Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host Keith Glasser. How we doing?
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Great. How are you?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Good. We're going to take a couple minutes and provide a little bit of an update. At least the off the best information that we have on the House vs. NCAA hearing, it was settled about seven days ago, six days ago. Since we're recording, there's already been one dispute that has been filed around Title 9, which I think we in in a lot of ways I think most of this stuff is not done right, it's not in law.
This is not been codified in any way, shape or form. But they are moving forward with the bulk of it and we want to take a couple minutes here to unpack the impact that this is going to have across college baseball and the impacts it may have on recruiting here. So I think the key part off the jump is that only the schools who have opted into this settlement are going to be impacted by these changes. Otherwise nothing really changes for them except for the roster number which will go to 35 instead of 34. But they'll be subject to previous rules around 117 and scholarship minimums. But as of right now, a rough count is that it's 250 plus institutions and counting. So it's a large percentage of college baseball in terms of their buy in. And that has to actually happen at the school level, not just the baseball at the baseball program level. So let's that's an important piece of information to understand that what we're going to talk about here applies to the schools that have actually bought in.
Probably the biggest thing that people have been talking about, and we've been talking about this for months, is the roster sizes are going to 34.
So previously at 40 they're going to go to 34. That 34 needs to be declared by December 1st of 2025 for the 26th season.
There are a few caveats to how that roster can be constructed, which they're using the term grandfathered.
So you want to walk through the term grandfather and kind of what that means and, and how this is going to be interpreted, which I think is a slippery slope, but we'll find out how they navigate it. But what do you what do you got on this grandfather term?
[00:02:44] Speaker A: The grandfather term is anybody who has been deemed it could be a high school senior or a current player that is in the transfer portal from the Rock from a roster or program they're leaving that has been told because of roster limits, you are no longer going to be able to have a spot here.
It's a slippery slope because who knows what this all is going to entail.
I think they've tried to put in some guardrails on the front end to where if you are grandfathered in, you will not count against those 34. Right. So this is kind of a further another four year recruiting cycle, if you will, of where there can be some rosters that are going to have more than 34 because they have players on the roster that have been grandfathered in because they were cut from a program due to roster limit sizes.
The caveat is that if you are going to end up receiving scholarship money, nil money, or a share of the revenue that a lot of these kids are going to get, you will count against that 34 or that player will, I should say, count against the 34.
So in order for teams, and the idea is that it allows schools that could potentially stockpile a bunch of players because of this to not be able to stockpile all of those players.
But the idea would be that, you know, and I especially think after, you know, probably a, probably two years, there's going to be far less kids across all rosters in all sports that are quote unquote, fathered in, grandfathered in, where there'd be less. I think that on the front end, you know, this year you could potentially see rosters that are fairly ballooned because they have a bunch of quote unquote grandfathered in players.
But, you know, I think it's going to be hard for you to have a ton of players that are going to be paying the full shot and not have any sort of athletic money, any sort of nil, any sort of revenue sharing. The thing that I think is a little murky is what the nil would look like.
I don't necessarily know if you could receive nil money from the quote unquote collectives, which we'll get into in a little bit that I think they're trying to phase out.
But would you be able to, you know, do your own thing and be able to monetize something that way and not be a counter. But again, like this, these are the slippery slope things we're talking about where if you're, if you have nil money, you are potentially going to, or you will be counting against that 34. So it's a, it's very convoluted. I think it's probably one of the more convoluted things in all of this house settlement stuff.
I get why they tried or are doing this to put, to give kids who had an opportunity to not necessarily, you know, when you got cut to not really have a detriment when you go somewhere else to another school. But you know, it's going to be hard if, you know, you went from scholarship money to all of a sudden you can't receive a dime for however many years.
So schools are going to have to make that determination and you know, you might end up having to be, you know, players might have to be end up being counters and lose that quote unquote grandfathered in tag because they're getting money.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And make no mistake about it, there are lawyers and I'm sure coaches are doing their individual research that are trying to identify loopholes in this so that they can get that 40 man roster specifically for the fall.
