Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
The Elite Clubs National League was founded in 2009 and continues to lead by daring to do things differently, embedded with grit, collaboration and tenacity – all things learned from the beautiful game. The ECNL protects and propels the integrity of the game and everyone it impacts by facilitating the perfect symmetry of excellence and humility, exclusivity and accessibility, freedom and community. We believe that challenging everyone to rise to their best creates game-changers that live well, long after cleats are unlaced. Born out of the belief in a better way. Continued in the ever-evolving pursuit of excellence.
Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Soccer's Transformative Changes: NCAA Settlement, NWSL CBA, and Future Impacts | Ep. 101
Let us know the topics of interest to you!
What if the future of college soccer was dramatically changing right before our eyes? On this episode of Breaking the Line, Christian Lavers, Doug Bracken, and Ashley Willis dissect the profound shifts stemming from the new NCAA settlement and the impending roster cap set to impact youth players by 2025. We scrutinize the potential upheaval of scholarship limits and what this means for all aspiring athletes.
We continue by examining the intricacies of the new NWSL Collective Bargaining Agreement, which promises to revolutionize the league with higher minimum salaries, a revamped salary cap, and groundbreaking revenue-sharing provisions. Discover how these changes are poised to influence youth development and recruitment, and their wider implications on the American sports landscape.
Welcome to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast featuring ECNL leaders Christian Labors, doug Bracken and Ashley Willis. This is episode 101, and when we return, christian Doug and Ashley talk about the new college soccer roster cap starting in the 2025 season and the new NWSL CBA starting in 2025, and we get it rolling after this message from Nike.
Speaker 2:Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL. Nothing can stop what we can do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1:Stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, facebook and Twitter. You heard the open, so to kick things off, I turn it over to the CEO of the ECNL, also their president, christian Labers.
Speaker 3:Thanks, dean, I appreciate you being on the call with us and got the normal group back today.
Speaker 3:We are going to take a shot at some pretty complicated topics today that we think are really interesting and will have some impact on youth soccer, even if it's not immediately apparent, but one being the lawsuit the NCAA lawsuit that was preliminarily settled a couple months ago and the announcement of what that settlement is with respect to N, the NWSL is approaching youth soccer, especially compared to MLS. That will definitely have some impacts on the youth space. So many topics, deep topics we're going to try and stay out of legal innuendo and I guess I'll put a caveat on all this that this is an area that we are trying to understand. I think, if you ask 10 people that have 10 different opinions, and so these are our opinions and thoughts, and where we make a mistake, we ask for some forgiveness in advance, because we're trying to figure it out, like everybody. So, ashley, I'm going to give it to you first. Pick one of these topics on what you want to go with and what you're thinking, and we'll dive into it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it makes sense for us in the ECNL to just go straight at the college roster cap situation that's happening, obviously having our youth players starting to become a little bit more affected by it. I think it would be wise of us to kind of dive into it and be able to maybe ease some of the ruffled feathers that's happening. I can't imagine being the players who are getting phone calls of you know you had a spot, you no longer have a spot, but I think there's such a bigger picture here that I think you know we can talk about and I think it's all very, very interesting. I don't think it's all necessarily bad. I just think that, like anything in college soccer or youth soccer or soccer in general, it's going to be a little bit of a trial and they have talked about the scholarship limits going away and what that means.
Speaker 5:Because I think I mean that could mean that, whatever the roster cap number, which I think is 28.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 5:In theory, you could have 28 scholarships. You know we've Christian, you and I have talked about this kind of offline have 28 scholarships. You know we've Christian, you and I have talked about this kind of offline. That's probably not going to happen at most schools, or we're unsure about how many schools that will happen. But I think that's also a really interesting topic to tackle because you know we've all dealt with our players along the way as it relates to scholarships and what our offers and what those look like, and they're usually partial, partial scholarship offers. So so I think that's the other interesting angle on this is what does this do for the scholarship perspective, as well as just limiting these rosters?
Speaker 3:So let's back up and sort of give the background, as, at least as I understand it. So there were three court cases that were going on. The biggest or the sort of most prominent was House versus NCAA. That were all generally antitrust actions which basically were challenging the NCAA's rules prohibiting athletes from receiving compensation and payments. The argument was that the conspiracy quote unquote. The argument was that the conspiracy quote unquote between the colleges and the NCAA to not pay athletes basically harmed athletes because they deserve compensation for their work. They were being harmed by not being able to get market rates for their name, image, likeness and everything associated with their performance.
Speaker 3:Obviously most relevant in football and basketball, the two biggest revenue sports.
Speaker 3:Obviously most relevant in football and basketball, the two biggest revenue sports.
Speaker 3:So the settlement, which has not yet been formally approved and in a settlement like this you need to get a variety of approvals for it to be final but ultimately provides $2.8 billion in back pay for athletes over the last 10, I believe it's 10 years, and it's also very important to say this is specifically with respect to the Power 5 and now Power 4, allows those schools to opt into a shared revenue model where initially, 22% of the revenue from tickets, tv merchandise, all the things surrounding the college, from tickets, tv merchandise, all the things surrounding the sort of college athletics business.
