The Sporting Class: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bracket

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre.

Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings.

DraftKings, the crown is yours.

And today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Oh, I won't say Cinderella again.

It's so great when St.

Francis gets in.

Right after this ad.

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Women's side of things as well.

Are you done shoving food into your mouth?

Are you good?

Yes.

Somehow, it is just, it's not the word I would use for Mr.

Sampson's eating style, shoving food in his mouth.

He reached out

candy into a popcorn bag.

Well, I don't like sticking my fingers in the candy bag and then in my mouth and then back in my own candy bag.

So I take out of with clean hands candy, put it in a separate container.

There were no paper cups here.

All that was available was a paper popcorn.

Wait, so wait, what are you concerned about with your own fingers going back into a bag?

Are we really?

Okay.

My fingers are just as dirty as your fingers.

Well, I certainly do not transfer.

It never would occur to me that I have a problem.

That's the difference between you and I.

It just occurs to me.

One of the differences.

Just one of the differences.

And the differences make for an excellent relationship.

Excellent.

Not to point this dirty finger at one of us in the room today.

Just don't touch me with it.

Well, John, it's going your direction because

we've been getting some viewer mail and people have noticed that your voice

is all over one of the great television shows that's on right now.

Are you watching the White Lotus?

I have been pressed into watching The White Lotus.

We watched it this weekend.

Are you aware?

Are you a body double by chance?

Well, are you suggesting that I look like that guy, Timothy Ratcliffe, or

Rat Liff, I think they're using in the

or or that

I sound like him, or he sounds like me.

By the way, I suspect I'm older.

So

you are older.

So that mofo would sound like me, not vice versa.

Well, just for the record here, Timothy Ratliff is, in fact, the character's name.

Jason Isaacs.

Jason Isaac

is the actor.

And that Mofo, in any event, sounds like this.

My grandfather was the governor of North Carolina.

And my father was

very, very, very successful businessman.

Thank God he's dead.

Oh, both my parents.

Thank God they are

dead.

Thank you.

Well, since I don't hear myself speak, which is true, I know it's hard to believe, but I don't actually understand how I sound.

So it's hard for me to understand if that guy sounds like me.

Well, you have a draw.

Oh, no, no.

I know that.

I have a draw.

But that's specifically a North Carolina.

I mean, that's what he's going for.

Oh, it's very specific to very close to where I grew up.

I mean, they are from Durham, North Carolina, about 70 miles north east of where I grew up.

And of course, I find the most interesting thing about the show is, of course, who's the greatest douchebag in the show?

The Duke guy.

Yeah.

In fact, the father is a Duke guy and

his older son is a Duke guy.

The mother is a Carolina graduate.

And by the way, I would judge her accent, Parker Posey's accent, is spectacular.

And it really does sound exactly like somebody I know.

So every time I hear her speak, she's got it.

She's also got that mouth curled downward.

She's got that thing about, well, they're not decent.

They're not decent.

So they do a pretty good job with it.

And they got the, I don't quite understand why they expect the rest of the world to care about the rivalry between North Carolina and Duke, but it's like a little Easter egg for me.

And they had a big problem this week.

Jason had spoiler alert.

No,

it's in the news.

He got into some trouble.

The actor who plays it.

A real-life story where he almost got canceled when he was talking about the size of his penis and he didn't want to answer any questions about it and whether it was real or not.

That's why I asked whether you were a body double, but you didn't get the jokes.

Oh, you're right.

I didn't respond.

Whatever.

Thanks for keeping the show going.

Well, just

to talk about how the sausage gets made, I guess, it was a fake penis they're all they're all that and so that was the conversation that was had which was is that you know margaret qually when she does prosthetics for substance does that get criticized more when mikey madison does not does that get criticized less are they forced to do he was defending his right to a prosthetic penis he was he was trying not to talk about it and he quit he made a quip where he mentioned the names of the actresses margaret qually and mikey madison he got in trouble and then had to release a statement while mike white was quivering with fear of this could impact

his baby.

So there was an immediate statement, a completely crafted statement by

I love a statement.

And he backtracked it and then he threw one out there for all the women out there saying, you have it way harder than I do.

Except for that.

Well,

you're not trying to make a pun there, are you?

No.

Trying to make a point.

I would hope.

That for his sake, if he was embarrassed potentially by the suggestion that his...

