Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the ongoing professionalization of college sports in light of the recently announced deal between the University of Utah and private equity firm Otro Capital of New York that is reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And later on, we'll react to the shocking fall of former University of Michigan head coach Sharon Mo.
Hello, welcome to the Call. Like I see a podcast. I'm James Keys and joining me today is a man who's, when he's recording his pod, I gotta say stop calling his phone. Kundegonlana Kunde, you ready to show the people what's good for the day?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I'll turn my phone off too.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Problem solved.
All right. Now before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe or like the show on on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. And we're recording on December 16, 2025 in tune day. I know there's been big money around college athletics, particularly football and men's basketball for a few decades at this point, but I think many people still hold on to like a nostalgic and romanticized view of the college sports industry, so to speak. But this recently announced private equity deal between University of Utah and Ocho Capital is really, if this isn't a one off and it's the start of a new trend, I think we can unequivocally say that we've entered a new era of college, of the college sports industry professionalization type of era where money and not higher education, at least from the athletic standpoint, is a guiding principle, broadly just kind of laying the groundwork for what it is. It's been reported that University of Utah has entered into a first of its kind deal with Ocho Capital and they're going to form a new company, Utah Brands and Entertainment llc, that will, that those two entities will jointly own and the new entity will get a cash infusion from OTRO and they'll get the rights to the revenue for things that the athletic department, their games and stuff like that and beyond games and beyond, things that are involved with the athletic department and what the athletic department already does, they'll get the revenue rights to that. And with the goal of the new entity being able to better leverage and make more money from these athletic endeavors that the University puts on. So Tunde, that kind of just lays out the broad strokes. But what's your initial reaction to this private equity deal where University of Utah is essentially selling off a piece of its athletics?
[00:02:44] Speaker B: I would say my initial reaction is one of Surprise. Because it's something new and not something I'm used to seeing, especially with my knowledge of private equity and that being adjacent to my profession in a sense, I'm pretty familiar with it.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: So this is a wealth manager, private.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Equity enter in the space of a public university system type of environment generally. I know that there's a lot of private universities that have NCAA participation as well, which is just an interesting kind of thing.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Right? Well, I would say, like, just for me, from an initial reaction standpoint, you know, like, I feel like people have been fretting about the state of college sports, particularly people that, you know, are close to it. Whether it's the media that cover it or the hardcore fans, they've been fretting out about the way this is, you know, this is going to, you know, this is going to be terrible for college sports. Oh, the coaches switching jobs. Oh, the players getting paid. Oh, you know, the travel. Like, people have been fretting about this for a while. You know, as long as I've been following college sports, it's like every new thing that happens is like, oh my gosh, this is going to change everything for the worse. But this actually does seem, this was the first time I actually, oh, wow, this is a big change now. Whether it's going to end everything. I don't really, my mind doesn't really work like that where I'm like, oh no, this is going to be the end of the world. But this definitely seems like, like you go down the money path and, you know, college sports and we'll get into this, you know, like it wasn't, it didn't start off as an, a money generating endeavor, like, hey, let's see how much money we can make by playing football or playing volleyball and so forth. And so that it's become that some of the sports have become very good at making money or that there are things that people will watch or people that will watch on TV and become very valuable in the entertainment space. Television entertainment space.
It's kind of forced a change, so to speak. It wasn't what they set out to do, but it's become so good at something that now it's like, okay, other people, that professional money people now are like, hey, you got something here that makes a lot of money and maybe we can help you out with that and so forth. So to me, it's kind of like a, it's a sea change, but where it goes, I don't know. But it's just like, this is a sea change, but it's a result of the idea that this endeavor, this athletics thing, which may have been about promoting the school, may have been about building character amongst people like the athletes or bringing different people to the school and so forth, that at least part of it is just such a moneymaker now that it's kind of, it's. It's almost left the plantation from that standpoint, or left the reservation, so to speak, where it's just like, oh my gosh, this. We got to do more with this because it's making so much money. And that's, you know, kind of, that's what we're looking at right now.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think you point out to something very interesting, which is that what was once considered an amateur athletic endeavor in order, you know, to give kids from around the United States the opportunity to go to university and to participate in not only the collective sharing of experiences as young people in a college setting and in dorms and all that, but also the idea of kids who might come from lower income conditions. This could be kids in the rural parts of the country, could be kids in inner cities, whatever, but their families may not be able to afford the tuition and the books and the room and board. But if they're athletic and they're good at a sport, they could get a full scholarship. And there's, you know, at this point, in the last, you know, probably 50 years of NC athletics, I would assume over a million Americans that, you know, otherwise wouldn't have had those experiences and the ability to maybe even move social mobility, like move up classes, you know, in terms of their income, class or wealth, class they were born into.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Regardless of whether it's a million or what the number is. Like we don't have the number, but it's a lot of people. It's an opportunity. It's providing educational opportunities for more people, like you said. I mean, I just wanted to add that it's a lot of people.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: So. Yeah, that's my point is just. So it's about, you know, there's this old saying that most people have heard of.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: You know, you don't.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: The main thing is. The main thing, you know, you don't.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Want to get off that.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: And I think that's kind of what we're talking about here is the main thing for college athletics has been that dealing with kids who come from somewhere else and they're going to play sports and go to class and earn degrees, hopefully, and all that. And if they don't earn a degree, they still have benefited from the Networking that takes place in the college setting amongst young people, blah, blah, blah. They're learning something and getting exposed to something different than they would have in their hometown.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: So that's a beautiful thing, to be fair. It's also about promoting the university.
