ESPN’s Dan Murphy Talks NCAA-Athletes Revenue Sharing & More | Full Interview | The Rich Eisen Show

Revenue Sharing pleased to have a staff writer for ESPN Dan Murphy joining the show right now Dan who along with his colleague Pete THL a very interesting story Dan earlier today appreciate you being here on the leaders of college sports being involved in deep discussions to reach a legal settlement that would likely lay out the framework for sharing Revenue with athletes in a future NCAA business model we go so far down the path Dan at sometimes in terms of the number of lawsuits the number of you items class action all this other stuff that the people who don't follow college sports on a daily basis like myself end up reading this in like going this is blowing my mind I don't know distill it for me here what exactly would happen in terms of this settlement and how would this for college football college sports fans how would this impact the sports that they love yeah thanks I feel like I deserve an honorary law degree after having covered college sports for the last three or four years the the upshot of it all is that there has been a a huge shift in momentum in the past you know year but really even in the past few weeks where college sports leaders have sort of come to the acceptance that they're going to have to or would be behoove them to share Revenue with at least at the top end of college football their athletes moving forward through some kind of collective bargaining agreement and right now the Catalyst or the vehicle that might help at least get the first framework of what that agreement might look like you know all this usually happens through a players union in Pro Sports colleges don't have a Players Association like that set up yet so the first framework for what a revenue share agreement might look like would likely happen as part of a settlement for this Anti-Trust lawsuit that's been going on for a couple years and the two sides in that case are getting pretty into the Weeds on a discussion of of what that framework would look like moving forward so for college athletes right now College athletes in the future we know that nil has gone from being the wild west to basically still the wild west and they're trying to put guidelines in place but the guidelines aren't necessarily real stringent there's you know different schools that are competing very much financially especially in the transfer portal for college football players right now if this goes through how if it all does that potentially allow the NCAA or other governing bodies to rein in some of the craziness that's led to what we've seen over the past several years the kind of things we see in Collective bargain agreements for Pro Sports lay out the ability for them to sign contracts that you know have a player staying somewhere longer than a year right now college sports with the way the transfer portal and nil is set up at least once a year sometimes twice a year players have an O opportunity to basically be unrestricted free agents and I think a lot of coaches and athletic administrators have realized that's not a great idea but in order for them to get a little bit of control back over that part of the game and they there are lawsuits preventing them from from making rules that prohibit that right now um they're going to have to give up something else in order to get that control back and that something else is is almost certainly going to be a piece of all of the TV money that has been pouring into college sports over the past couple decades how much is this also about the NCAA just fighting for survival as an Fighting for Survival organization in terms of you know we know that there have been proposals on could you you know have the big schools all band together and basically break off and form a completely different League for the NCAA to even be relevant to exist in five years how important is it for them to resolve some of these things from a legal perspective and at least have a path forward that they Remain the governing body here so the house case if it goes to trial and it's scheduled to go to trial next January could cost the NCAA somewhere between four and five billion dollars in Damages if they lose and it's a pretty good bet they're going to lose they their track record in these cases in recent years has been uh pretty rough so I I think that's the Big Mo one of the big motivations behind negotiating so it is an existential threat for the NCAA and I think we still may see a model in the future where the top 20 30 40 schools whatever it may be split off and do their own thing but the NCAA for the past 30 years or so has been uh a after school extracurricular activity when it's convenient for them to think of themselves that way and a huge multi-billion dollar entertainment business when they want to think about themselves that way we've reached a point where they're going going to have to pick one of those two lanes and we may see some schools decide they want to take a step back and operate more like a D2 or D3 school but we're definitely going to see a group of schools say jump with both feet in into the sort of this is a billion dollar entertainment industry and we're going to start treating it like one the amazing part and I'm not intending to put words in your mouth here Dan we appreciate you being here Dan Murphy staff writer for espn.com basically what I hear is this is this is illegal what the NCA is doing it's always been illegal we've been complicit in this for Decades of letting them do the illegal things because we like football because we like March Madness we like those types of things in your mind if this model moves forward here does the fabric of the sport change has even potentially change for the better in terms of some of the things with nil and unlimited transfers and those types of things is this an improvement for the average fan or is this going to work to the detriment we're going to go completely you know down a different path here moving forward so the law is not quite black and white and that's why I think it's rough to it's tough to say that it's been illegal for the past 30 years really the Supreme Court and judges have changed their mind about how they interpret this murky part of the law that for a while gave the NCAA basically a special exception to violate some of the rules that no other industry in