He wanted his acting to talk, not the size of his prosthetic.

Right.

Margaret, by the way, you make her front.

Did I say Maggie?

You said Marguerite.

You said like Margot or something.

I may have said Margot.

Your accent is also confusing to me.

It's sort of a Wisconsin accent with a hint of New York.

With notes of vanilla and oak and gravel.

Cat piss.

So we bring ourselves here today

very conveniently on the subject of March Madness and in fact North Carolina and in fact Duke and in fact the guy sitting next to us who may or may not sound like the guy with the prosthetic penis because John when you watch the tournament, and the tournament is by acclamation, I believe, the greatest postseason product in televised sports.

We can debate that.

David is wondering if you should debate that.

If you're talking in total numbers, there's just way more games than the NFL playoffs, but I would assume NFL playoffs would be the greatest.

I would assume the World Cup is even greater than that.

The soccer World Cup, I would put number one by a factor of two and a half.

Okay, so now we're playing for second.

But continue.

Or third.

The prospect, though, of single elimination cultural

rivalries executed by teenagers, being their own special TV product, John, that has been in the hands of CBS

and also at the earlier rounds, right?

Turner as well.

How jealous did that make you as a president of ESPN?

It did make me jealous.

We wanted it.

It also made me

angry at the time because we

at one point made a very strong push to buy the tournament.

I

literally cannot remember.

If I do remember, I don't mind mentioning the name because it was a reasonable guy, but there was somebody who was in charge of selling the tournament at the time.

We had met with

the folks at the NCAA, Greg something,

And I had a meeting in the park during the Final Four in Indianapolis.

It's right outside the hotel everybody stays in, and made an offer to buy the tournament.

We proposed immediately taking the tournament to 96 teams.

We also proposed televising every game.

And before we made that offer, remember in the days before that, they actually regionalized the early round games because CBS could not show but one game.

So we thought we had an extraordinarily compelling proposition.

We will expand the tournament.

We will pay you more money.

We will put every game on.

Did you offer ABC?

I do not remember that, Dave.

It's a good question.

And it would have come up at that time.

They would have asked probably, the answer is probably yes.

We probably agreed we'd put the

semis and finals on, but I don't know that.

And we were laser focused on what to drive value to ESPN.

But we not only made that offer, I stood in the park in Indianapolis and said, and by the way, if anybody else offers more, come back and see me.

Because we were prepared to do as we've discussed before, David,

which is we'll pay the most money, we'll show more games.

I've always believed there was, as there always is in college athletics, a committee that was going to make this decision.

I know because I talked to some of the committee members that one of the, that they were quite loyal to CBS, and CBS had done a great job, got no problem with that.

I usually found that money trumped loyalty.

And by the way, doing a better tournament,

more teams, more exposure.

And that is the time that TNT saved CBS

because they went and said, why don't we do it together?

We can put all the games on.

They did not offer more money.

So ESPN, your offer was the precipitating event that led to them having to figure out, okay, how do we compete with a network that has all of these other networks also?

Well, what they realized is they could get more money by showing more games.

And they had no way to do it, which is CBS.

So they had to go with the cable partner, which is why there's games on True TV.

And the question is, for John, is ESPN, you would have gone Deuce and then three and then four.

So what

WBD did is they had different channels that they stood up by putting games on that actually helps them get more fees from distributors because True TV, you got to have it.

Every March at least, you're going to see games.

And ESPN didn't have that issue because you would just have it all on ESPN networks.

Yeah, we may even have had ESPN 3 at that point, which allowed us to put

multiple games on.

So we could have done, I believe, a better tournament.

We also owned the regular season.

We had 1,500 regular season games.

We made the

assertion that, look, it's where people go to watch college basketball.

You got college game day.

You should have it over here.

At the dis where they had the discussion of

where they should go.

There was loyal to the CBS.

And they're also, and I do know this, that part of the conversation was ESPN's got too much.

And we don't don't want ESPN to have everything.

We insisted on going to 96, and they did the great thing that the NCAA always does, which is they do something dumb, which is, let's go to 68.

It's like, why would that be the response to, let's go from 64 to 96, right?

And 32 teams will get a buy, first round buy, and it'd be great.

There'll be more games.

And they decide to go, though, I'm the beneficiary of Carolina.

You can have that segue.

That's right.