You know, like you have these things that people, so people, more people would, whether they're playing sports or not, they may want to go to the university and say, oh, this, this looks like a great experience. Let me, let me see this. And we've seen universities increase their profile, whether it be Notre Dame, whether it be, you know, Alabama, Notre Dame kind of in 1900s, Alabama and more recently where it's increased its profile nationally and the competition to get in is higher now because of the success they've had.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Well, you know, they're good examples. I'll give the basketball ones because that's the sport I follow more. But remember when Pepperdine made it to, I think, think the Sweet 16 or the final Four is in the last decade or so. And that's a school that's normally not seen as going to that level. I remember that their admissions were up like, I think like 200% after that. They made it that far into the NCAA. And you're right, it's, it just, it was the notoriety of the name. People start talking, oh, Pepperdine's on, on the coast in California, nice place to be. And kids got interested in it.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: And they would have otherwise probably never heard of that school. So that's all the stuff to me that is, is the glue that can be part of a society. And I think what we're gonna, what we're witnessing here and what I'll get into, and this is what I like your opinion on, is kind of the, the culture of money and growth in the United States.
And we're about to watch that devour something else. Right. Like, like it's, it's devoured other things in our society.
And the reason I, I say it this way is if you look at, I'm gonna cite some stats here from fiscal year 2024 of Utah athletics, as you mentioned, that was the first school to really take this equity partnership.
The athletics program took in 109.8 million while spending 126.8 million for a 17 million dollar or 14.4 for 14.4% loss. And it says here football made 26.8 million. Men's basketball made 2.6 while the other 17 sports lost 21.2 million. So that's why I wanted your opinion and you're talking. My concern is that the growth model, yeah, my concern is just that the growth model will end up focusing, let's say, on just those two sports and those other 17 sports that thousands of kids, you know, around the country, even in that school, benefit from may end up going away. And that'll be another kind of loss to society of something that doesn't equal growth, but actually may have helped a lot of American kids grow up and blossom to be productive adults.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yeah, because that's the, that's going back to your original point is the, that's the point is the. What is the main thing we're doing here? Is this an educational institution that's providing a well rounded academic and athletic experience to its students or is it a money making thing? And that's the, I think that's the rub that a lot of people are kind of uncomfortable with about this is because the private equity is very, private equity business is very clear about what their main thing is. And that typically does not align with what a university their main thing is. And so there is a misalignment that we potentially are seeing here. And I think pointing out that, you know, generally speaking, this is, and this is seen in a lot of areas where the college football program will be profitable. It'll make money, it'll earn more money than it spends, even though it spends a lot of money. You know, the college football program spend a lot of money. You know, they pay the coaches a lot now they've been paying the players, you know, some.
And even before that, you know, they didn't have to pay the players before, so they were making even more money. And they're building waterfalls and locker rooms and all types. They doing stuff with the money because it's a non profit, you know, like, all right, we got to spend this stuff. So they've been making a lot of money for a long time. The basketball programs make much less, but still oftentimes will turn a profit and then all the other sports run into loss. And so if you're looking at that from a university perspective, and this gets to your point, if we're a university and we're looking at that, that's not a problem.
That's not a problem at all. That's like, okay, yeah, that's happenstance. It's like, oh, it happens to be that this sport, we can throw it on TV and sign a $100 million TV contract.
And this other sport, we can't do that. We can't put it on TV and make a Bunch of money with it. Because a lot of the excess money that's being made with football and basketball comes from the fact that there's TV money involved in it, whereas there's not for volleyball. There's not a ton of TV money for volleyball or for other sports. So.
But from the mindset of a person at a university and say, okay, so, yeah, let's figure out what we can do. You know, now the system has been sorting itself out a little bit. As far as the players should get some of this money or the fact that they're generating all this value, should you be completely shutting them out from that excess value? Again, that goes beyond just selling tickets and all this other stuff, this excess value that the university is generating, that part has been sorting itself out. We've had conversations about that. Society has had a lot of conversations about that. The law has come in and said, hey, you can't just cap their wages at zero or cap their wages at a scholarship. That's illegal under American law. So we've seen the nil and the paying college players thing work out.
But what you just raised those numbers, you know, high profit in college football, marginal profit in college basketball. Everything else is losing tens of millions of dollars. Private equity has a plan to. Generally speaking, the way they operate would be like, okay, well, let's put more into the things that are making money and see if we can make more money, and then let's take things away from or cut the things that aren't, and that's how we'll make this a more profitable endeavor. Well, that's not consistent with the university kind of main thing, though. So what gives in this? It's not even necessarily what gives now.
It's what gives in a year, in five years and 10 years. And so is the university selling out his academic purpose because from the money has gotten to the point where they're trying to do more, they've stumbled upon this gold mine and they're like, hey, yeah, let's get more gold out of the gold mine. It's like, well, what about everything else that we do? Like, we'll worry about that later.
