Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
The problems we have in the country are solvable, but not solvable the way we’re approaching them today, because of partisan politics. Richard Helppie, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist seeks to find a place in the middle where common sense discussions can bridge the current great divide.
Richard Helppie's Common Bridge
Episode 282- Show Me The Money- A Closer Look at NIL. With Greg Dooley
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The college sports landscape is undergoing a revolution that few fans truly understand. In this eye-opening conversation, University of Michigan lecturer Greg Dooley breaks down the complex world of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation that's transforming collegiate athletics from its century-old amateur foundations into something resembling professional sports.
Dooley expertly navigates the various ways today's college athletes receive compensation—from traditional scholarships to corporate sponsorships, booster-funded "collectives," and new revenue-sharing programs that allow schools to directly pay athletes up to $20.5 million annually. The financial implications are staggering, with even powerhouse programs like Michigan facing budget shortfalls and universities adding student fees to cover costs.
What makes this discussion particularly valuable is Dooley's balanced perspective on both benefits and concerns. While acknowledging that compensating athletes is fundamentally fair given their role in generating massive revenues, he highlights troubling consequences like the cutting of non-revenue sports and the thousands of athletes who enter the transfer portal only to end up without teams, scholarships, or educational opportunities.
Most compelling is Dooley's insight into the potential future of college athletics. Will top programs eventually break away to form professional minor leagues affiliated with universities? How will the relationship between academics and athletics evolve? And who should bear responsibility for developing future professional athletes—universities or the leagues that ultimately benefit from their training?
Whether you're a die-hard sports fan or simply interested in the changing economics of higher education, this conversation provides crucial context for understanding a transformation that extends far beyond the playing field. Subscribe to The Common Bridge for more thoughtful, nonpartisan discussions that bridge the divide on today's most important issues.
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Introduction to the Common Bridge
Speaker 1Welcome to this episode of Season 6 of the Common Bridge, where policy and current events are discussed in a fiercely nonpartisan manner. The host, richard Helpe, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and political analyst who has reached over 5 million listeners, viewers and readers around the world. With our surging growth in audience and subscriptions, the Common Bridge continues to expand its reach. The show is available on the Substack website and the Substack app Simply search for the Common Bridge continues to expand its reach. The show is available on the Substack website and the Substack app Simply search for the Common Bridge. You can also find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The Common Bridge draws guests and audiences from around the political spectrum and we invite you to become a free or paid subscriber on your favorite medium.
Meet Greg Dooley: NIL Expert
Speaker 2Hello, welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, rich Helpe, and today we're going to be in a sports topic. We're talking today with University of Michigan lecturer, full-time faculty member, greg Dooley. Greg is a college football historian at the University of Michigan. He teaches three popular courses on athletics history, sports leadership and what we're going to talk about today NIL, which stands for name, image and likeness. So, professor Dooley, welcome to the Common Bridge and thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 3Awesome to be here. It's certainly a popular topic. I've made a lot of new friends since I started teaching this class, so I'm looking forward to sharing what I know today.
Speaker 2So I'm just wondering do you get more questions these days on NIL or on sign stealing? And well, let me ask you this more questions or more whimpering around NIL and sign stealing repercussions?
Speaker 3Well, I would say it's definitely on NIL. I get more questions about what it is, everything ranging from explain it to me to nuance around what some of the teams in Michigan are doing. I'd say a lot more than say Mr Connor Stallions, who we just can't shake him, we can't quit him, he just won't go away. I don't even think it's done yet, but I definitely get a lot more questions on NIL these days.
Speaker 2I'm sure 30 years from now they're still going to be talking about that. I hear some whining coming from the direction to the south and a little bit to the north, maybe 60 miles, but in any case, let's talk NIL today. So a lot of people, and me included, just don't know what it is, don't know why we should care about it, as just ordinary civilian people not involved with college sports other than as an avid fan. And when I dug into it, wow, the nomenclature non-revenue sports, pay-for-play, tampering, compliance, settlement, transfer, roster limits, benefit, cap, dsas, boosters, collectives, associated entities, associated individuals, and it just goes on from there. So it's something that's fairly new, but it's sprung up to the point where it's created its own language. So for the lay audience that we have at the Common Bridge, what the heck is NIL and why was it necessary?
