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I think about it all the time when I finished my career in the early 2000s, and I remember my dad's generation, he ended in 1990, which is when I was just getting started, and the money was different. Dad weighed 19 years, and his last year he made like a one nine, and that was a lot of money back then. Very much so. And then him getting to see the fruits of what I got to make, and I can't complain at all. No. But I look at today's players, and they look like whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, you even go to college. You go to the colleges, these guys are making a killing. You know, I was just checking on, you know, the line at Florida State, the four guys that have started climbing at Florida State, we paid them $4 million. Really? Kid, there's so much money flying around in that NIL stuff, it's ridiculous, and I'm going to tell you what's happening to that game, because I've seen it. There's no glue anymore in college sports. It's all about the money. You're going to go out, they don't see. This is my, I love the fact that these kids are getting paid, and I think they should be getting paid. But the only problem with this is now in the college ranks is there's no camaraderie. We have no glue. We go out, we don't have, the coaches aren't, they're not teaching, or they're not coaching to raise up some kids from the bottom, to raise them up to be great players. All you got to do is go on and port on pickle. So that's where you run into the problem at, because those guys aren't the guys that, you know, you raised it up from freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors, you're going to get a paid play guy. You want to get paid play? I mean, let's keep it real. So the coaches, I talked to Deon one time. Deon was saying that he doesn't have time right now to coach kids up right now. He doesn't have time because the colleges are demanding them to what? When? So it ain't about the process where we were coming up, playing in the game where, you know, we came from the bottom and we raised ourselves up to the top. Right now it's to the top. You know, when I was coming out of school, all the seniors and high schools were the ones that were getting the scholarships to go play in college, whether it was baseball, football, basketball, whatever. That's over, over. The kids that are coming out of high school, they're getting preferred walk on it. They're not getting scholarships. And that's, you know, one or two, three, four top players in the nation. Yeah, you're going to get it. But the good players that are coming out of high school going to college, they're preferred walk-ons. And it's crazy because all the money are going into the portal. You know, I just had Bo Jackson on it. I asked him, I said, "Bo, what if, what if you were playing college today?" And he just started, he took a, he leaned back in his seat and he, he went, "Whoa," he goes, "You know what, Booney?" He goes, "I'd have probably never gone pro." Because I'm a free agent every year at the college level. And I yelled, "The NIL deals he would have made would have been, would have been." I remember taking him in, then I'm going to kill him. And I asked, you know, I, I, I agree with you. I, I think, because I went to USC. Right. By the way, for those of you watching the Bread Boom podcast, Cecil has a son playing at Florida State. And so he's got a, you know, a little, he probably, you probably keep a little sharper eye on what's going on. I went to, I went to USC and I remember going to that Colosseum. As a student, as a baseball player, going to the football game every Saturday. And they're packing at 70,000 people. Yeah. And they're, it's a big time moneymaker. And I thought, you know, we had our stipend checks and you get $685 once a month. That's what you've got. I got 220. Right. And I'm, and I remember Rodney Pete's, our quarterback, then Todd Marinovich is our quarterback. Back in the day, we were good. We won two rolls. When I was there. I'm a California boy. You know, I know. And I'm thinking these guys shouldn't have to struggle. I'm not saying make a millionaires, but what they're bringing to the table, how much revenue they're creating with their product on the field, wouldn't it be nice to make it a little more comfortable for the student athlete. So I've been thinking about that ever since 1988. Right. Now it's get to a point like you said, maybe it went the other way a little too much because now you've got rapid free agency. And I don't think when you go to college, I don't think every year you just think, oh, I need to make more money. So I'm going to go to the portal. I'm going to go here. And the next year I'm going to go here. I think I don't know. I don't know what the right answer is. You're a little more close to it than I am. I don't know what the right answer is. I like the guys being able to make money, but I love it. No, where's the where's the sweet spot? Yeah, I love that part, but the part I'm talking about is if I'm, if I'm under that much pressure as a coach, that I have to kind of swallow what I believed in my whole career is like bringing them kids up and bringing them kids like Essie did back in the day. Essie had, I mean, they were stacked from year to year to year and all those guys came from within, right? Right. You didn't have guys been able to just, you know, hey, I'm in the portal, come get me anybody. We got a quarter back now. This is the third time. I mean, he went to, he was at Clemson. He was at Oregon State. Now he's with us. And what I'm saying is the team we had last year had such a group until that debacle of, you know, who was going to go play for the national championship and once that hit everybody left and you can see as our draft of our team, we had a lot of guys going in and fell, but what I'm saying is this team, so you got eight new starters on the defense that just got here. How do you put that team together and have that same glue that you had with versus and all these guys that we had and then you got two months to put that team together. There's no way you're going to get that camaraderie. I got to trust that guy next to me. I always say that when I was playing that guy that played next to me, Lou, Lou Whitaker, I trusted that guy with everything, right? Right. Right. That was my teammate. I knew what he was going to do. He knew what I was going to do in the batter's box on the field playing defense. So what I'm saying is, Brett, I think this is going to be a learning experience for us at Florida State now that those guys that we had were some of those guys that have been at the university for four and five years because the NIL hadn't started yet. Now it's a pre-for-all where we're just going to go out and try to get the best talent. We're going to let a couple of guys prefer walk-ons come on and we're just going to deal with it on a yearly basis. I don't think that's what they were looking for. I don't think that's what college sports is looking for. I think they're going to make some adjustments to what they're doing with the NIL, but I think it's going to help because me personally, I'm a loyal person and I told my son this. He was talking to me about this. He had places. I said, "Son, listen. You got to have some laws somewhere, dude. It can't just be a free-for-all where every year the guys got a chance to get an important money." You got to have some loyalty because I'm saying if you get an opportunity to graduate from a university like a Florida State or Michigan or USC, a major college and you can stay there for the whole four seasons, it's going to be more enough because matter of fact, it doesn't even matter if you go and play in the NFL. What matters is that alumni is going to make sure that you're taking care of. At the end of the day, yeah, you're going to make yourself a little money in the NIL deal in college, but I don't think it's worth you traveling all over the damn country to get the money. Then at the end of the day, you have no loyalty. It's a weird thing for me right now. I did get the fact, like you said, that they're making the money, but I just don't. You don't know where, like you said, where that sweet spot is going to be and they're going to have to figure that out because I'm just telling you, just pay the play in college football or in college sports and all this. It's not a good thing. It doesn't give me, I mean, it's almost like the professional level for me right now where I just told you want to watch it. I think of it as the players now, it enables them to kind of hold the university and the coach hostage and especially if they're a real good player. It's kind of like, oh, if you don't do everything I like, I don't like how I'm treated, I'll just go to another one and everybody's going to want me because of my talent level and you got guys moving back and forth, you're right, it doesn't make any sense. You never have a chance to build a real team because you don't know who's coming to go on a yearly basis as a head coach. How much do I want to pour into this young kid who I think is going to leave me after one year? So, like you said, it's almost like an all-star game, like let's get everybody together for the all-star, you know, when you go to an all-star game, we're not doing any drills. We don't have a workout. It's kind of, it's a performance and we've got all this talent in, we've got all this talent in the room, let's go get them, let's go win tonight and then now we play against each other for the rest of the year.