Right. And having some, a little bit of a buffer to account for injuries and practice a little bit better. So be really interesting to see how that system is ultimately used.
I think it becomes a little bit less tricky for, you know, those kind of low major schools that probably aren't giving out nil money anyways.
Right. How do you, you know, how do you manage that and how are you going to manage your rosters? But that is, is definitely a sticking point and it's going to be very interesting to see how they define grandfathered. Right. They're talking about taking it all the way back to high school kids who may have been impacted by this.
How do you approve it? Did you go in the portal because you wanted to go in the portal or because the coach told you? I don't know how that's going to work.
There hasn't been any distinct plans or detailed information around how they're going to actually designate somebody in his grandfather. But it's an important caveat to this, especially for the next couple years because you know those, if you can carry a couple extra guys, it certainly, it certainly helps, it certainly helps practice. It certainly helps with guys being able to develop. So as far as the roster sizes go, I think the other thing, and a lot of people may not know this, but when you travel for conference games, there's typically a roster limit.
A lot of conferences are 30. You've probably heard the number 27 as of late.
You can only roster 27 guys for the College World Series. Each individual conference has their roster numbers for each conference weekend. That is not going to change as a result of the roster reduction.
The other thing is scholarships in general. Right. Schools have the ability to go to 34. And the big change for me with the scholarships regarding this, this legislation is prior to this passing, you had the 11.7 scholarship limit, which everybody gets stuck on. But I think the biggest hindrance to scholarships in college baseball was actually the 25% athletic minimum that is now gone.
So there's going to be a lot more scholarships that could potentially be available depending on the program decision, the institution.
But it's going to operate a lot closer to Division 2. Actually pretty much exactly like Division 2, where you're going to have the ability to use as much money as you want on any given kid. You could give a full scholarship, you could give them 500 bucks.
So I think that provides a lot of flexibility. Numbers don't always math out when you're trying to distribute 11.7. So you have money left over that you can't use because it's not enough for 25%. Gets a little bit trickier than people think. But schools have the option to go to 34.
I think most of the Power 4, so SEC, ACC, Big 12, probably a decent majority of the Big 10 will up their scholarships to that mid 20s range. You might see some schools go to full, but there are going to be a lot of programs of college across college baseball that will not budge off of their current scholarship situation. Whether it's 11, 7 and they were fully funded prior to this, or for a lot of the lower major schools, they may not be fully funded anyways. And those schools probably aren't going to budge on the amount of scholarship money that's going to be available to distribute across their program. They're just going to have more flexibility with how they can do it.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's going to be the biggest thing everyone's going to have to figure out right from a. It's going to be individually based from a program and a school standpoint. Because you have to remember that, you know, this is guaranteeing every student athlete full scholarships if schools are able to do it. So, you know that it's not just in baseball. They might increase scholarships in, you know, women's lacrosse and men's soccer and, you know, only give baseball maybe, you know, another one and you're up to 12, seven or almost 13, you know, so other schools are going to go 25 to 30 somewhere in that range. It's really going to depend. I think it's fair to say that the power fours are probably going to get as many as they can possibly handle so that they can continue to, you Know, dole out full scholarships to as many guys as they possibly can on their rosters.
You know, again, the mid majors and the lower division ones, the funding, I don't necessarily know what it's going to look like for them and they're likely not going to be budging off what they had. Could they see a minimal increase? Sure, absolutely they could.
But I think to your point about the minimum of 25% being gone is huge. Where you can, you can actually scholarship and do a little bit more with less because you can, you have the ability to do it where you know, hey, we can cover books or we can cover, you know, here's five grand which is less than 25% under the old rules, but here's five grand that you know, can really help out, you know, overall in paying for school. So it's obviously the biggest sticking point. Not everyone is going to go to 34. I can't say that enough. You know, the idea that, you know, you see the headline and you read like, oh, everyone's going to be full scholarship. It's, it's misleading.
