0:09
This is The GPL Podcast, part of the Pulltab Sports family.
0:15
Leo, how are you recruiting?
0:16
I mean, you, I mean.
0:18
My recruiting, I probably had 76 D1 offers.
0:26
The thing is, if I drink whiskey, I will not be able to function.
0:30
Perfect, let's do it.
0:33
It's happened before.
0:37
Oh boy, did you make a mistake.
0:40
I love it.
0:41
And so, I had to train for this marathon.
0:45
Make sure you stay awake for the game to finally begin.
0:49
Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe.
1:03
Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast.
1:07
Summer 2025 version, Veegs.
1:10
We did this the last couple of years.
1:12
We did that show for Mary Ucci, and then last year we did a show.
1:17
Now we're just going to have a summer show.
1:20
That's right.
1:20
I mean, there's a changing landscape in college athletics, and hockey is a part of it.
1:26
I mean, all the CHL commitments this summer and the money being talked about, times are changing.
1:33
$700,000 being talked about?
1:36
Maybe.
1:36
We'll see someday.
1:37
Maybe.
1:38
Maybe not.
1:39
Who knows if it's true, huh?
1:41
Exactly.
1:43
Well, we've been kind of talking back and forth with Nick Angell for quite some time weeks about, you know, he's been saying kind of hinting, hey, I want to create a collective.
1:52
We need to do something from the players.
1:54
So we thought we'd have them on along with a 20 year GPL-er, Eric Brever.
1:59
So let's bring him in.
2:01
Nick Angell, Eric Brever.
2:03
Hi, guys.
2:05
Thanks for joining the show again.
2:08
Great to be here.
2:09
Absolutely.
2:10
Thanks for having us.
2:11
Eric, we've had you on, I think you've been on overtime once or twice, I think.
2:15
Talking to all this legal stuff.
2:18
So it's NIL.
2:23
It's kind of a crazy thing that you and Nick are dealing with.
2:30
Yeah, it's a new world and obviously it's fast changing stuff.
2:35
Nick and I connected here, talking Gopher Hockey and Collective.
2:39
I've had experience teaching the subject at St.
2:42
Cloud State as adjunct faculty.
2:43
So I'm close to it and I'm keep up to date with it and feel pretty comfortable and confident in talking everybody through it.
2:49
So I think it's probably worthwhile to bring it to the Gopher masses here.
2:53
And I'm glad you're around to help Nick kind of navigate this because there's been a lot of a lot of crazies, Nick.
3:03
But first, what was your thought?
3:05
What was your reasoning in saying we need just a Gopher Hockey NIL?
3:12
I mean, I think just talking with Eric and you're kind of part of this community, and I think everybody, whether you're a player, you're a fan, if you're on the ice or you're up in the stands, everybody is just kind of bleeding maroon and gold.
3:27
And you're seeing this landscape change, and you're concerned that are we changing fast enough?
3:33
Are we evolving?
3:34
And I felt like we needed to evolve quicker.
3:38
You started seeing things happen, as far as kids signing, getting deals, getting collective offers.
3:47
The landscape was just changing, and I felt like, okay, either we need to evolve or you can ask the T-Rex how evolution worked for him.
3:56
So we needed to move forward with something or at least get the wheels moving, because by the time you think, oh, wow, the landscape has changed, if you have already not started to adapt, if not already adapted, it's going to be a lot more difficult to get that ball rolling.
4:13
What you're seeing now is schools really starting to adapt this and use it to their advantage, and that's something I think we have a natural in with being a big market.
4:24
So it was pretty important to connect with people outside of my circle, and that's where Eric and I connected.
4:31
It was like, hey, it's a legal landscape, kind of a legal money field, and we want to do this the right way, and we want to do it well.
4:41
That helps the players and works with the existing collectives that are out there as well as the athletic department.
4:48
So a couple of months ago, maybe a little longer ago, you created Golden Helmet Collective.
4:55
Tell us about it.
4:58
That was just kind of our first start, right?
5:00
You need a name.
5:01
So just thinking, I think it's pretty self-explanatory.
5:06
It was just like, okay, let's get the ball rolling here.
5:09
Let's start out with a logo.
5:11
And then once we've kind of built this entity, as the landscape starts to change, whether it's revenue sharing, it's deals, it's however it's going to move, we can be pretty fluid in how we adapt to the evolving situation.
5:30
So, okay, let's get an LLC, let's get the logo, let's start building something and then be very fluid in how we can adapt to this changing landscape that has kind of, we thought we had a pretty good handle on it, and then we get thrown a curve ball, and then they say, okay, no, you can't throw curve balls anymore.
5:48
So, it's been pretty wild, where we thought, geez, hey, we could probably be ready to launch in like a week if we had to.
5:57
And then NCAA comes out with some different rulings, and then it gets a little more interesting, and that's where Eric comes in and says, okay, here's what's happening, here's the nuances of it.
6:14
There's certainly a lot of changes out there, but the biggest thing was to get something started.
6:18
And on that point, if I can jump in on that, we had a lot of time to sit and think about what we want this to look like.
6:24
And at a base level, we want this really to go to the student athletes themselves.
6:28
We want this to go to the players, whatever we do.
6:30
We want them to be in control.
6:31
We don't want this to be a profit center where Nick or myself or anybody else is earning anything.
6:37
We really want this to be focused on really supporting the program.
6:41
So that's always been a benchmark.
6:42
And all the structures we've created have been with that in mind.
6:45
So, Vegs, hold on.
6:48
One thing I would go ahead and real quick, and we didn't want to make some differences where to kind of add on what Eric just said.
6:57
We wanted to be unique and we wanted it to be player driven, fan driven and be totally transparent.
7:05
And I think one thing that really stepped us apart and what makes people excited, whether they're fans, supporters, players, or staff, is nobody takes a salary.
7:16
Nobody makes a dollar from this and certainly we'll have some expenses, websites don't build themselves, payment processing, et cetera, marketing.
7:24
But nobody is taking a salary and 100% of the net revenue will go to these kids.
7:30
And I think when people realize like, wow, these are just gopher people doing the best thing that they can for gopher hockey because they know that it's not just the M on the sweater, the banners and the stands, it's, this is part of our community and it shapes who we are as people, as Northlanders here, as Minnesotans.
7:50
So that was kind of the impetus to start something really holistic that benefits those players without any like outside influences.
8:05
Veegs, I was going to say, you know, we've seen NIL football in basketball, but now really the last year, year and a half, it's creeping in to college hockey.
8:18
And this year, it sounds like it's just all of a sudden just gone right up.
8:24
Yeah, as you know, Eric and Nick were talking about it takes a little bit of time to form these collectives, go through all the steps and the processes to get them started.
8:34
And then the fundraising money has to come in.
8:36
And I think for a lot of institutions, it took a year or two for them to start getting the wheels turning.
8:43
And now you're seeing the impact across college hockey.