So to me, that's really the concern here is that the misalignment in kind of the purpose of the university, and yes, it happened to be that one of these things that you did turns out to be very profitable, or one is very profitable, one's marginally profitable. But I don't know that you should change your whole approach or you should even make what maybe appear to be minor but they are substantive changes to your approach. Because of that, maybe you need to figure out a way to, to make all this system work more equitably. And I'll kick it back to you because I want to get into the, what the private equity is doing here also because I want to look at it from their perspective too. But just there was one thing that we had kind of kicked back and forth on text and that was like, because it's been said by a lot of smart people I know Dan Wetzel over at ESPN now has been saying this, like, college sports in general doesn't have a revenue problem. They make, the athletic departments make a lot of money. A lot of that's on the back of football and basketball. But what they do is they have a spending problem. They, they spend like drunken sailors. And part of that you mentioned, already, like that's because it's not their money, you know, like, so to speak, these, these, these athletic ads or whatever, or university presidents, they are caretakers more than they're out there entrepreneurs. But so they make a lot of money, but they spend a lot of money. And that may be why the universities are looking around saying, hey, we could use some more money. It's not because they're not making money. It's because they, they keep wanting to spend more and more and more. What was, what was your thought on that framing? And I'm kind of, I know I'm kind of throwing this at you, but this kind of came up this morning like the framing of the college sports don't have a revenue problem. They have a spending problem. And tied to that, now they're starting to talk to private equity or starting to bring in private equity when they don't even have a revenue problem.
I don't know if more money solves the issue. If you have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point.
There's more money to solve a problem if you don't have a revenue problem.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's so.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: But I think it's several fold and I think there's just, this is where several things can be true at once. I don't think there's just one answer or catalyst for this. I think part of the issue is something you have a tendency to mention in various of our economic conversations is that we've had now enough time for wealth to concentrate at the top. And this is now more a macro comment that I'm making.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: In our society, so that there's a lot of family offices, private equity Firms, there's a lot of wealth held in private hands that is just looking for new ways to make money on itself. You know, so you're only so much.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Well, you're getting now into to kind of, why would private equity be doing that?
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Or just making a point of okay, if, if. Because I know a lot of people on Main street don't see this, but there's a lot of pooled and concentrated money out there. And it's just. And there's a term called family office. And these people pull, you know, the family might be worth half a billion, a billion dollars or more, and they might find another family or two worth that kind of money. And they pull their assets together and they, they either start their own private equity type of ventures or they partner with a big firm like the one that's doing this and that firm will take some of their wealth and just look for other ways to make money. Because at some point, these people don't want to keep buying real estate and stocks. There's just other things out there. And there's also, and there's a certain part of it that could be genuine. Some of these people could be genuine sports fans and boosters. And now there's just enough money where they're saying, okay, well, let's find a different way to do this and participate. There's another group of people that might be saying, let's make money on the money that the NCAA and these schools are bringing in because they are non for profit and they don't know what they're doing with how to deal with revenue and expenses and all this. So there's all kind of motivations. But I do think that the slippery slope and the concern I have is, as we mentioned, that there's two different ways of being and reasons of being. The university is there to be a university, educate students, give them opportunities to learn and experience new things. That's got nothing to do necessarily with profit or nonprofit private equity firms.
Reason for being is to make profit on money that it invests, period. And so at some point, that's my concern. Reading those stats about if 2 out of 19 sports make all this money and 17 of them are losing 21 million.
You know, there are, there are industries that we've seen already that do that, that we subsidize the taxpayers because we think that they are for the greater good. I will say Amtrak is an example that has never made money but is subsidized because rail travel has been important in this country.
Utilities a lot of times, airlines A lot of times are subsidized by the taxpayer through issuing of municipal debt and all that. So that's all different topics that we don't have time to get into. But there's, there's examples where we do have things going on in the United States that aren't constantly about needing to put an extra percentage growth on the, on this year than last year. And I'm just concerned that where private equity has reared its head, whether we look at health care or education or other parts of our society, it seems that, you know, profits get peeled out for a few who run these things. And then there might be some shiny objects that look better. But a lot of times when you look at the collective of how everyone's doing after the private equity took over, most of the time most people aren't doing better and a lot of times many are doing worse. So that's my concern.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: No, no. I mean their track record is not one that would give us a lot of confidence as far as how this is going to play out. If you look at the track record of the, of private equity, broadly, again that's not saying every single person, but just broadly. It oftentimes tend to prioritize more shorter term things. You know, like for a university, having a fencing team may be a long term, might be something that helps the university over long term in terms of the students that it attracts, that it retains and all this other thing like, and that thing will never make money, you know, so there are other considerations. So I definitely think that I did want to ask and get into the idea of why the private equity firm would be doing this. And I think you brought up a couple of those in terms of they're seeing, we see all these reports of how these billion dollar TV contracts that these college football conferences are signing and to, to broadcast the games, which is interesting about what you got to keep in mind about that is that the schools would do the games regardless. And so the television money is just money on top of that. Like they get paid, maybe they put it in a different spot. But the games are having Division 2, Division 3. All those schools play football games too. And, but they're not getting billions of dollars for the conference to do it. So that's like money on top of, you know, you get your ticket sales or you know, things like that, advertising in arena or in the stadium and so forth. So there's just this, this money that they're rolling in from, from nothing. And so I think that, you know, the private equity had their eye on that, like, hey, they're making some, I'm sure with our expertise, these people don't know, as you pointed out, they don't know what they're doing. They're not there to make money.