Speaker 3:22% of that revenue would go back to the athletes and the way in which that goes back is not defined. So how a school pays that back, in terms of who they give it to, what sports they give it to, how much they allocate to anybody, is not determined, so it can be done differently with every school. Then, importantly, third-party NIL payments are not included within that. So the settlement allows the schools to pay for the first time to eliminate this amateurism concept of the NCAA to pay the athletes up to 22% of this shared revenue pool. Then the athletes can also get paid as they can currently, I believe, through third-party NIL, which is not from the university but it's an independent business, although they, I think, are talking about a clearinghouse to evaluate third-party NIL and maybe to help protect the athletes or to ensure its market rate.
Speaker 5:Or to allow the university to manage the collectives that they have out there, right, I mean, I think that was part of it that universities might now act away from the third-party collectives as it relates to NIL and bring them in-house under their management.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure You're the lawyer in the room. I'm not sure about that. I don't know that piece of it. I've been trying to get my head around just the basic piece of it. A couple more things. So not that you're wrong, I just don't know, and I think that's the answer.
Speaker 3:If you ask to 20 college coaches right now what's going to happen with college sports, you'd probably have 20 people say I don't know, and then they would have 20 different opinions about where I would go, and that's sort of creating this concern and also probably lots of rumor and innuendo. But the other thing it did is it eliminates scholarship limits. So the old you know, they have this many scholarships divided up however the university wants. But that would go away and establish roster limits, which the big picture, if we back out from the legal nuance, is that before all of the money from the TV merch sales everything associated with college game day, as you think about it, predominantly basketball and football all that money went to the university and it was used to do whatever the university does with it fund other sports, invest in infrastructure, pay coaches and administrators. Now a large chunk of that 22% of it is now going to be allocated directly to the athletes. So the estimate on that in the power four because this is specific to the power four estimate on that in the power four, because this is specific to the power four, as far as I understand it, is that this will be north of $20 million a year per school that, instead of going into a general fund for whatever the athletic department was going to use it for, will now go into the pockets of the athletes.
Speaker 3:The question that goes with that is if $20 million of, let's in theory say, operating funds to cover expenses of other programs, other non-revenue sports facilities, support staff, if that is no longer there, what impact does that have on non-revenue sports? And that's where there's a lot of the fear and that's a lot of the uncertainty, because it does to some degree, for the first time, put those non-revenue sports, of which women's soccer and men's soccer are too, in the position of to some degree justifying the investment that is made in those sports or trying to get them to be a revenue producing sport. And that is a changed paradigm for a lot of those programs and coaches in terms of thought. So I'll stop there. Does that my description, match what you guys understand on this and what the conversations you've had.
Speaker 5:The question you rightly asked at the end is you know what does this mean for non-revenue sports? And the reality is probably it's going to be different university to university. One of the articles that we read on this the Ohio State Athletic Director made reference to some of these sports will now operate more like club sports, which I thought was an interesting kind of lens into what the future might hold for some of these sports. And then I guess the other question, christian, that I would have is you know how does Title IX factor into this whole bowl of spaghetti? It seems like we're now staring at bowl of spaghetti. It seems like we're now staring at, because that has obviously been a huge driver of women's sports equality at the college level. What role does that legislation play now moving?
Speaker 3:forward. To go first to your comment on that. This was in the Columbus Dispatch, President, Ted Carter, the Ohio State University university board of trustees, and the quote exactly. I'll read a couple of these. These sports will just be different. We need to map out each sport accordingly and then I think specifically to yours. We'll still have scholarship, we'll still have programs. Carter said some of those sports may start to look and act a little bit more like a club sport but yet compete at the Division I level and still travel and still compete.
Speaker 3:Now, if you can figure out what that means Exactly, they're what that means because club soccer or club sports are not Division I sports. There's typically the biggest difference being funding. They also did in that article, to be fair, said they want to keep all of their sports but they think that there will likely be a reduction of about 150 student athletes at Ohio State. Ohio State is notoriously one of the most well-funded athletic departments in the country. One thing if we go directly to roster limits, what you're seeing now, because you see some of this on social media, is, I believe and there was another article that said the average Division I Power 4 women's soccer roster is somewhere in the neighborhood of 32 to 35 players, something like that. And Ashley, you may have some info on that and some examples If the roster limit is decreased to 28,.
Speaker 3:And some examples if the roster limit is decreased to 28, and that is assuming that all these schools would stay at 28 and not reduce it beyond that. That, you're talking about four to six roster spots on average that are no longer in the power four. For those, how many schools are in the power four, Dean? Do you know that? Probably 60, 70 schools, something like that. I think it's like 60. Yeah, 60. So you're looking at about 250 to 400 spots that will not be there, if that average number is correct. Now it does beg the question a college roster of 35 players, of which 11 play. There are some real challenges with roster management in that. So some of that might actually be positive. From a student athlete experience, I don't know. Ashley, would you have any specifics on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean you're correct on the average roster size. I think FSU comes to mind as somebody who carries low. They carry 24. They've always carried 24. I think it will be interesting to see if you are mandated to carry 28. If FSU then has to come up to 28, if you're allowed to go low. I think there's just so many unknowns out there right now.