8:45
The schools that were really aggressive in setting up these groups are now showing the fruits of their rewards with the commitments they're getting, the transfers they're getting, and they're just able to push a lever that's attractive to some of these hockey players to get a little bit more than just room and board and tuition type stuff.
9:06
Yeah, it's been a crazy summer because you had NIL, you have Canadian juniors players coming in.
9:13
But Eric, where does this all start?
9:16
You know, I see a couple notes you left for me about the whole background about how all of this NIL stuff started.
9:23
Can you give us a basis of where this is all coming from?
9:27
Yeah, how long we got, but yeah, let's do it.
9:29
Yeah, at a space level, we have to remember what the NCAA has historically been and where it's going as a result of some of the decisions that were made within the last 20, 30 years with regard to media decisions specifically.
9:43
So you think of the classical NCAA 50 years ago, and the whole idea was this idea of amateur athletics, right?
9:50
That college athletes should be student athletes and Olympians with the overall aspect of that amateur component.
9:59
So the NCAA over time built up all these structures to protect against that.
10:05
You can't have it an agent, you can't have any professional type earnings that are leading toward your sports itself.
10:15
So that's the starting spot with all of it.
10:17
But at the same time, you had schools that were looking and entering into these very big dollar media contracts and the like, to broadcast football games and the like.
10:29
The classic example of this actually was a college basketball game, college basketball video game that EA Sports would sponsor itself.
10:39
The guy by the name of Ed O'Bannon, who played for UCLA in the late 1990s.
10:43
I remember him.
10:44
He went over to his buddy's house one day.
10:47
And there's a great picture in what I sent you, Veegs, if you can pull it up, of Ed O'Bannon realistically playing for UCLA.
10:56
And then also Ed O'Bannon, or UCLA number 31, playing in this college basketball game.
11:06
And when you look at it, they're identical to one another.
11:09
They're the same height, same weight.
11:12
They look exactly the same, except the one on the left is actually Ed O'Bannon, the one on the right is UCLA number 31.
11:20
And Ed O'Bannon looks and says, hey, wait a minute here, this isn't fair.
11:24
They're using essentially what is me in this video game, and I'm not getting compensated.
11:30
So what do you think Ed O'Bannon does?
11:33
He runs the lawyer and sues, like any good red-blooded American would.
11:38
So he goes to the lawyer, and starts this massive lawsuit suing everybody under the sun you can think of, the NCAA, UCLA, the PAC, and whatever it would be, nine PAC, ten conference at the time, PAC 12 now.
11:52
Sues everybody under the sun, which leads to about five years of litigation plus, and then even more thereafter.
12:00
Claudia Wilkin, who is the judge who actually just did this most recent ruling which we'll get to in a little bit, I'm sure, came down with a really well-worded decision to oversee or kind of govern this particular result.
12:14
And basically what it came down to is that, first, the NCAA is not God.
12:19
It doesn't have this antitrust exemption in the marketplace, which was later affirmed by the Supreme Court in a different case.
12:24
It really is not important in this whole NIL space, but the Supreme Court ruled on it, so therefore we have to think of it.
12:31
But the NCAA basically needs to stay in its lane.
12:34
In other words, it can conduct extracurricular activities, it conducts sports itself, but it can't regulate things outside of the sport that you're talking about.
12:45
In other words, student athlete free time is student athlete free time.
12:48
And if student athletes want to do things in their free time that's not associated with the sport directly, the NCAA cannot govern that.
12:56
Okay, and when you think about that, it's kind of obvious, but at the same level, you know, the NCAA for years have built all these structures to regulate amateurism.
13:05
Oh boy, have they.
13:07
How do you now separate those two?
13:10
Right?
13:11
So this Claudia Wilkin decision, Judge Wilkin decision came down saying, the NCAA has to stay in its lane, can regulate the games and eligibility and stuff related to the actual activities itself of a sport.
13:24
But anything outside of that, the NCAA cannot really do.
13:28
So what it meant is that, for example, student athletes can have agents or advisors to assist them in understanding how this is supposed to fit together.
13:37
Well, the NCAA previously said, that's an absolute no, no, we can't do that.
13:41
But this decision says, no, it has to be allowed.
13:44
But the same, in the same vein, the decision also said the NCAA can still restrict compensation for playing the sport itself.
13:54
And the question among sort of legal scholars in this is, how do you separate the two?
13:59
Because really what we're talking about here is brands, right?
14:02
A student-athlete's brand.
14:04
You think of Michael Jordan and the Jumpman, Nike logo and the like.
14:09
The good example that I have was Mohammed Ibrahim for the University of Minnesota football team.
14:13
He was spotted on the sideline of one game after he's running for another 100 yards in that particular game, eating at Gushers.
14:21
Within a day or so, they look and say, well, hey, we're giving you a sponsorship, General Mills, for Mohammed Ibrahim because he apparently likes Gushers.
14:32
Right?
14:33
But you know, you could also look at that and say, hey, there it is.
14:37
Yes, there it is.
14:38
But you could also look at that and say, hey, you know, is this a good way that we could give him more than just a sponsorship by General Mills?
14:46
What if General Mills says, why don't we give you 3 million for that sponsorship?
14:50
Right?
14:51
Not just funneling you an actual cost of being a spokesperson, but we'll give you lots and lots of money for that.
14:58
So would that be offered to the same, say, long snapper on the Gopher football team or the bullpen catcher on the Gopher baseball team?
15:07
Probably not.
15:08
But, you know, it's the leading rusher at school history.
15:11
Yeah, you know, they would get some of that type of compensation.
15:15
So you found this really difficult situation going back and forth where the NCAA says, hey, we can't do compensation for performance on the field.
15:25
But really, those who are performing well on the field have better brand recognition.
15:30
And as a result, they get compensated better.
15:37
This is a mess.
15:38
Well, I remember back when Jeremy Bloom was an Olympic skier at Colorado, and he started playing football.
15:44
And it's very common for the Olympic skiers to be getting all this compensation from skiing companies and brands and equipment.
15:53
But then when he stepped on the football field, it was a huge question, how is this going to be legal?
15:59
And the NCAA just made it up as they went along, and they let him continue to have his skiing endorsements and let him play football.
16:06
And he eventually got drafted in the NFL and got to try out, I think, with Philadelphia Eagles for a little bit.
16:12
But this has been around college athletics for a long time.
16:15
And it's just a couple legal rulings here and there, and now it's legal.
16:22
Yeah, so Pandora's Box basically got opened by that, right?
16:25
So as a result, schools who had some well-heeled owners could basically say, hey, we're going to hire so-and-so as our spokesperson, and therefore we're just compensating them directly for it.
16:38
Okay, now a couple notes with this.
16:40
What's actually being sold here is the brand, right?
16:43
The student athletes and their name, their image, the likeness of this.
16:47
Think of Ed O'Bannon in the video game, right?
16:49
Total brand of Ed O'Bannon and what he has to sell as a student athlete.
