What A Day - The High Stakes Politics of College Sports

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

College football is back and so is Congress. What does one have to do with the other? More than you think. Jane talks to veteran college sports analyst Paul Finebaum, host of The Paul Finebaum Show, about the Protect College Sports Act and why some members of Congress have taken an interest in sports this session. Show Notes: Check out Paul’s show Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

First of all, Lane Kiffin is the Kim Kardashian college football. I mean, wherever she goes or he goes, there is destruction and carnage in the place. And his history is too long to recall, but it's as simple as this. He was the head coach at Ole Miss last December. They were in the college football playoff for the first time. They had a shot at winning the national championship, and he walked out on them. It's Wednesday, September 9th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What a Day. The price of oil hit over $100 a barrel today for the first time since July as the Iran war drags on. Iran fired on a U.S. warship and the U.S. responded by allegedly destroying multiple Iranian tankers. And we have yet another warning from the world of AI. An anthropic researcher resigned on Tuesday, saying on Twitter that the people working in AI believe the technology could kill us. all by the end of the decade. Earlier today, another anthropic scientist agreed. Fantastic.

But before AI kills us all, new rules will allow those with TSA pre-check to meet a loved one or friend at the gate at 13 airports. A win for Sean Duffy's Department of Transportation. But I want to talk about football and sports and politics. Joining me today is Paul Feinbaum, host of the Paul Feinbaum Show on on ESPN and the SEC Network to talk about how college sports is becoming a political football. Paul, welcome to Wadda. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be back with you. We talked years ago, somewhere toward the end of COVID. And fortunately, I hope the world is better for all of us since then.

Yeah, well, it's a lot has happened. And it's interesting that we're talking because you host a very well-known show that is focused on college football. I host a show that focuses on politics. Our worlds typically don't intersect that much. And yet the world of politics, everybody is talking about college sports and college football. And we're going to get to why in just a moment? Because you've talked about the Protect College Sports Act. You've had some criticisms of the act. It's been co-authored by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Washington State Democratic Senator

Maria Cantwell. The Senate might take this bill up as soon as next week, but you've had some criticisms of it. Can you talk about what your problems with that legislation are? Yeah. And one thing, I always like to say I'm apolitical and I can't say that quite as easily as I used to based on a couple of things that happened in the past. But when it comes to the program that we do, we are apolitical, which means I have not taken a side. but I have some pretty strong opinions, Jane, and the reason I have strong opinions are, I think it's entirely up to college athletics

to fix their own problems. And they have done a really poor job of that. And it bothers me when friends of mine, close friends who are in administrative positions in college sports, say, well, we need Congress to battle us out. No, that is your job. You got us into this mess. figure out a way to get us out. And I'll spare the audience all the typical cliches about Congress

because you deal with that every time you talk to an audience. But I don't really trust the United States Senate or the House of Representatives or any politician for that matter to bail somebody else out of their problems. I mean, it's too dysfunctional. So, I mean, that's the philosophy that I come from. I've talked to a number of senators about this. And I don't think half of the senators or maybe 80% of them have any earthly idea what's in this bill. It's a very complicated bill. At times, it's convoluted. And I am baffled by the conversation about it.

It just seems like let's just rush this in. It's going to fix college athletics. It is not going to fix college athletics. I want to back up for a second because we're in this weird moment for, for people like me who love college sports, love college football, and someone who also pays attention to politics. You just said that, you know, college sports are something that the NCAA that these programs want to get bailed out of. But on the other hand, it feels like college football is bigger and better than ever. Everybody, you know, the big programs have more money than they know what to do with.

More people are watching. The viewership numbers are huge. You've got programs like Indiana winning a national. title coming out of nowhere if you, you know, you weren't paying attention the last couple of years. So it seems like everybody is profiting or a lot of the big programs are. College players can now be paid through name, image, and likeness. And yet you have all these other voices saying, you know, college sports, it's dying. College football is dying. There's a big problem here. There are big problems. This can't keep going on. So who's telling the truth here? Or is it like,

you know, it's going great, but also it's dying. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'll tell you what, the numbers back it up. Who's telling the truth? There were 102,000 people at Tiger Stadium Saturday night. The ratings for my employer, ESPN, were through the roof. They'll be the same way this weekend and next weekend and every other weekend. And I want to go back to Gina Arsurema, who's the most respected women's basketball coach in modern history. he came out the other day and said college sports is dying and i literally about fell off of my chair when i heard him say that it is not uh i'm gonna i'm on a college campus every single week uh you watch college game day you watch these games i mean there's 20 000 people out there at six o'clock in the morning because they can't consume enough i do this every single day so i feel like that gives me a

little a morsel of credibility to say what i'm about to say these people who say that are crazy um It has never been healthier from a financial standpoint. It is chaotic. It is out of control in many respects. Local judges in Banana Republics, actually, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, are making decisions that defy logic. But that goes for every court house in America, including the highest court house in America. So that is not political. That is just fact.