Speaker 3Yeah. So it really gets back to the formation of college sports and popular college sports like football, and from the beginning the notion around colleges having sports was set on an amateur ideal, meaning these weren't paid, these weren't professionals, they were a different class of athlete in colleges playing Soon. After the organization called the NCAA was created Around 1906, teddy Roosevelt was involved Some historians listening might know that story and basically in the the background, kind of upholding this amateur ideal. Well, as time went on, stadiums were built, tv came into play, the amount of money involved started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. The stakes involved for colleges and schools and coaches and fans got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3All the while, coaches and teams schem corner to say, okay, we have to allow some compensation beyond the scholarships and other things that a lot of students were afforded. And that's where the notion of they can benefit from their NIL, namely their name, their image, their likeness or, said another way, from their fame that we all know they've produced for years. That's the foundation and that is a very recent phenomenon. In the last three years the NCAA finally relented to say, okay, there's this other form of compensation that they can allow, and that's really what has really turned the college football and college sports world on its head?
How Athletes Get Paid Now
Speaker 2Yeah, and so I understand the athletes getting money, but at the other end of that transaction, somebody's providing that money to them and there's a mechanism for getting the money to the athlete. So let's start at that end for getting the money to the athletes. So let's start at that end. Who's funding that money that is going to be ultimately ending up in the bank account of these young athletes.
Speaker 3So this is something that a lot of people don't understand, and so I can walk through it, but there's a lot of different ways now athletes can be compensated.
Speaker 3First of all, there's those scholarships right, we talked about that. That's still in play for an out-of-state student at the University of Michigan, over four years, over a quarter million dollars. That's a lot, okay. So that's still there. Then there's NIL, and this really comes in two forms today. First of all, there's what I would call authentic, real NIL. That's State Farm, that is Dr Pepper, that is a local car company, that is a local restaurant paying an athlete to promote their brand or service, just like they would Patrick Mahomes in the NFL or a celebrity like Brad Pitt, right. So that's what that is.
Speaker 3This other thing that came around was this notion, though, of something called NIL collectives, and this is what people don't understand.
Speaker 3So there's real, authentic deals.
Speaker 3Then boosters got together and said all right, athletes can be paid now through this, through their fame, let's pool or collect our money together, write a contract for some type of service, like putting on a hat and paying them a hundred thousand dollars for that, that little moment, that privilege.
Speaker 3And those are called collectives, and those are third-party organizations, technically not directly affiliated with universities, where they're basically basically funneling money to athletes to keep their teams competitive and compete with other schools. So those are those buckets and one more just came into play, rich, and I don't know if you want to get into it, but it's revenue sharing. So this has evolved over time, where the NCAA threw another lawsuit starting this year. Starting July 1st of this year, schools can now directly pay up to $20. Million dollars effectively directly back to its student athletes. Okay, so you have all those dynamics going on which is causing a lot of confusion for people, but frankly, there's really those four big places or buckets where an athlete can be compensated. Today we can go into more detail about what's making people concerned, where oversight is, but that's basically the playing field that's causing a lot of people to pull their hair out.
Speaker 2So if I watch a college football game this fall and I'm looking down, there's 22 young men on that field. There might be somebody there with a handsome paycheck coming from promoting Chevrolet. There might be another young man out there that is getting one of the 85 scholarships, so is getting an education in exchange for playing. There may be another one who has $100,000 that was compensation from a collective for putting on a cap. And there still may be others who get nothing because they're a walk-on and they weren't scholarship eligible. And they're all down there on that field competing at the same time.