16:54
But when you roll that down itself, what does that look like in the marketplace?
17:01
A good example of this is, what's their market reach on Instagram?
17:06
It's completely a market shifter from what we've previously had because things like Livy Dunn blow the market open, right?
17:14
Prior to this particular ruling in O'Bannon, Livy Dunn would have probably been kind of an average influencer, so to speak.
17:21
But as a student athlete at LSU and a gymnast who, you know, does a lot of work on Instagram, well, suddenly it's, whoa, changes the whole game, changes the whole focus on women's athletics.
17:33
I'm not going to say for good or bad, but it just changed the market and how we look at some of these sports overnight.
17:40
Well, you did put a graphic together.
17:42
Let me show this.
17:43
The top 10 NIL athletes, Chidora Sanders obviously had a CU, and of course Travis Hunter was football, but there's that Libby Dunn, like you just mentioned.
17:54
Yeah.
17:54
Holy buckets.
17:55
That's a lot of money.
17:56
Yeah, you know, and you look at somebody like that and you say, well, she's got a market reach, you know, in her Instagram.
18:02
If she puts out a post advertising for a particular brand, it's going to be seen by a lot of people.
18:08
But, you know, you look at Shudder Sanders and Travis Hunter, for example, at Colorado.
18:12
You know, Sanders, of course, having the family name that he has.
18:16
But, you know, some of that's just naked compensation that's going to these student athletes.
18:21
Hooper Flagg, you know, Arch Manning, Kim Ward.
18:23
You know, there's just some naked money that's going right to these individuals, really to play for their particular schools itself.
18:32
But again, pay for play is not legal, even under the new rules of the NCAA that were provided at the time.
18:38
So they were kind of masked as compensation through this NIL type way.
18:45
And Nick, I believe Coach Wug put at least a couple hundred dollars under a hat for you, didn't he, at least once?
18:51
Or is it just, you know, showing up in his tighty whitey's?
18:55
Yeah, my recruiting experience was a little different.
19:00
Like I just really wanted to come there.
19:02
There was no money getting exchanged anywhere for me.
19:07
Yeah, so no, it was, it was nothing.
19:10
We had nothing like that.
19:11
And, you know, and right or wrong, it kind of is what it is now.
19:17
Well, what did a scholarship include for you?
19:21
Yeah, so like what were you paying or what was you doing for you?
19:25
And over the years, what did your family still have to come up with?
19:28
Yeah, so it was books, tuition.
19:31
You know, those are just obviously all your books, all your classes.
19:36
And then they gave you a stipend if you wanted to live in the dorm.
19:40
And then your food as well.
19:42
And then if you wanted to live off campus, they gave you a check for what that dorm and food money was worth.
19:52
And then if you wanted to live in a really fancy place, you had to pick up the difference.
19:57
If you wanted to live in a cardboard box, you could probably pocket a little bit extra cash.
20:02
But it was not very glamorous.
20:07
I think everybody thinks it's just so glamorous.
20:10
I sold cars at Denny Hecker Volkswagen in Inver Grove Heights in the off season.
20:17
And then I worked at Grandma's Restaurant and Saloon as well in the off season, just tried to make as much money as I could.
20:24
So I had a little bit of fun money to play with, like a normal college student athlete, because I didn't want to lean on my parents or take a student loan out.
20:35
Veegs, I think I met you at Grandma's.
20:37
It might have been the first time I met you.
20:39
I mean, they used to have quarter beers there.
20:40
It was quite the pre-inflation way to have a few bevies.
20:44
It was, I used to do the bartending, bar back and DJ.
20:49
So it was, I can still remember it.
20:51
I did the advertising.
20:52
It was 75 Cent Mik, Miklet Bottles, every Thursday, Friday night at Grandma's Restaurant Saloon, 18th Party, 21 to Drink, come on down.
20:58
So that was another life for me.
21:00
But that was my summer job.
21:01
And I worked my buns off so that I had money.
21:04
And, you know, it was interesting.
21:06
You see a lot of these kids that come from very meager places, like very kind of inner city kids.
21:14
And I remember I asked one of the guys and I said, man, you're always just wearing all these like Daffy Duck and Donald Duck t-shirts.
21:21
Are you just a big Disney fan?
21:22
He said, no, my mom works at one of the Orlando studios or something like that.
21:26
And that was the clothes he had.
21:27
It was either that or the team issued gear.
21:30
And I remember it was sad because like guys didn't wanna be on a group project with them.
21:37
Because if you had to buy poster board and markers and stuff like that, there was nothing for you for that in that scholarship.
21:45
So you needed that extra money.
21:47
And it's like, I mean, this guy is an amazing talent.
21:49
So I absolutely understand where these guys are coming from.
21:54
So, Eric, where does this leave us with collectives themselves?
22:00
Well, yeah, and the collectives are sort of a grassroots way of kind of supporting this NIL movement, was sort of their idea in place.
22:07
And you had a bunch of them starting up.
22:10
Many schools had many different collectives, all with competing interests.
22:13
Most schools now have kind of whittled down to one main collective to oversee things.
22:19
And at a base level, the idea was simple, was to get money from the community around it to support student athletes in a collective way.
22:28
So the thinking being, if the money can be raised by a lot of different people and put into one pool, it can benefit student athletes all potentially equally.
22:38
That was the original thought, but within a very short period of time, say a matter of months, collective started creating some separate pots of money that could be used to incentivize, say, potential recruits to come to their school versus another school.
22:53
Originally, collectives were not allowed to contact a prospective student athlete and say, hey, come to Minnesota instead of Michigan State.
23:02
We'll give you this amount.
23:03
Well, within two months after the initial rules were brought out, court cases said, no, NCAA can't have that rule.
23:13
That's impeding the marketplace from this brand stuff again, again, antitrust issue.
23:19
As a result, that allowed for collectives to start the process of recruiting on behalf of schools.
23:24
Suddenly, these well-heeled donors could put money into a collective to go to a student athlete and therefore, incentivize the student athlete to come to that particular school itself.
23:36
That's how the collectives came to be.
23:38
Up until, say, about two months ago, that's really the way the world worked.
23:43
So you see a guy like, I'll use McKenna at Penn State, and this is a little bit special because this happened after this deadline piece, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a second.
23:52
But, you know, over the last year to two years, you were seeing these collectives as the ones, the fundraisers, to say, come here, and this is what it's worth for you to be compensated for this.
24:04
Okay?
24:04
Now, one other note before we go any further with this, all of these monies that are being received with these collectives, for this brand recognition is taxable income to these student athletes.
24:15
In contrast to Nick talking about his scholarship, scholarships are generally not taxable.
24:21
So a student athlete coming, getting scholarship monies, you're not paying any income tax on that accordingly.
24:27
But when you sell your name, image, and likeness and your brand, any income you receive is taxable to you, okay?
24:34
Now, for US citizens, it's not a huge deal.
24:38
You understand that piece.