So I'm sure we can make even more. But the consideration of, okay, well their idea of how they're going to make more may not and probably won't. And if you go by the track record of private equity, definitely won't consider what's good for the university over the long term. And the other piece I wanted to throw in there, which is something you actually brought up to me the other day, is something I oftentimes say that just understanding how capitalism works I think is helpful. And this is just at a very basic level, but just money goes up through the system, money rises through the system. In a capitalist system, that's the point of investing capital, is to get a return. So the more money you have, conceivably, particularly when it's unregulated, when there aren't other mechanisms, the more money you have, the more money you can suck up with that money. And so you can suck all this money up to the top and, and the money will stay there. There's no effective mechanism in just the operation of capitalism, of just straight capitalism, there's no effective mechanism for that money to come back down. So it goes up to the top and then it just sticks there.
So the problem that you have now, that's where you get into conversations of taxation and other ways to for cause it may be in the government's interest to keep money flowing through the system, not just have it flow through once and then just stay somewhere. But that settings, setting that part aside, as you pointed out, if more and more money. We've heard about wealth concentration becoming a bigger and bigger issue as wealth gets more and more concentrated. It's not getting concentrated at the bottom, by the way. As more and more wealth gets concentrated, then people need to look for more creative and more new ways to use their money to suck up more money. And so I think what we're seeing here right there is also a reflection of the fact that they're desperate enough to use the word desperately, but they're mad, they're search, they're on mad dash to figure out more places where they can put their money to suck up more money. And so now it's into college athletics, which again, you go back 10, 15 years, I'd be like, hold up, that's a not for profit institution.
But they're just not for profit institution that tripped and fell and landed in a gold mine. So like, hey, let's go after those guys. So any additional thoughts beyond what you already thought throughout?
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah, man. I'm trying to figure out how square the idea of billionaires and private equity firms being desperate that'd be.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's why I said it's not necessarily that, but that's why I check. I think I changed it to the mad dash.
Trying to figure out.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: No, I think, I think, look, this is where to me it's just an interesting, this is all just an interesting kind of continued, I don't know, evolution of I think this combination of our system, our culture of growth and technology. Because you make a good point.
The TV deals, all these things that have happened, I'd say in the last maybe two to three generations because as we're doing this, it's an interesting to.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: The 1980s, by the way. That's when television really started to pick.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Because why? Because satellite technology. Right. Like with, with cable and the proliferation of being able to cable satellites.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: And then there were some lawsuits that, that, that opened up the, the playing. Playing ground a little bit. Yeah. So yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: And, and as I'm saying, like in the 50s and 60s when you have three broadcast networks and they want to show NFL you just didn because you had to add Johnny Carson at night and other things. So once the technology of allowing all of us with our eyeballs to see sports at college level through television, then the Internet and the, I would say the collective merging of our, those of us who went to schools, how we feel about them. Right. Like you said about schools like Alabama or Notre Dame, that now I have a connection. I went to the school, I'm connected to the football team. So I'm going to keep watching it for the rest of my life in a certain way that I might even be more passionate than the professional teams in the city I live in. So those are all things that let.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Me add into that because there's something very important with that also which is a reflection of our modern time and the technology, particularly the.
How diffuse attention is now that sports, particularly live sports are pretty much at this point the only thing that draw large television audiences.
And the NFL is king. They draw routinely 20 something million. You know, they can draw. Hit 20 million in terms of viewers.
Second is not another professional sport. Well, at least not. It's not an official professional sport. The second biggest television draw is college football. It's after pro football.
So again it is the academic. The professor walking along in the park, stumbling into the pot of gold, you know, because they now have what would be the second most valuable television property in terms of delivering eyeballs.
You get a million or two for some of the biggest television events. You get 20 million, 18 million for a Saturday college football game.
So the television deals reflect that. And part of what we're seeing here, and private equity's bet is the bet that those rights, the costs for those rights are going to keep going up.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, think about it though, that this all makes sense. And on the backdrop of the continued proliferation of the technology and to your point there, how to make money off of the different, I would say, veins of the technological infrastructure. So for example, not just tv, think about gambling. We did shows on online gambling in the billions of dollars.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Another way to try to leverage correct the technology plus the interest where attention is to try to earn more money out of what you're already doing.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Correct gambling on the phone. And think about the technology of what we're doing right now and that the, the, the proliferation of podcasts around sports and the ability for people to listen to those remotely, anywhere. So that's all I'm saying. Not to get caught on the whole thing, but the idea that technology.
Well, yeah, so I was going to say just to finish the technology is allowing the money to see all these new opportunities.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, well, and they're creating new opportunities as well. Like the gambling is something that wasn't really an opportunity 20 years ago, for sure, because of legal reasons. But then you have. The technology opens it up. The other thing I'll say, and I want to get to some ideas on how else this could be done because again, we talked about revenue problem, not a revenue problem, but a spending problem that the colleges have.