Financial Impact on Universities
Speaker 3Is that kind of the way it looks, with a little nuance. Someone who's listening to this knows one of the other changes they made. You can effectively give everyone on the team now a scholarship. So the the roster is 105 now the limit for, and with a few extra provisions in there, but basically you can give everyone who plays any varsity sport in a power floor conference a scholarship, which was another change they made. But basically, yes, you could see the quarterback at michigan having a long-term large deal, like bryce underwood the quarterback at michigan does, and getting that compensation, whereas maybe one player is only getting a scholarship whereas another is getting a scholarship plus some of the collective money all over the place. Then you might have an enterprising kicker who doesn't get a ton of money out of those sources other than a scholarship, but has run off and created a social media following and has picked up some social media sponsors with some smaller brands like a shampoo or a coffee or something, and is on a side hustle is making their own money, absolutely.
Speaker 2And when I also I look at the cost, I read a story that I didn't quite understand. It's about the University of Minnesota that students are going to pay a $200 athletic fee this year, even if they never attend a single game, and that their Twin Cities campus, for the first time, will be adding a $100 per semester fee to offset this substantial price for paying the student athletes to play for the Gophers, and even with that their athletics budget is almost $9 million short and that they've increased tuition 6.5% for in-state, 7.5% for out-of-state and that the payments to the student-athletes, which I understand is that cap of $20.5 million, is about 12% of the University of Minnesota's $174 million athletic budget. Something about this doesn't sound like academia or students or student athletes. Are they typical or atypical?
Speaker 3They're very typical. So if you look at the top of the food pyramid in college athletics, one of the schools that's up there are the Big Ten schools, but particularly Michigan and Ohio, ohio state. But even michigan and ohio state are looking at creative ways to help fill this gap. Connor stallion's financial penalties aside, michigan just produced its athletic budget for this year. They do that in june and for the first time ever they're assuming a $15 million injection from the university proper to make their budget meet. Okay, so the notion of Minnesota adding a fee now I wouldn't do it to students but to adding a fee to say someone's got to pay for this because while these are certainly run like businesses, these athletic departments, in a way they're still not meant to generate a profit. They're not for profit. They spend all the money that they generate. So when you have a gap in your budget you get concerned, and Michigan's no different. The way they're trying to raise the money. The other part of this is they are offering more scholarships that are allowed now with the $20.5 million through this recent settlement, which is the House settlement. That's what resulted in all this.
Speaker 3So schools everywhere are trying to figure this out. The other consequence Rich unfortunately is. We've seen, I think at this point, 40 sports cut across college right now. So far Cut sports to say we can't afford to do this sport anymore. People are wondering are we heading toward a tiering system where the revenue sports are in one tier, the, the medium or break-even sports are another, perhaps the, the sports like american and rowing that don't generate of just a net cost? Are they going to go somewhere else and look more like a club sport or something like that?
The Transfer Portal Problem
Speaker 2these are all, all questions that are out there and the ones you raise are great ones yeah, it sounds like, uh, destruction of part of what makes a rich college experience like a rower, a golfer, a volleyball player, a tennis player, that most of the revenue is football, it is big program basketball and then it falls off pretty dramatically after that. So these athletes that are going into this, what happens if they enter the transfer portal? Let's say the quarterback at Michigan decides, hey, I'm going to go to Oklahoma because they're offering me another few million dollars, does everything reset to zero and he's got to start all over again.
Speaker 3Well, for starters, and I'm glad you brought up the transfer portal because it's probably the topic that is as frustrating to the people actually behaviors but also that these people are in good standing enrolled in their school. Otherwise, how could they expect this brand, expect this to benefit from this person's name, image, likeness or the collective itself? You know they're not going to pay someone who goes to Ohio State or Oklahoma to play football, so the transfer portal definitely complicates that. Usually, when someone transfers, it's because either they were unhappy at their current school or they see a bigger opportunity somewhere else, either for playing time, but most certainly because someone in their ear whether it was someone at the school or an agent said we've got some greener grass here, no pun intended, meaning we've got more money. Now you brought up the transfer portal.
