Steve (00:00.611)
just to give me a sec.

Steve (00:11.299)
Ahem.

Steve (00:19.981)
You know, when I was growing up, was a time where you had a real distinction. It was a distinction when we were kids watching the wide world of sports on ABC. And you had games played, you had competitions played, Olympics, amateur event. You had college games being contested, amateur event. And you distinguish those from your pro engagement. How you ingested sport, had a relationship with sport.

For me, obviously, New York Knicks, New York Mets, Yankees, anything New York. It was kind of a paternal to son type of bonding with my professional teams in my neighborhood. But I always knew for some reason there was something that separated. There was a boundary that was created. I would suggest in some ways artificially that that created dissonance and that dissonance

is going through transition and we're coming kinda out on the other end now. And that is called name image likeness, NIL or N-I-L. And it's a concept we're about to define with two of the leading experts in the country who come from one of the leading, if not the number one group in the country, activating, operating on college campuses, trying to maximize college sport and relationship to those college athletes.

to the hilt and that's Kelly Collier who's the vice president general manager of Sooner Sports Properties and Rodney Anderson manager and NIL business development at Sooner Sports Properties. I should mention also a former baller pro player in the NFL Cincinnati and it's a pure pleasure to have you on the transaction report today.

Rodney And Kelly (02:15.906)
Thanks, Steve. I think I can speak for both of us. And we say that we're honored to be thought of to be on this podcast and ready to get into all the nitty gritty details that are our everyday lives.

Steve (02:28.524)
You know, it's something I've really held off on for a long time. I've spoken before audiences, frankly, nothing significant, but, and my kids' schools, probably 12 years ago, and I was asked, what's the trajectory of college sport becoming pro? And I said, it's a foregone conclusion. There is nothing that can stop it. I got to know Sonny Vaccaro quite well way, way back.

And he was at the forefront of when he was at Nike and other footwear companies of leading the way. And obviously there were seminal court cases that changed the trajectory of how individuals who in our mind as Americans, and I don't want to belabor this because we have a lot of coverage on the concept of what it means to be amateur. Why was that so sacred?

and the distinction between what you were Rodney of playing both at the collegiate level and the professional level. And all of sudden with the floodgates opening, a whole heck of a lot of laws of unintended consequences from this thing called name image likeness. So for a guy like me who used to like you guys represent hundreds and hundreds of athletes.

How is it, first of all, and I wanna make sure we're on the same page, and I take nothing for granted, and that is N-I-L, name, image, likeness. For guys like me who are not working in the college landscape, I would always equate that with an endorsement deal. So for our viewers, can we just get some common ground? Would you both please just share with us.

your definition of a best practice understanding of denial.

Rodney And Kelly (04:12.876)
The way I like to talk about it, and Kelly, feel free to jump in. The way I like to think about it, especially how it's all kind of shaken out where it is now, you have two buckets. You have your rev share dollars, and then you have your fair market or true market value dollars that's decided by the market. And so your rev share money is what you're going to get to come here and play. It's what you get to appear on school.

social media pages and on school billboards and you go to the team autograph signing in the summertime and then you play football or whatever your sport is that's rev share that comes out of the rev share bucket and then you have excuse me true nil this dictated by the market the businesses the brands that are in your area you know region country etc those dollars are not dictated by the school there's not dictated by anybody but

that company or that brand. And so there is no real cap there because if, know, Canes, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers comes down and says, hey, you're starting quarterback is worth X amount and we're going to pay him that to go be in our commercial, then that is the market setting the price. And so, you know, there's a cap over here in the rev share bucket. You know, every team is working with the same. Every university is working with the same. And then over here, there's not, not really cap. It's dictated by the market.

Yeah, I think it's well said, Rodney. think for me, Steve, to unpack and look at where we were in 2021, sometimes I feel like the Rose Titanic, it's been 84 years that we've been dealing with this, but frankly, it's been like four, which is mind boggling because it is a grind. I think you set it up really well.

In 2021, July 1st or July, maybe July 4th. I don't know the exact date. I know I was in Colorado in the mountains. I got a text from our athletics director and our senior associate AD with a post on Twitter with our starting quarterback eating chicken fingers and it was sponsored by Raising Canes and that was the very first iteration of anything in IL that we had come into contact with.

Rodney And Kelly (06:32.328)
And fast forward from 2021 to where we are. We've gone through and I can tell you just at Oklahoma. We've gone through. We don't know what's going on with this. We don't really know the rules or understand the rules. We don't really have the guidance. Understanding what the NCA is saying is or is not permissible, so stay away from it in regards to the multimedia rights. Let's let's just see how this thing plays out to OK, let's let's jump on board and.

and see if we can't align our corporate sponsors with student athletes and integrate intellectual property, something we stayed away from early on to what Rodney just explained about seven months ago, maybe July of last year, the house case coming down and saying that, you know, that the schools will have a rev share component, student athletes will be,

monetarily compensated for their name, image and likeness and that revenue share for their name, image and likeness being a set number that we all operate under salary cap, if you will. And then still true NIL true market value name, image, likeness. I would call it sponsorship deals having no cap and technically I would guess we're still in the wild wild west period.

Steve (07:56.963)
Factor in the agent role. So your group is the umbrella organization operating for the entire university, is that correct? You handle every aspect of name image likeness, you have a broader purview as well. So when an athlete, you mentioned, let's take a use case, and I love use case examples that.

Rodney And Kelly (08:09.582)
Correct.

Steve (08:23.554)
Just illustrate what you just shared. you're a quarterback at the time. And forgive my parochialism of being an East Coaster. But I love it. Raising, cane, fry, what was it again? Chin fingers, thank you. Yeah. Well, that's.

Rodney And Kelly (08:35.32)
Chicken fingers. Raising, Cain's chicken fingers. If you've never had Raising Cain's chicken fingers, you need to figure out how to get down south and try some.

Steve (08:46.726)
Awfully attractive offer. You know, those of us who were emanate from Manhattan have very limited choice. So with that said, let's go back to your quarterback on that seminal day. What was his name?

Rodney And Kelly (08:49.164)
You

Rodney And Kelly (08:56.398)
Ha

Rodney And Kelly (09:04.59)
Spencer Rattler, Spencer Rattler, currently quarterback for the New Orleans Saints.

Steve (09:10.988)
So Spencer is enjoying some very hard, healthy chicken wings. And you realize that the world has just changed. And it changed because we had some gentlemen. And again, I'm only addressing this because I have, not for this podcast, but I have really, I understand a grave mistake was made. And I'm talking expressly and a book came out by James Gatto. Gatto.

James Gatto obviously and Christian Dawkins and the Merle Code were the three Adidas executives who, as you just said, Kelly, it's only a few years ago that we had folk at a footwear company. I'm talking about 2021 where they were convicted of doing things they shouldn't have done.

Rodney And Kelly (10:04.014)
That's right.

Steve (10:09.845)
I mean, and if you take it, we just got into 2026. So we're talking on one hand the fact that we could see folk who are doing NIL deals, if you will. Yes, they were done against the regulations of the NCAA. But if you will, I never thought about it in this way, but NIL is really in some ways just a microcosm for what's happening in technology and AI.

Rodney And Kelly (10:10.2)
Ha

Steve (10:37.899)
And that is a very famous leader said 24 years ago, when the speed of technology is moving at the pace faster than the human mind's ability to capacitate, the result is anarchy. And so you see in many ways that there is a kind of a parallel analog here that as you referenced at the beginning, this NIL concept is moving at such a pace.