Why do they decide to go to 68?

It's a ridiculous number.

You would never

went to a 16th measure.

Yeah, just like a fractional increase.

By the way, David, are you amused that John's philosophy in every instance when it comes to college sports and his reign atop all of it is, can we get more teams into these playoffs?

Well, that's clearly, that's what they're trying to do.

What amused me about his last monologue was that his view of the reason, the only reason he was turned down, it's like being the best-looking guy in your class and the best-looking girl turns you down.

You're like, oh, obviously she's interested in tall or short or fat or skinny.

It can't be me.

It's not me.

It's you.

So John's position was very simple.

Hey, I was so good at my job and so big this network that they didn't want to give me more.

Well, he said it.

By the way,

if you took a couple of Venusians and said, here's proposition A, here's proposition B.

Gee, you're going to get more teams in.

You're going to get it on home college basketball.

You're going to get more money.

And this other one, but these guys have been great.

They're nice guys.

There's no doubt it was.

There was no doubt it was a better offer.

That's right.

Option B knows what Greg's last name is.

No, no.

And by the way,

Greg Shaheen was in charge of it,

but he was not the guy in the...

In the park?

No, he was not the...

Not the guy in the park in a trench coat?

No.

Because it sounds nefarious.

No, no, he was a committee member, and he was sent to sort of get our last, last and best.

Which you said to him, by the way, what a great negotiator are.

You said to him, this isn't my last or best, my last or best.

Please come to me.

Come to me with some made-up offer from someone else, and I'll beat that too.

Well, no, that wouldn't have happened.

You just said, come to me with whatever.

I did.

I said, come by.

I actually knew the people involved, and I do not believe they would have lied to me.

If they would have, perhaps they would have taken advantage of me, but I would have had the tournament.

And as with all of these things, it would have been very profitable and very good for our business.

And we wanted it.

Was ESPN ever asked to join CBS?

So my first thought is, if you can't beat him, join him.

So CBS was clearly looking for a partner that had the ability to distribute.

It would have made sense to me, though in the world of playing nice in the sandbox, ESPN would never do that.

But having ESPN partner with CBS, why would that be out of the question?

It would not have been out of the question.

At the time, CBS was looking to cut expenses.

I believe it was run at that point by Les Moonvez.

Les Moonves was quite skeptical that they should enter into a new, very expensive deal.

And I must give Sean McManus and David Levy credit.

They banded together to to keep the Evil Empire from taking the tournament by, and

TNT

took the lion's share of the money too, and did not, and got a final, I think like in year four or something.

So CBS didn't want to give up the semis in the finals, but they ended up doing it.

They're now doing it going forward almost every other year.

Yeah.

TBS is going to have eight Final Fours, I think, and finals in the next, whatever, 20 to 20 years, 10 years.

The agreement runs through 2032.

And yes, CBS and TBS will continue to alternate coverage of the final four every year.

But look, this is just the tonnage on this, obviously, we're talking about, I mean, it was originally in 2010 a 14-year, $10.8 billion

deal.

And the eight additional years of the contract worth $8.8 billion, nearly matching the value of the original for $14.

So the point being,

is David going to survive?

Yes, he is.

He's very good.

I was going to sneeze, and I made the sneeze a cough, thinking that's better for a show.

And I don't know which is better, actually.

No one ever taught me that.

If you're not watching on YouTube, David was what looked like to me doing a dab.

Have you ever tried to move a sneeze to a cough?

I don't want to get you off course, but I made a decision and I didn't know what to do.

So you caught me mid, and of course you brought it onto the show.

If you're going to sneeze, I'd appreciate if you'd go into the other.

Oh, I'm an elbow sneezer.

And don't worry about it.

You get a popcorn bag and sneeze into that.

Please, I do that with anxiety.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

The women's tournament, John.

The women's tournament, when you were considering all of this, just to give perspective here, that was not the business that it is becoming, obviously.

The business now, by the way,

is

regular season ratings up 3% from last year on ESPN, 41% from two seasons ago.

So how, again,

you are somebody who is also now involved in the business of women's basketball, which we'll also get to.

But the women's tournament looks to you like what as it concerns the college game?

The women's tournament is spectacular.

In In fact, we've had, I think

ESPN still has the women's tournament, and that is sold through the NCAA in a big package of other tournaments.