Speaker 3One of the huge consequences that I don't think we fully appreciate yet is all of the people who enter the transfer portal but never land anywhere. Meaning I'm leaving my school, my paid for likely education, my identity as a young person, which is my sport, inevitably right. These are often certainly at big 10 schools. These are the heroes of their hometown. They made it right to a big 10 school.
Speaker 3Well, they it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, they enter the transfer portal. Thousands upon thousands never actually land anywhere because a promise wasn't kept, it didn't work out, for whatever reason. So now what? No education, no sport, nothing, no nothing. These people are lost. You want to talk about mental health, pressure, anxiety, depression. Who is taking care of these people? Right, and it is a consequence of the system that we're in right now ability to transfer for young people who maybe could use a little stability in their life, like, hey, you know, you made a decision, you got to stick around here for a couple years. Give it time. Maybe you're not going to start right away, like everyone at home is telling you is going to happen.
Speaker 2Maybe you need to learn, get adjusted to your classes in school, but for many people that's not happening and I'm concerned about it well, it's a, because look, even when we go see a game with two major college teams on the field, very few of those players are ever going to touch an NFL field period, and so the challenge of trying to make a living post-college playing that sport is just enormous.
Speaker 2To try to be one of those elite few that make it into the NFL or into the NBA, there's just not that many places and it's terrifically competitive. You not only have to have the talent, the drive, come in in the right year, avoid injury and then, if you get through, your career is not that long. I think it's only like five or six years in the NFL for a player that gets onto the 45-man roster. So I can see the public interest in the protection of the young athletes and has there been any discussion of potentially allowing them to unionize? The NFL has a players association Major League Baseball, they all have players associations where there might be a collective bargaining contract that would cover all of the athletes at these big schools and big programs.
Speaker 3Yeah, so it's a great topic. It's a topic that comes in my class quite a bit. There are individual teams in schools, including Northwestern years ago, brown University, some others have gotten some legal traction and ultimately this is a federal issue. This is a labor relations issue Some traction there.
Positive Impacts of NIL
Speaker 3One of the challenges is this isn't like the NFL players who are football players in a professional league who play the same sport. Are you trying to create a union of everyone who participates in division one? That could be lacrosse, that could be football, and in their time in division one is fleeting four or five years, right, so it's a moving target. So the who is this group? What are they representing? Um, what are they bargaining for is a tough challenge. The other part right now is a lot of coaches and administrators would say why would uh athletes actually want to bargain right now? They have a lot, they have ultimate flexibility to transfer, they're getting um unprecedented amount of benefits that they've ever received.
Speaker 3You know there isn't a lot of oversight, although they're trying to do that through the House settlement right now, controlling a lot of these deals. So maybe I honestly think if anyone would want to come to the table and have a conversation. It'd be the coaches and administrators to talk about the transfer portal to change some of the rules, maybe to standardize some of the contracts, but ultimately, whether they're a union there's talk of whether they should be employees. Okay, whether any of that happens, we do need some type of coming together of both sides to agree on some of this. Otherwise, there is legislation in Congress right now to talk about antitrust-type protections for the league and for certain sports. If that happens, I think it'll be a little clumsy and it'll face legal challenges. The best result would be something like you're talking about, but it's hard to wrap your head around the scope and volume and practicality of that in the short term.
Speaker 2And look, I see this from a public policy perspective in this way, as you're starting to describe this. So you've got a teenager okay, say 16, 17 years old being recruited to go to a school, and it's not. This is a good coach you can play for and this is the kind of degree you can come out with and your schedule is going to permit you ample time to study. And now we've got this menu of business deals that you're trying to make at a 16 or 17 year old and at the same time, universities are going to recruit other non-athlete students and say don't worry about the cost of your education. We've got this loan that violates every principle of good lending and who takes the risk?