There's still lot of unknowns, there's volatility, it's exciting. It's not only in college. I did an interview recently with Deadspin before it was sold, that now there are over 41 high schools that permit, at least last time I checked, 41 high schools that are permitting NIL. So just so that we're all on the same page again, if you will, NIL as far as back to the quarterback, typically in the professional endorsement world, and Rodney, you can speak to this.

certainly better than all, you, I presume, had an agent representing you, right? And if you were approached to represent some type of product at some capacity, you had an agent traditionally negotiating that deal. Do we have that same superstructure for college athletes? And how does your organization, Sooner Sports Properties,

Rodney And Kelly (11:41.006)
Correct.

Rodney And Kelly (11:50.936)
Correct.

Steve (12:00.907)
It seems when you say you have the entire NIL rights for Oklahoma as a university, 130 plus year old university, 136 year old university to be correct, you have these overarching rights. Where did they seed their athlete agent representation? Or did they not? And this is all in parallel.

Rodney And Kelly (12:25.006)
So it's a little bit of a loaded question whenever you're talking about agents. Early on, think anybody was, there's, let's start with what an agent in the professional level is. Really, you're signing with, in my case, it was Athletes First, there's a guy named Justin Schulman, he represents a lot of professional players. He was just my agent for negotiating my playing contract. So when I go to the Bengals,

you know, what percentage am I paying him? It's only like, you know, 2.5 to 3 % is usually the range that an agent is getting paid for your contract. He's not dealing with any marketing stuff. so Athletes First has a separate marketing division that, you know, those are the people that I talk to whenever whatever brand comes and wants to partner with Rodney Anderson. That's that is a very functional and sustainable model at that professional level, because that's how most people do it. It's been that way for years. You know, it kind of keeps

agents in their lanes. And it keeps everything fair, too. Your agents are only taking 2.5 to 3 % of the playing contract, but then the marketing contracts can be anywhere from 10 to 15%. And so it's very important to keep that in mind when you come back and look at the college landscape. When it first started out, there were no qualifications, certifications, or any type of rules for how you become a certified agent at this level. So it was people like mom, dad.

uncle, my uncle's friend who was a lawyer at one point, he's my agent now. And, and they're taking on a landscape that was brand spanking new with no regulations or, you know, really rules or laws to follow. And so a lot of a lot of these guys were trusting agents that didn't they weren't really agents, or they're just trying to do it themselves, which left a hole for us to kind of step in. We were already dealing with

the school's partners and brands and whatnot. How easy would it be for a former player like myself to step in and be the connector, the bridge between our school's partnerships and brands between our student athletes? And then when I would run into a student athlete that had an agent already, great, let's work together. I mean, we're all kind of pulling on the same rope. And you learn real quickly the agents that understand the game and the agents that don't.

Rodney And Kelly (14:49.39)
I don't think we, we're not in the business of having bad relationships. We're in the business of building bridges and figuring out solutions. And so when it came to, when it comes to dealing with agents, we want to be in lockstep so that it benefits a student athlete in the university first and foremost. And then everything else, if it's done right on the front end, we'll figure itself out.

Steve (15:04.023)
Hmm.

Steve (15:10.531)
You know, I read that about half of your players on your roster on the football squad are getting over $100,000 in NIL money. Again, I trust no source unless it's my own, and I certainly don't have that calculus at hand. So presuming that's not radically off base.

When you look at that 50 % of them making 100 grand, it suggests that obviously the other 50%, at least many of them, are getting some form of pay. But just again as a use case, and we didn't finish with our friend Adler, the quarterback with the chicken wings, but we do wanna just assess when we have a roster that you represent, first and foremost of all those athletes, 50 % of them getting six figures, are those through some of these seminal deals that you've done with State Farm and others?

that is providing that cash.

Rodney And Kelly (16:06.134)
Yeah, I would say that a lot of the student athletes cash is coming from rev share, you know what they get to come here and then it's supplemented by the deals and the partnerships that the university holds. And I think that it's a important distinction to say we're not representing representing any one athlete or any one team. We are more so representing our brand partnerships. We're on the side of our brands, helping them figure out how to connect with the student athletes. That student athlete has an agent, then that agent

is the agent in that situation, not us. We're coming with the brands to the student athletes that we already have the rights to. And the agent in that situation really helps facilitate the deal. Or they're going out and getting their own deals that don't have necessarily the intellectual property included in them, unless that brand is interested in talking to us. And then we will include the intellectual property into that deal.

Steve (17:02.883)
So Ronnie and Kelly, when you look at the deal structure, just so I can get an understanding, I'm a brand, right? And Fowler Automotive has a relationship with you and your school. State Farm is a good example. They've really picked up steam and women's sports, what they're doing across the board, obviously seminal deal. Going back two plus years with with Caitlin Clark, one of the more significant.

deals that I think they undertook and have really branched out across women's sports and all types of NIL engagement. When we look at a state farm coming to you and saying, what rights do I have on buying something at Oklahoma, one of the top legendary schools in sport, it's just one of these iconic brands.

What am I buying? What is the parlance you and I have? If I were the vice president of marketing or sponsorship and I'm meeting with Rodney and Kelly, can you walk through with me kind of like a trial of what I would hear? I've got deep pockets. I'm very motivated and I want to do it. I like the two of you. You're likable. You got good ideas. You're very creative.

You got a guy who played ball. He knows the athlete's mentality. He's extraordinarily focused on mental health for athletes. Couldn't be more topical. I hope one day Rodney will go beyond athletes and deal with the rest of us, but that's for another discussion. So at the end of the day, what I'd be grateful to understand is I approach you, you approach me. Doesn't matter. We're in discussions. Talk me through as I am a prospective client of yours.

Rodney And Kelly (18:39.874)
Yeah.

Steve (18:53.421)
to work with Oklahoma. And obviously I'm not just a football guy. So what am I buying into? What are you offering? And let's talk that through as if we're deal making.

Rodney And Kelly (19:04.384)
Okay, so I'm going to unpack that, Steve, in the best way that I can. And I'll use State Farm. We'll give a real, true relevant example. I do think it's worth noting, we've talked a lot about Sooner Sports Properties. Sooner Sports Properties is Oklahoma's multimedia rights holder. Our parent company, Learfield, is the multimedia rights holder for hundreds, most powerful schools.

So there's an importance there I'm gonna get back to. Learfield allows us to operate at scale and State Farm is a great example. So State Farm is a great partner, a great sponsor of the University of Oklahoma and has been for many years. mean, look across college basketball, both men's and women's, you'll see the State Farm logo on the basket stanchions for years. I mean, as long as I can remember. So they've been invested in collegiate athletics for years.

Steve (19:30.989)
Please.

Rodney And Kelly (19:53.066)
They come to us through this process, to use your example, and they say, you know, give us your best pitch. Well, a year ago that happened. And State Farm said, you know, we're looking at NIL as brand influencers. Supposed to have in your play-by-play guy or your head ball coach give a, you know, for lack of better terms, an endorsement or speak about State Farm.

we can now use student athletes. And so they have an evaluation, metrics that they use, social media following, play on the court or on the field. And that's important. Going back to something that Rodney talked about earlier, players with agents, something that over the last four years has really evolved is this distinction between market value and roster value. Those two things can be vastly different, right? Their roster value doesn't always necessitate

Steve (20:41.069)
Mm.

Rodney And Kelly (20:46.882)
their market value.

Rodney And Kelly (20:52.866)
So State Farm comes to us. They basically say, we're interested in a brand influencer. We've got a freshman basketball player named Jeremiah Fiers. We put together a basket to basket, stanchion to stanchion, very similar to something you've seen with Caitlin Clark, you referenced her earlier. State Farm has a series of questions. It's a get to know. It's a media opportunity. Jeremiah comes.

goes basket to basket stanchion to stanchion with State Farm answers questions, pushes this out on his social media. State Farm's already a corporate sponsor, so they have the intellectual property. He's wearing his uniform. It's wrapped in OU. It looks very similar to something you'd see at the professional level at the NBA or the NFL. They're able to now push it out. They hedged a little because Jeremiah Fears was a diaper dandy and he ended up being the number seven overall pick in the NBA draft. He's balling out now for the the Pelicans in the NBA.

