#361 - Jeremiah Donati - Director of Intercollegiate Athletics @ TCU - The Business and Future of College Athletics

Chris Powers: Jeremiah, welcome to the show. 

Jeremiah Donati: Good to be here, at long last, right? 

Chris Powers: Long last. You've been in what, Fort Worth since 2011? One of them, Bob Ginsburg, if you're listening to this, introduced Jeremiah and me when he was a Young buck town, and we've been good friends ever since.

Jeremiah Donati: We grew up together. I remember seeing you in your first office, just off Seventh Street, and it was a one-person show. Seeing you now is excellent; you're doing great, so being with you is fantastic. Congratulations on everything.

Chris Powers: Thank you, you too. I mean, when you came, I remember there was a time where I was like, you got it.

You can't move. You just got to stay here. And you're like, I don't know. I am still determining where my career is going to take me. And now you're the athletic director. 

Jeremiah Donati: Well, I'll tell you what we've got here at the perfect time because you look at TCU and Fort Worth DFW. Is there a place you'd rather live?

So, we're lucky. When I got to TCU in 2011, you could feel it was about to take off, and the stadium was in rubble. We just came off the Rose Bowl, but there was just something special about being on campus. And you want to go to places on that trajectory.

Coming to TCU and Fort Worth was my best professional decision ever. 

Chris Powers: That's awesome. Well, We will talk a lot about it. I want to back up a second. When did you know that you were going to become a sports agent? 

Jeremiah Donati: Well, going way back. I'll tell you this. I'd not be good at anything but sports.

It may be arguable if I'm even good at that, but I always knew I wanted to be in sports, whether in athletic administration or as a sports agent. And so, I knew when I was in college. It’s a funny story. I'm playing Division Three basketball. I'm going to live out my dream forever. So many guys make the NBA from Division Three. Is that suitable?

But I seriously wanted to play overseas, and I had that dream. I had a mentor, Jim Liven Good, who was the athletic director at Washington State and then Arizona and UNLV. And he called me up one day, like my sophomore year. And he says, Hey, what will you do when your career is over?

And I said, yeah, I'm going to play overseas. I'm going to do all these things. And I hesitated. And I said I'd like to be you, or I'd like to be a sports agent. And he said, well, I'll tell you what is the best advice I ever got. He said you need to be those guys.

They used to be coaches. Now, they're lawyers. They're out there. They're people with JDs, MBAs, and professional degrees. And it just changed my mind-set—so, long story short, I went to law school, Whittier Law School in California. I also knew Lee Steinberg worked there in Newport Beach.

It became my obsession to work with him and for him, and I was able to work with him for almost five years before. And Lee, if you need to know who Lee Steinberg is, he represents Patrick MA Homes. He's the inspiration behind the movie Jerry Maguire. So people younger than me need to learn what that movie is, but it was a big movie and sports agency. Tom Cruise starred in it.

He represented and led Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Ben Roethlisberger, and Warren Moon. I had the most unbelievable experience working with Lee, who ultimately brought me to TCU. 

Chris Powers: Why? 

Jeremiah Donati: I was part of it, so we've represented coaches and players. I also did a little side work for Chris Del Conte. Who was the athletic director, right?

At Rice. Quick, funny story about that. So, I'm in the NFL. I remember the NFL plays a game over in London. And we're at Wembley Stadium, and Chris calls me. I'm over in London, and he says, Hey, call me J man. I need your help. I want to go. I'm going to TCU. I need you to help negotiate this contract with Bob Ginsburg, our good friend.

And I was like, Chris, I'm on the side-lines in Wembley Stadium. And I said, Hey, I got to call you back. Ironically, the Patriots were playing the Buccaneers, but Brady was on the Buccaneers, on the Patriots, at that time. Long story short, I got the game's finished. We're heading back.

And I say, Chris, I need five minutes with you to get the deal points right before I call this guy Ginsburg back. So Chris is like here's the term, here's the salary, here's the buyout, here's any perks, bonuses, all those types of things. Great. I got it. So this is a great story.

And Chris, if you're listening, I'm sorry. But, so I call it Bob Ginsburg. I got back to Newport Beach, California, where I lived. I call Bob and say, here's my understanding of the deal, and I lay it all out. You know, take a few minutes to review everything; there is just dead silence on the phone.

I thought I lost. I thought the call dropped in my place and heard Bob on the other end. Well, Jeremiah, that's different from my understanding of the deal. I'm going to have to get back to you. So Bob calls me back, but the press conference is in an hour. Talk about having leverage. I always talk about the secret to negotiation and leverage, right?

Preparation, so Bob called me back and said the chancellor had signed off on those. He made a point of asking those additional questions. So I tease Chris all the time. You're the most intelligent guy in the world or the dumbest. He either knew what you were doing or had no clue, but either way, long story short, Chris came to TCU as a beautiful ride here and a lot of success.

And I was fortunate to, about a year later, he kept pecking at me. I had only some answers, but he needed someone to speak his language. Because Chris, if you met him, he's not your average bear. And so, your average frog. And so, he offered me a job, and I kept saying no, no, no.

And he said, just come out here. And if you don't like it, I'll never bug you again. So I come in January. It is January after the Rose Bowl. It's cold; the stadiums are in shambles there's because I remember renovating it. Oh, that's right. Remember that it was torn down and. But you set foot on campus, and you could feel like the magic of it.

And I went back, and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, Nicole, told her, I'm like, you wouldn't believe this place. It would be an excellent time to take a chance. And it was the best decision I made professionally to come out here. So that's, so he hires me, took a massive pay cut. You talk about, like, I tell a lot of our younger staff, like a bet on yourself, take a risk.

I took a significant pay cut moving from that back into this industry, which is where I wanted to be. The sports agency and that business were fun. It was a great experience, but I don't miss it. What I'm doing now is much more gratifying, and it's just where my heart is.

Chris Powers: Didn't you grow up next door to Del Conte or Yara's families or friends?

Jeremiah Donati: Kind of, yeah. Our families go way back. And so I've known Chris since I was probably 10. Oh, that makes me feel old. I've got a 10-year-old at home. But our families go way back. Our fathers were excellent friends back in Taos, New Mexico. They had an extensive children's ranch. And my dad was a first-generation college student and first-generation medical student.

And was becoming, went down to Taos to be like a ski doctor, met Chris's dad in town, and said, Hey, we could use some medical help. We'll offer you a place to live; come up to the ranch. And so they became friends. Years later, Chris graduated from college and said they wanted to attend grad school. His dad called my dad and said, Hey, could you help him get into Washington State, where my dad was a team physician for the Coughs? So Chris comes to town, and I'll always remember my first impression of him. He had this car—like a Volvo, and it was like an—he called it the anchovy can—and had just moved from Santa Barbara. And so I jumped in the car, and he pulled open the glove box, and there were like a hundred parking tickets filing out all over the all over the seats.

And I think he wanted him up and throw him away. It is the city of Santa Barbara, which is still looking for him. Maybe he's paid those off, but we, Chris, are friends, brothers, and mentors, and we just had a great ride together, and it was fun. We, we still talk a lot.

People ask me if you guys still talk. So yeah, we talk all the time, but when we talk, we won't even speak TCU or Texas stuff. A lot of times, we talk about families and that type of thing. 

Chris Powers: That's awesome. Okay. So, you leave, and you come to TCU. So, for people listening, set the stage again for where TCU was as a university in your mind. Everybody knows where we are today, but what were you stepping into?