24:39
But most foreign students are here on student visas.
24:42
As a result, that restricts you from earning money while on the student visa in the United States.
24:49
So that plays a role in terms of what an NIL collective could do to say, a Swedish student playing hockey for the University of Minnesota, or a Canadian student coming to the United States to play hockey as well.
25:01
They wouldn't be necessarily able to earn NIL dollars directly within the United States for those activities.
25:07
So that means a collective would have to find work in Canada to be able to leverage that for the Canadian student or Sweden, for example, for a Swedish student.
25:17
A question here on this.
25:21
Now that we have the revenue share, also money in the waters, is that one way a school could pay a Canadian player money out of the revenue share pot that could go to them and then the collective money that was maybe intended for that player could go somewhere else to an American player?
25:38
Well, maybe.
25:39
Let's get back to what that revenue share is about here.
25:42
So that revenue share is actually derived from something called, we know in the business, so to speak, as the house settlement.
25:50
And the house was actually the name of a student athlete, a swimmer, I don't remember where school is at Oregon, I think, that developed a class action lawsuit among student athletes saying, hey, wait a minute, I could have made money when I was a student athlete, but these rules prevented me from doing so.
26:07
So I want a piece of that pie that I could have made.
26:10
So that led to more litigation, a class action lawsuit involving all of the former NCAA players over the last, however, many years saying, we want a piece of the pie now that the NIL is now legal in the NCAA.
26:25
That was settled among the Power 5 conferences, and it led to these big terms you'll see on the screen here.
26:33
The first is that it allowed for schools to have roughly what called a salary cap.
26:38
Each year, they can directly make NIL payments to the tune of about $21 or $20.5 million annually.
26:46
That amount is going to be subject to some degree of variability based on how much Power 5 conferences take in as annual revenue itself.
26:54
Figure about a $21 million salary cap for our purposes here.
26:58
It also allows for schools to eliminate scholarship restrictions.
27:03
Anybody on a roster couldn't, in theory, be on a scholarship.
27:07
But they also put caps on the number of roster spots.
27:10
That's been some concern because it could eliminate walk-on players, for example.
27:15
But to avoid that restriction of walk-on players, they put an initial restriction saying the first $2.5 million of new scholarships that a school would create to bring, say, the current 18 up for hockey up to, say, 25, 26 for the new cap.
27:32
If you added eight scholarships, the cost of that goes against your $21 million salary cap as an institution, which can really change how you might look at that are adding scholarships in some sports, at least initially, like the University of Minnesota.
27:47
Because if you got only $21 million for NIL dollars, only $21 million for NIL dollars, if I lose two and a half to give new scholarships, well, I won't have as much to sweeten the pot for a better player perhaps.
28:01
The South Settlement also has a trust fund pool.
28:04
Over the next 10 years, power conferences in the NCAA are going to put $2 billion into this trust fund to be paid out to former athletes.
28:13
Then it sets up an arbitration plan to oversee this whole regime that they're looking at.
28:19
Finally, it allows for these collectives in theory to still do exist, and businesses can still contract with players directly as third-party NIL deals.
28:30
But any NIL deal going forward has to go through an automated system overseen by the consulting firm Deloitte called NILgo, to oversee and make sure that this is actually a legitimate NIL deal and not just naked pay-for-play.
28:48
So there's a lot that went on in this particular lawsuit.
28:52
That's kind of led to some of the confusion over the summer, particularly here, as you see on the screen, because in July or early July of this year, and Nick and I had met with folks at the University of Minnesota, we've met with some of the folks at Dinky Hound Athletes, and we were really excited to kind of start laying this out and building the framework.
29:09
And then in early July, the NCAA says, hey, wait a minute, any prospective third-party NIL deal, which like Golden Helmet Collective would be looking toward, has to have a production of a profit.
29:23
And we're like, wait a minute here.
29:25
We're trying to do this really for full transparency.
29:28
We don't want to make a profit off of this.
29:31
We want to benefit student athletes.
29:34
So this essentially outlaws what we're looking to do.
29:36
And most NIL collectives around the country were outlawed from doing what they were currently doing.
29:42
So that backlash lasted about three to four weeks.
29:45
And they hurriedly create a new guidance, basically saying the activity itself has to be for the production of profit, not necessarily the entity that's talking about it.
29:56
So in other words-
29:56
So is it a bunch of people just got together and said, hold on a second, we've already got so much in place here.
30:01
This really messes it up?
30:04
Kinda.
30:04
That's sort of the backlash of, hey, you know, we like this.
30:08
Some of this is really not a bad deal necessarily, provided that it's just not naked compensation for pay for play.
30:14
What's the problem here?
30:16
You know, in essence, this NIL Go system, this house lawsuit, it was trying to be as close to a collective bargaining agreement that you might see in, say, the NHL or in the NFL.
30:29
You know, there's the players union and there's the ownership and they get together and they create these contracts called collective bargaining agreements, right?
30:37
So that's essentially what's happening here.
30:38
But the issue is that we don't want student athletes necessarily to be employees because that entails worker's compensation.
30:46
It employs all sorts of overtime restrictions and compensation, minimum wage laws and I mean, whoa, all sorts of issues get brought into that piece.
30:58
So how do we create a collective bargaining agreement without having a union of employees and management, which would be the universities getting together and saying, this is how we're going to conduct this stuff.
31:12
This is as close as we can get to making this stuff happen, is this house lawsuit settlement.
31:18
So that's where this comes from.
31:20
And again, Judge Wilkin, Claudia Wilkin again, was responsible for overseeing this.
31:26
And she went through this class action lawsuit.
31:29
She initially rejected or did not approve the initial settlement.
31:34
She finally did approve it based on some roster cap aspects and making sure student athletes that were going to otherwise be cut because of these roster limitations could still find other places to play.
31:46
Not really important for our purposes, but basically, this went through a lot of legal scrutiny to get to this point and create this framework of a collective bargaining agreement that's just not quite a collective bargaining agreement.
32:02
I just remember getting a phone call from you, Nick, in early July, saying, look what I just found out, blah, blah, blah.
32:10
I'm like, 10 minutes and I'll say, Brever's calling, got to go.
32:15
Yeah, it was a super concern.
32:19
Yeah, I think it was a shock not only for us, and I think we were fortunate that we really hadn't launched.
32:26
People had heard some rumblings, GopherPuckLive might have shared a story and a little website.
32:33
Maybe.
32:35
But we really hadn't launched, and for a lot of the collectives that were already out there, that were established just saying, hey, this is what we're doing, that ruling basically said, you're out of business.
32:47
It was an opportunity for us to just maybe pump the brakes and see how we can evolve into this landscape.
32:55
Because we know that if you look at, obviously we're talking about hockey right now, but if you look at football and basketball, these collectives from Alabama, Texas, some of the SEC, ACC, etc.
33:09
There are some incredibly powerful collectives out there.
