're going to allow you that. It's hard to. You're going to experience a World Cup.

I was fortunate to experience a World Cup in Brazil. What was that, 2014? Yes, sir. And once you go experience that type of atmosphere, man, it changed you forever. I've been to EPL games. I've been to English Football League games. Not the same. Yeah.

It's nothing like it, yeah. But nothing like it. It's nothing like it. We got it on Fox, right? Yes, sir. Fox Sports every game live. That was your fresh take of the week presented by Wendy's. Get yourself a $4 biggie bites, a $6 biggie bag or an $8 biggie bundle now at Wendy's.

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And as it for my gift cards, man. Because we get easy at a hundred for the biggie bites, the biggie bag, times two biggie bundles with frosties on the side. All right. Which leads me to this. Thank you to our sponsor, Wendy's. We love you. We'll see you next time on the triple option. Presented by who?

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