Jeremiah Donati: Well, you can tell right away. Excellent leadership, unbelievably supported, and unfortunately, it is still that way today. They were very intentional about where they wanted to go and where we wanted to go at the time. We were a tremendous regional powerhouse but needed to be added to the national stage.

The Rose Bowl was that first step, and I came right after that. But even that wasn't the case; we were still the little engine that could. And always, I wouldn't say I like that term. I will discuss that and the challenge of shedding that right later. But if you saw it, it wasn't just. Yeah.

We in athletics know that we're like the front door and many things in the university, but we're not the most important thing. But we are the most visible thing. They don't film or broadcast chemistry labs on ESPN. They play football games. That's just a responsibility we take very seriously.

But there was a lot of we, we had a great football program. We had a great baseball program but still needed to be operating like that, that Power Five school. And so one of the things that Chris and even athletic directors before him were chipping away at was that it was really to make the jump to the Big 12.

We knew significant investment, not just in infrastructure but also in human capital, needed to be made. Those things weren't going to happen overnight. Luckily, we've been blessed with tremendous support from the chancellor and the board to continue making those investments.

Since then, we've doubled in size and staff, which are necessary resources. So, we've come a long way. And now we're a national brand, and it just shows by our admissions success in athletics, but not just in athletics across the university.

We've got this unbelievable business school, unbelievable medical school. We've got a new president, and the chancellor is still here. Thank goodness, because he's fantastic. However, our new president, President Daniel Pullen, is unbelievable in the course he's charting; our new strategic plan for the next 150 years is pretty impressive. So, we're just getting started. 

Chris Powers: Okay, real quick. You said operating like a Power Five school. So, summarize what a program that's not operating like a Power Five looks like from a more business perspective. And then once you reach power five. Like status, what is the headcount or programs, or what's the bridge to get there?

Jeremiah Donati: Well, the quality of your facilities is easy. You can walk on some campuses; Daniel Meyer Coliseum is a perfect example. That was an awful facility. That's our basketball facility for those who need to become more familiar with it. We had to modernize that to show my arena.

So that's an easy example. You can see that with your eyes; you can feel it as you're walking in the spaces, but it's how you compensate coaches that dictates their quality. Now it shows up in NIL. And what kind of resources do you have there to attract and retain talent?

You know, your headcount as far as your staff is concerned. But it also has to do with your partners. We're a great partner with Nike, and I'm on brand today as you are. By the way, I appreciate that. By the way, I am a proud TCU grad. I know you are. And so, some of your listeners know that, but not all; by the way, I brought you some gear; check this out so I even got your size and everything.

Chris Powers: Man, I'm going back to school. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, check that out. There's a lot of brand-new stuff up on the other side. We'll do a little fashion show here on your podcast, but we've got all sorts of stuff here for you, baby. So, we keep your closet full and purple, but many good things exist.

If any of those sizes need to be fixed, you know where to find me; I lost track. So anyway, we were comparing, so we need it, and we need to modernize our ticket operations. One of the things we weren't doing, and it's no one's fault, was asking for fair market value for our ticket price, like in the six years before.

Like the Fiesta Bowl or the Rose Bowl, you remember those years when we were undefeated, losing one game a year. We raised ticket prices a total of 10 bucks over six years. We were in the snow, one's fault. We weren't comfortable at that level yet. Right. And so we weren't comfortable.

Asking fair market value is critical to your success. You've got to understand what that is, and you have to be firm in asking for that and not apologize. And we were just yet to arrive as an institution. There was an old joke, and I'm going to screw this up.

So, for people-watching from Fort Worth, you go to the zoo. And, with your admissions ticket, you get a free ticket to a football game. It was something like that back in the mid-nineties. So, we've come a long way. It just shows you we were emerging from a mom-and-pop regional university.

We slowly grew an under chancellor bushing is leadership. You see, we've become a big-time national brand. 

Chris Powers: Okay. You mentioned this, and we have a lot of business people on here, but you've probably raised more money than most of my business friends have raised in business.

I've had help, but we've raised a lot: you and your team. We don't have to go too much into it. What's the secret to raising money? Well, you raise it on behalf of a school. And so your audience is a little different, but it's a lot of business guys. It's a different ask than asking for a for-profit venture.

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, you've got; I get asked that often. So you've got to have something people want, right? or something that's always seeking. I always tell people you're selling a product, vision, or idea yourself. You're always in a state of an imposition where you're trying to influence someone.

So, for us, it was about painting a vision that people could get behind and what the benefits would be when that vision came to reality. It's not just winning football games and going to the CFP. What is the impact on the school, the community, you, and your family, and is this a place your kids would want to come to now?

You get people dreaming. And then, and then the, and luckily, we're good at executing those plans. We have an excellent team to do that, but fundraising is funny. You know, a lot of people do it differently. And we were talking earlier about my predecessor, Chris. You know, he was the best fundraiser I'd ever seen.

I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot from Victor Boschini. He's an unbelievable fundraiser. He'll come right on and ask you; he'll come right out and ask you. And some take forever to get to the ask, and they do it. And I'll tell you that the one secret to any fundraiser is when you ask for the money.

You stopped talking, right? Yeah, just shut up. Because it's, like, fundraising one-on-one because it was uncomfortable energy in the room, and you want to kill it with, Oh, what'd you think of the hat? I gave you one, but you just stopped talking. You put the power back in that person's shoes.

Typically, the answer is that I will get back to you. I will think about it, but you've got to have these things down. You've got to give the power to the person making the decision and you've got to ensure that that's the case. You've got to do your homework, you know?

I've done it both ways. I screwed one up last year. I asked the guy, and he's probably listening. I asked him, I asked him for 2 million. He said, okay. I was like, dang it, I should ask for five. So I've screwed it up both ways. And so, you also want to ask him for 2 million; you know, his net worth is 100,000.

You've got to do your homework, and we do. We have a great team. I've got a great team that does that. But there's no secret to it. It's about relationship building. It's about being genuine. It's about spending the time to connect with what's important to them. I always say like, it's your money.

What would be most valuable to you regarding TCU athletics for a second? What would be a great use of your money? Keep me from talking you into this building, scholarship, NIL, team, or whatever it is like; what do you want to do with your money?

Right. And so, when you get a chance to understand people's hopes, dreams, and aspirations and how they can live them out potentially through TCU now you're, now you have something special. And so that's the key to it for us. And for me, there are no shortcuts. You know, there have only been a couple of times in my life where people call you up and ask to give you money.

During our CFP run, when we announced our 52 million human performance project, people called up saying, I want to give to that. That's unusual. But it also shows you the value of football in Texas and at TCU; in winning, people want to get on board.

That's the value of football in our business. 

Chris Powers: All right. We're getting to the business in sports and football. I have one more question before we get there, though. Chris is going to Texas in 2017. UCU is on the up. The question was, when you came in, you guys were on a hot streak; you two were thick as thieves.

You had been picked to become athletic director. One was like, were you feeling a lot of pressure? 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, so sure. I saw another funny story. When Chris announced he was leaving for Texas, I was in Los Angeles with the basketball team. We were playing in the downtown tournament and Staple Centre.

It has since been renamed, and I was also interviewing at Washington State University. So I wake up and look out the blinds of the room in downtown Los Angeles, and Chris tells me he's leaving. He called and told me he's leaving, and he's emotional about it and says, Hey I think you've got a great chance.