But with that, I want to ask you, do you think there are other ways that are, you know, what do you think as far as like, is this the only way? Like they feel like they have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, as you know, as like I said, Dan Wetzel says, which I think is a really insightful thing. And they. So to solve their spending problem, that's not a revenue problem. They're going to get more money.
So setting aside that, that doesn't make kind of logical sense.
Because if you don't have spending, solving a spending problem just to kind of make it out, say it out loud. Solving a spending problem requires discipline. You don't solve a spending problem by getting more money because you have a spending problem. The more money you have, the more you'll just spend. But what are your thoughts on whether there's other ideas? Because remember, educational institutions oftentimes rely on donations, on boosters, stuff like that.
And so they have other ways of making. It's not just tuition or even not just television contracts that they get money from. So your thoughts on that?
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think with creativity, anything can be done. I mean, this is all.
If we go back to sapiens, this is imagined order stuff, not real order. So anything can be created. And I had to go to ChatGPT, by the way, because I had to make sure that I remember some things properly, which I'm not going to get into it because it was confusing, but it was about. I remember when I was young, so this is around 20 years ago, and I was in the industry. I'm in wealth management and all that. There used to be the ability for guys like me to sell tax credits to clients who would do investments into oil and gas partnerships, like speculation, in that. In that sector. And so hypothetically. And this is where I'm gonna botch it, I was trying to get all the info, but I didn't want to do a finance course again in five minutes.
But just it was something like, let's say if you put in a dollar, you know, you might be able to take $2 off your income, and that was the reward. You know, the IRS is trying to incentivize behavior, right? So in order for the government, federal government, to not spend so much of its own capital on exploration of energy in the United States, it's trying to incentivize individual investors to do it. So hypothetically, the idea would be, I put a million dollars into one of these oil and gas investments. It can do nothing. It can be a dry hole that doesn't return anything. But because of that, the IRS may allow me to use two to one against future income. So I may be able to deduct up to $2 million of my income or, you know, against future taxation down the road. So for someone who's in that wealth class, they might find advantage in doing that. So my thought was, you know, we have this, this great history in college athletics of boosters and people, you know, donating on a monthly basis, $100 a month if they want or whatever, just like you've said to me, donating half.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: A million dollars and getting a library named after them or just people. There's a lot of.
That's part of the culture is people donate. These colleges have huge endowments. A lot of times, you know, like that are based on in large part donations and stuff like that. So yeah, that, that structure, I mean.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: How many, I mean, not even to get into all the universities near us that have buildings named after individuals. Right. So it's the exact same thing. You're right. And so the idea could be where you offer boosters maybe like what if the irs, again, legislatures could create rules where if you want to really, you know, do this without including private equity, just allow the boosters to take a different type of deduction on their donation to a university and give them a two to three, three for one deal or something.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: And the universities are already non profits, you know, in fact, you know, by and large. So it wouldn't even be that difficult to do something like that, I think without creating a bunch of unintended consequences.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: It would seem like, yeah, or even give the private equity firm some benefit. Like instead of saying, you know, offering universities a line of credit, which literally means a line of credit means you're going to put them into more debt, they're going to have to pay interest on it all, that maybe you could just give the private equity, if you guys put in half a million, we'll get, allow you to take $3 million off future, or 3 billion off future income or something. So my point is just playing that kind of game too, where maybe it incentivizes behavior, creates a culture within the wealth class or private equity class to just say, okay, maybe it's not for altruism and because we're just bleeding hard people, but we get an incentive if we donate money to these kind of universities and it's better for our bottom line going forward. So, you know, I'm just saying that there's ways to think about this that could be different, that's all.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with you and I like your focus on incentives because I actually am very pessimistic about this. And that is because I think the incentives, the reason we have the problem is because the incentives, or lack of consequences, I guess probably the lack of negative incentives are, is glaring. Basically, if you have, if you take the premise that there's not a revenue problem, but there's a spending problem and you can't solve that with more revenue necessarily. Now one of the things that private equity would do is if they're coming in, they would implore, they would compel the decision makers to have more discipline as far as the spending. But as you pointed out before, where that may be is not more discipline necessarily with the things that are making money, making Profits, but more discipline as far as getting rid of the things that aren't, which we would not necessarily. Which would not be consistent with the kind of mission of the university on multiple different levels. The concern I have right now is a lot of the out of control spending.
It's kind of like what we had with the real estate bubble a couple decades ago, where there's this belief right now, because of what I mentioned previously, about the ability for college football particularly, but in some respects college basketball, to deliver eyeballs. And that has increasing and increasing value to television networks, because television networks have a really hard time getting people to watch stuff in the moment, not watch it, stream, watch it later on, skip the commercials and all. But how can we get people to sit down and watch something?
Live sports solves that, particularly college football, pro football. So there's this belief that everybody's operating on that the money's just going to keep going up forever, which is kind of like the belief during the real estate bubble that people had that the values are going to keep going up forever. And so as long as.