33:14
Eric and I just sat back and chatted and we're like, all right, let's let them hash this out.
33:21
We think that maybe they might have overstepped a little bit, and we're going to just hold our cards closer to our chest and just let this play out.
33:30
Now, it seems like they've come to some resolution where fans are able to contribute to be part of an organization, help fund the players, help fund the teams, and collectives are able to be part of that.
33:46
But even when I was texting with you and talking with you, you're like, hold on, what's happening?
33:52
I'm like, yeah, this is breaking news right now.
33:56
Yeah.
33:57
The key aspect now in all these activities is a student-athlete has to do something to get compensated for it.
34:03
So gone are the days where a student-athlete could just be nakedly compensated saying, oh, you're our spokesperson, wink, wink, nod, nod.
34:11
Now, they're going to actually look and say, what does that entail?
34:13
How many times do you have to appear to be that spokesperson?
34:16
Where do you have to appear?
34:17
What do you have to dress in?
34:20
All of those things go into that particular aspect, and this NIL Go system will evaluate and say, is that market price?
34:28
So that way, you don't have the backup quarterback at Texas making a million dollars a year to sit in the sidelines.
34:35
You actually have to say, I'm going to be making X number of appearances, signing this many autographs and conducting these many clinics or camps to be able to justify the money that you're making from the NIL monies.
34:47
So I like to say, gone are the days of the big NIL dollars, at least short-term wise.
34:53
There's a lot of plaintiffs' attorneys that probably disagree with me saying, hey, that's not legal, they can't do this.
34:58
But I kind of think it might be, based on what I know in the antitrust rules and this class action settlement.
35:06
But for at least the interim or the short-term, right now, you're not going to see the big dollars in the next cycle.
35:13
That being said, this house lawsuit settlement came into effect on July 1st of this year.
35:19
Everybody knew it was coming into effect around July 1st of this year.
35:23
So everybody started front-loading deals for this coming school year, getting paid out prior to July 1st, locking it in so they can actually have no salary cap whatsoever.
35:35
And we're just kind of working through this for this next school year.
35:38
But next year, next summer, you'll have a salary cap, you'll have some restrictions with it.
35:44
And the big NIL dollars are going to have to be justified, you know, with actual what we call activations.
35:49
They have to actually perform to be able to get this compensation.
35:53
So VX, part of this is 20.5 million for the U to spend.
35:59
A huge bulk of it's going to go to football.
36:02
Another large bucket is going to go to basketball, men's and women's and volleyball.
36:06
And it seems like Minnesota is going to get just a very little bit, which could only equal like two or $300,000-ish.
36:16
So as of right now is what we know, Minnesota is not going to do scholarships for everybody.
36:20
They're still on 18 scholarships now.
36:25
So have things really changed at Minnesota so far, Veegs?
36:30
I don't think the house settlement is something that's going to be changing for men's hockey and women's hockey.
36:35
There's not a lot of dollars that are going to be left over once they pay out the football basketball players to go to hockey.
36:42
So it's a big challenge for Golden Helmet Collective to figure out how they can make an impact because we're definitely seeing that across College Hockey right now as people are not relying on the house settlement, they're not relying on these big collectives.
36:56
They're kind of forming their own groups to support hockey.
37:00
And I think if there's going to be a change, it's going to be up to the hockey community to do that.
37:05
And we don't know, we don't know what, you know, we've heard hush hush whisper numbers.
37:11
We don't know.
37:11
But let's just use your number, Jupe, because you said two or 300,000.
37:17
Let's just say it's two or 300,000, right?
37:20
The interesting thing and kind of the scary thing and the thing that kind of makes Golden Helmet even more of a necessity is if we say, okay, Michigan, Michigan State, they're probably going to have the same issues that the Gopher Hockey Team is having, right?
37:38
Where they have big basketball, big football programs that need to get funded.
37:42
I think there's a realization we all knew college sports was a money making opportunity.
37:49
It's a business, right?
37:51
And now we're starting to see it being run as a business.
37:53
And as much as, I mean, I would love the Gopher Hockey Team to have 20 and a half million dollars all alone.
37:58
I'm not a big basketball and football fan, but I get it, right?
38:03
What happens when the University of Denver or UND says, you know what, that 20 and a half million dollars, that's the cap.
38:13
You know what?
38:14
We're only gonna do, we're gonna do 5 million.
38:16
And we don't really have a major Big Ten basketball or football organization to fund.
38:23
Think of Denver, think of Maine.
38:26
Think of Bemidji State.
38:28
Bemidji State doesn't really have a D1 football or basketball.
38:30
So they could just say, hey, we're gonna use all this money and just put it into hockey.
38:35
And the Gophers have two or $300,000 to use your number.
38:40
Whereas these other smaller schools that don't have to fund a major basketball or football or another major sport, it kind of gets real scary.
38:50
And that's where having a robust collective to help supplement what's already available to the team is probably pretty important.
39:00
And just to go off of Nick, like Boston University, Providence, those are other hockey specialty schools are competing in that market place.
39:10
You know, Colorado College, another school like that.
39:13
There's a lot of them in College Hockey where they don't have these football programs and basketball programs that have big revenues.
39:20
So if their hockey programs can be successful and they have a passionate community to supplement it, it makes it easier for those schools to get in the game.
39:29
But, Eric, I'm kind of wondering, something like a Big Ten School has a huge load of money coming in from football contracts and TV contracts.
39:42
I don't think UND and Denver have huge TV contracts.
39:46
They could spend up to 20 million, but it's a lot harder for them to have that 20 million, isn't it?
39:51
Yeah, I mean, even the University of Minnesota, a 20 million dollar, you know, they have to find 20 million dollars from, from wherever in the athletic department and fund this house obligations.
40:01
I mean, it doesn't grow on trees.
40:03
They have to actually find this.
40:05
So they're still cutting at the University of Minnesota positions and times and hours so they can afford the house lawsuit.
40:11
That's just for them to break even accordingly.
40:14
Now, you look at St.
40:15
Cloud State, for example, I don't have any insight necessarily the athletic department St.
40:19
Cloud State, but you look and say, well, are they going to be able to afford raising more money to keep up with the University of Minnesota, even to pay what the University of Minnesota is doing?
40:28
So if the number is 300,000, were they going to get 300,000 more on top of what they're already getting to be able to make this happen?
40:36
You know, the Star Trib made a big deal a couple weeks ago, I think, when they noted that University of Minnesota students are actually have to pay a student fee to pay for some of these athletic facilities, right?
40:48
Well, most schools around the country, you actually have a student activity fee that's paying for their athletes.
40:56
So, you know, at St.
40:57
Cloud State, there is an activity fee that you are paying as a student at St.
41:00
Cloud State that goes toward intercollegiate athletics there.
41:04
UND has that, UND has that.
41:07
Most schools have that situation already in place.
41:10
This is nothing new around the country.
41:12
The question would be, if you are at North Dakota, if you are at St.