The men's tournament was taken out separately.

So we've always had that.

It was always good business.

It was always fun.

It's become better because the level of competition is so much better.

The big problem of the women's tournament 15 years ago, and I use that as a rough measure, was that you knew that Tennessee and Connecticut and a few other teams were going to dominate.

They would frequently win their first-round games 86 to 38.

And there just wasn't a lot of competition, and there weren't a lot of big stars.

There were a few stars, but the league now has competition.

There are actually upsets.

There are lots of good players.

And you have transcendent players that people want to see.

In the men's tournament, everybody wants to see Cooper Flag.

In the women's tournament, you've actually got Paige Beckers and

Gigi Watkins.

So you got real star power.

The fact that it went up 3%,

the 41%, of course, is a Caitlin Clark effect.

What you have, and I think we had a discussion here about this, I remember what my point of view was, which was this was not, this Caitlin Clark phenomenon was going to be built upon and was not a one-year phenomenon.

That's the change.

That's what has happened.

Yeah, we don't know.

That's what people are looking for right now.

In the postseason.

The regular season so far, though, built on that increase.

So he blew by something that I just wanted to stop on and examine: where the women's tournament as part of a package, that's a really critical point.

So when you're meeting someone in the park in a trench coat and the assets you're discussing are the men's tournament, you're talking only about the men's tournament, and there are multiple bidders, billion-dollar bids.

When you're talking about the women's tournament, the people in the trench coat need to give you a little more.

They need to open the kimono.

So what ESPN did, because they're looking for a program in order to justify distributor fees, they need stuff.

So what they do is, in addition to getting the women's tournament, they throw in a bunch of stuff that the NCAA on its own would value at zero.

I mean, I'm being cruel, but it's very little.

And ESPN's willing to do it because they want the women's tournament because they don't get the men's.

In return, the NCAA gets to go to its members and say, hey, I got water polo a TV deal or fencing or soccer or whatever such sport gets locked in there.

Well, there was some value.

The women's softball, the College World Series for the men's baseball, both very valuable.

And

those deals with the NCAA were great deals.

I forget we paid.

Well, I'll give you some numbers now.

So this is the first year, actually, under the eight-year, $920 million contract extension between ESPN and the NCAA.

The women's tournament specifically valued at $65 million per year through 2032.

The men's tournament, by comparison, $1.1 billion per year.

Does that, I mean, I think that we should just understand that we can talk about equality, and there's a whole big thing about equality of pay as it relates to WMBA and NBA or WNBA and Unrivaled or college programs on the women's side and the men's side.

The market spoke and it's just not close.

So to keep David's math in order, right?

So $65 a year million, nearly twice as much as a $34 million average payout in the previous deal, and yet still compared to the 1.1 billion,

not small,

not close.

And so when you're out there getting a package, yes, the College World Series in your mind is valuable because you get the programming of it.

You get the sort of the feel-good in Omaha.

I understand that.

It's amazing.

But obviously, the NCAA, when they're valuing it, they put it in the pot and you overpay for the pot because you've got all of the abilities to distribute and the need to distribute it all.

That's how the deal gets made.

It's a perfect partnership, ESPN, for all of that pot and NCAA.

Well, the overall pot was of great value, right?

Because a lot of programming.

And for college sports, of course, no matter what you're showing, the uniforms are what people

tune in to see, other than where there are big stars like in the women's tournament or in the men's tournament.

But there really aren't even any big stars in the college world series I mean you're a baseball guy they there's a few each year every now

you had uh what was uh was it Kat Phillips who played women's softball she was a big enough star I have that wrong the pitcher the underhand pitcher uh Kat gosh yeah I don't think Phillips is right but Kat is right yeah Kat Osterman Osterman you did have stars emerge but if the for instance if you did do the women's volleyball which was quite popular, the men's lacrosse, quite popular, field hockey, all those did pretty well on television.

What are the numbers for field hockey?

I have no idea.

Come on, what do you value field hockey at?

We were at a moment in time where if you put on a test pattern, ESPN did about 250,000 viewers.

So

if you're going to.

Which is why the people in the parking lot decided not to go into business with you.

Think about what he just said.

He would just as soon put up, pay for zero, put up

the squiggly little

ones posted a test pattern on ESPN, not feeling good.

That is demonstrably wrong, actually.