Speaker 2And I just look at this whole situation and I'd say we've got something terribly wrong here. If a way for a young person to pay for their education is to participate in a sport, fantastic. You've got a student plays athletics, gets a little break on tuition, you're not burdening anybody. But now, when we're talking about tax money that ultimately is going to young players and we've got fees being extracted from their peers to go into their pockets. Something's terribly wrong here with college sports.
Speaker 3Yeah, there's a lot, and the issue of fairness, the value of sports as an entity to the colleges, where it all fits in and who should be really paying for it, are all big questions. The other thing is, is the changing nature, I think, of some tastes. It's hard. My children are college age. They don't watch television rich they don't. They watch their phones, yeah, um, I think they're less prone to sit through, uh, say, four hours and a half of a football game, uh, in person.
Speaker 3So on top of that, you could argue we could be looking at a house of cards. Then you get people our age and older who are watching all the money throwing around getting thrown around and it's not something they signed up for. They didn't sign up for the NFL with younger people, professional league, which is what some people feel like it's turning into, and not knowing any of the names in the roster you add in your comments, it's leading to a level of frustration with people. That all said, there are some really good things that have come out of this, in my opinion, with NIL. So I think there's some really strong positives that do get, I think you know, in all the chaos and all the wild westness of what's happening right now do tend to get lost as well.
Speaker 2I want to talk about some of those things and look, every change was put in to try to address a problem. So, if we go way back, the University of Michigan used to recruit and give scholarships and they ended up practicing against players that were better, faster and stronger than the people that they would meet on Saturday. And then finally the NCAA came in and said no, wait a minute, 95 scholarships is all you can do, and that changed the competitive landscape. And I personally know people that claim and I believe it that they were among the top two or three players at their positions, but they were going through college at a time when they were behind the Heisman Trophy winner and that number one athlete and they couldn't. They had no way out of that.
Speaker 2They had, as a teenager, had signed up for a particular school. That's where they were locked. So I kind of get the transfer portal. I kind of get the transfer portal. Until we had this conversation, I was not aware of the athletes that spill out to the other end and are basically left high and dry. They're off their current team, they've lost their scholarship, they're no longer enrolled in school and they're maybe 20 if they do it two years in and they've got to pick a new direction in life. They're back as one of the in life.
Future of College Athletics
Speaker 3They're, they're back as, as one of the uh uh coaches told me, they're back at the crib, they're back home, they're back at their high school gym, working out back on the track hoping to get that call, yeah. So yeah, it's brutal, but I did. I did mention a few good things and I do think it's the right thing what are some of the good things that you see coming out of this?
Speaker 3Yeah, so for a lot of college age students, you really don't have to worry about the financial side of life till later. Maybe you have a parent or an aunt or uncle who does your taxes for you, right, you know, things like retirement accounts and IRAs is probably the last thing on your mind. Um, your brand, which we all have. I have a brand, um, here as as a lecturer at Michigan. Right, we all have a brand, brand awareness. Working with companies, thinking of the business side of your life, from from everyone, from someone on the rowing team to the football team. Many of them are making six figures right a year. They are getting exposed at most schools to programming, they call it, or lessons about, yeah, taxes. You know this is all taxable income. You got to learn about taxes. Number two, investing. Hey, did you know you could take that money and put it in a Roth IRA? What's a Roth IRA? Well, it's this new financial instrument you should get started now. Let me show you some charts about what this could be worth when you're 50. Those types of conversations hey, hey, I want to get into real estate, Boy, I'm at Michigan. I want to use some of this money. I've always been interested in real estate. I want to use some of this money. I've always been interested in real estate. I want to learn about it. So you're getting a lot of that kind of life education pushed down to these younger people. What used to happen is a lot of these players used to go to the NBA and the NFL and you've probably heard the statistics but a high, high number of them are in financial stress years after they enter the league. Of them are in financial stress years after they enter the league. So a lot of that education about life that's good for everyone, I think, is being put down. Above all, it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3Michigan, you know Michigan, the Big Ten. These schools try to generate millions and millions and millions of dollars because of what's happening on the courts, fields that you know, that are at the athletic campus here. These students deserve to share these enterprises. These facilities were built on the backs of these players. Undoubtedly, no one denies that. The coaching pay all of that and, by the way, there's going to be a level set on all that stuff. It's no secret that michigan has a better football facility, a better weight room, by the way, with a golf simulator, two bowling lanes, um, a barber shop is better than many nfl teams. It's because the labor was cheap, but they had all this money they could pump back into the facilities. The workout facility is ridiculous. Um, so it's, it's right. It's the right thing to do, to share with athletes now now, let's, let's let's simulate that right?