It is just a, I don't, I mean, the guy that drives me the craziest in all this is the one that was hired to save college sports. And that's Charlie Baker, two-time governor of Massachusetts. He was hired for this multi-million dollar job. And all he's done is get on his knees and beg Congress to bail out what happened before him. But he's been there a couple of years now. It's on him. And every time there is one of these crazy court decisions, the commissioner of whatever, league it is or Charlie Baker or somebody else immediately says, we've got to protect the college,

we got to pass this College Sports Act. And listen, I think it's pretty obvious that this, you know, it's called bipartisan. I'll defer to the history books. It doesn't really feel bipartisan. It feels convoluted. It feels crazy. And I want, you know, the politics of it, I'll defer to you. But I just hope these senators know, they're voting for. And maybe if somebody could tell me that they've actually read the bill, I'd feel better about it. Yeah, because what we're talking about is the Protect College Sports Act. And as you said, it's very complicated. It's quite long. There are lots of provisions. Some of the provisions I support, I support that players would get to keep their scholarships if they

get hurt, which is, that seems fair and totally fine. The bill also says that players can't transfer multiple times. We've seen across college football, you've seen players go from team to team to team. Players would get one free transfer while a second transfer would force them to sit out for a full year. It places a strict five-year cap on athletic eligibility, which I think for a lot of people who may not watch college football, we're now in a moment in which there are players who've been playing college football for seven, eight years because of COVID, because of a host of other issues. But something that really bothers me is this idea of. of, you know, and this is something that we've, people have been talking about for a long time,

this idea that, you know, the players shouldn't be able to transfer multiple times, but coaches can go wherever they want all the time. You know, you have coaches that are like, oh, I'll be there, you know, if you have former Texas, you know, former University of Cincinnati coach, now current Alabama senator, Tommy Tuberville, who promised that his players at one school that he would be buried there in a pine box and left the next day. So this whole fight seems to be, kind of a battle between the college players and the administrations and coaches. You're 100% right. And, yeah, I'm pretty even keeled in my thinking about most things, Jane.

But I remember just go back to the beginning of this in March when there was this roundtable at the White House. There were no players there. There was no representation of the people. And I think the feeling is among the players that I've talked to, yeah, they're making a a lot of money, some of them, not all of them. But this is about the other side of it. This is about the administrative side and the corporate side. And I just thought he got off to a bad sir. I had a fairly heated conversation on the show I do with Randy Levine. Who is he? He's the president of the United States' point man on this bill. And I just think that's wrong.

I want to know what young people have to say about what is how they're being affected. And as far as limiting them to one transfer, that's absurd. Every coach in college athletics can walk out. Now, yeah, there's a penalty, and there have been big penalties paid. Texas A&M three years ago fired Jimbo Fisher. He won a national championship at Florida State. they had to end up paying out $76 million. That told me they can pretty much afford to do whatever they want.

And that's what this is really all about. If you can't afford to compete at this level, then you have to go to a different level. And it's the same way. And I just feel like the players, and every time I say, well, the players are getting shafted, some old guy is going to come up to me and say, well, you know, they're getting paid.

when I played in 1965, we weren't. Players have always been paid. It's just been under the table. It's been illegal. Now it's legal. And it's a lot different. I don't need to remind you, Jane, the quarterback at the University of Michigan picked up about $12 million for going there. And it's a long convoluted story.

But essentially, they paid for it through Larry Ellison, the billion, multi-zillion, of founder of Oracle. Now, what does Larry Ellison have to do with Michigan? Nothing. His wife went there. Very little. And Mark Cuban in Indiana. So, I mean, I'm used to that by now.