To be the athletic director at TCU. He also knew I was interviewing at Washington State to be the athletic director. He said, but if none of those things work out, I'd love to have you come down to Austin and work with me and work on my staff. So I sit there, and I'm looking out of LA, and I'm like, damn, my life's about to change.

I'm either going back to Pullman or going to Austin, but what I wanted to do was be here. And so, and so it worked out great. And I'm forever grateful to the chancellor for giving me that opportunity. But that's how it went down. And there was a lot of pressure, for sure.

You're living up; there's a standard here, and we have very high standards. We've got, we expect to win and expect to win, not only on the field and on the court, but across, in everything we do. And you're stepping into big shoes, and you're a first-time guy. It was the first time athletic director.

There were going to be some bumps, and there were a lot of nights to ensure that I was not only living up to those but also had my influence on the department, how I wanted it tweaked, and how I wanted to run it. So those were fun times looking back on them.

And then right when you feel like, boom, you got this you're starting to get your legs under you, COVID hits, right? You know, so, like, year two, I'm like, I, okay, I get this. I know what they're trying to do. I get this. I'm meeting people, and we're really starting to fly high, and then boom, COVID hits.

As my dad used to say, make plans to make God laugh. That was how that went. 

Chris Powers: Oh man, COVID. That was not a good year for me. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, it wasn't for anyone. 

Chris Powers: Yep. All right. Real quick, though. On your first day on the job, or maybe your first year, did you have an immediate plan, or was it since you'd been on the team and knew what was happening?

You weren't going to shake up the tree from day one. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, I did. I wanted to, but it was still working. It was not a fixer-upper. I wasn't being called in because things were so bad. We were; it was the opposite. The pressure was like, let's keep, and we can't go the other way.

Yeah, let's keep it rolling. Let's go. Let's see how we can go higher. And so, yeah, I had some things I wanted to tweak and some things I wanted to learn. As a young athletic director, I was the second youngest athletic director in the country, the Power Five level.

You know, you want to be a subject matter expert in everything. I wanted to know everything about compliance, academics, marketing, and everything else. And what happens is you end up being a jack of all trades, and no one needs those. Like I need, I'm a good fundraiser.

I'm good on the external side. I need to hire; I need the subject matter experts to be the experts. And so empowering those people was like empowering a young leader. That leadership trait took me a year or two to develop. Let me empower those people to just, you've got the talent, let them run.

I don't need to be the compliance director. Rather than trying to get in everyone's business and understand, I can do without trying to be. We'd be in trouble if I was because I don't know it. Like, I still need to memorize it. Right? So, there were some operational things we could do better.

In some areas of focus, I thought at the time we needed to focus more on the development of our student-athletes, the holistic in some ways that might have been a little prophetic because soon after that, I'll come. Now we're teaching these kids; they've got money for the first time, how you manage that money, how you pay taxes, how you build your brand, how you be how you build your brand on social media a lot of these and I'll come in we created 525 entrepreneurs overnight, right?

So now, I'm taking a little bit of a deviation from your question here, but one of the things I came from was that industry. So, I was perfectly equipped to manage that change because I've always thought these kids were making a lot of money for the university.

They should take a piece of it, and I'm sure we'll get to that. We're heading and never down that path, but let's keep going. But one of the things was so you have these entrepreneurs on your campus. Okay, we were surprised, by the way; how many already had companies set up?

Yeah, these guys are ready to go. I mean, there had side businesses, not for the image name, image likeness of them in a TCU as a TCU athlete, but they were, some of them we're making music, we're selling products like on their own. And so I had entrepreneurial. I had the entrepreneurial spirit and mindset already before that. So that was cool to see. 

Chris Powers: They weren't offering NIL deals to nerdy business school frat guys. But that could be common. 

Jeremiah Donati: You're okay. I know this. I know I'm your guest on this podcast, but one of the things I loved about you when we first met was that you were selling real estate as a student, Matisse. You're like, does everyone have you told that story?

Chris Powers: I've told it a couple of times. Since my first year of college, I've been buying real estate for 20-something years. I bought my first house over on Court and a 3511 Corto. 

Jeremiah Donati: You were buying real estate. In my first year, I was finding out how to buy a meal, like the one in the student union.

Chris Powers: I would stay up until 4 a.m. drinking with all my buddies, wherever you are. I would wake up at noon, go to the mortgage shop, and get a loan. It was the best year of my life. It was the American dream. It was the best. Yeah.

Jeremiah Donati: That's cool. I've always admired that about you. You are like, You have the entrepreneurs. I've never seen anyone with a better entrepreneurial spirit than you.

Chris Powers: I love it. It's the game. That's my sport. I don't get you. You get sports. Business is my sport. Well, that's all right. So you said the hot button was NIL. Jamie Dixon came to speak at our YPO forum, which was awesome. Let's be open; we can take it in any direction.

So it started what? Three years ago?

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, 2021, July 1st. So this is the third anniversary of it.

Chris Powers: Do you know what's happening today, or is it still the Wild West where you're still getting tossed and turned around every year? 

Jeremiah Donati: It is the wild, wild west right now. One of the things that happened is that, let me step back.

NIL is a good thing. Generally speaking, it's a good thing. What we're seeing today is not NIL, right? It is just a pay-for-play model that has become entirely out of control. The good news is that these three massive lawsuits are being settled.

You may have seen in the news these antitrust class action lawsuits that will stabilize that aspect of the business a little more. In the future, the athletic departments will be permitted to share revenue with the student-athletes. So starting next year, 2025, we will share up to 22 million a year with our students.

That will replace what many of these NIL collectives are doing now, where they're paying the players in exchange for their Talents. Because it's not NIL, I will fall short of calling it NIL.

Chris Powers: That’s like a group of alumni who raised money and paid people.

Jeremiah Donati: NIL would be Nike doing a deal with Chris Powers. And then, in exchange you are doing a commercial, tweeting something, or using your name image likeness. These kids are just deciding to come to TCU, and we're paying them. That's just a pay-for-play model.

That now comes in-house, and TCU is committed. So it's a permissive cap. Every school has to do it, and they can do it. But it's a permissive cap, so some schools aren't going to do it. 

Chris Powers: Why? 

Jeremiah Donati: And because they don't have the money. So, one big thing for TCU is that we've made the institutional decision to do that.

Big deal, right? Because now, school can only pay for what we're doing. So Texas, Ohio State, and all the schools with massive budgets are doing the same. So it's a huge thing for TCU, a gigantic thing for Fort Worth, and a massive thing for our football and basketball programs, but we will be at the top of the revenue share.

No one will do more than us. And right now, the little engine that could is what we started back in the Rose Bowl. So when we talk about growth, that's one, and that's an institutional decision to make. We don't have to; there are schools in the Big 12 that won't be able to do all that.

Chris Powers: Wait, real quick. So I understand you 20 per cent of total sports revenue. 

Jeremiah Donati: Take 20 per cent of the average power fives, and you get 22 million. 

Chris Powers: Oh, it's an average of the power fives. So everybody gets 20. 

Jeremiah Donati: From the lowest to the top budget, they took the 20 per cent, and you get to 22 million.

Chris Powers: So you hear the rumour that A and M are raising a hundred million yearly. What do they do with that other 80 now? 