So unless you introduce a consequence, meaning that bubble bursts, that will bring people's spending discipline up, that'll raise that, or the people that don't get run out. So that's one way, but that's a lot of pain. Ideally, we could try to figure out a way to increase, to tie consequences, either positive or negative consequences, with keeping spending under control, because as long as the spending is the way it is. In fact, my concern here, the reason I am relatively pessimistic about this, is that it almost feels like the universities are the dupes here. Private equity has identified someone who makes a lot of money but has a spending problem, like a credit card company maybe. And they're like, yo, like your credit card companies show up at universities, right? You know, like, hey, we'll give you a bunch of money, you person, new college kid with very little discipline here, have this card, go spend all this money and then you'll owe us all this money. And then you're like, you know what? However you know, and we all know how that plays out. So it's like they identified that, hey, there's these people with this huge amount of money that don't know what to do with it and they don't know how to control themselves as far as spending it. Let's get them indebted to us.
So I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the craziest thing. So ultimately what I think needs to happen is ways to Come up with whether coming from them. I mean these are tied in with states a lot of times coming ways to figure out how to solve the spending problem.
And that's not necessarily saying taking to the athletes and saying, hey, you guys generate all this money, we're just not going to give you anything. That's not the answer you still got. There's still a way to treat people equitably, but figure out a way to get the spending under control because I think that's ultimately what needs to happen. We can't rely on this ever increasing revenue from television networks.
Societally, that just doesn't play out well normally. So any last thoughts before we wrap this up?
[00:34:47] Speaker B: No, I say you sound like one of these politics people talking about.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: No, I do, man. Stop the spending on a negative note, a pessimistic note. I call you glass half empty tune day.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: I think, you know, I, I, I just. You had the positive.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: You were the glass half full guy today.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: No, I, because you know, it's, it's all part of the same sucking sound that on the system, you know that this, this, this wealth money is just sucking more money out of other thing. And this is another seam in our society as a little crack in, in our economy. They're like, oh, no one's in there yet. Let's go, let's go put ourselves all up in that seam and start sucking out of it. And so, and it's going to be a transfer of wealth continued from well, this regular. From the public to the copies of the private. Yeah, the few. Because as they create more gambling sites and charge more for beers and popcorn at the stadium, we're paying for it, right?
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: And we're not because it's private equity. Literally. I mean it's one thing if it was public equity and we could buy shares of the companies that are doing this, but it's private. We don't even have access to it. So you know, at least, at least I can buy Google now. Microsoft and yeah, I was gonna say.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Now we're back in kind of we're in balance now. That's the glass half tune day I was looking for. Or glass half empty tune day.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: So, so we're good. Yeah.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I'm back. The force is back in balance. There we go.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Took me 40 minutes, but I woke up so.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Cool. Cool. Yeah. So yeah, we're gonna get out of this part. We're actually, we're gonna have a second part for this conversation as well. So join us for that. And until then, we'll talk to you soon.
All right. Coming back, Tunde, we saw last week, this past week, just breaking news. And it took like a real concerning turn for a while where we had former University of Michigan head coach Sharon Moore.
We get reports that he's fired from his job, and then we get reports that he's in police custody.
And things have unfolded since then. And essentially what we've, what we've learned is that he was having an affair. He's a married, married guy, three kids, 39 years old.
And Michigan is one of the biggest, most prominent job, football head, football jobs for football coaching jobs in the country. You know, so he had this dream job, so to speak, married, three kids, and he was having an affair with a staff member and was, you know, there's, you know, paying her goods amount, good amount and stuff like that.
And then ultimately they had denied it. They had denied it. The university looked into it at one point over the summer, they denied it. And so they didn't have the evidence they needed to act on it. Well, at some point in the last few days or a week or a couple weeks, she changed her story and said, yeah, yeah, this did happen and there's a lot going on as far as why that was and so forth. So she changes her story, he gets fired for cause, no buyout, no continuing money, you know, you're out, you're done. And then he reacts. And apparently the reporting is, is that he go. Goes to her house, kicks in the door, the, the person he's having the affair with kicks the door in, holds a knife to his neck, saying, my blood is on your hands, you ruined my life. And so forth. So it, it was kind of a. And I'm sure many people are already familiar with kind of these broad strokes, but it took on a. At first it was kind of like, oh man, this guy threw it all away. Ha, ha ha. And then it was like, oh, man, is this guy okay? Is this guy, you know, like, what happened to this guy? So it's just, overall, it's just a shocking fall from a guy who goes from, again, one of the top five jobs you say, in the country at 39 years old and so forth to now, probably will never work in that industry again and kind of is going to have a difficult time kind of regardless of what happens with law enforcement matter.
It seems like he's going to have some consequences there as well. But just in terms of a career standpoint, put himself in a very difficult spot moving forward. I'll put it like that. So what stands out to you about kind of the broad strokes of this, you know, this story, Tunde?
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Well, several things stand out that we'll talk about.
The ultimate crash out.
And I wouldn't want to say in history, but it's, you know, the ultimate crash out.
I guess this recent moment, that's, to me, what stands out. The most other things that stand out are how people are reacting. I'm finding that interesting because, again, there's a lot of confirmation bias, which we'll get into in terms of what we're seeing. But I just think that my initial reaction is a combination of things. I would say the funny part, to just be honest about it, would be the crash out part. And I don't mean funny like I want to laugh at him and his family, but more of that's the stuff we can have in jest. And people can kind of, you know, make light of whatever they want. About that part. Well, can I add part.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: I feel like for that. Can I add something? Because I think because you said something to me that was very interesting on this previously and that with the crash out, and it's like, so he gets fired, and in his mind, according to the reporting, he's like, oh, no, this girl has ruined my life.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: So then he goes and kicks in her door and puts a knife to his neck. And it's like, well, actually, her telling you getting fired from Michigan didn't ruin your life, but you may have ruined your life by running and going and kicking into her door. And the crash out part basically, make long story short, then, like I said, you threw this to me, like, what he was afraid of happening when the initial round of stuff happening of his life being ruined, so to speak, he may have actually brought to himself with the crash out, you know, and so that, to me, was just like, when.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: You said it, I'm like, oh, man, it's the classic thing that befalls a lot of people, which is the thing you're most insecure about.