And so there's a little bit of, you know, there's a little bit of.

Rodney And Kelly (21:56.674)
forethought, but also the ability to do what they've done and catch lightning in a bottle in regards to NIL and what that translates to at the next level.

Steve (22:04.813)
So is the deal expressly with that one athlete?

Rodney And Kelly (22:09.966)
So the overarching deal with State Farm is with the University of Oklahoma Sooner Sports Properties in Learfield. So they're a corporate sponsor, et cetera. We have a national sales team at Learfield that maybe manages 50 schools, right? Like, well, they manage all of our schools, but maybe State Farm has a huge deal because it's easier to them to go buy at scale. They want to have North Carolina, and they want to have Duke, and they want to have Alabama, and they want to have Oklahoma, and they want to have Texas, and so they buy at scale.

They have a separate pool of money that they want to use for brand influencers. In our case, call it NIL. And they work with us on what the best options are at NIL. And again, roster value, market value. Just because...

Steve (22:56.579)
Would you just go a little farther so we're clear on terms on market value and roster value? Market value of what?

Rodney And Kelly (23:07.278)
what their name, image, and likeness is worth to a company like State Farm in the marketplace. For instance, we need a backup center on our football team. It's important. Everybody needs a backup center. If your center goes down, you need to have somebody that can step in and snap the ball so that you can win football games. He may never play. He may have 1,200 followers.

Rodney And Kelly (23:37.774)
I've been holding that in for a while, I'm sorry.

Steve (23:40.557)
It's all right. We'll be just fine.

Rodney And Kelly (23:44.454)
Whoa.

Steve (23:49.047)
This program is being brought to you today by Robitas.

Rodney And Kelly (23:50.19)
I'm eating my water.

Yeah, thank you. Can someone fetch me another bottle? Thank you.

Give me a second. I gotta lose the tickle.

Steve (24:01.367)
Yeah, take your time. The beauty of not being live.

Rodney And Kelly (24:05.058)
So I'm glad we're not.

Steve (24:06.403)
been there alive

Take your time, Kelly.

Rodney And Kelly (24:19.906)
Thank you.

Oops.

It's like the tickle in this circumstance is like times six just because of the circumstance. Had you been at your desk, it would have been. mattered. But I was thinking about it. I was like, don't do it. Don't cough, don't cough, don't cough. OK. I want to pick up my thought on the backup center.

We just go.

Steve (24:48.109)
You're good. Yeah, you just keep going.

Rodney And Kelly (24:49.71)
Okay, so you've got to have a backup center on your football roster because you need to have someone to snap the ball in case your starting center goes down. That's a very high roster value. But if he's got 1200 followers across four social media platforms, he means nothing. His name means nothing. His name, image and likeness means nothing to State Farm. So they would hold very, very low market value. Very important position to have. And so it's really for us. Rodney's been the best at this for

extended period of time. In fact, Rodney was the first person in his role at Learfield at any school on any college campus in the country. Figuring out how to marry. The brands need with the correct student athlete that provides. What they're looking for, but also provides our student athlete. You know the the monetary opportunities that that they're looking for.

Steve (25:46.02)
What would be some of those metrics, guys, that you bring to the fore when I'm at State Farm? My KPI is driving it. Your understanding of the metrics of the athlete. So we have a fusion where there's that Venn diagram and there's that sweet spot in the middle where I can satisfy your KPIs as an athlete. And you know that at the end of the day, I'm very much suitable for demographic. I'm a guy that's meeting and checking off the boxes.

So what are those, we know that position, there's been obviously a bias, particularly when look at football, to what type of athletes are in demand. And I once spoke to one of the heads of the NFLPA years ago. And there's a good reason that at the time, Odell Beckham Jr. did not get the monies that say his comparable in basketball, Kevin Durant.

was making, because number one, these guys wear helmets all the time. It's not as ingestible to your point about time on field, time on court. Well, time on field, if I'm a center of a football squad or I'm a left tackle, at the end of there's a real big difference between, again, a ballplayer running up and down the basketball court.

who's got no impediment from identity. I used to say you could go down to Wall Street in New York City, put the entire front and defensive line of the New York Giants on a bus and just show their heads, nothing below. And 95, 98 % the people on red lines, they'll just be unidentified, right? So we know that at the end of the day, there are some limitations based on sport. What are those guiding factors that enable it? I'm really interested.

Rodney And Kelly (27:14.456)
Good point.

Steve (27:23.103)
as meaning our viewers are really interested in probing into those metrics of how you come up with what we would call fair market value.

Rodney And Kelly (27:33.272)
So again, it's hard for us to say what the fair market value is, because that's something that the market sets. And so things that we could entice the market with would be like, I think the perfect example would be like a Jeremiah Fears in State Farm. You have a basketball player that is a well-known, very fun athlete to watch. And so people already know his name. But then also his social media was good enough to match.

with the things that State Farm was looking for. So State Farm, again, like this is more of like an influencer media type of a play. We want this to play well on social media. want it to be quick hitting like an Instagram reel or a TikTok. It's not a long form piece of content. It is literally, we're gonna ask you 10 questions as we walk stanchion to stanchion. It'll be fun, get to know you type of questions while the entire time we're highlighting OU and the State Farm brands.

coexisting together. And that is the perfect example. So when I when I when a state farm comes to me and says, hey, we're looking for this is our idea, we want to go stanchion to stanchion. And it would really help if they had a really good social media following and and a player that that at least get some minutes. And so then we got to start diving into their social media presence. And it can't just all be like basketball pictures and football pictures, because we already know that about you. You know, it's

it started to become a whole like student athletes have to think of themselves as a business like a storefront. Their social media is their storefront. Everybody already knows that you're an athlete. What about off the field? What about you outside of an athlete? Is there what it what matters to you? Those are the things that brands are looking at when they come to try to do NIL deals because it's what it's what not everybody that they're that State Farm is selling to is our sports fans. You know, sometimes it might be.

good to relate to somebody for something different. I think other examples could be like, why did Spencer Ratler get the Raising Cane's chicken finger deal? Because he likes Raising Cane's chicken fingers. It'd been weird to put him in that deal if he hated chicken fingers. And so, you know, there's a lot of things off outside of their sport that matters to the brands that they just don't know. And they look to us to fill them in on. And Steve, let me let me double down on that a little bit.

Steve (29:56.397)
Please.

Rodney And Kelly (29:59.598)
Again, going through this concept of roster value versus market value. One of the highest paid student athletes in NIL era was a gymnast at an SEC school that wasn't the best gymnast on the squad, but had an incredible social following. Brands look for that. If I'm a brand, what do want to do? I want to get my brand in front of as many people as possible. At end of the day, that is what

they're looking for in terms of market value, media value. So followers matter. If you're really good on the field or on the court, I'll give you another relevant example. Our current quarterback has a deal with Beats, with Apple. And I guess I can say his name, John Mateer. He's the quarterback at Oklahoma. For those who don't follow Oklahoma, you can Google it. But he's...