Jeremiah Donati: So now those will have to be the way that law, the legal settlements, are called the house case. That's really three, really four. But the house settlements, which people are generally referring to as, are now real NIL, and we'll take over.

In addition to the revenue sharing, your kids can still get NIL deals; those will go through a clearing house, which a third party will regulate. So, it should bring some stability to the wild, wild West. It will be challenging, and there's still a long way to go.

But you'll see that they will look a lot different a year from now. Tonight, I'm going to a flying tea club event, and the flying tea club is our NIL collective. They've been fantastic and spectacular for us. It's going to look different next year. And now their responsibility will be to find actual NIL corporate deals.

They might come to Fort Capitol, and you might sponsor three student-athletes, and there'll be a market value for what they're doing. The services they're giving Fort Capitol and in exchange, right? Those will be run through a clearinghouse and a third party.

Chris Powers: So I couldn't just go to an athlete after a game, like, Hey, well, where the sticker, like they should, the proper way to do it is to go through a clearinghouse. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah. The problem—and that's still being determined— is that the regulators will ensure a fair market value so that you're not just putting money in the kids' pockets above and beyond that 22 million in rev share.

So it should. Let me put it this way: It's what NIL should have been in the first place. 

Chris Powers: And why wasn't it?

Jeremiah Donati: Just because there's one of the things that we struggle with as an industry is because, well, we're here with all these lawsuits because we could not make rules that we could enforce.

At the last moment, the NCAA backed off from creating guidelines for NIL and said to let the states decide. Yeah. Well, you've got 50 different state laws that govern NIL, so it becomes competitive. You think about the Southern, Big 12, and SEC footprints.

Everybody wants to win, so it's like a race to the bottom because everybody's trying to find the most lenient laws. It sounds great from a competitive standpoint, but it could be more sustainable. We need one set of rules. That's one of the reasons the NFL has been so successful, but it also has antitrust protection.

So, one of the things that we need as an industry is some antitrust protection and some federal preemption. 

Chris Powers: And what does that do for you? 

Jeremiah Donati: So we could have one set of laws, one set of one standard, one federal standard. We're not asking Congress to run college sports. What we could have is one federal standard.

The other thing about the NCAA is that it didn't have subpoena power. So, if you had a bad actor, there was a third party. They could get off scot-free. What we do need is some accountability there. So, all those things, Chris will be there the following year. The settlement is going to be filed tomorrow on Friday.

Once the judge approves that, we'll have a year to figure out the new business. Our company has been turned on its head because of these lawsuits, and it will be stressful for everyone, whether you're at the top or bottom of the food chain. Fortunately, we find ourselves in a perfect position, but we've got to thoroughly think differently about how we operate our business.

And we have to do it quickly here. 

Chris Powers: You know enough now to start building a strategy for post-2025, and you're comfortable enough with the core legislation. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yes, we do know enough. And I'll give you one real, real quick. A real-world example is that, for sharing revenue, let's pretend that we're sharing revenue with our revenue-generating sports, right?

There are six at TCU: football, two basketballs, baseball, soccer, and volleyball. Those are ticketed sports, and they're on television. Those sports produce revenue. They don't all make money, but they do produce revenue. If we say for a moment, they're not saying this is what we're doing.

Those are the sports that will share the revenue. We will provide the 22 million, which will be spread across those six sports. Well, that's 230 student-athletes. Those are 230 licenses. We need to negotiate individually with those student-athletes. I don't have anyone on my team right now who is in a position to do that.

So we will have to create an internal department to manage that because it will be a permissive cap. Similar to the pros, where you have a salary cap, we're already consulting with folks in the pros to see how you do that. In the NFL, for example, you've got your quarterback room to make this much per cent of your salary cap.

You know, your offensive line, your left tackle, those people are valuable, your defensive line. And so you've got to know what that would look like, but we need to administer it because this is a court settlement. You screw this up you find yourself back in court, there's enormous repercussions for doing that.

So, we have to plan for that and model several different scenarios.

Chris Powers: Okay. And then on duration. So, I like my opinion that I'm just for NIL. I want to see kids make money, especially if they're building the brand. It is just a personal thing.

What I hate to see, though, are these kids just bouncing around the transfer portal from contract to contract. It's essential to be a part of a team for four years and build camaraderie. I guess I don't know if that's why Nick Saban quit coaching, but he alluded that, like, once I lost the ability to build my family, so will these contracts, you think, come with where you have to stay for three or four years on a contract? Or is this transfer port going to be open forever? 

Jeremiah Donati: Well, the transfer portal is not going away. The second part concerns a couple of things. One is having a little more certainty. And so we talked about that permissive salary cap. Kids right now bounce around because they get significantly better deals.

In other places, this should stabilize some of that. If you're operating within the same cap, there won't be. You know that outside NIL deals may have some influence, but that has a chance to be stable and stabilizer there. The second part that you alluded to is a whole another podcast.

There's a lot of pressure under the navel. The National Labour Relations Board will turn these kids into two employees. If they become employees, like I'm under contract or coaches are under contract, you can potentially have them under contract. So now you want to transfer from TCU to another university or vice versa.

There's a buyout. If I wanted to go to another school, I had to buy out of my contract, or someone made it so people moved around less. Right. That's just a general business principle. And so, I'm not making any predictions there, but we should understand some more rules about how those rulings will play out.

And that could be another, and there could be anything short of an employment status to a quasi-employment status. So there's a lot to be worked out there, but you'll see the transfer portal or the rate at which people do that, which will slow down. It's a little tricky right now to know how much; unfortunately, many kids transfer and need a home, and they need help finding another one.

They don't; they don't transfer to a better place. They find themselves without a home. More, they're just like musical chairs. There are not as many chairs as kids transfer into the ecosystem out of high school every year. So, it's sad there. Some people have moved on to what they thought was a better opportunity at TCU.

You look up and try to find them a year or two later than I was even playing call sports. So it's unfortunate that they've lost their opportunity. 

Chris Powers: Are they moving for the better deal, or are they also moving now because maybe they didn't have a good year under this coach and because they can transfer willy-nilly? Do they bounce, or is it mostly chasing the deal?

Jeremiah Donati: It depends. You have to remember that these kids want to play. They're all competitors. And at some point at high school or their previous school, they were the guy or the girl or the man or the woman, and they were the standout. And so they're all competitive. They want to play. So part of it is the economic aspect of it, but they're competitors. They want to go to a place where they can play. We recently lost a big recruit, not because he didn't want to attend TCU. He wanted to go someplace he could play immediately. Our roster is pretty stacked. And so this person was going to sit for a while. And so that wasn't part of his game plan, so that's okay, and that's the great thing about our society, which is that you have this little flexibility. Still, I'll finish with this: we all agree that chaos is not; we'd like more certainty and stabilization there, so I'm hopeful all these changes will provide that.

Chris Powers: If you're the number one quarterback in the country coming out of high school right now, this, I mean, you know enough.

Are you picking the school you're going to because they gave you the best deal, or are you picking the best school you're going to because that's the school you would have always wanted to go to?

Jeremiah Donati: Depends on the kid; if it were me, I'd want to go to a place where they, the coach and staff, and the school had shown a history of success and development if your goal is to play in the NFL, you want to go to a place where that coach, has developed NFL guys. You know, unfortunately, Sonny Dyches has done that. Gary Patterson did that. You know, Jamie Dix has done that. Kirk Charles has done that. And so, you'd be taking a chance if you went somewhere.