I insisted that we program 24-7, 365.

While many people on cable television were still putting on vacuum cleaner commercials at night,

in my tenure of getting content, we made a decision that we were going to have real sports on 24-7, almost no repeats.

We took off all the hunting and fishing that used to appear on Saturday morning.

And you'll remember the days when women dancing on the beach in aerobics classes used to be on Saturday morning ESPN.

And we took all that off

because we could afford to.

And it did matter over time.

And you didn't get to the 250,000.

We never really had a test pattern.

You didn't get to that until people knew when you cut the channel on you're gonna get sports you're not gonna get a vacuum cleaner commercial sometimes you'll even get pablo

by the way i think it is one of those sucks less than the other not by much but you know i think it is still the case you can get paid sponsored programming on some of the cable sports networks to this day.

That is a formative part of my childhood, by the way.

Just like infomercials,

the QVC products that I was suddenly very familiar with.

But I do want to get to the joining of these two products, actually, from the NCAA's perspective, because part of this deal, the extension, the timing of it that was interesting was that they run through 2032.

So this is lining up the men's and women's,

which would allow ostensibly the NCAA to negotiate simultaneously.

And what does that unlock?

Does that sound familiar to you?

Does it sound like the NBA and WNBA by any chance?

Where you lock them up, you get them at the same time, and then you go to ESPN or Turner or CBS, and all of a sudden it's one buyer.

You're throwing it out there.

You can then assign any value you want to the women's tournament.

Just

but while the women's tournament will be more valuable as it goes up, the more essential foundational question is, will the NCAA be selling it in the next round?

And why would they be?

Have they demonstrated any significant ability other than the men's basketball tournament to extract real value?

Who would be able to extract value out of field hockey?

But this is, I want to, I want to actually make this point even more clearly, though, because John is saying something that is, I think, not obvious to most sports fans.

The NCAA does not run the college football playoff.

The NCAA, when it talks about all the things that it's engaging in litigation over with former athletes, it's really revenues from March Madness.

Like, because of the pie of television products, it's mostly March Madness.

So I don't know the exact numbers, but you said it's an average of 1.1, but they're deep into the deal, so they're paying north of $1.1 billion.

They distribute, it's findable, but I think they distributed $300, somewhere between $250 and $350 million last year to the schools.

Now, do the math on that.

Let's assume it's $350 to give them the benefit.

That means that there is $750 million

that's not being distributed.

Why?

Because they're paying for a big administrative body in Indianapolis.

They're not paying $750 million for admin fees.

No, no, I didn't say it was admin fees.

I was about to want to have this great discussion with you because what you're saying is what will replace the NCA.

You need a governing body.

Unless the SEC says, hey, we got 14 in.

We're going to try to go to the network.

We'll do our own postseason tournament.

The conference tournament on steroids will combine with a few other conferences, make a super conference not go to 98 teams.

We'll go down to 32 teams and we'll just make it the best of the best.

Well, I think you're headed in the right direction, but it's not quite right.

Look, colleges, athletic departments, college presidents have demonstrated that to get more money, they will do pretty much anything.

I don't know why.

There's already discussions with

SEC and Big Ten sort of bullying into we're going to get more guaranteed slots in the college football playoff.

So they've got the mindset already that we're going to keep other people out.

Why wouldn't you create four super conferences,

64 teams, and that's your governing body?

Your governing body is we run ourselves like most leagues do.

Who else has FIFA?

And you see how great that works.

Who else has a governing body, which is an independent third party?

The NFL does their own thing.

NBA does their own thing.

Major League Baseball does their own thing.

Why don't four college conferences go, we're going to do our own basketball tournament, 64 teams, and we will...

We will now, we will sell that for a billion and a half dollars, and we'll divide that among our schools, and we will further separate the haves

from the have-nots.

I hate that.

Literary reference alert, animal farm.

And

why do you hate that?

Because

you want a Cinderella to get in.

St.

Francis is in.

The lowest rating.

That's so great about John.

That's literally what I asked you a question, but then he answers it for you.

And also, if you're not watching on YouTube, fluttered his hands around.

Oh, I want the Cinderella again.

It's so great when St.

Francis gets in.

It's great on the St.

Francis campus.

I guarantee you all the broadcasters are going, oh my God, can't you just put the,

by the way, they'll get us to the controversy out in North Carolina.