He transferred from Washington state into Oklahoma a year ago for the first several weeks of the season. Last season he was a Heisman front runner success on the field is important to Apple like they look for a select group of folks the last couple of years prior to the season. Sometimes it's five, sometimes it's eight, but they pick these high profile athletes that are going to have high profile presence on the field and they put him in custom beats headphones, right? So when our quarterback is walking into the to the stadium.

he's got these headphones on, right? That is what Apple wants. They don't care what his social following is. It's important to them that they're branded though. And so this is a specific deal where they worked through us to gain the IP so they could have the intellectual property, put the OU logo on custom Beats headphones that they made for John. And then ultimately made a hundred and I think 125 pairs for everybody on the team. So John was able to gift as a part of his NIL deal, every member of the team.

these custom OU Beats headphones, one of one, right, player edition. That's really cool. Everybody's happy. Well, Apple's happy as long as John goes out and plays well, because he's going to get residual pregame, postgame. He's wearing the headphones. So it's not always about how many followers, right? It's about how high profile the athlete is in some instances. So really it depends on what the brand is looking for. I think Rodney said that as much.

Rodney And Kelly (32:20.354)
someone may just want impressions and if they want impressions, we're gonna get you the largest social following that any of our student athletes have regardless of their success on the field. Or if you want high profile, then we're gonna go bring you the starting quarterback, the starting point guard, the clean up hitter. It just kinda depends on what that brand's ultimate goal is.

Steve (32:41.443)
You when you said Matir, I understand when I was looking at the rankings, if I remember correctly, he was getting somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million in 2025. He was in the top 15 ranking for NIL deals thereabouts. You also talked about gifting. had a heck of an athlete who I think your linebacker was it Danny Stutzman is his name. He gave, I think he had a deal, at least again, I.

Rodney And Kelly (33:04.462)
That's correct.

Steve (33:09.091)
Folks, I can attest to the veracity of these numbers, but the number I read that I'll, the best one I could find that I think is the best I'm gonna get was 100K of which you took 50 of it and distributed it to walk-ons and literally gave 2000 something to like 25, 20 plus walk-ons. Heck of a, heck of a.

Rodney And Kelly (33:22.722)
That's correct.

Steve (33:29.475)
heck of a way to build your brand in a very effective way and being recognized as a go-to guy who's got the back of your teammates who are not getting endowed with such deep funds coming their way. What is interesting in the NAIL space is it's clear to me is that, as Kelly said at the outset, is we are absolutely, again, going back to the AI analog, we are absolutely in the embryonic stages.

There's a lot of structure that is being yearned for. And that's at every level by then. We had a wonderful, wonderful gentleman, I'm sure you guys know him lot better than I, Chris Bevilacqua, sold his business. What became CBS Sports was his platform. And he's been in media for decades.

And to your point, you're just the desire in college football. Chris was talking about the Delta, that if we could just get the conferences together to pool their broadcast rights, you're going to go from a three plus to four billion annual to somewhere around 13 billion. This is his reference of what he thought the deal could be struck at.

I thought it was very, very interesting. we know that everything is disruptive right now. There's nothing. In fact, when we see a group like KKR, Colbert, Kravis, and Roberts literally being putting hundreds and hundreds of millions into youth sport, you know that our industry is just aflame with opportunity. As I said to someone in a meeting earlier on technology, the hardest part of our company at SportsBiz and the AI

know, sponsorship technology we do, is just determining which opportunity to pursue. Because there are so many right now. Lola, please go ahead before I carry on, Kelly, please.

Rodney And Kelly (35:27.692)
Well, yeah, I apologize for the interruption. Something that really I think is relevant in what you're saying, and I may get in trouble for this. I hope I don't get in trouble for this. We can edit this if we need to.

Steve (35:32.215)
Not at all.

Steve (35:41.025)
Just blame it on me.

Rodney And Kelly (35:42.806)
I appreciate that. So Randall Stevenson, former CEO of AT &T, who is currently and all this is where I'll get in trouble. I don't know his exact title. I'm going to call him chair of Oklahoma football or chair of athletics. He's serving at the pleasure of the president. He's a special assistant to the president of the university. The president brought him in.

a little less than two years ago because of the volatility of what we're going through in collegiate athletics. And he worked directly with Joe Castiglione, our athletics director, who served for 28 years, one of the best to ever do it, and then was on the search committee, chaired the search committee for our new athletics director, Roger Denny, who we just announced a week ago.

And the reason that I bring that up is because Randall said something in a group of, we had an all staff meeting on the day that we announced Roger as our athletics director. And Randall said, I keep hearing from conference commissioners and head coaches and people around the industry that what we're doing is not sustainable. What we're doing is not sustainable.

And he said, I don't know that I agree with that. Like I've been through a lot of volatility with AT &T, right? Like through the, you know, we're a wireless company and now we're a digital company or we're a streaming company and Time Warner, all the things that he went through. He said, it's certainly the most volatile situation I've been in, in an industry in a short period of time. But I don't think, and I don't want to misquote him, that it's not sustainable.

And I'm paraphrasing, he said, I just don't think we figured out how to sustain it yet. It's not sustainable in the way that we've done it for 150 years. It's our job and our charge to figure out how to make it sustainable. I find that fascinating, because I agree.

Steve (37:32.782)
That brings us to a really interesting point and I appreciate your bringing up Randall. I didn't know that he was an Oklahoma grad. So he's got that connection that obviously your school has enormous pride in his being an alum. It was a question I was actually gonna lead off the discussion with and that is a simple obvious one. If someone were just asking you for a quick overarching.

envelopment of the distinction between college sports today and pro sports. What would you say today is the distinction between college and pro? And what is the trajectory of that, whatever your answer is going to be?

Rodney And Kelly (38:22.286)
I think we're moving closer and closer to a professional model. Like the way it felt leaving OU for me as a student athlete was very much so the traditional style of collegiate athletics that we've all known and grew up with and whatever. And then when I went to the Bengals, very business forward, very CEO mindset, the money mattered. And that was the difference, really. At the end of the day, the money was the main difference.

Steve (38:36.003)
Sure.

Rodney And Kelly (38:52.462)
Because with the money like because you know, and I opens up and with money comes agents and you know, now we you has a front office with Jim nagging his staff and we took our strength coach Jerry Schmidt and elevated him to head of nutrition and read like it's restructuring all of college athletics. Now all these things have front. It's just becoming more and more the professional model. And so really there's not many differences in the way that it feels in the locker room.

the way that it feels just walking into the facility, the way that it functions on game day.

Steve (39:27.587)
So Rodney, I'm gonna drill down there. What is the distinction today that you would say is an overt, obvious distinction? We just talked about your QB getting about three mil in NIL, and that's just NIL. So what is, you're walking back into the locker room.

Rodney And Kelly (39:34.402)
The distinct.

Rodney And Kelly (39:44.738)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (39:49.058)
You shaved off, I don't know, is it, 10 years, 12 years? I don't know how long, you look very young. Eight years, six years, I don't know. But the way that Kelly positioned you as the first ever, six years, I don't know, you look like you're about 25. But at the end of the day, I know you're not, right? There you go, happy birthday. So if we took you back 12 years and we put you in the locker room and you were experiencing...

Rodney And Kelly (39:52.558)
That's it.

Rodney And Kelly (40:05.742)
I'm about to be 30 this year.

Steve (40:15.261)
what our good friends that we just referenced, meter and others, in that locker room are experiencing. It could be any sport, but let's stick with the big boys and big girls in basketball and football. What would you experience that you wouldn't have experienced at the Bengals? And scope of money is not important. It's the distinction in the quantity is not important.

Rodney And Kelly (40:38.638)
The difference is just the feeling in the locker room. I think in college, I always say like I was on a team with Baker Mayfield and Mark Andrews, Orlando Brown, a bunch of big names. We were all piling to the same old beat up Tahoe, going to the same bar, just trying to get a free beer on a Saturday night. it was, you know, there was no like, well, how much are you making?

Steve (40:52.675)
Hmm.

