Between The Eers: Let's Talk About Contracts
Between The Eers: Let's Talk About Contracts
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 Good Wednesday morning, everybody.
00:11 Skylar Cowan here, another episode of Between the Years.
00:13 And I'm trying to get deeper into some more analysis from this past football
00:20 season while also looking ahead.
00:23 But I just can't help myself with this transfer portal, so I can't.
00:29 There's nothing that necessarily happened recently that sparked this video.
00:36 I just started thinking more and more about it.
00:38 And look, I understand we're in a different era of college football,
00:46 or really in a different era of college sports.
00:48 But just because something is made available to you,
00:53 doesn't mean you have to utilize it, okay?
00:58 The portal has its pros, has its cons.
01:02 Believe it or not, there is some benefits to the portal.
01:05 I don't think it's just 100% of these kids that enter do it for
01:15 increased NIL opportunities or to get on a bigger stage.
01:19 That's not necessarily the case.
01:22 And if you look at the kids that have transferred out of WVU,
01:26 you would understand that that's very much not the case.
01:29 But I have a problem with kids bouncing left and
01:37 right in every which way because they can't.
01:44 I don't know the answer, and
01:49 I'm not gonna pretend to know what the answer really is.
01:52 That's not for me to figure out.
01:55 But what I will suggest is that there are some
02:01 sort of contracts that are put in place that
02:06 ensure that said player will be tied to said
02:12 school for set amount of period.
02:16 And that can be changed or altered with a coaching staff change or
02:23 a sickness or death in the family or something like that.
02:28 A legitimate reason that has to be sent into the NCAA and
02:32 it's a hard check and it's cut and dry.
02:37 It's yes or no.
02:38 There's no gray lines in between.
02:40 There's no some kids will get it, some kids won't.
02:42 That's the only way you're gonna create some sort of consistency within this portal.
02:50 In the contracts, I think you look at it this way.
02:54 For high school kids, for transfer kids, for JUCO kids, for
03:00 those that are still in JUCO, which I don't think is gonna exist for much longer.
03:04 There has to be multiple options where when you sign a kid out of high school,
03:12 you give him the opportunity to say, okay, we're signing you for this many years.
03:20 And you've got to stay here under these conditions just like a normal contract
03:25 the NFL would.
03:26 And I know it sounds crazy to pin a high school kid to,
03:31 let's say, just even a two year commitment.
03:35 But a two year commitment is a hell of a lot better than the kid showing up.
03:44 And by the, let's just say the midway point of his freshman season,
03:50 he's not getting playing time.
03:53 He understands he's not going to get playing time and is ready to bounce already.
03:58 You know that in those two years, things change.
04:04 Guys are gonna graduate, opportunities are gonna open up.
04:09 And I think that's the biggest problem right now with these younger kids that hit
04:14 the portal, is they're too damn impatient.
04:18 They don't wanna wait around.
04:20 They think that because they have four years of eligibility,
04:23 that they should be able to play all four years.
04:28 And I'm not saying that, look, if your goal is to go to a college and
04:34 play four years, then that's on you.
04:39 That's on you if you picked the wrong school.
04:41 You have to understand, they're in the recruitment process, and
04:46 I understand there's all these coaches out there that lie about playing time and
04:52 kind of their path to playing time and all that stuff, I get it, I really do.
04:56 But at the end of the day, you've got to be able to sort through all that.
05:01 As a kid, as the parents, the support system that's around it,
05:05 you got to be able to sniff some of this out.
05:08 And when you go on more than just two or three visits, or
05:11 you talk to more than a handful of coaches,
05:13 you're gonna start to be able to pick out what's true and what's not.
05:16 So to me, that's on the kid for
05:25 not putting himself in a situation where he can go and play for four years,
05:29 if that's what he truly wants.
05:30 If you're an average three-star recruit, and I don't really care for
05:36 their star rankings, but this is just to help support the conversation here.
05:40 If you're an average three-star recruit, and
05:45 you think you're just gonna show up at West Virginia and start from day one,
05:51 I don't know what to tell you, you're gonna be disappointed.
05:55 Now, that doesn't mean you can't start from day one,
06:00 but there's no guarantee in that.
06:06 If you wanna start from day one with that kind of a high school status or
06:12 high school resume, whatever, you need to go to, I don't even know,
06:18 not even a group of five, I think you would need to go FCS.
06:23 Look at the FCS level and see if there's anything there.
06:26 The problem, I think, with some of these other kids
06:35 that are groomed and
06:39 developed into star players that maybe necessarily weren't star players.