Speaker 5:Yes, if it's a roster maximum, then nobody's going to argue if you have less.
Speaker 4:You would think. I think that's the completely logical thing, but we are dealing with something that's not fully logical in a lot of ways. So I'm just throwing out kind of what would be interesting to see. I think it would be very interesting if you're at 34, like you know well over 60% of these Power 4 schools are. I think it would be really interesting if they start going towards the more what D2 schools do, where you have like a second team that trains, does everything the exact same. So, okay, I'm going to roster these 28, but I'm going to keep my roster quote unquote at 36, 38, whatever, and those guys aren't going to be rostered. They're never going to play a game until maybe they become ready and kind of treat it like you know, the Air Force Academy had to prep school and almost kind of treat it like that of like I'm going to use you and develop you more and then put you into my 28 when you're a sophomore or something like that.
Speaker 5:It feels like the concern or the reason for the roster cap and you guys tell me if you think differently is that these athletes are now in large part going to be considered pros employees.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's been determined yet. If that is exactly the case, I think I'm reading here from this is from the ncaaorg and it says unresolved issues, one of which is the settlement does not address ongoing efforts to designate student-athletes as employees under state and federal labor and employment laws. Whatever the settlement documentation is, it doesn't put any sort of agreement upon that. There is a whole degree, a slew of laws and regulations that go into place when somebody is considered an employee, which I can't even imagine the complexity of that, because that's also state law. There's federal and state law, but 50 different states are going to have 50 different interpretations of employment law. So that part is still open.
Speaker 3:Not sure how much complication that does to your other point, doug, about Title IX is that I believe that there are some states that because the athletes are now being paid almost de facto as employees, whether they are technically or legally classified that way, there is some question as to the degree to which Title IX would apply. I believe I'm not an expert in that area, but I've read that there are some states looking at potentially saying by paying these athletes, it therefore removes things from Title IX. Now I don't know if that's a statutory solution that states would have to address if they so choose to do that or not. This is where we get in trouble, because there's so much that we have to do Right.
Speaker 5:Is it Title IX federal law?
Speaker 3:It's a federal law, yes, but I believe it's tied to federal funding. But maybe we go get a Title IX expert on the line. But I think our point on this is there are question marks around that and I think, going back to Ashley's point, what this is really doing. I mean there's so many impacts from it. A smaller roster size it doesn't mean that those let's just say it's six kids that are not going to be on a Power 4 team anymore. It doesn't mean they're not going to play college soccer. It means that they're not going to play college soccer in the Power 4. So they drop down to whatever the you know the next school is.
Speaker 3:And, by the way, we should be clear that there are schools in especially in soccer, that are not in the power four that are better than a lot of the power four in terms of soccer performance, right. But there's six roster spots that currently have athletes on average. We'll say that are not going to have athletes on average. We'll say that are not going to have athletes. Well, those players are presumably going to go into other conferences and to other schools. That, in theory, raises the level of those conferences and the level of play in those programs. It also in theory, going from a roster of 34 to 28, there is a smaller range of performance within that roster which, again in theory, allows more focus on those athletes and probably a little bit more of a competitive environment, depending on how the environment's managed. So those things are not necessarily bad things, they're just change.
Speaker 1:I know we're moving forward, but I want to go back to the fact that they're going to make this payment for for lack of a better word back pay for X amount of years, and is that only going to the big revenue sports, or is that going to every single athlete that played at those big fours over X years removed from where we are today? Who gets that money?
Speaker 3:Well, well, you know my first answer, dean, and that's going to be. We're not totally sure, but I do. I did take some notes here, if uh just got to pull them up, that the back pay, like we can tell you who's paying it. So the NCAA this is the $2.8 billion in back pay. The NCAA itself is going to pay 41% of that, so $1.2 or $3 billion. The Power Five schools are going to pay 24% of it. The Group of Five, which is another set of conferences, are going to pay 10%. The football FBS subdivision is 13% and the rest, the sort of non-football schools, is 12%. This is so new. I mean we're in the last—.
Speaker 5:Here's my name. The name on the lawsuit is a guy named Grant House, and Grant House was a swimmer, I believe, at Arizona State University who brought this. That in and of itself leads me to believe that is it only going to be football and basketball, or major sports?