You might get more money to attend a school that's never done that, so your family may need it more. So, it depends on the kid. If it were me, and I had NFL or NBA aspirations, I would want to go to a school where you could look up on the wall somewhere in their locker room or their team facility, and you could see guys who had walked the walk were there.

That would be more important to me than short-term financial resources. 

Chris Powers: All right. I don't know how to ask this question because it's a rumour, but maybe it's not. I keep hearing about private equities getting into college athletics. The First question is, is that true?

Jeremiah Donati: I would tell you that it's being floated around.

Chris Powers: In what capacity will they buy the sports away from the university and privatize them? 

Jeremiah Donati: No. We've talked to several private equity firms, and that's not breaking news—you can Google that. 

Chris Powers: All news breaks here.

Jeremiah Donati: But it's a little trickier to know what that looks like other than it would be for an influx of cash. They would be taking part in your business. And so, I've never done a private equity deal, but they're set.

They're typically selling those in four, five, or six years. And they're not in it to not make money. And they're not your buddies. For example, money is not free, and it's not cheap. The cash is costly. Right. You're talking about expensive money. And so for us, it could be a better solution at TCU because fortunately, we are well-resourced, and we have an ability, I think, to do even more.

But there may be places where they're underperforming, whether in ticket sponsorship or advertising, where you could bring in private equity, especially if that private equity firm has other ownership interests that could be leveraged into different aspects of that business.

It might work, but there is a better solution right now. We're looking at it, and we've met about it as a university, and it's just not; it needs to make sense for us right now. But knowing your options and thinking through them is good with everything changing. There's, this is also not a secret that the Big 12. I've looked at some options.

There are still ways to go. I don't know if that's something we would seriously consider as a conference, but I would give our commissioner, Brit Yormark, credit. We're looking at everything. He thinks about our business differently, and he's thinking about its commercialization differently.

He has to in 2024 than ever before. So, the thing I love about him is he's aggressive, bold, and throwing punches. He and I have become close because we spend so much time together. I'm on his executive committee. And so he's fun to work with because you see how I tease him constantly.

He's got a twin brother, an identical twin, and I tease him all the time. The athletic director jokes that we think we hired them both. I don't know how we're doing all this stuff because the guy's tireless. He'll call you at 5 AM, contact you at midnight, and you're like in bed or getting into bed.

He seems afraid to go, so I don't know how we're doing that, but he's been great for us at the conference and just a lot of fun to work with. 

Chris Powers: So, and to close the loop on that, would private equity, again, it's theoretical, just be investing in a one-off team by team or maybe whatever teams they've picked, or would they be investing in the industry or the conference or?

Jeremiah Donati: Well, we've seen it. We've seen them go to schools specifically, athletic departments, specifically, and not necessarily a team.

That's interesting. Those teams are all wrapped up under an athletic department. If you imagine a scenario and you've heard some scuttlebutt about when a football was to break away, you can imagine that in a more attractive play for private equity. If it's on its right now, the dirty little secret about college athletics is that we have 22 sports; if we lined them all up if I lined them up, if I lined up 22 widgets, right?

And I said, This one makes all the money. This one makes some money. This one's a great brand, and we love it. We do want it. These don't; I'd be talking about football, basketball, and baseball; they have to fund the rest. They're all important, and we've been successful across the board.

They're all important. But if this were operated like a business you run, you would drop those and focus on these two or three, right? We don't have the. We're not doing that. We're not trying to do that. However, there may be a scenario in the future where football can be operated a little differently.

Then, because we know that's where the economics are. Regarding our television media rights deal, approximately 80 per cent is attributed directly to football. So, it seems silly to treat them all perfectly equally as sports. Now, their title nine is a great thing.

It's excellent, but operating the football operation within those doesn't make sense. So, there needs to be some flexibility. We're looking for some guidelines on revenue sharing. Overall, Title Nine has been excellent for our industry and business.

But something's got to give because our current model is just not sustainable, and with the growth of football in the amount of dollars and resources that go into it every year, the cost of doing business goes up yearly. And so when you go to take to come back to private equity there may be a scenario where if there were ever to be some deal where the super conference you hear about or football breaks off, I could see that being potential, an option where private equity or outside resources come in.

Chris Powers: All right. Real quick, you don't have to go through each one. What are all the different revenue streams in college athletics related to TCU? You might miss a few, like a stream of consciousness, but how do you make money? 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah. Your TV media rights deals, half of it, or excuse me, your TV media rights deals, probably half of it, your live gate, which is your tickets your suites, parking, then you've got your licensing deals, sponsorship, advertising, Concessions.

You know, there's a distribution from the NCAA for the men's basketball tournament, soon to be followed by the women's basketball tournament. Well, it's cool that the rise of capitalizing on the rise of women's basketball and the growth there are the biggest ones that come to mind.

Those are 97 per cent of it, obviously not including private donations, but we don't. We have an annual fund that makes up 15, 16, and 18 million that goes into that budget yearly. But those aren't; I'm talking about just the other sources of revenue.

Chris Powers: If it's a night game and I've been tailgating and you're looking at the Chicken Express revenue line item, that's probably me making it hockey stick.

Jeremiah Donati: Shout out to Ricky Stewart and Chicken Express, who also sponsor the Flying Tea Club. So, just another shout-out to Ricky.

Chris Powers: All right. Coaching is huge. We can tie it back into NIL, but it is not. Well, I'll ask it from an NIL perspective. How has it changed your relationship with coaches? What are they asking for, the NIL or something? Just what's changed from that relationship? 

Jeremiah Donati: Well, it's forced them.

It's changed the game for them; you could argue for the better or the worse. On the one hand, they have to be more fundraisers than ever. Every coach, to some degree, will have conversations with donors. But now the conversations are a little different. Hey, this kid wants to come here, or it may cost X to keep this player or these players.

And it's much more; it's changed. I mean, when student-athletes, especially in football, basketball, and baseball, come to campus, one of the first things they ask about might not be the ultimate decision; it might not be the ultimate thing that influences their decision, but they want to know what the NIL situation is. So they've got to have our coaches armed with one. We must ensure we have the resources to execute and deliver the promise rather than manage a team. And then you've got. Some are making more and working in that locker room, and Chris finds out what Jeremiah is making and gets mad because Chris is playing more than Jeremiah. Or you've imagined those dynamics, and it's not fair. I'm better than him. How come he's making more than me? Or how come they are making more than me? Or what are you paying your first-year students versus your seniors? There's a whole other layer of complexity. I could get criticized for saying this, but coaches make much money.

But they don't have much of a life. Other than a couple of weeks of vacation, they are on 24/7, and you've got 120 bodies in the case of football. You're responsible for young men and must know what they're doing.

You're accountable and responsible for what they do at all hours of the day. Well, do you remember what you were doing? Well, I know what you're doing. You're 19. You're buying real estate. That wasn't what I was doing. 

Chris Powers: But I was staying up till 4 a.m., you were staying up till 4 a.m.

Jeremiah Donati: You did say that. And so then you're managing a staff. You have this thing called a family at home, and they have their needs, and you have responsibilities as a spouse there as well. And so it's tough. It's a tough deal, and they make a lot of money, but they earn it, especially those who do it well and can succeed.

They earn their paychecks, but the NIL has changed their lives so much because now they have to develop relationships. They have personal relationships with donors and collectives and must make themselves available to those folks and make those appeals. Any coach would tell you it's a little sigh of relief in this new world of permissive revenue sharing.