Speaker 2sure it's. Still, the costs are being laid off on the taxpayers and the donors, because it's not going to a science wing, it's not going to a chemistry student, it's not going to someone trying to invent something in the computer lab. It's being charged off to other students, as the University of Minnesota is doing, and with this escalation, when it's tax money or, you know, bonds floated on behalf of the revenues that are general obligations of a city, a state, a municipality or a university. This is not free money. It's not as if there is a profit from football that says you know what. We're going to distribute this a little bit differently.
Speaker 3Absolutely not. They were distributing it, they were pumping it back into their program, their facility and keeping the money.
Speaker 2And it's going into this vortex. But let me ask you this why not take those major college sports that are no longer student-athlete sports based on? You can sign a contract, you can hire an agent, you can change jobs, you can sign contracts, you can make all the money you want to make. Why not just take the big schools Michigan, ohio State, oklahoma, oregon, washington, et cetera take those football and basketball programs, spin them off into a for-profit minor league and then let the NFL and the NBA deal with that, much like Major League Baseball and professional hockey. They pay for their own farm system. Why not just do that and let the university continue to be an owner?
Speaker 3Sure, and that might happen. That might happen is that those top tier schools break off Because right now, the Big Ten with all its members shares all its revenue. You go to the CFP playoff, you go in a ballgame, you're on TV, you have a TV contract. Northwestern gets the same cut as Michigan and Ohio State. Okay, so you could see a point where, okay, now we got to pay that. Now we have all these expenses. Now we're not good with that anymore. Now Ohio State, michigan State, michigan want to go off because we're worth more with that anymore. Now, ohio state, michigan state, michigan want to go off because we're worth more than the other schools. That could happen.
Speaker 3There's a lot of talk around that happening. Um, now, if you go into a pro style league, um, what I would just say be really careful. Um, is it still? Do do alums fans? You know the millions of ohio state fans that are rabid ohio state fans that are out there. Are they going to feel the same way about the school? Probably, um, if they're in a more professional setting, is it still the same buck eyes with that charm that clearly is there with and that connection a lot of people have with the school? Are you going to fracture that, are you going to lose that? I'd say be careful I would.
Speaker 2They already have. And so if you kind of extrapolate this out, and you know, michigan, ohio state, it's still the ohio state. Buckeyes, it's just a for-profit corporation that raises its own revenue. You get off this trying to schedule classes and academic eligibility and all the charade there. These are paid professionals coming in to play a sport. Peripherally they can. You know. One of the benefits can be the company pays their tuition. That could be something that they could negotiate. I'm saying flip the model and then, yeah, so Northwestern now doesn't have money for a big football program. You know what they could do? They could have something called student athletes and fund a program and then Northwestern could get in a league with, like Vanderbilt and Duke and Stanford and other places that have actual students playing the game. It would be competitive at their level.
Who's Monitoring All This?
Speaker 3So there is something underlying what you're talking about, though, and I want to be real clear. I've had a speaker in my class state this someone who's an official at a big school that university presidents are addicted to money, and it's not just sports. Ok, so we're like separating the problem. Well, are we? End of michigan has made up a bunch of individual schools I'm speaking to you that are from the department of education. I know that, especially with politics and research grant funding and all that, it's the lifeblood of this place. Yes, behind it is a higher ideal we want to educate people, we want to do great things in the world. It's driven by money. I know that the hospital at Michigan, michigan, has a $15 billion budget. Okay, between its campuses, its hospital network and all this. The money is important. It's not just all about doing good. It's the lifeblood of everything and a lot of the decisions that are happening here. It's not just yes, it's that way in athletics, but it's also extends to the other parts of the university.