Speaker 3:if a show? No, no, I think it'll be either agreed upon by the court that this is how the payment's going to go on a, you know, pro rata athlete, or maybe by sport or by level. I wouldn't think it would be left up to each institution, because I could create a whole nother set of problems. But I think this is again why this is a settlement in principle. It needs to be approved and a lot of details need to be worked out. That is a separate set of money that needs to be paid out by these athletic departments on top of the shared revenue moving forward. We said the shared revenue moving forward is estimated at $20 million per school per year in the power four and then to back pay $2.8 billion. I think the estimate is that could be upwards of $30 million per year for 10 years per school. I mean that collectively is $50 million. You know, if those fees are, if those numbers are accurate, $50 million of revenue that otherwise would have been available for non-revenue sports, for facilities, support staff, whatever it is that they use, that is now going to be directed to past and current student athletes and, by the way, I don't think any of us are saying that that's a bad thing, that athletes are being paid for their services. I mean the athletes, especially when you look at these big football and basketball schools that are bringing in billions of dollars of television and selling out 100,000 person stadiums. It just means that that money is going in a different direction, which means the rest of the economic model has to be changed.
Speaker 3:So the other question on this that's very interesting is that generally the perception is women's soccer is fine. I guess I'll put that in quotation marks. There's nobody really talking about whether the schools will have women's soccer programs. There may be funding changes and some people think the women's soccer programs are going to get more money and some people think they'll get less money. But men's soccer there's more question about whether some schools may just choose not to have a men's soccer program, which is, you know, I know that has created a huge concern and we've had discussions with a variety of college coaches and I know college soccer coaches are talking to the to us soccer and other organizations about what might be the future of college men's soccer.
Speaker 3:And even within that discussion there's questions because, for example, if you're in the power four, that does have football on the one end, some people say that might be better for you because there's more revenue in those institutions and therefore more revenue potentially to allocate towards other sports.
Speaker 3:But then others say that might be better for you because there's more revenue in those institutions and therefore more revenue potentially to allocate towards other sports. But then others say it might be better not to be in the power floor because they don't have to pay the football and basketball players to the same degree. So when it comes to discretionary funding, it may be easier to get some funding for soccer than it would be in a school that needs to pay to get a five-star offensive lineman. When you look at the NIL deals at least through some of the anecdotal evidence that we hear about the cost in NIL of an offensive lineman is like the majority or half of the average operating cost of a college men's soccer program. And then when you put it in that sort of viewpoint, that's a really, really interesting dynamic on the economics. Here you know one player a big name player for sure being a large part of a potentially a non-revenue sports budget like soccer.
Speaker 5:My question I think and this is the obvious question for this podcast is how does this affect the ECNL and what we do on a day-in year-out basis?
Speaker 3:Well, I think and we all can have our opinions I think on the women's side, like I said, there's not going to be a ton of change. There might be some smaller rosters. There might be if they're losing spots in the power four and those players are, in theory, going to go to another conference or another school. There might be a slight adjustment in total numbers of players that are moving into college soccer. But there's Dean, you might know the number 300-something Division I schools in women's college soccer. But there's Dane, you might know the number 300 something division one schools in women's college soccer, and then all the D2 and D3s, and so my gut is not a lot of negative. I mean, it's always a sad and difficult moment if somebody's losing a spot that they thought they were going to. So we're not minimizing that. But just from a big picture perspective, I'm not sure there's going to be a huge impact on the women's side. Before we talk about the men's side, ashley or Doug or Dean, do you have a different perspective on the women's side?
Speaker 5:No, no, I think it's to your point. The trickle down will happen a little bit as they lessen the roster spots. I made this argument when we were talking about this last week that it's even more important now to be in an environment where you can compete at the highest level in the youth game and be in the highest level of exposure platform you can be in, probably because, as these programs kind of narrow, that's going to have an effect on how they go out and evaluate players, look at players and what environments they see players in. In this case to me it seems like players with aspirations to play at that level. It's even more important that they're in an environment like the ACNL to maximize those things.
Speaker 3:What really is happening here is this reallocation of revenue to reward and I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm just trying to state the facts to reward and pay the people driving the revenue. So if we take a step back and say before the head football coach is making X dollars and the starting quarterback Heisman Trophy winner, national champion is getting a scholarship and room and board, now that quarterback is going to get paid a lot of money. So it's a reallocation of resources to you know. In many ways, like it would be done in business, the star who drives a lot of the value for the business is going to be paid more than other people and within that it's going to tighten funding. Because whereas before that money was just in a collective because you didn't have to pay these athletes, that money was just in a collective because you didn't have to pay these athletes you probably can be a little bit more free with how you spend that money Now because it's getting tight.
Speaker 3:I mean we go back and say again power four if they're saying around $50 million is now spoken for in back payments or labor payments, basically it means that maybe there will be changes in recruiting, maybe people would be a little bit more selective about how many trips they go on and how much money they spend on it and if they're going to increase scholarships to compete because if you're going to be in a sport and you want to win in the sport, then scholarships are going to help you do that, or payments to do that it may make people a little bit more selective in where they go looking for players because it becomes that much more expensive to find the diamond in the rough, for example. That may or may not be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which state you sit in, but I think a lot of this stuff it's not going to be answered in the next couple of months. Some of it will be answered in months and some of it's going to take years.