41:16
Cloud State, if you are at Minnesota Duluth, how am I going to feel as a student athlete knowing that this is now essentially going to fund an NIL activity perhaps for a student athlete?
41:28
That just changes the game a little bit.
41:30
One thing is for a scholarship perhaps to have them there and how it's supported at top level.
41:35
Another one is just naked compensation again for a brand.
41:40
I don't know how that's going to go politically.
41:46
There's one other issue too, a great unknown that's also going to play into this.
41:51
I don't know if there's a good legal answer on this quite yet.
41:54
That is when the university starts spending money on itself or for its own activities, it implicates one of these big elephants in the rule we also call Title IX, where you have to equitably allocate resources for opportunities for both genders.
42:11
How is that going to play into these NIL dollars?
42:14
At the University of Minnesota, for example, in most Big Ten schools are looking 70-75 percent of their salary cap, for lack of a better term, is going toward football.
42:26
Well, 20-25 percent is going to be split between men's basketball, women's basketball and volleyball.
42:31
Well, that means necessarily volleyball and women's basketball are not making as much as football.
42:38
There's a good chart on it that way.
42:39
This is what I've hear by and large across the Big Ten schools, what we're seeing.
42:45
A school like Iowa, for example, might put some of that 0-5 percent toward wrestling, for example.
42:53
Another school might go toward lacrosse, Rutgers or Maryland, perhaps.
42:57
I read Nebraska is not actually funding anything else.
43:00
It's 75-25 to men's basketball, women's basketball and volleyball, and nothing going to anything else.
43:06
You're really looking across the board, but these numbers are kind of where everybody is going with it, at least the Big Ten schools.
43:12
The SEC is going to be somewhat similar from what I understand.
43:15
I know there's no college hockey, but I did hear most SEC schools are kind of doing something similar to this.
43:21
But they also have baseball to fund, right?
43:24
The one outlier I've heard is Kentucky is going to spend like 40 percent on men's basketball alone.
43:30
But that's Kentucky.
43:31
It's a big deal for basketball at Kentucky.
43:34
But that means necessarily they can't spend as much on football.
43:37
Women's basketball or volleyball and whether that's going to be in compliance with Title IX is an open question at this point.
43:44
Because Title IX may come in and say, no, no, no, no, no.
43:47
No, you have to give it equitably among the genders to make this thing work.
43:51
That could be a real troublesome.
43:56
Then one more topic on that, back to the idea of these scholarship pieces.
44:00
If Denver, for example, was going to add scholarships up to the cap, previously in College Hockey, you could have 18 scholarships.
44:10
I think the new cap is 25 or 26.
44:12
I don't remember exactly the number.
44:14
26.
44:15
26.
44:15
They could add potentially 8 scholarships.
44:18
But if you add 8 scholarships for men, Headline has always said you have to add 8 scholarships for women someplace else too.
44:25
Now you're fundraising for 16 scholarships, perhaps, to make that thing work.
44:30
The men's might not be a problem, but if you're donating to Denver for men's hockey, I don't want my money necessarily going toward a comparable women's sport necessarily.
44:39
That might not be the best for a donor.
44:42
That's why you look and say, people say, well, how come we're not welcome?
44:45
We don't have 26 full scholarships.
44:47
If we use that $200,000 or $300,000, and maybe it's more, maybe it's less.
44:52
But okay, we're going to add 8 more scholarships, and let's say it's at $40,000 apiece, there's all of your NIMs.
45:00
So now you have nothing to give, maybe some top recruits.
45:04
So it is such a crazy shell game that we're playing right now.
45:09
Eric and I, we chat quite often, but what happens if this happens, and what happens if that happens?
45:14
I think when we first had almost, we'll call it a soft launch with Golden Helmet, there was a lot of buzz, people are excited, and now we're getting some emails, hey, what's going on?
45:24
How come you guys haven't launched?
45:25
What's happened?
45:26
It's like, well, when you start looking at all the different puzzle pieces, the biggest thing is for us to do this right.
45:34
Because right now, we can be pretty malleable with what we're doing, what we're focusing on, looking at different activations for players, different memberships for members that could join.
45:46
All of that is really malleable.
45:47
Once you launch and you start collecting money for members to do X, Y, and Z, well, guess what?
45:52
Now you can't do X, Y, and Z, and you have to figure out, well, okay, we got to do A, B, and C.
45:58
It's so important for us to just take our time and really understand the landscape so we can do this effectively, and efficiently, and really help these kids.
46:08
Because there is a lot of concern out there.
46:12
When the NCAA ruled that collectives were essentially banned, my phone was ringing from current players right now saying, okay, well, how do I do this?
46:21
Do I need to put together like a marketing kit and start sending it out to different businesses?
46:28
And I just said, okay, well, let's just take a step back, just wait a little bit.
46:33
I think this is going to, I want to say blow over, but I think it's going to change a little bit.
46:37
I think this is a pretty malleable situation.
46:40
But the student athletes were concerned as well.
46:44
Well, it's a crazy situation.
46:46
And then you add the Gavin McKenna, Veegs, 700,000, the number is being put out there.
46:58
It could be, we don't know for positive, it could be NIL.
47:03
It could be Penn State saying, hey, we're just taking a large portion that maybe could have gone to the hockey team, come on a thousand dollars, and we're just putting it all onto one player.
47:12
And maybe we pay it out over a few years.
47:15
That's just it, Veegs.
47:16
We don't know real numbers or anything, because we have heard parents and agents are inflating everything.
47:24
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who say, I got X, and there's no way to prove it.
47:30
You know, you even have players who are coming to Minnesota.
47:33
There's some locker room talk about what they're getting to come in the portal.
47:37
And there's just no way to verify that.
47:39
And everyone wants to look good from what they're saying they're getting from these schools and these collectives.
47:46
And it's just a big unknown.
47:47
I do think we will see in the next year as institutions report their financial spreadsheets, the NCAA as part of the process they have to go through.
47:58
You'll see how much money they are actually rev sharing out.
48:02
And you're going to be able to see how much they're giving to football, how much they're giving to hockey, and you're going to get to see some things you can link up.
48:08
Some of the collectives, they haven't been as careful with their tax filing.
48:12
And they are putting their 501C tax documents out there that they have to report with how much money they've taken in from donors and where it's going.
48:23
And so it's a really complicated landscape.
48:26
The numbers aren't very clear right now.
48:28
Maybe with NIL Go we'll be able to start to see some numbers report out that way as people do Freedom of Information Act requests on this information.
48:38
But right now it's the Wild West.
48:41
It definitely is.
48:43
Before we're going to finish up a little bit here before.
48:45
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48:47
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48:51
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48:53
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48:55
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49:00
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49:28
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49:33
So that's right.
49:35
It was, that was a great addition for his team.
49:38
And then of course, Gateway Fiber on the North End there, Veegs.
49:42
Yeah.