Speaker 2I'm agreeing with you is that having an independent minor league football and do something like you're eligible for pick a number, 80 games or until you turn 28, and then you're out of the league if you haven't made the NFL by that time, that'd be a cool league. You could sign multi-year contracts and things, because something's going to happen after this. And right now I've personally seen it down at the high school level. A promising player in basketball says you know what? I want to go to schools of choice and play in a different district than I reside because I can get more exposure. And then, hey, we've had a good year in the state championship game. Now that player's transferring down to IMG in Florida because it's a better opportunity to get a better look from a major college. And I mean, where does it end?
Speaker 3Well, yeah, and well, and going from the other side, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the old system and, frankly, where the system is still at, is the NFL. Yeah, right, and frankly, you could throw Olympic sports into that NFL. Yeah, right, and frankly, you could throw Olympic sports into that. Um, the United States trains more international athletes. I think there's 25,000 international athletes in the, in the NCAA, many of which are going to compete in the Olympics for their respective countries. Um, all trained in the facilities, the resources that are here.
Speaker 3The NFL where do you think people like Aiden Hutchinson or the detroit lions was built? He was built in schoenbecker hall. It didn't cost the nfl a dime, and so he whittled through. A lot of these players came in as skinny blah, blah, blah worked their way up. He got the draft and built ready for the nfl. Nfl is benefiting greatly from this. So to me there is a question now, now that what I say, the jig is up, now that we have to compensate, now that it's being more professionalized well, people are pointing fingers. Yes, 200 for minnesota students. I ask us, olympic committee, what about you for our wrestlers? Uh, hey, nfl, we're. What about the nfl draft itself? It's all college players. Why isn't that coming back to? If michigan puts 18 guys in the nfl draft, why aren't we getting 18 stipends from the nfl for that? Um? Why aren't the players being paid in for in for that moment? If you create basically a feeder league to the nfl, um, why, why should the ncaa, should the nfl, be compensating some of the players for that?
Speaker 2that brings up a couple of things. So first of all, just to punctuate your point, the nfl got aiden hutchinson, not only capable on the field, he already had a brand, they didn't have to do anything and people wanted to come to see Aiden Hutchinson play football at the next level. So they have benefited greatly from that. But who's going to monitor all of this complexity, making sure that people are doing whatever the current rules are? Where you know back, you know the NCAA overstepped. Hey, an amateur couldn't buy a kid a hamburger and they were prevented from working while they were on campus. They didn't have a family that could send them money. It's like that was not the right answer. So who oversees all this?
Speaker 3I mean, it doesn't seem like the NCAA is the group no, the, and one of the nice things that came out of this house settlement, I think, was a formal acknowledgement that the ncaa can't, isn't equipped to, and shouldn't be the oversight agency for this, for this new, you know, revenue sharing, sharing, collective monitoring. They're just not good at it. You know, I used to say they're good at running tournaments and then I heard you know like well, they set up the fields for some women's tournaments and they set up the hotels. I used to give them that credit for that, but they're pretty good at the NCAA tournament. Let's give them that. Okay, they're not good at this.
Speaker 3So they set up a separate commission to monitor the salary cap and what they did was affect the salary cap, which is the revenue sharing money, and they brought in some technology companies that are used in pro sports. They brought in the big four firm, deloitte, to help monitor these transactions and basically report and be able to flag violators of offenses around this. So that's brand new. Is that going to work? Are schools going to comply? Are student athletes going to do the things they're supposed to do by reporting their deals? We don't. What are the consequences? We don't know yet, but I think a good thing is. The NCAA said, it's not us, because I don't think anyone would disagree. Ohio State, Michigan, michigan State. The NCAA is a highly dysfunctional organization at doing that kind of stuff.