Speaker 4:To go back to what I originally said when we brought up this topic and then to kind of piggyback off of what you were just saying, Doug, I think it makes all the sense in the world for kids in our league to just like take a collective deep breath. They're in a place that is going to, in theory, continue to be the best place for them to be in order to get seen to go play at the college level. Coming from somebody myself who coached in other leagues, you look at those sidelines, at those events. You look at our sidelines, at our events. It's already night and day. And then, to your point, Christian, if they're going to start to have to make recruiting decisions of, I can't go to four events, I need to go to three events, I need to go to two events. They're already packing our sidelines. So take a collective deep breath. It's all going to be okay and you're in the best place for yourself Not to toot our own horn or, you know, to kind of make it seem like the ECNL show I mean, it is the ECNL podcast I guess I can, but but I think, talking with other coaching friends in the youth game, whether or not they coach in this league or they coach in other leagues.
Speaker 4:There's been conversations of like well, you've got it pretty easy going forward with everything that's going on. They're already at your events. What are they going to do now? They're going to choose between. So I think our kids can take a collective deep breath. In my opinion, in my humble opinion, Take a breath.
Speaker 1:Especially on the girls' side. I mean, one of the things we need to remember is, even pre-NIL, you guys have been in the game long enough to know that men's college soccer had already kind of separated from women's college soccer and was trying to create the 21st century model. The women wanted nothing to do with that, and that's kind of where they stand right now anyway. So I really think the men's college soccer side, which you guys hit on a little bit, is the one that has the biggest gray cloud over it, don't you agree? Kind of where it ends up landing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're right, Dean, and I think there are some coaches in men's college soccer are attempting to be pretty proactive on this, and so the 21st century model is a different. It's an example, like you say. It's a different problem that was trying to go take college soccer from one fall season to a fall season in the spring season to allow really kind of what the ECNL and the Development Academy has done in youth soccer, which has allowed more training, more rest between games, a longer, more meaningful season for developmental reasons, for competition reasons as well, to provide a better Final Four experience than December in Columbus, for example. No offense to you guys in Ohio, but that's not a great time to play soccer. So, yeah, that issue, which was ongoing and has all sorts of resource questions with it as well, right, because now the season is twice as long, training is as long, people are working longer, facility usage, all that sort of stuff. And then now you have real basic decisions on investment. Well and I was having a conversation the other day about this at some level, if you're an athletic director and you have a certain amount of revenue, just like in any other business, you have to decide where is the best place to invest this for the biggest impact Now in college. Now there's a part of that that, like it or not, is business, because if you don't have a product that people pay to come watch or see, you don't have the revenue. But then you know it is college athletics and some of that is probably looked at through the lens of the university experience and having different sports as part of the university in terms of what does that add to the university culture and what to having athletes in a variety of different sports add to the campus, and so I think there's probably a lens and then maybe a big lens or a small lens depending on who you're talking to in terms of this sort of holistic piece that's now front and center.
Speaker 3:On men's soccer, the other difference between men's and women's soccer is men's soccer already right now, is about 50% international, so a huge number of these roster spots are made up of internationals that come from Europe or South America or wherever into the US to play college soccer and you got to think, if there are concerns on general revenue to operate, that those are probably the highest expense athletes. I would think that it may be that that reduces the number of international players in men's soccer, which could be a positive for the American youth player in terms of roster spots being available. But I think on the men's side, it does seem very clear that people are looking at options as to whether NCAA soccer is the future of men's soccer or whether there is other another governance body that is the future of college soccer. And what does that mean in terms of funding? What does that mean in terms of governance? What does that mean in terms of funding? What does that mean in terms of governance?
Speaker 3:What does that mean in terms of structure? Because I think a lot of the men's side would say, if we're looking at all of this at an existential level and we were to need to rebuild or reformat, well we might as well reformat as a fall and spring season, because that's what they want from a developmental point anyway, if you're sort of going to have to blow up the room and restructure, restructure in the way that they want. So I think to your point though, dean, there's a lot more questions on the men's side about what does it mean than there are on the women's side, and that may be as simple as football is going to have 100 male athletes from day one, you know, and there is no equivalent sport on the women's side in terms of size, of number of athletes. So it just becomes tighter on how many male athletes are funded outside of football.
Speaker 5:You're right when you say like we're not going to really know for the next bit of time. I think it will start to sort itself out over the next months. But, man, it might take years to really see what this does to the landscape and exactly how it ends up, what the end product is and what the actual influence over what we, you know, what the. There's a lot more questions than there are kind of answers. At this point the one thing you could say for sure is it will not. I mean, things are going to change. That still goes hand in hand-hand with the ongoing discussions about whether or not these Power Four conferences will just break away period and if they do not have an NCAA, that's the answer to it.
Speaker 5:I think there's just a lot of.