06:44 When they came out of high school, or maybe they just didn't have the recruiting
06:49 profile that some of these others did that were highly, highly, highly ranked,
06:55 and recruited by every blue blood out there.
07:00 The problem with those kids is a lack of appreciation, and
07:06 I'm not saying it's every kid, because every situation is different.
07:11 But Gino Auriemma talked about it very, very good in his post game against
07:17 St. John's, I don't know if it was last night or a couple of nights ago, but
07:22 he hit the nail right on the head.
07:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]
07:27 How can a coaching staff pour into his players
07:32 when there's no appreciation,
07:37 there's no guarantee for the kid to come back, and
07:42 you're gonna have to find that kid's replacement after a year or two.
07:47 There's no connection.
07:53 And you can, just like I was talking about with the recruits, and
07:58 you can kind of sense when a coaching staff is being real or not.
08:04 I mean, a coach kind of can sense whether or not a kid wants to be there,
08:09 even if they're having a great season.
08:12 They can kind of start to pick up some signs on the breadcrumb trail,
08:19 and figure out, yeah, at the end of this season,
08:21 this kid's probably gonna enter the portal, or at least entertain the idea.
08:24 And I think there's a serious lack of understanding from these kids too,
08:33 that they go from whatever recruit that they are to
08:41 becoming a star at a place like West Virginia.
08:43 They just think, all right, I became a star here, but
08:48 now I've gotta go to the SEC, or I've gotta go to this Blue Blood program, and
08:53 I've gotta prove myself there, because that, that is what's gonna get me to the NFL.
08:58 It's not happening.
09:02 That has absolutely no role in getting you to the NFL.
09:08 Are you gonna get more eyeballs on you?
09:10 No, maybe from the average fan, not from the NFL scouts.
09:17 And look, people will say, yes, if you go to Florida State,
09:22 if you go to Georgia, if you go to Texas, if you go to Alabama,
09:26 you're gonna have more scouts watching you.
09:30 Yes, there may be more scouts physically in the building, but
09:35 they're gonna be watching you regardless of where you're at.
09:38 If you're putting stuff on tape that is NFL worthy.
09:44 Doesn't matter where you are, they will find you.
09:48 And it's not like West Virginia is just little tiny school tucked into
09:54 the mountains and it's so hard to get to and no one knows really
10:00 how to get there or who exists there.
10:03 Is it quality football?
10:05 Yes, yes, the answer is yes.
10:10 They will find you at West Virginia.
10:12 They will find you at Texas Tech.
10:15 They will find you at East Carolina.
10:17 They will find you at Rutgers.
10:19 They will find you at Eastern Michigan.
10:20 Just because you had success at one school doesn't mean
10:30 that you need to make the jump up to another school to do the same thing.
10:36 When you go from West Virginia playing in the Big 12 Conference,
10:41 that's big time power five or now power four football.
10:45 If you've proven yourself there, okay, and you go to the SEC or
10:51 the ACC or whatever, you're not having to prove anything else that you didn't prove
10:58 before, you're not going up against West Virginia.
11:02 You're going up against the same schools that you would if you transferred
11:09 before they left the SEC for the SEC.
11:12 If you were to transfer to Texas or Oklahoma, you're doing the same thing.
11:15 You're facing the same damn people.
11:17 The only problem is now you're putting yourself in a tougher position because
11:23 you have to relearn the scheme.
11:25 You have to relearn your coaching staff.
11:27 You have to relearn your teammates.
11:28 You have to relearn the playbook.
11:30 And you also have to beat out the competition that's battling for
11:34 the same starting spot as you.
11:38 Where the place you just came from, you didn't have to do that.
11:42 You already had it locked up.
11:43 I just I don't understand some of the thinking and
11:50 the thought process behind some of these kids decisions.
11:53 I don't, I really don't.
11:54 And whoever is feeding them this bad information needs to stop.
12:00 You're not only killing these kids careers.
12:03 First and foremost, that's the most important thing.
12:07 But you're also killing a team's progress like a West Virginia or
12:14 even an Eastern Michigan or East Carolina or Texas Tech or
12:19 Bowling Green or UConn or just any random school that's not a blue block,
12:26 is what I'm trying to get at.
12:27 How are those schools ever truly supposed to be competitive in this era of
12:32 college football if they've got bad people telling them bad crap in the rear?
12:37 Tell them, hey, kid, you got 1,000 yards, 15 touchdowns,
12:45 but it'd be really nice if you went to Ohio State and did that.
12:51 What the hell's the difference?