49:43
In Minnesota, we're the state of hockey and bad Internet connections are like a bad line change.
49:48
Slows everything down, causes chaos.
49:50
You might even lose the game.
49:51
You know, we did our fiber to the fish house this last year.
49:56
Yeah.
49:56
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50:00
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50:18
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50:21
And then we've got a new sponsor, Veegs Rave Sports.
50:24
We've been seeing the Kinger doing a lot of videos and stuff on Rave Sports this summer.
50:30
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50:30
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50:31
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50:32
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51:10
So guys, what podcast, I have something to echo there.
51:18
I'm trying to think.
51:19
So what's your next steps here?
51:22
Is it something that you do?
51:24
Are you going to maybe try to fund scholarships?
51:26
So maybe it's more of a collective to fund the scholarships to fill that gaping hole.
51:31
And then then you could use their money for the picking those individuals.
51:35
Well, what's the direction?
51:36
What do you want to kind of do now?
51:38
Well, you know, the landscape still continues to change.
51:40
You know, after this guidance has come out, we've seen the president come out with an executive order saying he's directing agencies to start creating some policy on this lake.
51:51
So while that doesn't have a lot of legal standing per se, it does show a direction that, you know, the president wants something to get involved in this.
51:59
Congress has also taken up a bill that potentially would codify the terms of the house law settlement, house being, again, the lawsuit, not necessarily the House of Representatives.
52:10
So we're seeing still some of the stuff influx a bit in terms of which direction this goes.
52:16
You know, the president's executive orders seem to kind of push things more toward school favorable terms.
52:23
I don't know that Congress would agree with that.
52:26
I mean, I think there's more desire to benefit athletes in Congress than there might be the president's perspective.
52:31
So a lot of the stuff still has to be fleshed out over the next couple of, I'll say, weeks.
52:36
And I think there will be.
52:38
But when the football season kicks off in a couple weeks, I think we're going to start seeing some sort of detente or some sort of a, hey, we have to have something to work here to make sure this works for the next school year.
52:49
So, we'll know a lot more in a couple weeks, I think.
52:53
But Nick, you can kind of talk about other ideas that we've had and considerations that we're looking at.
52:57
Yeah.
52:57
So, I mean, we, the biggest thing is we want to be an amazing partner.
53:01
Obviously, the University of Minnesota has the official collective Dinkytown Athletes.
53:07
We think that we can be amazingly beneficial to that, to be an additive piece to that.
53:16
So, we've had conversations with Dinkytown Athletes, and we really want to be a partner with the University of Minnesota.
53:21
So, we've been incredibly upfront with them, and our meetings have been incredible.
53:27
And I would say Jeremiah at the University of Minnesota has done an incredibly good job.
53:33
It is a difficult time when there are so many question marks about what's going to happen, what can go through, what can't, how much can we pay, how much can we not.
53:44
There's so many questions out there, and I think he's done an incredible job positioning the U for success.
53:49
And in our conversations with them, we've made it abundantly clear that we want to be an amazing partner with them.
53:57
And we don't want to be divisive.
53:59
We want to be additive to what they bring.
54:02
And I think they've done a great job for a lot of the sports there.
54:06
And we just think that there's an opportunity that we know the hockey market, we know the hockey people.
54:11
And since we launched, we've had multiple businesses come up to us and want to do collabs with us.
54:17
We've got a pretty good array.
54:20
I can't give too much away, but we've got some really interesting opportunities.
54:26
And it's kind of like, I mean, I don't want to be too sentimental, but it really kind of warms my soul to see the businesses.
54:33
These are big businesses in the state of Minnesota, national brands that people know and will respect.
54:42
And they are dying to work with us right now.
54:44
So it's really exciting to see just kind of the passion just kind of coming out.
54:49
When we first launched or had our soft launch, just to kind of let people know, hey, here's what we're thinking, here's what we're working towards.
54:56
We asked for a digital video production expert as a volunteer, and we had over 75 volunteers just for that one position as an unpaid position.
55:07
It was incredible.
55:11
I think we're really excited about the way this thing is going.
55:15
The biggest message we would say to all the fans out there is like, this is coming, we are working on it as fast as we can.
55:24
But sometimes we just need a little bit more time just to flesh it out so that we can do it really effectively when we do launch.
55:30
But we do have some really cool stuff in the works, and I think everybody's going to be really excited about some of the things that we're working on, especially with the collabs, the collaborations.
55:43
Now, just figuring out some of the logistics of how do we get these activations done, how do we work to be an amazing partner with the U and with Dinkytown Athletes because I think we can be really additive to what their mission is and what ours is as well.
55:57
We've got Nick Angell, we've got Eric Brever, and I've also heard Nick Michael might be coming out.
56:04
Yeah.
56:05
Nick Michael, he's got great relationships with the players just as our ambassador, our direct communications.
56:12
We've got another attorney as well.
56:14
We have CPAs, tax sides, so you can never have enough attorneys.
56:20
We all have full-time jobs.
56:21
Nobody takes a salary from this.
56:24
We are all volunteers.
56:25
It was funny, I was talking to an agent that was asking me about the landscape just last week, and I was telling him, I was like, yeah, he's like, how much are you charging?
56:35
I was like, nothing.
56:36
Well, you have to take something.
56:37
He's like, no, this is not about me and paying my mortgage.
56:42
We take nothing on this.
56:43
We all have our own jobs.
56:46
This is just doing what's right for an amazing program that has given, I think all of us, something special.
56:54
I mean, hey, if you want to feel warm and fuzzy, just watch the O2 National Championship highlight reel that you put together.
57:01
I mean, I still get goose bumps on that.
57:03
It was almost like Woodstock where people still come up to me and they're like, hey, I was here at that time and I watched it at this bar.
57:12
There's something familiar about that where we're just a big family.
57:16
Like I said, whether you're wearing the skates, you're up in the stands or playing in the band or cheerleader, it doesn't matter.
57:21
We're all just great Gopher fans and we're all trying to work to put something amazing together.
57:25
I think once we do launch this, there's going to be a passion and there's going to be a clarity and an openness about what we're doing, how we're doing it.
57:35
We've had great chats with the staff, talking with Bob and Paul and Killer and Gordo and talking to all the guys about, hey, here's what we're doing and asking them, what do you need?
57:47
How can we help you?
57:48
Here's kind of our vision, but there's no point in just having the Golden Helmet vision if it doesn't align with what the staff needs along with what the players need.
57:58
So kind of trying to say, hey, how can we, how can we help you be more successful on the ice, be more successful on the recruiting visits and hang more banners and make more smiles and make more memories for the next generation of Gopher players and fans to come?
58:14
Well, I see a question here from earlier and I see Vonner wants to know, let's see if I can get this up here.
58:21
All I ask is that new NIL is the ability to get a real jersey with names and numbers on them.
58:27
Veegs, it never fails when we get back to a jersey discussion on here.
58:31
Yeah, I think Gopher fans are a little jealous.