You do something yourself to bring that on. Okay, so this guy is probably insecure about losing.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: All right, Anakin Sky. I said, okay, Anakin Skywalker, man, I'm gonna beat you to it. Cause I know that's where you're going. Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Well, I wasn't. But, you know, we'll go there for sure and have some fun with it. But no, so if. Because what did Yoda say, the great Jedi philosopher? It was, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. So Sharon Moore was somewhere on that spectrum Right. I think he was on the hate leads to suffering part when he broke into our house. So. But, but the other part, besides the crash out part, that was one part of what, what I kind of, this moment is making me see. But the other part, I think is a bigger picture, maybe even a more important conversation that we can have as two men that are older than him.
And I would speak for myself, being in my late 40s, and you are still probably healthily within your mid-40s. Even though I'm still mid, but you're like one tick closer to me on the other.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: I'm getting to the precipice and then I'll be going down here.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: You're what we learned in elementary school. If we have to round up, you'll be 50 because you're 46, past the five.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: But on a serious note for the audience, James is 46, I'm 47, I'll be 48, and four months, it's December, I'll be 48, March. And so my point is, is that that's kind of one of the things I thought, oh, man, this guy's like almost a decade younger than me. He's 39.
It's an interesting place to be as a man at that age. And you said something to me that even reinforced it on a phone call, which was, yeah, had he been 20, 10 years younger, had he been 29 and been some grad assistant coach, this also may not have played out in his life a similar way. So it's an interesting thing to now be a little bit older than a guy that's getting himself in this kind of trouble publicly. And then to realize, man, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm middle aged. And this is, this is kind of when he's at the age of when traditionally we used to hear about men having a midlife crisis. You know, a guy's married, he's got a few kids, he's kind of, he can't sit still. You know, life's going good for him in his career, and all of a sudden, you know, he freaks out and buys a convertible and starts chasing 18 year olds behind his wife's back. And this one may have been in front of his wife, but the point is. Yes. So that to me is another part of this conversation that I don't see too many people having. That to me is just interesting, which is he's going the direction of. A lot of men have gone, maybe not most, but a lot.
And I think that part's Getting lost in the, in the other parts, you know, the parts that people want to look at like, oh, the racial stuff that he is the white chicks and, or whatever that people.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that stuff is a little more.
Yeah, like, I'm sure you get more hits if you tie this somehow to.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's the part that's being black.
Yeah.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: I mean, honestly. Because the crash out kind of removes all of the speculation from how, how things would have happened differently if, if he was, you know, if he was white or if she was black or you know, if it wasn't the cross racial stuff like that once he crashed out, like, it kind of was like, okay, well that part, you know, if you're, and if you're in jail for a couple of days, then you know you're going to lose your job, you know, like, that's not a thing. But to me, kind of in a similar vein to what you were talking about, what stands out to me here is really the like, it's kind of the in between phase. Like he's still like at 39, you kind of still are young enough as a man to kind of make some bad decisions, you know, like where, I guess reckless decisions when you get in your 40s, 50s, some guys still make bad decisions then, but most guys like mellow out a little bit more as they get to those. And a lot of times you don't get to these, these amazing dream job opportunities until you are at that phase. Like you're 45, 50, 60, you know, and then it's like you're less likely to be now. So again, some guys, you know, they do it at any age, anytime, you know, and then some guys wouldn't do it at any age at any time, you know, but like kind of. And I'm talking about Median here, so he's at the age where he still kind of has a little bit of that reckless 20s, 30s recklessness. But he had gotten far enough in his career where all of his decisions really mattered, you know, and my point with the, if he was like a 29 year old grad assistant or a 25 year old grad assistant, he wouldn't have felt like he ruined his life if this happened. You'd be like, oh, okay, I'll just go get a grad assistant job somewhere else. Like nobody's going to know about it because nobody cares if a grad assistant gets caught doing something. It's like, all right, yeah, you're out. You'll get picked up somewhere else. No big deal. So he had Gotten successful enough. He had had enough time to get so successful to get to the top of his profession, yet he still had the recklessness in him. You know, so he was kind of like stuck in this in between, you know, kind of like what you're saying with the midlife crisis where the he had, the kinds of consequences he was facing were very serious versus, you know, like again, if you're 25 years old and this happens, it's just something different. So I'm, to me, that's really what's, what's, what stood out is this, you know, as far as how. Yeah, he kind of, he's stuck in between and then now, yeah, he at a whole, with a high profile position. He really, you know, he really put himself in a situation where what he feared is going to happen. One other thing I want to ask you though, and that is, you know, like there's, you know, I've seen guys talking about this also just with like there's gain that should be learned here that maybe he missed out on, you know, because, and I've even heard like this is, this is, I've heard it in family settings, you know, like with men in my family and so forth, but all friends and all that, where it's like anytime a man, you know, of a certain level, once you get to a certain level of prominence, if you are dealing with a woman who has a lot less to lose than you, then you've given her all the power.