They also understand that it will take the pressure off them to be this kind of fundraising coach slash. It's a lot of work. They've been putting effort into maintaining a roster at this level. At lower levels, this is no knock on some of the lower division one levels, but if NIL is optional to you, then it's just different.

Recruit your best, put the best team out there, and try to win. Well, in these battles, when you're recruiting against Texas you and A&M and Baylor and whomever it's about NIL as well. And that's a massive part of it. 

Chris Powers: Oh, man. It's so true about coaches. For example, when you watch interviews with the best coaches right after every game, they're back in the film room.

Yeah, it's just the way they talked. Like, I listened to Schlossnagel, who just went to Texas, give a speech at Texas on YouTube. And he's like, I don't do anything. I don't fish. I don't; I, like, don't go off. 

Jeremiah Donati: He is, and he's always been, a one-trick pony, and that's baseball.

Chris Powers: They're maniacal about it. Unrelated to NIL, what's your relationship with coaches? So, you're in charge of raising a lot of money and running a team of what? 

Jeremiah Donati: There are 400 people or 250 total staff and then another 550 student-athletes. So there are about 800 people in our 22 head coaches.

And so, what's my relationship with him? You know, I try to be supportive, and I try to, but I'm not going to come in and question the X's and O's. And I tell them I'll do it if it's important to you. So, in other words, if a recruit is on campus and it's like, Hey, Chris powers, five-star kid or great family, whatever it is, I want you to meet him.

If I'm in town, I'll always try to meet with that student-athlete and that person prospect. You know, I'm pretty easy to get in touch with, I try to make myself available, but I also like to like part of my management and leadership philosophy is like, I want the leaders to lead I want, I'm hiring you for a reason.

We rarely get too deep in their business, but I want to be a partner, right? I want to help them and support them. Sometimes, it's with resources, but sometimes, it's just talking through scenarios of what I look like at TCU. Acquiring talent is the most important thing we do, whether it's talent on the field or not.

We're only as good as your people, coaches, and staff. And so, not only attract those people but retain them, right? Cause we've got some good, we are the, the, the gift and the curse of success is you typically have good people around the curses that everyone's trying to pick them off, you know?

And so that drives your compensation budgets. And so, that's great; you should have seen, it's not uncommon that the second a season is over, I'm talking with the head coach about how we will retain. This assistant, these assistants, or the head coach themselves, because said the program is now on and is now said is coming after them.

So those are good problems to have. I tease the chancellor all the time. I'll get his approval to extend a coach or offer additional compensation. It starts with this. It is a good problem because we just won X we, but there's the deal we've got to do a little more here or there.

So again, good problems to have. I wouldn't trade those. It's better than the alternative. 

Chris Powers: It is better than the alternative and recruiting coaches. I don't even know how to ask the question. Every time you hear of a coaching announcement, not just at TCU but at anybody, it's always like,

It is done in a faraway room that nobody can see. We met in an alley, and we made the deal. Then, we went back to our schools and announced it. It sounds like the guy down in Austin. What's the high-pressure coaching? Like how do you recruit a coach? That's already at a big university.

They're very plugged into the program, so it has to stay quiet. How does this happen?

Jeremiah Donati: We've used a search firm; most schools do. They'll help you organize those delicate situations. One is that you never know if you're in the market, right, and you're looking for a coach.

Everyone knows you're in the market, but that coach is still in a contract somewhere. That coach may be coaching a team that could still be playing. You have to be mindful and respectful of that because if that doesn't work out, they've got to go back there.

You always want to be mindful of that, as it's an unwritten rule in our business. That's a boundary you don't want to step over. What you wouldn't want to do is expose that. And then it's not a fit. Then, that coach has to return to that school, and they are no longer wanted.

They're angry. They're ticked off. They're the like, that'd be unfortunate. Those people have lives, their families. And so you got to be mindful of that. So we try to be, and it's if you're talking a lot of the proper protocol is if you're, if I'm I would call my counterpart at that school and say, Hey, I wanted you to know, we'd be interested in talking to your coach. And you're not asking for permission. Sometimes, it may happen in a contract, but no one will deny that. They appreciate the courtesy. And you may say, Hey, I need to tell you whether your coach is the first choice. We want to talk with them and see where it goes.

Very rarely what you described out in the middle of the night, these clandestine meetings happen.

Chris Powers: Well, there was a rumour when you hired Sunny that you all had to drive to Dallas, drive down an alley at 11 o'clock, sneak in the back of some house, and how. 

Jeremiah Donati: After we announced that we were moving in a different direction and the coach passed, they didn't want to finish the rest of the season.

You know, we were entirely in coaching search mode. Sonny was the coach at SMU. And so we want to be very mindful of that because he was coaching a team. They're having an unbelievable season. We have a lot of respect for their program. And so I don't, it wasn't quite that, but that's interesting.

But you know, I did call Rick Hart, who's doing that charming job at SMU, and let him know that we were interested in talking to Sonny then and wondered if he would come. We were talking to a few coaches and interviewing a few coaches, but there are some crazy stories you've heard.

Those things happen how coaches are, how they come to be, and how they let go. There have been some wild stories. You might've seen the one with Lane Kiffin and USC. Now, that happened years ago at an airport hangar after a game, he was let go on the team plane or something. I mean, it is. Sometimes wild stuff comes, and I wasn't there, so I don't know what circumstances were, but crazy stuff happens in our business, and he ended up just fine. He's done it all, miss, so it's very resilient. Business coaches are a very resilient group; sometimes, it's just a matter of finding the right fit. 

Chris Powers: Is there, not just a TCU rule but an understood rule? Even huge schools churn out their head coaches every two or three years. And as a fan, I'm like, man, you got to give the guy time to get going. What's. That's not necessary.

It's not the athletic director going. I'm the only one making this decision. That's probably pressure from trustees and donors. Yeah, but is there an unwritten rule that you get two or three years off and still need to turn the program around by year three? It's time to start.

Jeremiah Donati: There used to be this unwritten rule that you'd have to give them four years, right? They need four years to get their team in. And those were pre-transfer portal years where you could rebuild teams faster. I would tell you this, and there are different circumstances for all of them. If there's misconduct, you may move on from a coach earlier. You may be forced to. Those are contractual terms: termination for cause or without cause. But I would tell you this: You've seen a lot of programs that have gotten themselves in hot water financially because when you let go of a coach, there's a buyout. And so imagine this: Imagine if you let go of a coach, and there's a call to call a 5 million buyout to terminate the contract early. So you're on the hook for the 5 million. Well, guess what? You're also buying a coach from their contract because you're taking a coach. So pretend that's 5 million. Now you're 10 million in the hole before you've signed them to a contract. If you have any assistant coaches in contract, you have to buy yours out. And then, if they have any, you see that it's expensive. These are not at-will employees.

You've got to be smart about how you're doing this. Let me fast-forward. Let's pretend that a little transaction takes place. We bring in a new coach. We pay that coach more. So now your balance sheet and compensation are going here. You still need to play a game, and is all this money in the hole?

Let's pretend after two years, it's not going well. And you're like, do I do this again? Right. And so there are some schools—I won't name them—that you've seen have had the notorious Scarlet, which is that they're paying two or three coaches not to be there. In other words, they've bought multiple coaches out, right?