The broadcasters are going

to bring back to North Carolina.

Everybody's going to bring Bub up, but the people to blame are,

if you are the broadcaster, you want the best teams.

I would go to a 64-team tournament.

You're going to try to say, I influenced it.

I didn't because

why would I try to say that?

Now you're answering questions and you're actually saying affirmative statements.

Frankly, Pablo, I think you and I can have the rest of the day off.

I think we just give John the show, let him ask the questions, answer the questions, and then say exactly what we're going to think.

Because if you were doing that, I would say what I was going to say to you is that you deny all the time that you had nothing to do.

Hey, the Marlins, they're in.

That's great.

No problem.

We love them.

We're so happy to have them.

It's horse hockey.

You would prefer to have just North Carolina.

You'd prefer to have North Carolina and Duke do everything.

Well, I would actually prefer to just be able to declare that North Carolina has one every year.

That would make me the happiest.

I now realize that

David and I are doing the thing where he sees the Marlins and I see Davidson.

I see Steph Curry.

David sees the Marlins.

I see George Mason.

You know, like the idea of the under, I mean, as much as there is a poetic,

you know, vastly non-the-lens montage thing we can flutter our arms about, the whole magic of why I said by popular acclamation, this is a special thing is because, in fact, it is the underdog capacity.

You know how much money there is in the two words upset alert?

Upset alert is is is a foundational concept of the March Madness tournament.

You still have an upset alert.

You put 64 teams in.

They are the 64 teams that make up conference A, B, C, and D.

And then when the 15 seed upsets from the SEC upsets the number three seed from the Big Ten, that's an upset alert.

And it's two teams that more people care about.

And forget for a minute whether it's a better aesthetic event.

What do you think any of the college commissioners and presidents care?

They want more money.

Haven't we talked on this show over and over?

The fans are never considered.

They're not doing Cinderella for you, Pablo.

I know.

If they could look at, instead of splitting up, the individual conferences end up getting 35 million, 40, 50, 60 million.

If you could look at splitting up a billion and a half, that's $375 million distributed to 16 schools.

So I'm not suggesting I think it's more poetic or more interesting.

or you can't, you have these beautiful stories.

I'm just suggesting the economic value of that.

375, I can't quite do the math with 16, but

it's close to $25 million of school.

So you think if somebody could get those guys in a room and go, why don't you do this?

Well, I would say the reason why the Yankees and Red Sox don't split off and form their own league because they've threatened that before.

And the reason they never do it is they recognize that actually no one wants to see a season or a world or a league where it's just the elite teams from two or three cities.

And that's that's called the World Cup.

That's called the playoffs, the NFL playoffs.

But you need a league.

Well, you have a league.

You have 64 teams.

And by the way, there's another beautiful thing, which is they can't play out there that's playing football and they can only play each other.

So now every week, you're getting 32 games that are good games.

What are the games?

By the way, you love those underdogs.

So you must love when Alabama beats Troy State 56-3.

And when

this is his programmer talk.

So he's talking about he wants those playoff type games with those same.

It's why you see Red Sox Yankees Sunday night baseball every Sunday.

That is what the dream is of someone in his position.

But that is the dream of someone who doesn't have ownership of a league or of a team because it doesn't actually increase the value of your program if you're shrinking down all of the possible opponents and putting yourself in an ivory tower like that.

It's why they've never done it.

So if you knew that every time Alabama played, they were going to play a Division I team from a major conference.

Would that make you happy or sad that you were going to miss Alabama beating up on

some poor school for a million dollars?

I think that when it comes to the regular season, actually, I'm okay with John's plan to bolster the strength of schedule.

Totally cool with that.

The whole point of college basketball, though, I think is to

reinforce the first word in the name.

And maybe, John, your position is merely that we are so past that at this point that it's naive to argue for a replication of what college is, meaning that Auburn is actually in the same world as Alabama State.

But that to me is entirely the appeal of March Madness and the tournament.

It may be, but it's not, we've already decided.

It's a professional sport.

They get paid.

They do, but the current offer, you're saying a billion dollars is where they are in their current TV deal for the 68-member tournament.

Yep.

In a deal that you have acknowledged that you would take over today if given the opportunity and still running the SPN.

Today, you would want to do the tournament exactly as is.

As much as you complain about it, you would take the 68 teams right now.