And so, and even, you know, I think there's a story that floats around in college football, even, you know, where Nick Saban has this quote. And again, it, there's denials in terms of this, but in him talking to his players when he was coaching either LSU or Alabama, that he said, again, you can't deal with women that have a lot less to lose than you. And the joke was basically that if I'm doing anything, it's going to be with Hillary Clinton, not because I'm in love with her, because at least she has more to lose than me. So what are your thoughts on the violations of the game, man, and the violations of the code here that this represents? Because he pretty much, she was working for him in the university department, but as soon as he messed with her, actually he worked for her because she could end him at any moment by saying, hey, this dude is dealing with me in ways that I know are against policy. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:47:19] Speaker B: I'll give you my thought, but first I have to get rid of this taste of bile in my mouth, from the vomiting in my mouth, of visualizing you banging Hillary Clinton, not me.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: And again, that's to make the point of who's a person that has a lot less, a lot more to lose than a football, even the biggest prominent football coach.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: I'm not sure if I feel more sorry for me for having to see this in my mind or the face you have, the look you have on your face while you're doing it that.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: I'm visualizing so that I wasn't going that far. I think the point is better made without visualizing it.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: That'll remain in my head. But no, so.
So no, I think, look, this is where we go from. I think it's easy for all of us, especially as men, to think about, you know, start doing the whole. Well, what would I, you know, I would have done this, you should have done that, or you shouldn't. Obviously, this guy wasn't thinking straight the first. Listen, let's be honest. As a type of men we are, the first thing is he's responsible for cheating on his wife. First.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: Second. Then he's a dumbass for, you know, pooping where he eats, like you said. Third, somebody that's a subordinate to him at the workplace. So there's all these things we can rattle off. And you make some good points there, because as I'm thinking about when you're talking, I'm also thinking about at my age, I've had friends like him, people I've known personally, whether they're friends or not, meaning just like people, whether it was the workspace, whether it was friends I had from college, meaning in our 20s, 30s, and then into your 40s.
Some men do fall off the kind of, you know, they fall by the wayside on the journey.
In examples like this, some might. Might be work things. I know guys that have been caught embezzling money from their workplace, all that. Others, it's. It's this kind of behavior at home. And so.
And like you said that then there's other guys like us that are more measured and just kind of, you know, able to navigate the journey without these kind of dramas. And so I do think that there's a lot to be said with that. I think sometimes it. It those. Some of us men are fortunate that we might make some little mistakes when we're younger where we got kind of a slap on the wrist and then we understood, yeah, better not do this again.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Before you had.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: Versus other guys.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: That's. That's the thing is, like, before you had that's what I'm saying.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Like you kind of, you get scared straight in a sense versus other guys that don't. And you know, they might get to slap on the wrist or get caught, but then they keep going. Like we had the show last, last week about, you know, the documentary about some famous people that, that have had that where they just keep going once they're allowed to. So, you know, my understanding is this coach had, you know, this isn't the first recorded incidents of whether attempted or full on infidelity. So obviously this was part of who he was as a person looking outside of his marriage.
And that's what I'm saying. Like this is obviously he got himself in this position and I think that the crash out thing I'll end on this is that's where he hurt himself. And images are so important.
The fact that he behaved this way and then was arrested meant that when they did his arraignment in front of the judge on Zoom, he was in that all white get up in that little room which gives us all. He'd have been better off in an orange jumpsuit because that white thing in that little room that, that made it look like, okay, this guy's crazy. And I think you mentioned something on a recent show about the former NFL player Ray Rice about how when it first came out that he committed some domestic abuse, kind of public was kind of half, okay, maybe whatever, the minute that video came out of him and his wife in the elevator and him knocking her out, that was it. And so I think there is some, or like Diddy with the Cassie hotel video. Like there's something about images that once we all saw that image of this guy in that white outfit, you know, when he's talking to the judge, I think that's, that's the part that ends it because it's like, man, this guy can't be in front of young men and kids and trusted to be responsible if he's breaking into somebody's house, putting a freaking scissors to his neck, talking about he's going to kill himself. So yeah, you know, that's what makes this a more unique than just, oh, he was chasing white chicks. You know the stuff I see online.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and like, I feel bad for the guy, you know, in the sense again, like, I don't want anybody's lean life come crumbling down. But you know, hopefully, you know, people can learn from it, you know, like that people that would, could use that message, you know, or use that lesson could learn from it because a lot of it did come back to kind of the where he was reckless or kind of shooting a little too fast from the hip, you know, so but I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: I'll say this, your pun was intended. He did shoot too fast from the hip.
I can't believe you didn't recognize you said that.
I'm tuned to Golan and I'll just say this for the YouTube audience. It is the third day of Hanukkah so I'm wearing my Hanukkah shirt. So just to next week we'll have my Christmas sweater. So just want to make sure I'm getting everybody in for the holidays. All right.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: All right. We appreciate it, right for joining us. We'll talk.