Speaker 1:There will be a lot of interesting questions over the next months and years, as this kind of sorts out Seriously said it best, though, like at the end of the day, they're still going to need players and the best place to find players is the ecnl. So it's kind of all word and upward while they sort it all out, because you think about all the stuff that's going to trickle down from x years of back pay, somebody's going to get missed, and I mean that's just going to be a total nightmare. But one thing that's not going to be a nightmare is you're going to continue to develop the top players to go to these schools, and they got to keep moving on, and I think ecl will serve a great role in that right no, that's a great way to say it, dean, and I think you know we talk about this internally a lot.
Speaker 3:Obviously, this discussion is about college and and theNL pathway into college, but there's a heck of a lot of reasons why sport is important, beyond the ability to be a college athlete.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think that's also important in college, that you know, people go to be a college athlete and they go to win, and some go to try and be pros after that or somewhere through the middle of that.
Speaker 3:But the impact of sports on people is significant, and so you know to your point, dean, we believe a lot in the power of sports to positively impact trajectories of people and to teach life lessons and all that sort of stuff, and it's a sort of icing on the cake that you can then move on to college and maybe get an education that you otherwise may have not, or have an opportunity you otherwise may have not. Maybe that's the closing part on this is everybody take a deep breath. You're in the right platform, with the right clubs to have the exposure to get to that next level, whether that next level is NCAA, whether that is a different version, or whether that next level is fully funded scholarships or not, the cream rises to the top. The best kids are still going to have that opportunity and as long as we do a really good job of creating a great environment and our clubs do a really good job of developing players, things will take care of themselves.
Speaker 1:When we return, we talk about the new NWSL, cba, new.
Speaker 2:NWSL CBA. Soccercom is proud to partner with the ECNL to support the continued development of soccer in the US at the highest levels. We've been delivering quality soccer equipment and apparel to players, fans and coaches since 1984. Living and breathing the beautiful game ourselves, our goal at Soccercom is to inspire you to play better, cheer louder and have more fun. Visit Soccercom today to check out our unmatched selection of gear, expert advice and stories of greatness at every level of the game.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast. This segment we talk about the new NWSL CBA and Christian as a recovering lawyer. This is a very impressive CBA.
Speaker 3:That was really unexpected. I don't know about you guys, I haven't been following that and their existing CBA, I don't believe, was up for a couple of years. So this is a proactive let's get this thing changed. In a way. Everybody wants to Again some basics here. The basics are one thing, but there's some really interesting things here at a bigger picture level. The basics is the minimum salary is now $48,500. That will go to $82,500 by 2030. So this CBA goes all the way through 2030. The salary cap is now $3.3 million. It'll go up to $5.1 by 2030. There's some revenue sharing provisions, so if there's a big boon of revenue to the league, that has to be shared with the players. So that's all very positive just from an economic perspective of a NWSL player.
Speaker 3:But the really interesting things to me is how this CBA affects the youth market, because they effective immediately eliminated the draft, so there's no more drafting of players, and they also eliminated any discovery rule, which is where a club claims rights of a youth player. And if you Put that in contrast to MLS, I don't know if you could be farther different in the way that they have now viewed basically the source of players and how you get them Because MLS has, and these have created dramatic disputes and they're very, very contentious Because MLS has, for example, territorial rights. Very, very contentious because MLS has, for example, territorial rights, and I'm reading this off of the MLS player development guidelines On the one side, nwsl has eliminated the sort of youth discovery rule where you can just claim players as within your system even if you haven't really done anything with them. In contrast to that I'm going to read this word for word In addition to the 45 registered Academy players, an MLS club may establish homegrown exclusivity over up to nine players who one are not registered Academy players, two have a permanent address or reside with their parents or guardians in the mls club's territory and three are in one of the u15, 17 or 19 age groups.
Speaker 3:So what this said is mls can claim rights to a player that they have never trained, have never had in the club and have never spoken to, purely because the player lives in their territory and, vis-a-vis other MLS clubs, they can prevent that player from signing with another MLS club, even though they had nothing to do with the development of that player in any way, shape or form, which I mean. We can all imagine the reasons why, in theory, a businessman may want that. It is about as anti-player friendly as you can get. But on the contrast, then you go to the NWSL, who have now basically said hey, anyone and everyone is fair game for anyone. So it's almost more faith in developing a true scouting process that then has to find the right players and convince them to sign with you, rather than being able to capture players based on where they live.
Speaker 5:Other things that stood out to me were no maximum salary and then full free agency. So once a player's contract expires, that player's, that player's free to go go wherever. So my view of this is that it feels like a really exciting deal, super player friendly and on both sides. Really for fighting for that and for agreeing to it, if you're on the NWSL side of that. But I think they're also doing away with phasing out provided player housing for some years as part of compensation. And the no draft thing is wild right, because it's so ingrained in our culture. Having these drafts, I mean you got to tip your hat. It's a pretty groundbreaking from the perspective of sports in America. I mean it's a pretty groundbreaking agreement. I mean, have you seen, and ever seen, anything like that Christian in pro sports?
Speaker 3:No, I mean, you said it, the American sports mentality has these, just like you have, you know, a separate postseason that you don't really have in soccer anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 3:But it has this draft mentality that I get a lot of credit to the, the nwsl players for, for focusing on being player friendly.