And as long as fans are happy on Saturday or whatever night it is that you're playing college basketball, we survived. But I just don't see that this is really the role of the Congress. I think this is the role of college athletics. And what you're getting, and I know I'm getting deep into the weeds here, the conferences are now working on self-governance, meaning they're going to run their own shop. Something's going on literally as we're speaking with one of the conferences

that I spend the most time covering where they're having a battle with one of their schools. And that's how it should be. It shouldn't be dictated. And besides, I'm not even, you know, the biggest reason why Congress can help out the NFL or Major League Baseball is antitrust. exemptions. I'm still not convinced, and I'm not an antitrust attorney, I'm still not convinced this bill does it. If it did, then I would feel more comfortable with it, because then it would protect the leagues from all these bogus lawsuits. So I have one more thing, and then I do want to get

to the LSU situation, because I think that that's something that's rapidly developing, and it seems to have gotten a lot of people involved. I think the concern that I do understand from fans of smaller teams of fans that are at schools like Washington State or Oregon State, fans that are, you know, their team got basically realigned out of the spotlight. And now those teams are less able to compete financially. Cruz said in an op-ed in USA Today earlier this year, quote, if things don't change, we are headed toward a future where college athletics and specifically college football will be reduced to a super league of just a handful of the wealthiest school. Now, cards on the table.

My favorite college football team is the University of Michigan, which has a ton of money, which seems to have not helped it very much on Saturday. But, like, you know, it has a ton of money. This is not something that I am worried about. But if my favorite college football team were, say, Bowling Green or Miami of Ohio, the cradle of coaches, I would be very worried. I would be very worried about the fact that you will have these teams where, When you get good, all your players will transfer out to bigger schools. And when you're bad, nobody cares. So is there a role to be played by Congress or by anyone in helping to level the playing field financially for smaller schools and schools that are part of smaller conferences?

There could be, but it's not going to be in this bill. And I know I keep trying to convince myself maybe that I'm apolitical, but I have to say this. Why is Ted Cruz so concerned about all this? I think there's a reason for it. He's running for president. He's got some very wealthy backers. One of them is Cody Campbell, the billionaire booster, who put Texas Tech on the map with his money.

There's some other tributaries to a private equity group out in California that wants to take over college football. And this is, Jane, I don't need to tell you this. Why are people involved? Why do people ever want anything to get something in return? So I'm highly suspicious of the motivation of Cruz. I understand Maria Cantwell. She has a legitimate complaint because Washington State, in her home state,

got jettisoned out of a major conference. But I think people need to look behind the curtain and see why is Ted Cruz bloviating so much about this issue? It's not because the president asked him to. It's because of his own self-interest. And I know that's the way Washington, D.C. works. But I don't like the idea of a man running for president who is using this as his Trojan horse. We'll get back to my conversation with Paul Feinbaum in just a moment.

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www. www.jindleetme.com slash Wad and entercode Watt at checkout. That's www. www.J.orgendeletme.com slash Wad code Wad. Let's get back to my conversation with Paul Feinbaum. So I want to talk about LSU, Louisiana State University. So their current head coach, Lane Kiffin, always comes to a new school having burned all of his previous bridges

and with a whole lot of controversy and often with a lot of success. But what he has done or attempted to do has now made the conference that you cover most of the time, the Southeastern Conference, very, very mad. So mad that they are in court or were in court early. today. They've been in court multiple times of the last week. And the SEC is saying, we would be okay with kicking LSU out, which is crazy. What did Lane Kiffin try to do or say he wanted to do? Well, I mean, first of all, Lane Kiffin is the Kim Kardashian college football. I mean, wherever she goes or he goes,

there is destruction and carnage in the place. And his history is too. long to recall, but it's as simple as this. He was the head coach at Ole Miss last December. They were in the college football playoff for the first time. They had a shot at winning the national championship, and he walked out on them. It had never happened before. There's no precedent for this, but he wanted a better job. And here's where we get to the interesting part.

How did he end up going to Ole Miss? How did he end up going from Ole Miss to LSU? They offered him a lot of money. Why? Where'd the money come from? The governor got involved. Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, who helped fire Brian Kelly, the former coach,

and the athletic director, Scott Woodward. And he got on the phone and called Lane Kippen. And he promised Lane Kiffin, I will be at your disposal, and he has held that part of the bargain. And in a state like Louisiana, like a lot of other states, the governor holds all the cards.