Some schools have had the misfortune of having to do that a few times, so you want to avoid that. 

Chris Powers: Does that come out of your budget, or do private donors show up, and we'll pay that?

Jeremiah Donati: You would avoid getting a donor to pay at all costs, and you've been very supportive at TCU. Imagine if I called you one day and said, Hey, Can you help me?

You'd be sitting there going; this is not how I, yeah, you're like, and I was one thing like that wasn't how I envisioned supporting TCU when you were buying real estate when you were 19 years old but buying coaches out of their contract. You put my name in that field, but you never know.

And there's—I'm not, you know—some, you have to do what you must. And some schools need more resources to do that. I need donor support to help you there. You find a way to get it done. We've been fortunate to find resources on campus to do that, but I'm not saying I'd be against it.

There may be a donor who could help you and say, Hey, I've got the resources to do it. Don't pull it out of your budget, your endowment, whatever it is. Let me help here. I'm sure that happens, but you'd try to avoid it. I want to donate to help us build buildings and renovate places, not buy coaches out of contracts or underperforming.

That's a reflection of us not doing well. 

Chris Powers: What was the average coach head coach in football paid when you started in 11? Now you're seeing these like 10, 15 million a year. 

Jeremiah Donati: I'll tell you this: June Jones is a former coach at SMU. Why is that important? I used to represent him when I worked with Lee Steinberg, and we negotiated a deal. That was a 10-year deal, 10 million dollars over five years, 2 million dollars yearly. Excuse me. It is back in 2000. It was nine. He had the second biggest group of five contracts next to Gary Patterson, who made a little more then. So think about that when you had, and this was not this. I'm just using him as an example because we're talking about you and TCU, 2 million.

The top coaching contract was probably in the four or 5 million range. Now, if you look up and down the giant 12 conferences more than not are well over 4 million. 

Chris Powers: That's like table stakes. 

Jeremiah Donati: So, yeah. And then there's plenty of—they're over 10 million. You know, I'm not going to reveal our coaches' contracts.

You can look those up, but they're just going up. It's the cost of doing business. They're going up to continue to go up. Now, there are two schools of thought: funny. You can look this up back to COVID for a moment. This article was published in the New York Times. It was like some were curious enough.

This guy still has a job. COVID is going to be the great equalizer for coaches' compensation. It will be what it took to balance to keep these coaches' contracts and checks. What was that guy? Whoever he was, it was the opposite. It's been like on fire. You know, it's got their rage, not control.

So that's an issue within our industry. But the reality is, we can complain about it, but we're guilty of it. You see, we're the ones paying them. We're the ones agreeing to do it. So, it's the cost of doing business. 

Chris Powers: I don't know why I just had this question. You take someone last.

So, from an athletic department standpoint, let's take someone like an anomaly, like last year's Caitlin Clark at Iowa, who was the most prominent college athlete in men's and women's sports. How significant was her economic impact on Iowa's university that year?

Jeremiah Donati: Well, well, geez, first of all, like, what an unbelievable talent and that was so fun. We were all just captivated by not only her but also South Carolina's run on the women's side and just what she's done. But I'll tell you, this was interesting, and I'm going to screw the statistic up, but this is not untrue.

Caitlin Clark was unbelievable for Iowa and women's basketball. Still, for women's basketball as an industry, those ratings are through the roof, irrespective of her, regardless of her, instead, excuse me. And so, but back to her, I mean, I can't. Iowa has a new athletic director doing an excellent job, and I'd have to pick her brain on the actual value, but it's astronomical; I can imagine what she's done for that program.

The visibility, the eyeballs, and Iowa basketball, the Iowa brand, everywhere you looked. So you think about what that's done for admissions. Think about how many young girls in Iowa and across the country are growing up thinking about that logo and being the next Caitlin Clark. It reminds me of when I was a kid, like Mike, the Michael Jordan commercial.

It's like everyone wanted to grow up. Think about how many young women are inspired to follow in her footsteps. So, my impact was one thing, but the impact across the industry is another. So, back to it, it's hard to quantify it. I'll use another example. I get asked all the time.

What is the value of the CFP run? We were just at the national championship run two years ago, so it's tough to quantify. However, we've seen some tangible value as we raised 52 million in almost six weeks to build the performance centre.

So that was when, a year from now, when that building is constructed, I'm always going to remember that building is like thank you, Sonny and team and everyone who came before them to help us, that put that team in a position because it was it was, It was a magic year there.

It was a lot of magic team year. What a season! Then, it was followed up with basketball and soccer. We just made the tournament, and then baseball went to Omaha. And it was just a lot of, so those were difficult so that I could tell you in real life, but then admissions went up, right? And admissions are spiking, and kids are making all these decisions.

And so the value of that to the university is one thing, the value of that to the football program, but you know, that's just the front door to the university. So, we know at TCU that kids decide to come to school because they want to. They want all this stuff.

They want the big city, small town field at Fort Worth brings. They want the in-person experience on campus, and they want to, you want to get to know your professor. They want to walk across the stadium drive and get the big-time college athletics experience.

It's that combination. And then, if you're having a bad day, go to 25 minutes DFW, and you can fly home. Or if you're really, or you go to each other, if you've got accurate means so you have all of that and think about how many schools in the country offer that.

There are few for us to save the town, and it's a safe campus. And so, that little equation, if you will, what football and sports bring to the entire campus, it's challenging to get back to the CFP run. We see it in real-time: concessions, Jersey sales, and all those things that have gone up. Jersey is more expensive now than it was five years ago.

But I don't have a number to quantify it other than it's; there's a reason we keep paying coaches what we do: It's worth it. It's worth every penny. 

Chris Powers: All right. I want to finish on the Big 12. Let's start by. It was like, again, being an athletic director for the last five years with COVID.

NIL, all this stuff. You then get another; we'll call it a surprise. You get a call. Texas and Oklahoma are headed out of the Big 12. What's your reaction as a participant in that immediate news? 

Jeremiah Donati: Well it's panic mode, right? Because of the two massive brands. And it's funny. We were talking about this with your producer before we came on air.

We were scheduled to go. You and I were expected to go on air around the time of that news. We had to cancel because it just stopped everything in our business. Is the Big 12 going to implode? Suddenly, we're getting outreach and reaching out to other conferences. If the Big 12 is not here, where should we go?

Who's going to come with us? All those things. It was a stressful summer, and this was like, we just got through COVID. You know, like, what next? So, and then there's NIL and Texas. So you, it was a lot. It was an extraordinary time. But look, like anything else, I got to give Bob Bolesby, the previous commissioner, credit.

He stabilized the conference. We had four great brands with UCF Houston, Cincinnati, and BYU, and look Texas, no, you're moving on. Good for them. You know, they found a place they felt like they needed to go to. And then we were able to bring in Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado, and now suddenly we're 16 strong, got an unbelievable commissioner.

And you feel like that Texas OU news feels like it was 20 years ago. And so, sure. You know, you didn't ideally, you probably didn't want to lose them. Of course, right? Excuse me, they're great brands, and we have a lot of institutional history together. Those were, especially being regional, right?

You like those regional rivalries. Those are big deals, but life goes on, you know? And so it wasn't my decision, for sure. And so that's okay. But I like where we are as a conference now, and you know, we'll see him in the playoffs, but yeah, we'll see him again down the road.

We've had a lot of success, especially against Texas and football, and I'm hoping they'll be willing to play us again. 