Steve (40:56.296)
you

Rodney And Kelly (41:05.934)
What's your contract say? And you know, the camaraderie and just we're all here for the love of the game. You're not getting paid. Why are you here? Because I love the sport. This has been my dream since I was a kid. I want to be here. I want to play Division one football in the SEC. That's why I'm here. And you know that I don't think that if I walked into a locker room and like a new age locker room, I don't think that I'd get that same feeling. And I don't think that that's a bad thing.

I just think that they're different things. You know, I grew up in an age.

Steve (41:38.083)
So again, so what you're saying is the Bengals and the present day locker room, if you all look the same from an age standpoint, forget the ball on the field. We haven't yet identified one fundamental distinction, but for the numbers that are involved.

Rodney And Kelly (41:45.014)
are very similar.

Rodney And Kelly (41:59.98)
Yeah, I mean, the way that a professional locker room functions right now versus the locker room that we have today is very similar.

Steve (42:08.771)
Kelly, you wanna add anything to that?

Rodney And Kelly (42:12.472)
Well, clearly I did not play in the NFL. So Rodney is more equipped to answer that question.

Steve (42:14.851)
Could have been a quarterback. Tight end.

Rodney And Kelly (42:25.132)
the distinction for.

my money or that's bad way to put it, the fandom of Oklahoma still matters and it still means something and it's been around for 150 years. And although the operational aspect of, know, Rodney just referenced what's happening inside the locker room. You brought this up at the very beginning.

Not every player is making six figures and there are still walk-ons. You know, we referenced Danny Stutzman's generous contribution. There are still people, and I'm talking about football right now, but all of our sports that play for the love of the game. At Oklahoma, for instance, we have six sports that are what we call rev share sports. So out of the allotted money from the house settlement that the NCAA and the college sports commission has agreed upon,

Here's the allotment of money that the schools can contribute legally within the rules to student athletes. That's six of our 13, 16 sports. And so we still have women that are out there playing soccer and we still have women that are out there rowing and we have men that are on our wrestling team. Our job is to assist in making their collegiate experience, which is very much traditional.

somehow compensating them with real fair market value NIL deals with brands that are interested in those specific student athletes in those specific sports. So, bit of a circle, right? But it's not all professionalism. You can see that a lot, right? Amateurism isn't what it used to be in football, and it's certainly not men's women's basketball, in our case baseball, softball, but we're still operating

Rodney And Kelly (44:21.742)
collegiate athletic programs that our fans are passionate about. And they all have the same ability to monetize their name, image, and likeness. Going back to the reference I made earlier about the gymnast at an SEC school who is making more money than I think most everybody on our campus because...

Steve (44:44.801)
Olivia Dunn.

Rodney And Kelly (44:46.734)
I don't say names. Yes, because of her following, right? She's a brand influencer. So every student athlete, regardless of sport or regardless of skill has the opportunity to better themselves. And when we hired Rodney, Rodney is a lunch pail guy. I got to give it up to him.

Rodney was still in Cincinnati when we first talked to him, our athletics director said, we've got to get a handle on this. Sooner Sports Properties, Learfield, you have all of the connections, all the connective tissue with our brand partners, with all of our biggest corporate sponsors. There's got to be a way to tie this in. I said, Rodney, like, we really want to bring you here and we really want you to help us with NIL, but we don't really know what that means. And he got on a plane with his wife and he flew here and we figured it out together. It has been a crazy journey, right? That's an entirely different podcast.

What I'll tell you about that is through this process unfolding what NIL has become, one thing that, you know, the connective tissue, the lividon,

Brand partners is what we excel in. It's what we what we it's the relationships that we have are the core of Oklahoma athletics and we can't tell a brand who they want or what they want. We just do our very best within the confines and the rules in the legislation as it changes. Sometimes it seems weekly to put. The best. Partner with the best student athlete, regardless of sport.

to hopefully maximize whatever result, right, they're looking for.

Steve (46:27.169)
Hmm. No correlation, by the way, to the top paid team and I'll budget. Do we have a correlation? Actually, we rephrase that. Do we have a correlation between the amount of money is invested by third parties to NIL funds and the winning nature of those clubs? And again, that's a complicated question in one aspect.

because we can say that the winners are track money. But at the end of the day, if you have a highest NIL allocation for a basketball squad or a football team, are you pretty much in today's universe going to be one of the top contenders in the country?

Rodney And Kelly (47:19.82)
I would say usually that probably is true. But then you have cases like, excuse me, this year, Indiana, know, Signetti comes over from JMU, brings a bunch of guys that are basically no names. You they just transferred not for money. Again, for the love of the sport, they're coming from JMU. Indiana is a big step up. And but I think my point is that Signetti got to hold on to those guys for a few years and develop them.

and the development is what won them that national championship, not the money. But then there are cases that you can point to where the money did help win that national championship. So I think very similar to how do deals get done, there's a bunch of different ways to get them done. How do games get won and national championships get attained? There's a bunch of different ways to do that, I think. But to answer your question, yeah, money doesn't hurt. Yeah, I also don't think that Indiana, I also don't think that...

Steve (48:13.059)
And you know, please.

Rodney And Kelly (48:18.048)
Indiana didn't pay them at all. Well, yeah, they definitely got paid something.

Steve (48:20.899)
Mark Cuban was a monster contributor. I mean, he's certainly the sugar daddy of that club. At the end of the day, correct me where my assumption was wrong, if it is, I thought when this came about, my looking into crystal ball 10 years ago was the law of unintended consequences were all the mid-level pro ballers.

all the guys playing sport, gals playing sport, who were at the mid-level of the game. They weren't rookies that you could bank on for the future. And they weren't veterans who had already proved themselves. And I thought corporate budgets would be sliced and diced for that mid-tier, mid-level management, if you will, and saying, why don't we go out and play the venture capital role? We're going to go out and put money into 50 athletes.

And we can take that one massive allocation we were giving to that incredibly decent running back. But we're now going to distribute it to 50 folk on the college sports side and give it a try. We're venture capitalists. If we strike gold with one or two and we maintain that relationship, we earned our money back in spades. Is there any legitimacy to that today, or is that not a reality in today's sponsorship marketplace?

Rodney And Kelly (49:45.314)
I don't know if I understand your question. Could you rephrase?

Steve (49:48.291)
When you have the ability to take, because what happened was for many companies, their sports marketing budgets didn't increase. So now you have this new open window, just like we have, you know, 20, 30 new leagues over the last 48 months coming into the United States from cricket to three on three basketball. mean, wherever you turn, there's a new league.

Rodney And Kelly (49:56.716)
Right.

Steve (50:08.672)
So we have all of this inventory coming in. And forgive me, I don't mean this in any pejorative or objectification fashion. That inventory is called the athlete in college, where you have hundreds of thousands of people playing ball that were not available to you as a brand yesterday, just a few years ago. So now of a sudden I have to say to myself, well, I was paying to be engaged at the pro level and we did have a relationship with a few athletes.

Rodney And Kelly (50:27.502)
Mm.

Steve (50:38.71)
But you know what? They weren't the goats. I couldn't afford the goat. But I was spending a few million bucks a year, all in, activation rights fee, to be able to navigate with that respected athlete. If I can take that money and allocate it to, let's call it 50 athletes on the college side who have yet to prove themselves at the elite level, but they're on the trajectory, they're on that linear path or hockey stick path.

Rodney And Kelly (50:39.246)
I

Rodney And Kelly (50:43.063)
Right.

Rodney And Kelly (51:03.117)
Mm-hmm.

Steve (51:06.7)
that I would have thought we would have seen corporations saying, hey, I'm not renewing that contract with the pro athlete, not the goat, wasn't the rookie Aaron Judge at the time. I'm gonna go and just spread my money across lots of folk on the college side, grow with them. A lot of them will fall by the wayside. They're not gonna turn pro.

but I want to build a long lasting relationship and therefore sorry mid-level athlete, I don't have money for you anymore. Have you gentlemen observed that at all of money's coming from other ball players?