I think I'd take 65, 67, 6, and 67.

Even if I knew that.

You take it as is and you know it.

Even if I knew North Carolina was 60.

No, no, I'm not telling you my preference.

No, the 68 is ridiculous.

But no, I'd want 96.

It's never even been a consideration to expand the tournament to that number.

Oh, no, it has been.

Because it has been.

So they.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I want to hear about this though, because why would they

take take the money?

Beyond John in his Watergate parking lot with a trench coat.

Has there been momentum to 96 teams outside of you?

I know that the NCAA has discussed it several times, and it will happen at some point because they'll want to get more money.

And then we'll argue about...

But you were offering it 10 years ago.

I know.

So what do you mean it'll happen one day?

It will happen one day.

We were already in the market offering more money for 96, and it was turned down.

And we're here all these years later, two extensions later, and it's never been put to 96.

It's because

of the beauty of a committee.

And the committee decides that the right number to go from four,

and this is I'm back to the football, is four to 12.

The right number to go to is eight or 16.

So you're saying that's a vestige of the politics that that would be irrelevant because the haves and have-nots are already very evidently one or the other.

He's saying something even more.

I'm going to speak for him.

He's actually saying that his view is that in 2032, it's not going to be the NCAA who's going to be negotiating a new deal on behalf of men's college basketball.

It's going to be an entity controlled by what he hopes is going to be four power conferences.

I didn't, by the way, I'm not hoping for it.

I'm expressing my opinion that with this amount of money at stake,

the halves are going to decide we want to keep more of that money.

And we're going to keep more of that money by restricting who gets into the tournament.

And

by the way, and 96 is too many teams in a way, right?

It's too many.

You already got.

So you're backing off the 96?

No, no.

You're confusing my personal what I want from what I think will happen because of the influence of money in the game.

So we're distinguishing between John Skipper, man who is trying to maximize the financial incentives of everybody as the president of a media empire.

And now John as normal North Carolinian.

Family, head of a family.

That's right.

With a large

hand.

With a large tournament field.

My grandfather was a governor of North Carolina.

And my father was a very successful

businessman.

And they're both dead.

And thank God the Lord took them.

How much money is going to the players in your scenario?

Well, there you go.

You could solve some of the NIL problem by taking half of that money.

And I'm just making this up, so I might be thinking something stupid.

You take half that money and you just say every team gets this amount of money and you stop the craziness of having these events where a thousand players go into a portal and go to the highest bidder, which means

that's a worse habit.

I love that.

That's pure free agency.

Well, I'm not necessarily for pure, I wasn't really for NIL, but they've decided they're going to pay the players.

They've ended up with a system which is ridiculous.

It means that, you know, your local car dealer can go buy you a quarterback and you're better.

Wouldn't it be better if you took that money from the NCAA basketball tournament and actually set a wage scale and said, here's what players are going to get

paid so that you don't have this ridiculous, you know,

nine players out of a 12-person squad go into the portal and you're a fan and you now no longer even know who your team is.

He confuses me.

I assume that if I had to know John Skipper, that he would be a huge fan of the portal, of a person's inalienable right to maximize their profit-making ability as a worker in the fields with their backs burning in the sunlight.

As always, David.

They usually play inside.

You underestimate sports's preeminent socialist capitalist.

Exactly.

I'm a socialist capitalist.

He tries to tell me that, and I don't know what he means.

I don't understand.

It just makes him feel better, I guess.

I would like to ask you both, what is burning inside of your brains beyond capitalism, socialism, and all of that?

Because David,

you've had a big week on nothing personal, talking about the business of now now international baseball.

Is that where you want to go?

I would like to talk about international baseball because there is money to be made, and baseball was cashing checks this week, and there was a lot of domestic criticism, and it's so misguided by people in the media or just haters who don't understand how you could play baseball at 6 a.m.

New York time each morning, Tuesday and Wednesday.

But the fact is, these games were not for the U.S.

As shocking as that sounds, these games were for Japan and for the Japanese people.

And they were 7.10 p.m.

games in Japan.

And MLB printed money.

The Dodgers won two games against the Cubs.

Is that what you were about to ask?

No, I was going to say, why is anybody upset about that?

What's the problem?

Oh, people have gone crazy over it.

Now you've watered down opening day by starting the season.

These are real games.

These count in the standings.