It's not going to happen at every program. I don't even know if there is one that will get to 34 in year one. Do I think eventually they will? Yeah, I do. But I don't know that there is a school that's going to get the 34 right away, you know, and there's other ways that you know, they're going to be able to be creative. And this is why they got rid of the national letter of intent where you couldn't receive any outside money. Things like that, where, you know, with nil and with revenue sharing as part of this whole house settlement was the $2.8 billion in back payments for the last 10 years with student athletes in current years for another 10.
You know, that money is going to be allocated towards sports as well. So you're depending on how the percentages at each individual institution is set up from that revenue sharing slice of the pie will also give schools, and specifically some of the Higher Power 4 Conference Schools More money to kind of be able to dole out to student athletes that can obviously reduce the cost of education. Now whether or not you use it for that is, is up to you. But you know, I would imagine that the selling point for them is going to be like, yeah, we're going to have, you know, you're going to get X amount of dollars in revenue sharing, you know, based off of our estimates. And you know, you can put that towards your Education, which is essentially a 50% scholarship, whatever it might be. I don't know, I'm making up numbers as we go, you know, but that's the ability to be able to do that with some of the other revenue streams and avenues that are available for student athletes. Also makes it a little bit more interesting, if you will, for these schools to be able to give money to kids from not only a scholarship standpoint, but paying them while their name, image and likeness and also giving them a slice of the revenue share that they're generating.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah, thinking on the NIL topic, funds that are not a part of that distribution.
Right. That do not come out of the revenue sharing. And each school is going to distribute their money. It's roughly $20 million however they see fit at this point. Although I do think you're going to see some significant pushback on the Title 9 stuff.
But regardless, they're going to have a certain amount of money that's allocated to baseball.
The funds from the distribution, from the revenue sharing are, are not going to be scrutinized at the level of a third party nil deal, which is you've got boosters, which is kind of how it works now, where, hey, we got a million bucks, we'll give it to you. You distribute how you see fit.
And there's no real substance behind how that money was actually earned. Right. And I think the, the spirit of NIL was that you were going to benefit off your name, image and likeness, not just get paid to play.
So moving forward, anything that comes from a third party, whether it's a booster or an nil collective or a company, however it's going to be, it's going to be interesting to see how creative and how other people make money off of this.
But anything that comes from a third party over $600 is going to have to be approved by what they're calling the NIL Clearinghouse at this point. And they're going to use quote, unquote, market value as their barometer as to whether a nil deal is valid. Right. So in my understanding is that there's one appeal that can happen. So if there's $100,000 deal in the NL clearinghouse comes back and says, hey, we only think that this particular athlete's worth $50,000, you can appeal it, but after that appeal, you basically get told this is what your deal is going to be.
I don't know if anybody has any clear understanding of what market value is going to be, how they're going to determine that, but Anything that comes from that third party is going to be scrutinized at a much higher level than any of the revenue sharing money that's distributed directly from the institution.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the, the move is to kind of move away from the. Or the idea is to move away from the NIL collectives that have popped up. I think NIL has kind of come off the rails a little bit, especially at the higher levels and in different sports.
So I think the idea is to kind of move away and actually get this back to the spirit of what the law was and to kind of, you know, quite honestly, I think overall they want to get something in place that is more uniform across all 50 states, where every single state right now has different laws when it comes to NIL type stuff.
I think the other part of it is that, and I think it's fair to say that the more kind of legit opportunities for nil, it would, you know, from companies and from corporations and from legit business entities, I think probably have a far better way or chance, if you will, to be quote, unquote, approved by the clearinghouse. I think it's going to be rather difficult for the collectives to be able to continue to pool money and quote, unquote, pay players for paying or for playing. Excuse me, because they're trying to move away from that. There has to be, there's going to have to be some semblance of something. It is that you're doing for the amount of money that you're paying you for. Right. Like you can't just get 150 in nil money, 150,000 in nil money, and you sign a box of baseballs and that's it. Like there has to be something more that you're doing in order to kind of justify the fact that that's the amount of money that they're paying you for your name, image and likeness.