12:56 There's no difference at all in terms of the good side.
13:01 The bad side of it is, again, you gotta go to Ohio State where they've got an
13:05 abundance of five and four stars.
13:08 And you're gonna have to beat those kids out for playing time.
13:11 Make it make sense.
13:15 I don't understand it.
13:17 If you wanna go to the NFL and you like West Virginia or
13:24 you like any of these other schools, look at their history of sending guys to
13:28 the next level.
13:30 I guarantee you just about every school that is recruiting you
13:33 has sent someone to the NFL.
13:37 It has happened before, and it will happen again.
13:40 These blue bloods are not just NFL factories where they're farm systems for
13:47 the NFL and they just,
13:49 they're the only teams that just send them poof magically in the NFL.
13:53 If you show out, you will be found, regardless of school, regardless of level.
14:00 That is my biggest issue, is these kids that come in, they stay for a year or two,
14:09 they become stars, and they leave the coaches that helped them become those stars,
14:16 high and dry, to go somewhere else for some school that when they came out of
14:21 high school, overlooked them, didn't care about them, said, you know what?
14:25 They don't have a four or five star ranking attached to their name,
14:28 don't care about them, go somewhere else.
14:30 If you get better, they will reconsider.
14:33 You're an afterthought to those schools.
14:35 A second option, the schools that truly recruited you,
14:41 truly wanted you to be there, including the school that you went to.
14:47 And the school that helped you get to be the player that you are now,
14:51 those are the ones that care about you.
14:53 Those are the people that you wanna have in the back of your corner.
14:56 Not the ones that just come around and pick up the scraps, right?
15:05 Pick up the good pieces that are left.
15:06 The refurbished pieces, if you will.
15:15 So, got me in a good mood today.
15:18 Already, to start off this Wednesday, look, I don't know, like I said,
15:22 I'm not gonna pretend to know the answer to how you get these contracts figured out.
15:28 But let's be honest, we are going to an NFL model.
15:32 That's just how this thing's going, at least on the football side of things.
15:36 It is going to be as identical to the NFL as possible.
15:43 And if these kids wanna be treated like professionals and
15:48 treated like they're in the NFL, then throw the contracts in.
15:53 Throw the contracts in, give them multiple years.
15:59 They can pick how many ever years they want.
16:01 That way, if you have a kid on a two year deal, you know, hey,
16:07 at the end of this two years, I'm gonna either have to replace him or
16:13 we re-sign him.
16:14 And I hate that college football and
16:19 college sports has gotten to this point because I hate that.
16:22 That is ridiculous.
16:23 You should just be able to go to your school, stay there for four or five years.
16:29 And if for whatever reason, after two or three years, you feel like you're losing
16:34 out on an opportunity, you're playing time, you're wasting eligibility,
16:37 you can transfer.
16:39 I get that.
16:39 I'm 100% okay for that.
16:42 But we've got to stop the constant roster churning.
16:49 It is bad for the sport.
16:51 100% bad.
16:55 The product is still good, but in my opinion,
17:00 the product pre-Portal, much better.
17:03 Because you actually had a two deep, you had a three deep,
17:07 you had kids that have been in the program three, four, five, six years.
17:10 Now you've got a bunch of kids that have been there three or
17:14 four months before the season started.
17:16 How the hell can you find success when you have,
17:22 in some cases like Arizona, when they had freaking 40 or 50 new kids?
17:27 They just signed, what, like five or six high school kids in December?
17:33 Which means they're gonna be banking on the Portal again?
17:38 Come on, come on.
17:40 Let me know your thoughts in the YouTube comments about the Portal,
17:46 what your solution would be.
17:48 I'm interested to hear.
17:49 I'll read through the comments to see what you guys have to say about it.
17:54 So I'll definitely take a look, but that'll do it for us here today.
17:58 I've got some stuff to do.
18:00 It's West Virginia, Oklahoma tonight.
18:02 I've got to get some game day coverage going.
18:04 I can't spend all day on this.
18:06 Although I promise you I would definitely do that because it is
18:10 something that I'm very passionate about.
18:13 So anyways, hit that Subscribe button on YouTube at Mountain Ears Now.
18:18 Give us a follow on @xthesameham.
18:20 You can follow myself @callan_.
18:22 And we will be back tonight for the Mountain Ears Now post game show.
18:27 I'll be joined by Chris Hall.
18:28 And we'll recap what goes down in Norman between West Virginia and Oklahoma.
18:34 Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Between the Ears.
18:37 We'll see you here in a few hours for the post game show.
18:39 [MUSIC]