Chris Powers: Okay. Well, this was somebody that, My buddy, George Coulterson, and he said, you got to ask him or no, it wasn't, it was, Brad Hilliard.

Brad, he goes. I've been asking him, so you'll answer. He goes, how will nonconference games be scheduled? 

Jeremiah Donati: We have a good question. For non-conference games, we already have a schedule out through 2030. I can't name the schools, but we're pretty far down the road, so we have a mandate.

You have to schedule a power for school every year. So, like this year, we play Stanford. Next year, we play at North Carolina. The following year, North Carolina came here. The following year, Stanford came here, and they played home, and I'm with Duke. And then we have got Purdue coming back, which is the return game of the home and home.

We played back with him in 2019. Yeah, that's a lot. That was a mouthful right there. That's a good memory. So we're looking for a game in 2030. And then we also have SMU, our group of five opponents, who's now in the ACC. And so you've got to get that. We pushed pause in that series because we didn't want to go home and away.

We want more home games. To generate more revenue, we want to play more home games. Having that home-and-away Power Five mandate and a home-and-away group of five doesn't make sense. We want more home games. We want people to come to Eamon Carter.

We want to play them as a substitute for one of those group power five games. So after 2030, we will play them this year in Dallas and next year in Fort Worth. For now, that's the last game in the series, but we'll play them again. We don't have a game on schedule.

We're talking to some schools in the Big Ten and the second to fill in those games. And so we'd like to love something that our fans are familiar with, whether it's regional. You know, we talked about Texas, and those are certainly schools that have shown interest in playing down the road.

We would be interested in playing them, but we should wait to make any predictions because it's got to match up with their scheduling. What's crazy is that you schedule these games ten years out. And so you look up a game in 2030, which seems like forever ago. It's a six-season; it's coming here quickly.

So we're having a lot of discussions. We're also being mindful that the ground is moving under our feet, which is an industry. But that's how, ultimately, those games will be decided—the nonconference games by Sunny and myself in football. And what happens is that I'll typically reach out to the athletic director or the schedule on the other side.

Say, Hey, would you be interested? These coaches will confer, say yes, and then we'll get it together. So, more, more, I expect you in the next six months or so. We'll have some announcements.

Chris Powers: Do you think you'll see more of what happened in Colorado this year with Dion? They became this media brand slash company.

You think of showmanship and entertainment. It will come more into athletics, where you have shows on them. 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, we are in the entertainment business. Please make no mistake; we play a sport but are in the entertainment business. And so, talk about lightning in a bottle with the guys as marketable as Dion, but if you look at it.

What college Game Day has done and become, and Big Noon on Fox, which is the counterpart to that, and the resources they pour into those every year, get bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah, college football is the second most attractive brand behind the NFL if you look at live sports in a non-election year, other than the Oscars, live sports.

Ninety-five of the top hundred shows worldwide are live sports every year. You know, it's like the Super Bowl final for playoff games. I mean, it's unbelievable. I see these every year in the sports business journal, and a CFP last year when TCU was in it, we had over 20 million viewers.

For Michigan, you need to get 20 million viewers watching ridiculousness and MTV, right? No offence. I love that show. It's great. When you're in the hotel on the road, you turn on the TV and you pop that on. I can fall asleep to that. That's funny stuff.

But no, those are live sports. Those are some of the best forms of entertainment, right? We saw with the strike, the actor, the guilt strike that those scripted programming it's going to be hard to come by. However, the value of sports and sports content continues increasing, incredibly premium sports content.

So that's the good news for our industry. I'll end with that one on you: The future is bright. There's so much uncertainty right now, and there are many things we need to work out, but you know, we're a resilient business, and we'll be just fine. 

Chris Powers: All right. Then I'll have two more. You said the word super conference earlier. You just said there might be. If you had to guess by 2030 what the conference system would look like, from what you can say, that might be happening or predictions based on how it's forming. Are we going to start seeing a consolidation of conferences?

Jeremiah Donati: I think so, eventually. That's inevitable in 2030, a little soon, because I know our contract goes through 2031 like for us. So, it'd be challenging to imagine how that would have happened. Because you will have, ESPN and Fox would be involved in that to some degree.

Or would want to be they run college football, ESPN and Fox run college football. And so, it's headed that way. And one day, when our kids are here running this podcast, that will be the case, but it's a little tricky to know how you get there.

Because dissolving the conferences as they currently exist would require a new entity. And remember, we only have one person to oversee some of this. We don't have a Roger Goodell; every commissioner or conference has its commissioner, and they all have their interests.

And they're not giving up their jobs. I don't blame them. Something has to happen—some massive event or opportunity that provides more value. And oh, by the way, we're just talking about football. Then back to the other sports. Like, what happens to them? Yeah, because my hunch is that the super conference doesn't Tangle up all that, you know?

The Super Conference may be a solution for football. Whereas the Big 12, SEC, Big 10, whatever the conference is, that's still the solution for the smaller spread. Because those are important, right? It's funny. We're talking about something, even the Olympics, like tomorrow's opening ceremonies in Paris.

Today is the start of the fall season, which has been great the past couple of days. It's unbelievable, right? Like, here it is. Summer's over. And so it's back to Paris for a moment. Those Olympians played college sports, so those are important things. And so you hate to see those go away or be under-resourced.

Chris Powers: Do we have any Olympians? 

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, nine. We do; exactly, we have nine Olympians and a Haley van lift. Who's on our women's basketball team is the only one representing Team USA. She's on the women's basketball team. That new three-on-three is going to be fantastic.

Nine Olympians. Nine horn frogs will take. We're over there tomorrow, and we'll be participating in the opening ceremonies. I can't wait. Our president, Poland, is over there. He'll be there. He's going to check out. So we've got representation in swimming, rifle, track, and basketball.

It's exciting. It's an excellent time to be a horned frog. I get it. I'm an Olympics nut. I always loved that, especially where you go. It's a little tight, but no, it's a good time. It is a fun time of year, and thank God for the Olympics. Because of this, we're chomping to get to game one in football.

And you know, I'm a golfer like you, and I always have. You always had the PJ championship, and now that's gone. So August is lean. 

Chris Powers: All right. Final question. How many teams should make the college football playoff every year?

Jeremiah Donati: Oh, I like 12, 12 is a good number. 

We were one of the last teams ever to play in the 14 playoffs that started this year. The playoff goes to 12 teams and the conference champions. So if you win the Big 12, the great thing now is this current format. Looking back to 2012, TCU would have been extensively involved. So this is what you talked about. Think about the exposure that would have given us as an institution.

So forward-looking, the Big 12 champion will be in every year. The first and second-place teams will probably be in, and maybe even the third-place team in some years. There is a lot of competition from the Big 10, SEC, but it's great to have that expansion to 12 teams. So, I'm a firm believer 12 is the correct number. You'd hate to see it go more than that. I think it would kill the bowl system. Then you start running this system or a situation where it can't, and there's a finite time when you can play these playoff games. Like you can't play them back-to-back days, and you've got the holidays, and you've got the NFL.

It's more challenging than playing them out over three months. You've got to play a regular season, too, so there's a limit to what you can do there. So 12, 12 feels right. 

Chris Powers: I love it. All right, man. You're the man. 

Jeremiah Donati: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. It was great seeing you, as always. Keep up the excellent work. 

Chris Powers: Thank you.