the in the country can can violate that that special exception is now gone which is why we've had this turmoil over the last three to four years in terms of what this means for fans if you are a fan that really wants to make sure that he sees Alabama play Jacksonville State because they live in the same state or wants to make sure that Ohio state is going to play akan every once in a while and likes those stories that might not happen in the future but if you're a fan who wants to see Ohio State play Oregon every week or Alabama play Texas we're going to see more and more of those matchups coming coming because I think what this is leading to is is a bigger separ separation between the 30 or 40 schools that are just playing in a different Stratosphere than everybody else with money right now one of those teams that's kind of in that that middle ground is UAB where the players became the first ones to vote and opt into effectively the college sports Union Trent dfur the former NFL quarterback former ESPN analyst who's now the head coach there said he actually wanted this and he informed the players about this opportunity and said hey it's going to College Sports Union happen eventually you should join up right now I'm curious number one how does any Administration view a coach's actions like that and number two how soon do we potentially see other schools doing the exact same thing I I asked uh Trent D's bosses at UAB what they felt about it they decided not to comment on it it is an O position really yeah dfur is you know in a sense dfur is middle management in college sports and you don't often see management asking the the labor force to organize so it is a unique position D for taking there and one that I think a lot you know you see more and more coaches who want to position themselves as player Centric and player friendly who are going to stand up and say we need to be giving more to the players right now um there's a little distinction between what this group is and a union just for sort of employment legal reasons they're they're trying to negotiate a little bit differently but in effect they're they're trying to do the same thing and I think we will see more people jump on board with this as we said at the start schools are starting to see why it would be good for them to bargain collectively with athletes and the biggest missing piece of the puzzle to get to a point where schools are sharing that Revenue bargain with athletes is they need somebody to sit across the table from them who represents the athletes right now they're they're a group all over the place and you need to be able to have a single entity or only a couple entities that you can actually sit across the table from and bargain um so this group that athletes. org that was down at UAB a couple weeks ago signing them up is one of a handful of different people trying to position themselves right now to be essentially The Players Association and the voice of athletes when we inevitably get to that bargaining table you mentioned a school like akan maybe in this future Universe here them playing Ohio state every now and then it it just doesn't happen what happens to programs like that or what even happens to programs like my alma M Boston College that just lost Jeff Halley to an NFL defensive coordinator job in large part because he was having to recruit his players and then re-recruit them and then re-recruit them again after Spring ball keep them out of the portal and find n money which is not really prevalent at a school like BC those those programs that might be in the one of the power five or power four conferences I guess at this point between them or those the max of the world what what happens to those programs if we move in this direction it's a great question I think there's I think of this in two phases within the next year or two years at Max we're going to see schools having the opportunity to share Revenue with players more directly and that's going to create a rift where schools who want to go all in and spend as much money as they can to build the best rosters are going to do so so and some schools might decide that's not for them we'd rather look at this differently and I think that phase two of that plays out in the next five to eight to 10 years as all of these conference TV contracts roll over where five to 10 years from now when the Big 10 is looking at signing its next deal it's the the TV partners are probably going to look at that and say hey we love the Ohio State versus Washington and USC matchup but we don't really care for Maryland versus Illinois could you cut those guys and there's going to be this Dash over the next five eight years for the Boston colleges of the world to decide if they want to be on the at the big kids table they need to spend a lot of money in the next five to eight years to have the best teams they possibly can in order to make sure they get a seat on that bus before this big rift happens between some of these top-notch schools and everybody else in college sports Dan last thing for you appreciate you being here give me the timeline here I know it's it's difficult when you're talking about things that are in the court system and you got multiple different cases a lot of moving Parts here but how how soon could we see any of these things potentially take effect in other words this fall are any of the things we're talking about actually going to impact college football right now or are these Ripple effects that we're really going to be pushing out for a few years the only guarantee is it's going to be slower than everybody wants it to be and thinks it should be I think you know this year we will probably see some changes that come as schools get more involved in paying nil deals for players and it already looks more professional than it did a couple years ago as schools are sort of saying the things out loud that used to get whispered in the back of the bar you know by campus um but I don't think the the really significant shifts are probably at least a year out my my best guess is we start to see some of that summer of 2025 and then it evolves from there Dan Illuminating stuff man really appreciate you coming on on short notice the full story everybody can read at espn.com thanks for being here man thanks for having me catch the rich eyes and show every single day on the Roku Channel 12 to 3 Eastern for free