But I also think that that goes back to what market value and things of that nature. So what does, how does that shake out in the process? And you know, the clearinghouse stuff, we were talking about this before we started doing this. It's, it's in its infancy. Right. So for anyone listening, like, this is something that they just named the head of this clearinghouse last week before this announcement of the house settlement being agreed upon like two or three days before. So I'm the, the sum framework might be there, but I'm imagining that there's not really a big plan in place where they're going to hit the ground. Running on day one and say yes, this is what it is or no, this is what it is. And there's going to be growing pains with the nil Clearing House. There's going to be growing pains with the house settlement. I mean, you talked about it at the top where you know, there's already been another lawsuit a challeng the, this with Title nine. And I would suspect that there's going to be more over the course of the coming weeks and months going against this because it's, it is so new and you know, there's, there's a lot of things that need to be worked out to, to kind of make it, you know, more official and more efficient for what it is that they're looking to do, you know, so there's, there's absolutely going to be more to come. But at least from a starting point, you have 34 man roster in baseball. You have scholarships that are, you know, up to 34. Not every program is going to get to 34, but the 25 minimum being removed is huge. Where you can use your money how you see fit.
And then that, that, that roster limit has to be at 34 on December 1, you know, so it seems as though I didn't, I didn't read it. I haven't read anything yet or seen anything about a minimum for the fall.
I don't know if you have. I haven't seen a minimum for the fall yet.
So like you could see a decent amount, a high amount of student athletes getting, you know, cut on December, you know, late December, late November, around Thanksgiving, December 1st to get to that 34, which I think opens up a whole other bag of issues that we're going to have this year in, in December for transfer portal and things of that nature because under current rules you can't transfer one to one and play mid year.
So what does that look like? And, and how is that going to shake out over the course of the coming months? So there's a lot more to come, you know, but like I said, the, the kind of concrete stuff for right now is the 34, the, the scholarships, the clearinghouse and, and things like that. So it's convoluted. It's, there's a lot more to this than just kind of this 30,000 foot view. We're getting a little bit more detailed than that, but there's certainly more to come and more, more in there that we'll probably continue to touch on like we have over the last couple of months.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that fall roster limit will be interesting. I know the rumors Floating was 38, but with the grandfathered in, I think that makes it harder to, to potentially enforce that. You know, if you can, within the rules, have a roster of 40 because you've got six guys who are grandfathered in who have no ties.
How about, how are you supposed to tell somebody you can only bring 38 in the fall?
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think the 38 in the fall was the one that was voted on at the convention at the beginning. So like, and that was before the grandfathering in and all this other stuff. So that obviously throws a monkey wrench into, you know, that quote unquote legislation that, you know, probably they were, they were counting on that being the number.
But what does that look like now? And you know, could there potentially be 45 to 50 guys on campus because of that?
And I do think the other thing to clarify too when we talk about this stuff is that walk ons do count against your 34.
So even if you are not grandfathered in and you're not getting any scholarship money, you do that student athlete counts against the 34.
The only ones that you know as of right now do not count against your, your roster size would be the grant, quote unquote, grandfathered in players.
You know, so you can't just bring in 15 walk ons and they don't count against anything. They're going to count. But again, if there's no real roster limit number in the fall, what is that going to look like on some campuses?
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Certainly more to come on this.
There is going to be some challenges moving forward. I think that, that, you know, like we said at the top, that's already, that's already happened. I would expect it to continue.
So this will be a little bit of a moving target.
I do think a couple of the pieces of this puzzle are firmly in place and that's going to be the roster stuff as well as at least how they're going to handle the third party nil information that seems to be set in stone and is the step that they've put in place to try to wrangle some of the spending that's coming from those boosters. So more to come on this. We'll certainly cover it as we get more information, make sure that we have a chance to kind of interpret it, sit down, read it and be able to speak to it with some semblance of knowledge. So more to come on this, but anything else you want to add, Coach?
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you everybody for listening. Tune in next week. We will talk to you then. Thank you.
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