Rodney And Kelly (51:39.494)
Yeah. You sound kind of like State Farm. You sound kind of like State Farm. Yeah, I mean, if I was a business and I was spending a bunch of money on, you know, the older professional athletes, like, yeah, I'm not going to get as much bang for my buck. But if I take it down to the collegiate level, I think that there's a bunch of different ways that you benefit from that. I mean, think about a younger audience in the digital world that we live in.

And then you give, you invest, you know, your brand into young athletes that are connecting with all those people that are just going crazy with this digital world that just is multiplying, multiplying, multiplying. It's kind of hitting, it's kind of more so hitting the nail on the head than with that one professional athlete. You know, who knows how good, like everybody wants to partner with Patrick Mahomes and he's done a great job in commercials, but I've seen a lot of student athletes from our university that in my opinion are way better than him on camera.

And, you know, is a, yeah, you're losing Patrick Mahomes, but you're getting 10 OU athletes across multiple different sports that are nationally televised, you know, every few days.

Steve (52:48.662)
Talk to me about the VIP corporate hospitality and pro sports as an event owner in my old days. One of the most lethal aspects of sports marketing was certainly above and beyond the media exposure was the structured corporate entertainment, i.e. Pro-ams.

private dinners, meet and greets, getting all those signatures, having 250 golf balls to be signed and given away, sending off the photograph, hey Rodney, great outing, your friend LeBron James, and it's on the desk of the CEO for the rest of their lives, and their kids are talking about it.

Tell us how exploited, and again, I'm using that in the most respectful, I can use another, how maximized is that in our NIL space today? And in your judgment of the universe of NIL athletes, what percent have the ability to go into a room with the corporates that are providing them with that cap?

Rodney And Kelly (53:48.716)
I think that second, let's focus on that. Not everybody's great at an NIL deal. I think a lot of

Steve (53:54.946)
How about 90 % of most pro athletes?

Rodney And Kelly (53:59.99)
Yeah, it's, I think probably is around 90, maybe even a little bit higher than that 90, 95 % of athletes.

Steve (54:04.866)
By the way, just out of fairness to our golf friends, having done a lot of golf, I have to tell you, you can't get much better. But you start going into some other sports, I mean, at times, depending on what sport you're in, I mean, and it's not 90%, that's not a fair assessment. Golf, you have a universal ability because they're trained, they're going into pro-ams on a weekly basis. It's a very much corporate environment. And yes, the cream of the crop of some other sports,

can do well, but it's certainly not the majority. So back to your point, Rodney.

Rodney And Kelly (54:39.542)
Right. A lot of guys, you know, they want to be involved in NIL because it's shiny, the money and all that stuff. like, dude, your social media, your brand needs work. know, where's my NIL deals? You've got 20 followers and you you took all of your pictures down because you're trying to focus for the season. You know, you sound like a guy who's really focused on just being an athlete. So do that first.

Steve (54:49.164)
You

Steve (55:07.084)
Yeah.

Rodney And Kelly (55:07.486)
We're not going anywhere. We'll be here when it's time to work on your brand outside of the field. But yeah, it's funny. I think when I first got here, I did a ton of football deals because obviously football at Oklahoma is huge. The more softball deals we did, the more softball deals we got booked for. Because the girls just get it. They're so good in front of the camera. They're already kind of...

tuned towards social media. they just, get way better reception. They do a way better job. They're prompting on time with their posts. Compared to some of the guys on any sport, guys just kind of aren't really good at posting. Social media is not really their bag and they don't really care about it yet. So it's kind of hard to go get you NIL deals when you don't really even care about the deliverables that you're going to be on hook for.

Steve (55:57.239)
Well stated, well stated. Yeah, no, it's interesting. You know, it's kind of back to your Rich Paul Maverick Carter LeBron James commercial deal for contracts. I've got my commercial officer who's going out and doing all of my.

on all my commercial, quote unquote, private enterprise activity. And then of course I can afford to have someone do my social media, so I don't have to worry about it, I just approve it if that's the case at all. So it's a construct for people to become men and women very fast.

And a lot of them can't because when you're putting people into new money, we all know and it has nothing to do with race. has nothing to do with demographic. It's for any child in any environment going as a teenager into a place where it's not asking mom and dad for an allowance or they weren't working minimum wage at a certain location. And now they're looking at cash that can buy impressive items that swag people away and make a statement and they compete with their peers and they've got to maintain

a certain image and even though they're not even that individual, they just have a certain image they want to yearn for and maintain, that it's a lot to throw in the mix and that kind of bringing this to a full circle. When you look at the laws of unintended consequences, one of them we were all certain would occur.

Rodney And Kelly (57:07.234)
Man.

Steve (57:20.672)
would be, and I've never heard the term and I love the two terms that Kelly used. One was a diaper dandy and the other one was a lunch, that you were a lunch pail guy, which I'm gonna get clarification because I have apps, I was waiting for where, I just.

I'm yearning to understand it so I can use it in one of my discussions. The lunch, and the diaper dandy I thought maybe is easier, primadonna, but I got it. It's the one who's so good, they're off to the pros so early out of the school. At least that's what I intuited from Kelly's comment. if you will, law of unintended consequences, one of them we were certain, was you start empowering 50 % of the Oklahoma team with six figures.

Rodney And Kelly (57:52.088)
That's right. gotta credit Dick Mattel for that.

Steve (58:07.49)
drugs, forgive me for saying, but indulgences in environments with the opposite in gender that they shouldn't be doing, domestic violence. Have we seen, and I'm not here to put you in the hot seat, I'm just curious from your observation. Do we have any trajectory, any trend we're seeing at this point in time where there are worrying circumstances that need to be tended to rapidly?

Rodney And Kelly (58:37.196)
I want to, I'll lead off with saying like, there's going to be a bad apple in just about every single bunch. You know, there's always going to be the guy that just doesn't get it or can't grow up. The girl that just can't grow up that just doesn't get it. That being said, I feel especially, and I swear I'm not trying to be biased, but I do feel that something that we have here that Brent Venable has brought in, Soul Mission, really put emphasis.

Steve (58:41.506)
100%.

Rodney And Kelly (59:05.548)
It's not necessarily forcing them to be better men or forcing them to do the right thing, but it just put emphasis on the fact that yo, money just makes you more of what you already are. And if you're a bad person, if you're an immoral person, it's just gonna bring that out in you. So like on the front end, let's check ourselves. Let's see what kind of people we are. Where do we want to go with our lives? This is just a flash in the pan. There's gonna be life to live after this university, after your sport is over. You've got to start thinking,

like that if you want to be in conversations with this type of money. And so

Steve (59:39.682)
Is that in the purview of your organization, by the way, to train them?

Rodney And Kelly (59:43.276)
Of course, yes. That's more like I told Kelly and all the athletic people that I talked to at OU before I took this job. The thing that I care about more than anything is connecting with student athletes because I just finished walking that path. I was when I first started, I was one and a half years removed from seeing the rookie high drafted second round, millions of dollars signing bonus come into the locker room, try to compete with dudes that

that have been in the league for years and their money is gone. And now that guy is, I'm sure he's happy with how things have turned out. He's got to live with himself every day. But man, what could have been had you been responsible with that money? And so I think here at OU, yeah, every single time I'm in front of a business and I'm connecting with a student athlete, I do take the opportunity to get in the student athletes ear and say, hey, do you feel comfortable? Is this something you want to do?