Regular season games where MLB made as much money in these two regular season games as any other regular season games you can make.

So, of course, they're going to go to Japan because Japan keeps paying.

I don't understand the objection.

People, I have no objection.

People object to 6 a.m.

start times, 3 a.m.

in LA if you're going to watch it.

They can't watch it in America conveniently.

Aren't there 162 games?

Are there people who are opening day is a holiday though?

Opening day, you don't go to school, you watch games all day long.

Now there are multiple noon games as well.

And so it waters it down.

It used to be the first game of every year.

Quick trivia.

Do you know where the first game was every single year in baseball?

You should actually know this, Mr.

Programmer who loves baseball so much.

And you would never show them on ESPN.

So it's not the Yankees or the Reds, right?

And it created a whole big thing within the room because the Cincinnati Reds started every season.

And you, and Coco will check me.

The Great American Ballpark.

It was not the Great American Ballpark when this tradition started, but it is now.

Just an audacious name to name anything.

And so it would be the first.

No, that's named after a company.

It's not

because it's the greatest American.

Hold on.

I'm sorry.

Am I wrong on that?

I believe.

So, okay, hold on.

In your defense, I'm being told that Great American Insurance Group.

Okay.

Still an audacious name to name your insurance group, but now I digress.

Just to be right.

Cincinnati, you would never put them on the air.

And that was the first game that was supposed to be.

That was a thing.

But ESPN, back in your day, back in my day, had zero interest in having the Cincinnati Reds start off a baseball season.

And so that's when we went to the defending champions the night before the start of opening day as a way to get a little extra money from you.

And that's when we went to actually opening nights and opening days on the same day.

Good idea.

Good idea.

By the way,

no, no, on this,

I think that baseball going abroad to play games solves several problems.

They can go play somewhere where it's warm.

My most miserable opening day experience was being at the Chicago Cubs opener and getting snowed upon.

And that is a problem.

You weren't in a suite at Wrigley?

No, I was.

You were in the stands?

I was in the stands.

I have John in the stands like he was at Trump's inauguration.

He's in the back in a pocket.

No, no, I think it's quite good.

And I'll also say something else positive about baseball here.

Baseball is a sport with true international appeal.

And I think they can build upon that.

They're doing it smartly here, and they should do it.

And I'm perplexed because I think there's still 162 games.

I know opening day is special, but if anybody who's a baseball fan ends up the end of the year and goes, oh my gosh, I just wish we had 10 more games,

I'd be shocked.

We have approximately, speaking of

time and games allotted, we have only a couple minutes, John, for you to say what is burning inside of your brain.

Well, since we've pre-planned this, what's burning inside of my brain is

I was assigned

to

replicate human relations.

That burning inside my brain is unrivaled.

I have to disclose that I

have some level of investment in that league, had a very successful final weekend, and in fact, had a very spectacularly successful opening season.

Yes.

The Rose are the champions.

This is Angel Reese's team without Angel Reese, but they are the newly crowned schools.

She got hurt playing in an off-season, non-WNBA sanctioned tournament.

Well,

it is off-season, but when you say non-sanctioned, I'm not sure what that means.

Are they part?

Is Adam Silver your partner?

Neither the WNBA nor the NBA has any financial or perhaps any interest in the

negative interest.

But no, no, this is no different.

We started a league.

We started during the offseason.

Nobody is prohibited from playing basketball in the offseason.

It was one of the real concerns.

So I don't want to be flipping about that, that people would get hurt.

No one got

seriously hurt.

And I think Angel Reese was kept out for in the

in an abundant

caution.

Yeah, thank you.

I was struggling with that.

But 364,000 people watched this team without Angel Reese win the title on TNT and True TV, which is, again, we'll talk more about this later, but that's just an impressive number for year one of a new thing, a three-on-three league.

Most leagues don't even make it past a year.

Some leagues don't get through a full year, and you've done that.

And I can't wait for you to announce year two.

Look up what

the three-on-three

old basketball player league, what ratings they did.

Big three.

Yeah.

Not quite the same.

Not quite the same.

Not quite as great.

Um, but for us here at the Great American Sports Business Podcast, otherwise known as the sporting class, um,

thank you both.

We're out of time.

Can't believe that.

See you later.

Get your popcorn ready.

Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Aberoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo.

And we will talk to you next time.