That's why somebody's senators are leaving DC to become governors. You mentioned Tuberville. He's doing that. Minnesota, just look around the country. And it is really interesting to follow this because LSU is a unique place where it's LSU against the world. So back to the issue at hand, Lane Tiffin decided to

get a couple of pro players. One that was on the Cleveland Brown's roster two weeks ago, he threatened to put them on the team. according to the SEC and federal court, they claimed that he orchestrated these lawsuits. He finally backed down a week ago by putting them in the Clemson game, and he backed down this week

by putting them on the roster for the rest of the season. So we think that is over, but the SEC has gone to such extremes that they are convening a meeting this week to consider expelling LSU from the league. I mean, this is unprecedented. I'm gasping to describe how I feel because I'm gobsmacked at the concept. But that's who he is and that's what's going on.

And then yesterday, everybody joined the party. John Kennedy, the senator from Louisiana said, you know, we're going to fight these people until the end. And you say, well, okay, who cares what John Kennedy says? Well, let me go to the other side of Congress. Mike Johnson, you may have heard of him, the Speaker of the House, LSU graduate. Steve Scalise, majority leader,

LSU graduate. I mean, they've got some, they've got some firepower in Washington, D.C. So I think the thing with this is that these two players who were on NFL rosters and Lane Kiffin says, you know, come on in, you can be on the roster. Then he says, oh, okay, we're not going to do that.

We finalized our roster. It's not going to happen. What happens to those two players? Because you basically, they've been told, you know, you're not in the NFL, but you're not in college. And I think that this goes back to, you know, we're talking about Lane Kiffin. We're talking about these very powerful people. But these players, all they want to do is play football. And what happens to them?

Where do they go next? Yeah. And before I come down on the players, they should be eligible. because if the NCAA, when they changed their rules a couple of months ago, they added a fifth year. If they had grandfathered all these players in, we wouldn't be having a conversation about this. But in typical NCAA parlance, they just totally screwed it up. These players have an agent, Drew Rosenhouse. He's looking for a place for them to play right now, either in college or professional football.

I don't, they might go, they may very well go back to the NFL and be on. on a taxi squad or they'll find a place to play in college football, but I will promise you it won't be in the SEC. I think my last question for you is I think we're agreed that the Protect College Sports Act, it's very complicated. And it also, to me, it doesn't look like, based on what we know now, that it's going to get a bunch of Democratic backing. But this won't be the last time Congress tries to get involved in this.

If I've learned anything watching Congress talk about sports, whether that's Major League Baseball, whether that's the NFL or whether it's college sports, this will not be the last attempted bite at the apple of dealing with college sports. So you're understandably distrustful of Congress, as am I. I might cover them all the time. But if Congress could do one thing for college sports, what would you want them to do that you think would be genuinely helpful? Well, I do believe very strongly in the antitrust exemption because it helps you manage the game without fear of every week having another lawsuit. And I know that sounds contradictory to my overall stance, but it has worked effectively for Major League Baseball, the NBA, in the NFL. They are able to conduct their business without having to be concerned. I mean, there are plenty of lawsuits.

that would help. There's a lot of, most of the centers I've talked to are interested in, in really curtailing the rights of the players. And I am not in favor of that. I think players should have the same rights as the coaches. And I think that's really the rub. I saw Tommy Cumberville a few weeks ago.

He introduced a bill and he told me, my bill is simple. It's basically limit everybody to get one transfer. Well, you already gave it. us his resume. He's walked out on quite a few schools, and so have many others. So I think, I think they have to find a compromise where players have the ability, maybe there's a number on it. I mean, there are, there are players that are, that last year, Diego Pavia for Vanderbilt was in the sixth or seventh year because he was playing for a smaller college, another player played for a junior college. So what do you do? You go to court. So I think that has to be

stopped. And I'm not trying to, to infringe on the rights of players, but At some point, we can't let lawyers and hometown judges make decisions in relation to the local team, because they're just not objective, they're not there, nor are they using the law as their guide. Paul, thank you so much for joining me. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you, Jane. That was my conversation with Paul Feinbaum, host of the Paul Feinbaum Show. Before we go, politics can feel like an endless stream of conflict, strong opinions, and information overload. That's where Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Galen Druk come in.

After years of helping people make sense of polls and elections, they're bringing their data journalism expertise to crooked with their new series, still counting. Every Wednesday evening, they'll break down the latest polling, explain what the numbers actually mean, and explore what might happen next, without the spin or the shouting. The first episode drops tonight, subscribe wherever get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a review.

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