Do you even have the time to do something like this? The last thing that NIL should be is a distraction. At the end of the day, it really should be something that you're already doing. You know, if you're a football player that loves hunting and fishing, your NIL should look like hunting and fishing. You shouldn't go try to, you know, you know, a gamer if you were never a gamer before. Do something that you're already gonna do in your free time. Make that your NIL. Make that your brand.

because now it's easy as opposed to trying to be something that you're not. Now you're keeping up with Joneses and now you're in a tough spot.

Steve (01:01:17.602)
Well stated, well stated. By the way, it's interesting you mentioned that stat or just people being concerned about how to handle their money. I remember the glory days of about 2009, 70 plus percent of NFL ballplayers after two years of retirement were bankrupt. And by the way, I don't think the number has gone down dramatically. It's a big, big, big issue.

Rodney And Kelly (01:01:41.642)
No, I mean you see it almost every single year. You see it almost every single year in the league. There's going to be one or two guys that go in there and try to hang with every buy the chains. I'm going to buy all the expensive dinners. I'm going to buy the cars, the houses. And it just wasn't smart. There's a time and a place for those things. I think the earlier you can teach a student athlete that lesson, the better because they're going to excel in their craft. They're going to continue to get that's why they came here in the first place.

Steve (01:02:05.878)
Yeah.

Rodney And Kelly (01:02:08.686)
And if they're doing it the right way, money is going to be attached to that success. And so what are you going to do? Are you ready to deal with that kind of success and everything that comes with it?

Steve (01:02:18.434)
Kelly, a law of unintended consequences I want to ask you. I watched today an interview with your very, I would say, highly integrity-based coach of the Sooners of the football team, Brent Venables. And you get the sense that this is a man of deep faith, a man who, as much as what we might think we hear from others,

is someone who may speak in sins. I don't want to call them platitudes, but he is such a down-to-earth real human that this is a guy you want to play for. This is a guy is a father figure. This is a guy who's 24-7. This is a guy who can handle stress like a Navy SEAL. Did the dynamic of NIL, I never thought about it until this conversation.

I don't recall, except for a real prima donna who thought he had, or she had more power than they truly did, do I recall in college sports where college players were either A, influential in getting their coach out of a job, B, where they were fearful the man or woman for whom they were playing might not be their next season.

And I never saw that dynamic, this fragility, volatility, this instability of win today. There's no building for many schools. It's I've got to win today. And if I can't keep up with the big budgets of Georgia and Texas Tech and others in which are monstrous spenders and obviously Texas Tech, believe, or Texas A &M was just a recipient of a $500 million deal for their

college rights, which is an extraordinary half a billion dollar number is just mind blowing. When we look at this, that a coach can be perceived by his players because of the press he's getting, because he might have lost two games in a row, or he didn't surmount what he did last year. Do you think the NIL construct has altered that relationship between players faith?

Steve (01:04:44.524)
Commitment, the coaches told me something. I got four years ahead with him. I forget the portal for a moment. Just I got four years ahead with him. He's got, I know I'm accountable to that man or woman. Now I'm not so sure. There's talk he might be fired and we'll pay him out for his contract, a big hefty number, just to get him out of the way, says Penn State.

Rodney And Kelly (01:05:09.496)
How many coaches in the Power Four, how many vacancies were there this year?

Steve (01:05:15.362)
You're the Guru.

Rodney And Kelly (01:05:19.358)
We got our stats looking it up. Maybe between 15 and 20, high profile, power for coaching openings. Some. That's right.

Steve (01:05:29.664)
Yeah, I it seems like every week that we were getting peppered with this stuff.

Rodney And Kelly (01:05:35.18)
What I believe, and this is maybe specific to Oklahoma, and it's gonna maybe sound like I'm a homer or I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, but you're right. Coach Venables is a man of integrity. you know, Rodney mentioned SOL mission earlier. SOL, S-O-U-L, stands for Serving Our Uncommon Legacy. It's something that's very important to Coach Venables. It's a part of the structure in which we brought him here, brought him back.

from Clemson is he was insistent. We have to have something that teaches the man how to be a man. And that includes financial literacy. And that includes how to tie a tie and how to fry an egg, among other things. But at end of the day, I do think it's tough because I think you get, these kids all have social media, they all have TVs and you can see.

you can see when things are going well and you can also see when things are going really bad. think that we operate within a vacuum pretty well. And what I would tell you is...

We know that he's our head football coach and the guys that play here still have to play in his system and they still have to play. You know for him as a coach and so I think yes in IL is a thing and I think yes. Rodney reference that we have Jim Nagy in a phenomenal front office staff who treats it very much like an NFL front office and they're having negotiations with players based on their you know their market value. Some their roster value and and making decisions based on.

How are we going to be successful on the field? But ultimately, they still have to want to come play at Oklahoma. We're not going to go out and buy, for lack of better way to put it, a player who doesn't fit our system. so I think if I'm going to pause and give you this story that I heard from a sitting power for athletics director in the last two years, there are going to be three categories.

Rodney And Kelly (01:07:37.902)
of schools long term, right? As this all started to unfold in the last four years. Once the House case settled and they set this number, this fictitious number of $20.5 million, that's your sort of salary cap or that's your rev share, they're gonna be schools that will not get to 20.5 million. They're gonna do their very best to get to 10, some of them 15. Then they're gonna be a group of schools that are just gonna get to 20.5 million.

And then there's everybody else. And when I say everybody else, everybody else is a small group, right? It's the group of people that are gonna be in the high limits room, right? It's the people that are gonna get to 20 and a half, and then they're gonna engage their corporate partners, their brand partners, their multimedia rights holders, et cetera, and try to create as much fair market value true.

what we do here at Sooner Sports Properties in Learfield, true NIL deal making to generate deals to compensate players above the rev share number. That is a very small group of people that are playing at that table. And so you're gonna see, this athletics director said.

You're going to start to see the haves and have nots or the disparity and we have to make decisions based on. You know, maybe it makes more sense for us to pour all of our resources into basketball. Think about that right? If you're not going to get to 20 and a half million or schools that don't have football, how good is Gonzaga going to be right? How good is is? Look at the final four two years ago, right? We had mid majors everywhere because they can invest everything in basketball because they don't have to pay for a football roster. So where I'm going with that is.

we choose which table we're gonna sit at. And we know we've chosen to sit at the elite, the high limits table. And so we're gonna play at the high limits table, but we're not gonna make irresponsible decisions on roster moves. And I think that's where we have people that you gotta buy into the system. Look, mean, Rodney mentioned Signetti earlier. They still had Mark Cuban, they still had donors, they still had sponsors, they had a roster that...

Rodney And Kelly (01:09:47.842)
You know, NIL was a part of, wasn't a bunch of guys that just came from JMU and went to Indiana and they were coached really well and they did great. NIL was a part of that Indiana success. And now even more so, right? Because they've had the success. How many brands want to partner with Indiana? The players were being paid, but they still had to buy into the system. And I see that very, very, there's a lot of parallels in Coach Cignetti and what's going on in Indiana and what's going on here.

Coach Venables is the guy that you just referenced on the front end of this question that I've taken a long time to answer. He is a man of integrity. He is who he is. He's not gonna sway from who he is. And I think ultimately, regardless of how talented you are, if you're not bought into the system and you're not bought into moving the ball forward and ultimately helping Oklahoma win a championship, you're not gonna play here.

Steve (01:10:38.978)
Yep, it's one of those, to me, very clear situations that, as you said, you attract a roster of folk that they don't have to drink the oolade because first of all, they're all natural and they don't want artificial ingredients in their gut. So you're really anchoring on the mastery.

Rodney And Kelly (01:10:58.872)
Yeah.