Final Thoughts and Closing
Speaker 2Again as a country, need to look at this big business that sports have become, and without losing sight of all the wonderful things that benefit from competition in athletics. But it can't be the only thing. We've still got to make sure that the universities are doing their core mission of teaching and research, because I don't know that anybody suffering from cancer said you know, I think we need to send more money into a basketball program or a football program. And when I talk about athletes, I mean all of them. I mean the rower, the lacrosse player, the tennis champion, the wrestler, the gymnast. All of those sports I think are important for young people to enrich this. So, greg, as we kind of come to the end here, you lecture on this and talk about it. I know my knowledge of this has gone up significantly during this time. What didn't we talk about yet today?
Speaker 3What didn't we talk about yet today? There's a whole bunch of talk behind the scenes about still the future, the playoff in football, how we're structuring the money, where agents fit in, where the federal government might fit in, and again we touched on it. But right now there are some bills working their way through Congress that might provide some protection to this settlement and that that is a 10 year deal to not only pay some former athletes but set up this 20 and a half million. That's definitely something to watch if you're interested in politics, to see if the federal government finally steps in and does something about it, steps in and does something about it. You know what else? The role of agents, you know, is definitely a sticky area because it's quiet, it's clandestine, but there's still not a lot of accountability for who these people are advising and whispering in the ears of young people and maybe convincing them to leave. More oversight of agents is really, really going to be important. I will say this that the last thing is, you do talk about the role of schools and what we want schools to be doing and the research we want them to be doing.
Speaker 3At Michigan, no entity and the athletic budget is only a fraction. It's about 1.5% of the overall budget of the University of Michigan. But no one, no entity at Michigan is responsible for generating more money for the brand of Michigan. I'm talking about the schools and the hospital, the Lloyd Carr former football coach, you know, center at at mott hospital. Charles woodson, you know, children's center, the bo shanbeck or heart center they're all named after former athletes and coaches here.
Speaker 3Even the schools. If you go to the michigan stadium, the suite holders are often some of the biggest donors, not only for the, the Ross School of Business, stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins, but, you know, around campus it's intertwined in a lot of the things we do here. So the schools know that athletics are important. I can see more subsidization from the schools to the athletes in the athletic program. But it's going to cause friction and frustration with a lot of people who are looking at the true mission of the university. We've been at odds with presidents of the academic side since the dawn of college sports and it's only heating up.
Speaker 2Well, that's well said and that intertwining is really kind of that's the Gordian knot here, right? How do you undo this? And Michigan does have a world-class medical diagnostic care delivery and research, amazing life-saving things that happen there every day. Seriously, every day, gosh. I just keep thinking it'd be nice to have a physician that's up and coming getting this kind of support too, versus digging themselves a multi-hundred thousand dollar hole in student debt. But I think it's our society needs to step back and take a good hard look at this and what's the appropriate level and balance for each of these? And again, as I said, I'm a sports fan. I enjoy watching Michigan football a lot and I just want to make sure that the people on the field and the people not on the field are treated fairly. And, greg, this has been a great conversation. Any closing thoughts for the listeners, readers and viewers of the Common Bridge?
Speaker 3No, but if you have a Michigan student, I'm easy to find. We've got some awesome programs in the School of Ed. I also write mvictorscom and I'm a host of a podcast called the Professor and the Pundit where we talk about a lot of these issues available anywhere. You can get your podcasts.
Speaker 2I hope everybody tunes in and with our guest today from the University of Michigan Department of Education, professor Greg Dooley. This is your host, rich, helpe signing off on the Common Bridge.
Speaker 1Thanks for joining us on the Common Bridge. Subscribe to the Common Bridge on substackcom or use their Substack app, where you can find more interviews, columns, videos and nonpartisan discussions of the day. Just search for the Common Bridge. You can also find the Common Bridge on Mission Control Radio on your RadioGarden app.