Speaker 3:Like that's actually, if you combine these two topics this sort of uncertainty in college but with the ability now to invest kind of how you want as a college soccer program, and the freedom that comes with that, which is sort of inherent with this being an antitrust case. And then you talk about the NWSL, sort of throwing open the landscape and saying nobody's protected, which really what it was is protecting clubs, so they have a monopoly on players within a certain area. It's a very free market and to me it says, hey, let's compete, let's compete in development, let's compete in recruitment, let's compete in scouting and let's compete to see who's going to be the best, without guardrails of, hey, you guys get this territory and you guys get that territory, and these are rules of who you can find and when you can find them. That'll be very interesting to see. It probably also is designed to put NWSL on a fairer footing with international clubs in terms of finding talent as well, so that they can find it anywhere and at any time, instead of having rules that sort of restrict.
Speaker 1:And you're even seeing the flood. I mean this last transfer window. A ton of international players are coming in for these final 10 games of the NWSL, even before they got this thing done. So the wheels are already spinning on getting those international players.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know if the super league gets an assist for some of these changes as well, because they're kind of rules were a little bit more wide open, that might that might be a stretch. And then the other thing I thought about when I heard of it is like, hmm, god, I'd God, I'd probably rather live in LA than in this market. But then and another tip of the hat to the ECNL, quite frankly, because you guys have such great clubs everywhere across the country, it may not matter. There's going to be players that will be fine playing in North Carolina, fine playing in LA and probably even fine playing in Utah because you've got the talent there. Is that fair? Or are you guys worried about, like Louisville for instance, sometimes I worry about, are they going to be able to contend with some of these other venues under these new rules? And I guess that's a matter of is there enough players to go around?
Speaker 5:I think you're going to tell me there are I mean you would think that it will look a lot like if we use I mean, I'll apologize ahead of time for using a men's example to make an example for the women's game, but if you look at the Premier League or whatever, there are certainly clubs of different levels. There are clubs that have the money and have a lot of money and they spend a lot of money, and then there are clubs that are more, not as high up through the food chain and probably never going to win the league, but stay in the Premier League for years and years and function. Is that maybe where we're headed, since it's such a free market? I wouldn't put Racing Louisville in any particular bucket because I don't really know their wherewithal to spend money on their women's team, but you would think that investment from a financial perspective will equal success. That's what it seems like.
Speaker 3:And you can go on an MLS website and you can see what are the designated territories and some of them are. They're sort of tortured territory discretion.
Speaker 5:It's actually kind of laughable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and now, part of that's because I mean to your example, dane, if you're a club in LA or San Diego, you're in the biggest hotbed of talent in the country in terms of numbers and quality. And then you can go to other parts of the country where there are good players there. They're just nowhere near as many of them. It's not apples and oranges. And so one question would be how do you make it quote unquote, equal, carving out a territory? Or if you're saying, all right, how do I make the equivalent of LA? I mean, if you had to make the equivalent of LA, you probably got to take the Midwest, you know, and it doesn't make a lot of sense Right now. The other way to say is oh, there is no way to do that. So let's just open it up and you find your players wherever you find your players, using the relationships you have, the resources you have, the vision you have. If you believe in your ability to find players, develop players and put on a product, you probably want less restrictions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So summarize it. All three of you summarize what you think will come out of this. I mean, do you think it'll be stronger, bigger and better? Will there be some teams that fall by the wayside? Or is this onward and upward, with international players coming over, tv deal getting bigger and NWSL getting stronger at the right time?
Speaker 5:I mean I would chime in and say you would think anything like this makes it better. Competition and free market, to Christian's point, make the cream rise to the top. It'll be interesting to see where it goes financially. And maybe these smaller market clubs I mean, they certainly understand what they're getting into because they didn't do this without the owner's stamp of approval. So I think they probably all have a good idea of what they're getting themselves into. It will remain to be seen what will happen in these smaller markets. Will they be able to get the talent that they need to compete and do all the things they need to do to compete? You can't say it's anything but good for the players that are playing in the league or will play in the league. You would think it's just going to make it better, more competitive, which I think is a good thing, Ashley.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it's the best CBA that I've seen in American sports. I think it's the most player-friendly that we've ever seen. I think we already spoke about that. But, with that said, you're just going to make the league even better. The players are getting essentially everything they've ever wanted being a professional athlete, and now it's basically like we'll give you everything you want. Now just go fire on all cylinders and I think that this league is about to turn a corner of how much talent is in there. Um, I don't think there's going to be issues as far as like getting players and keeping players happy and this, that and the other thing. I think the nwsl is about to go from an A-league to an A-plus league, if they're not already an A-plus league, a-plus-plus league. I think it's going to be very, very fun to watch. I went to Alabama and we get different letters.
Speaker 3:Okay, roll tide. Sum it up, tristan. What do you think? I'll zoom out a little bit.