Steve (01:11:06.946)
of finding like-minded folk who have this value-based work ethic. Unlike what we saw happen at Clemson this year, where literally Ole Miss takes a player who is secured, signed, delivered at school, pulls them out, and now there's about to be a lawsuit, or there already is, and Dabo was up in arms and took a public position and made it very clear that this is just unsavory, right? You can't run the business.

in this fashion, right? It's very hard to run a ship if the guy who's got all the folk on board who came to captain the boat or whatever position is, know, the ship won't sail as effectively. It's hard to run a squad that way. So it seems like in summation, you know, there's a lot of history to be written. We're living textbook history that you guys are...

navigating in a very, I would not only use the word conservative, but you're doing it in a way that is integrity based and at the same time, recognizing that the games and winning games are vital and helping, as Rodney said, athletes integrate. It's a lot of moving parts, right? It's a lot of moving parts to try and make it work as effectively as it can to its optimal level.

And I guess that's ultimately what we're all going to be figuring out is what does it mean to optimize college ball today? And what are those defining ingredients? And from our very parochial vantage point, what ultimately, and I'll leave the last word with the both of you on the subject, what ultimately changes with sponsorship?

If we looked into the crystal ball that you're involved in over the next, we don't have to go that far out, 24, 36 months ahead, 48 months, what do you think changes within the superstructure of that core critical stakeholder called the corporate brand, corporate sponsor, that's going to influence and play a critical role in the game?

Steve (01:13:24.352)
Is there any trend you see at this time that you see as just tip of the iceberg?

Rodney And Kelly (01:13:28.3)
I think.

It is just the tip of the iceberg. do think that our corporate partners continue to learn just as we have. I think they continue to figure out what sports, what type of athletes, what student athlete influencers fit their business and their mission the best. I think that nobody, whether you were talking about agents, coaches, players, multimedia rights holders,

brands, nobody's done learning because it is the tip of the spear, the tip of the iceberg. I think they will get smarter. They will get more honed in on the type of athletes, the type of influencers that they want. And then I think the student athletes will get smarter too. I do think to Kelly's point earlier, there's a, in their own heads, their roster value is kind of what they're riding on, but what is your true market value?

Steve (01:14:03.446)
Mm.

Rodney And Kelly (01:14:24.27)
There might need to be some work over here done on the brand side of the student athlete if they really want to maximize their value in NIL. And then I do think if I had to predict for the NCAA, they just need to get some type of structure in place. I think you could start with the transfer portal. In my opinion, if I could be king of NCAA for one day, I'd make the transfer, I'd put more.

more, I think I go back to how the transporter was. Just because if I'm a player and I got a transfer and sit for a year, I mean, I really got to think, man, do I want to go sit for a year? They're definitely not going to pay me if I'm just going to be on the sideline for one year. And so I got to really want to go to that university and be down for development for that first year, because that's all I'm going be doing. And that also kind of makes the school think, hmm, you know, do I want to pay that guy to come sit here for a year? I don't know. And so.

I think in two to three years, it's really hard to call, but if I had to guess, I'd say those are some things that I could see changing.

Steve (01:15:28.802)
Shall we?

Rodney And Kelly (01:15:31.18)
Well, I think Rodney's right. still not quite five years in, in the infancy of this volatile period in collegiate athletics. I think, I quoted Randall earlier, or summarized Randall earlier, saying that there is a way to make it sustainable. We just got to learn how. And I think Learfield, Sooner Sports Properties, we've been the leader.

the time that NIL became permissible to today. And we've had very aggressive forward thinking leadership saying, what can we do? We know what we can't do, but what can we do? And we'll continue, just like our peers, to push the bounds of what can we do to make sure that we remain at the top of this competitive tier. I do think at some point, going back to the comment earlier where I heard an athletics director speak,

about the fracturing that's happening across the collegiate athletics landscape, at some point, on the horizon, I see collective bargaining, right? At some point, we see some sort of, I don't know, it's a unionization. I don't know what it's going to look like. Someone smarter than me above my pay grade's gonna have to figure that out. But I do think that, you know, it...

Look at every professional league right and there's things that have been put in place like luxury taxes and you know Rodney played in the NFL for a number of years and and everybody basically operates under the same set of rules and I think that the the Wild Wild West period although it's completely different than it was in 21 and then the house case and the Collegiate Sports Commission and and NIL go which we're all learning and dealing with over the last year and making sure that fair market value NIL deals are are legal and compliant

and that we're representing our brand partners appropriately. All the things that we're doing, I think, we're in the meantime. I have a mentor, spiritual advisor that talks about going into something or coming out of something, that when we're in the middle of something, we're kind of in the meantime. And I think in this NIL volatile period that we're in, we're sort of, it's so transformational and so volatile that things change so quickly. I think that,

Rodney And Kelly (01:17:51.022)
You you said 18 months, who knows what's gonna be permissible in 18 months, who knows, you know, what conference is gonna look like in 18 months, who knows what the transfer portal is gonna look like in 18 months. I think all of that will take shape. And I do agree that at some point down the road, there will be a new normal, right? It won't be the normal that we grew up with. It won't be the 150 years of college athletics and college football as we knew it, but it'll be normal.

Because at some point, we will have to learn, as Randall said, how to sustain collegiate athletics in the name, image, and likeness era. I definitely don't think we're done with the volatility in the portal. I don't think we're done with conference realignment. And I certainly think there's going to have to be some sort of collective bargaining down the road.

Steve (01:18:42.22)
Gentlemen, we could spend days with delight on the subject. It's what perhaps is the most, for me, meaningful part is that you guys are at the cutting edge of determining what that future looks like. And when you're living it, I know there's a lot of creativity that comes about.

I will share one thought that I have seen repeatedly in the college space that I do think it is gonna require an ability to stop the train and say to ourselves, 20 years ago we didn't have social media, right? And these athletes were, and pro athletes were, pro athletes were relevant without social media. And somehow we have to find a way

where the biggest engagement metric transcends mightily, or at least is equivalent to someone's social media following. And obviously demographic fit within following, there's the quantitative, which has been the history of the sports marketing industry.

your logo was on the screen for 30 seconds. Yeah, it was back here with 20 others, you know. Way, way back. Let's count that. Okay, it's a 30 second spot plus premium. We'll give you at the championship 2.5 million plus. Give me a break. Right? The impression wasn't even viewable. Right? We're masters at the quantitative game. Let's put this out and everything is just a big number. But it's clear to me that one of the gold mines we have is, and I'm not offering, I'm just opining.

And that is that when we can go well beyond social media and saying how many Instagram followers does XY and Z athletes do they have because they are so much more than that. And the qualitative nature of sports marketing, as we all know, is a holistic experience.

Steve (01:20:46.15)
And so it's, believe that if we have this conversation in two to three years, that would be the one thing I would suggest that we're gonna start realizing these untapped areas that don't take them away from the game, but at the same time, enhance value, attract more money, because there's a bigger narrative being told, not just with the megastars, but at a more granular level.

perhaps just a thought. With that said, I have to tell you, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. And you guys made for a great trifecta here. And that's Kelly Collier, Vice President and General Manager of Sooner Sports Properties, Rodney Anderson, Manager, NIL Business Development at Sooner Sports Properties, formerly of the NFL as well. And obviously part of the Learfield Super

super, super, the real, the Learfield Mothership that this entity is a part of operating with, as I last checked, well into the billions of dollars that you're engaged in in the college space. And I'm very, very happy for what you've endeavored to do. Love the combo of the two of you. Love the mental health focus.

And as you said, a lot of people do it just for the Benjamins. And at the end of the day, you guys clearly have a system that seems to represent the stakeholders at Oklahoma, particularly that coach, really, really well. So I thank you today for coming on to the transaction report and do hope that we will do it not too long into the distant future.

Rodney And Kelly (01:22:38.272)
Appreciate you Steve. Steve.

Steve (01:22:40.333)
Good having you. We're going to ask you to hold for one moment. Ryan is going to hopefully.