Speaker 3:I think in the short term, with uncertainty both boys and girls you may see a little slowing down in some ways of recruiting, at least on the margins. I mean the best players at the biggest schools, they're going to go as fast as ever. But where there may be uncertainty about roster size or other change, you may see people slowing down as the recruiting class gets beyond a couple of top players. I wouldn't be surprised to see a little slowdown there in the short term, which, by the way, may not be a bad thing. I think the players making decisions when they're getting older is better than players making decisions on recruitment when they're 15. But in the long term, I actually think this is going to make sports at a lot of levels better, because this is forcing decisions to be made that are going to be rewarded or punished in terms of you're either good at it or you're not, a lot faster.
Speaker 3:I think that's what drives improvement. We talk about it a lot internally, like minimum standards are important, but they just kind of they keep the the bad from being really bad. You want aspirational things, and when you have more freedom and less restriction to kind of invest in the way you want and the processes you want and the time you want, I think you're going to find people be more creative. So, even if you've got scarce resources as a men's college program you have less resources than you have you're going to find people who are really creative without using them and they're going to be better for it. And if you have more resources, you're going to find people that create new ways to invest that hasn't been done before to making the game better. So I'm going to take a positive long term with a little bit of gray in the short term as people hedge against some risk. But also I think that once, once some of the guardrails are put down here on what on uncertainties you'll see a rapid escalation.
Speaker 1:We're not done. When we return, it's Bracken's Brain Buster.
Speaker 2:From athletes just starting to turn heads to some of the best athletes to ever play their games, gatorade shows that they are the proven fuel of the best.
Speaker 5:For the athletes who give everything, nothing beats Gatorade the studied, tested and proven fuel of the ECNL Dean. It feels like it's time for my brain blister. Yeah, I love it. My brain is a little bit busted already when we started getting all these legal conversations. You know well above me, so like Christians in his wheelhouse with his lawyer thing that he does.
Speaker 3:Recovering.
Speaker 5:Yeah, my Bracken Brain Buster today is inspired by my experience over the last week. And my experience over the last week is last weekend it was beautiful here in Cincinnati Ohio, beautiful fall weather, nice 70s, 50s in the morning, great. Today it is 98 degrees here and I have to go watch my favorite band 98 degrees was, yeah, good band, good, catch on that. And I have to go watch my son. What sons play soccer on uh, on turf, which is going to be really excruciating. I want to ask what your favorite season is and why is it your favorite season? And this is a a tough one for Ashley because she lived in Florida and, as we know, they don't really have seasons there but, christian, you're in Milwaukee right now. You live in San Diego. You don't have a lot of seasons, but you're familiar with the seasons from all your time in Wisconsin. So I'm guessing that your answer is not going to be winter, but I'm going to let you go first today.
Speaker 3:All right, it's easy for me. I love the fall. I love the cool, crisp air of the fall, the colors of the leaves, and fall was always the time you know soccer starts up. So it was fresh season, high school or club soccer was the most important thing in your life and you were starting out new, with a new team and a new year and just all the memories associated with fall fresh start.
Speaker 1:Okay, love that, dean, what you got. My favorite season is the summer. I've got a wonderful pool. It becomes my office. I utilize it even while I'm working, and because of that, summer is my favorite season so are you saying you take business meetings in a pool, Dan?
Speaker 3:If that's the case, I'm seriously impressed.
Speaker 1:Close. It's pretty close. I definitely edit this podcast in the pool. I can tell you that.
Speaker 5:Wow, ashley, in the great state of Florida that has no seasons.
Speaker 4:I can tell you right now it's not summer. I'm going with Christian, I'm going fall. Sports are back, whether it's youth or college or pro. The weather's nice Like a good hoodie and shorts. Weather situation is like perfect. Leaves are changing. If you live in a place that has leaves, you see it on TV?
Speaker 5:Yeah, it looks beautiful on TV. Looks beautiful, I got to go winter. It looks beautiful, I got to go winter. And the only reason is because just my family and I we love skiing. Getting out there and ripping it up is our favorite pastime, so I always look forward to that part of winter.
Speaker 3:You're getting a little old Doug, so I wouldn't rip it up so much.
Speaker 5:Stay on the bunny hills, stay on the green, stay on the green runs. I mean, my ripping it up is a lot different than my kids ripping that, I hope. In my mind I look like I'm crushing it out there, but I'm sure I'm sure I'm not you're like peekaboo street in your mind, but really you're like big wide s turn, sort of thing yeah, I don't know if I would have gone peekaboo street. That's a good reference. It's a pretty uh I know things.
Speaker 4:sometimes guys Watch out.
Speaker 1:You do.
Speaker 5:All right, so that's all I got today, Brought a little, hopefully levity to our deep conversation about things that are hard to understand.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap for Episode 101. Of course, I want to thank Christian, doug and Ashley. Also thanks to Colin Thrash, our producer, and thanks to all of you, our members of the ECNL. I'm Dean Linke.
Speaker 6:We'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast. No-transcript.