58:33
You know, North Dakota launches a new jersey for this year.
58:36
And right away, you know, the already Ralph is stocked with jerseys with players.
58:41
And there's just a strong desire from Gopher fandom to have something like that here.
58:46
And it sounds like we might be having some New Jersey branding this year.
58:51
So, you know, stay tuned for some of that.
58:55
Something that's on Eric Brever's shirt there, maybe some CCMs.
58:59
I don't know if Eric's sponsored by CCM or not.
59:02
Maybe it's part of his networking for the Collective.
59:05
I will take one.
59:06
That's actually a really hard legal question, by the way, when you consider that, because you're using the University of Minnesota logo with the M, you know, on front, you know.
59:15
So it's one thing to use a student athlete on back with their name and number.
59:19
That's their likeness piece.
59:21
But use of the trademarked M is a complicating factor.
59:24
So you'd need a couple of parties to sign off on that.
59:27
Gopher Creative Properties, of course, controls the logo for the University of Minnesota.
59:31
And, you know, they want to make sure that and protect it appropriately.
59:34
So well, we just see North Dakota do it in days, it seems like.
59:38
And they're just ready to go.
59:39
I mean, if anyone's been to Ralph Engelstedt Arena, you know, they've got their their their shop.
59:46
There is quite amazing and could do a lot.
59:50
And when it comes to hockey, Veegs, I am jealous of what North Dakota has.
59:56
It's their their big show in that it is.
59:59
It is their hockey.
1:00:00
Hockey is the big thing there.
1:00:01
And even they've had some issues selling season tickets this year.
1:00:04
I saw Brad Schlossman retweet that they still have season tickets available.
1:00:08
You think with a slate that includes the Gophers coming to town, they would have no problem with that.
1:00:12
But hard times across all athletics.
1:00:15
Tough when they're not including playoff tickets.
1:00:20
I had to throw it in there.
1:00:24
Speaking of the apparel side, something we've worked on on our website, and we do have the website fully active.
1:00:29
It's just not launched yet.
1:00:31
We will have apparel with our logo, Golden Helmet Collective logo.
1:00:36
And there's some pretty cool logos.
1:00:38
And we're talking with some businesses to have some kind of unique items that I think people will recognize and will want to be part of.
1:00:47
So yeah, more to come on that.
1:00:49
But we will have a full apparel line up, hats, shirts, hoodies, t-shirts, polos, everything.
1:00:57
It's pretty extensive.
1:00:59
We've partnered with another company to get that all set up.
1:01:02
So we will have some Golden Helmet apparel when we launch officially.
1:01:08
Well, JJ here is literally nothing to do here in Grand Forks, besides to get drunk or leave town on weekends.
1:01:14
So it's hockey or leave town or get drunk, Veegs.
1:01:22
I don't know what you want me to say about that.
1:01:27
Well, Veegs, you know, I'm heading to Grand Forks.
1:01:30
Sounds like you might be on the Grand Forks trip.
1:01:33
It's getting closer to as a thumbs up.
1:01:36
I'm 50-50 right now.
1:01:37
It's looking closer than it was earlier in the year.
1:01:40
It looks like flights to Orlando are expensive that time of year.
1:01:43
So we might shelve that trip for another time.
1:01:46
And I could be Grand Forks bound.
1:01:49
We're just going to figure out travel.
1:01:51
Interesting.
1:01:53
Interesting.
1:01:54
All right.
1:01:54
I'm going to throw.
1:01:55
I'm going to get some hockey taco in here.
1:01:57
Brever, how many games are you going to be at this year?
1:02:00
Or is just football so important at New Prague?
1:02:03
You're going to miss half the season.
1:02:04
Well, I got hockey in New Prague, too.
1:02:06
I do help with the high school team here, too.
1:02:08
You know, I love going.
1:02:10
I try and get as many as I can.
1:02:12
Try to bring the girls as many as I can, too, over the women's games at Ritter, as well.
1:02:17
So I'm certainly no stranger to it, but there's always a Brever family representative in Section 1.
1:02:22
So we'll be there.
1:02:24
You see Brever here, Nick.
1:02:27
He loves to go down those stairs.
1:02:29
So he goes all the way down.
1:02:32
You learned that's just so stupid.
1:02:34
I mean, my seats, if anybody's looking for me, they're right on the red line, top row, because I used to have to run those stairs.
1:02:39
And I said I will never go down those stairs ever again.
1:02:43
So that is where I am.
1:02:46
I'm actually one off the top row.
1:02:48
I'm waiting patiently for those to open up.
1:02:51
But yeah, we've got six seats right on the red line.
1:02:53
And I take my kids, I got twin seven-year-olds.
1:02:57
So we'll be at a lot of games.
1:03:00
However, I do have a full-time job, full-time dad, husband, and then work with the Gopher Hockey alumni.
1:03:07
And then my wife, about a month ago, two months ago, had really fully announced that we were, that I was going forward with the Golden Helmet.
1:03:15
She's like, did you launch a collective too?
1:03:18
So along with a couple of charitable organizations for Naval Special Warfare that I work with.
1:03:24
Yeah, we're pretty busy, but I will try to be at as many games as I can.
1:03:29
Oh, boy.
1:03:30
Well, I hope we see you there, both of you there a lot this year, that that would be great.
1:03:36
Veegs, we talked about at the end of the season, a lot of players gone.
1:03:42
But we've seen quite a few of these players that are coming in play recently at the World Junior Summer Showcase down there at the Ritter Arena.
1:03:51
You got to talk to all these players and a couple of current Gophers and a couple of future Gophers down the line.
1:03:57
But in recent days and weeks, the future looks quite a bit brighter than maybe last August.
1:04:07
Yeah, it felt like last year the coaching staff was very cautious with filling up their pipeline with commitments.
1:04:15
And I think part of that is people they've gone to the Gopher Hockey insiders or they've listened closely with their Bob Motzko translator.
1:04:24
He didn't feel like those previous classes were worthy of crystal balling out and seeing what they're going to look like when they finally got to campus.
1:04:31
This different class this year is one that coaching staff is much more comfortable with.
1:04:36
And you saw them get really aggressive, getting a pair of Cullens to commit.
1:04:42
Luca Jarvis from Stillwater.
1:04:45
I'm trying to thank Gunner Conboy.
1:04:47
Conboy.
1:04:47
Yep.
1:04:47
Big kid from Lakeville, who's a real power forward.
1:04:51
You know, they finally got a Minnesota goalie and Casey from Grand Rapids.
1:04:55
So you've seen the staff get more aggressive getting players to commit to Minnesota.
1:05:00
And I think that's made a lot of fans happy.
1:05:02
There are still some big names out there.
1:05:06
Freddy Schneider, Fitz Henry, you know, that fans probably want to see commit to Minnesota.
1:05:11
We'll see what happens.
1:05:13
I think some of these players are waiting to make that big choice as they see how places like the Golden Helmet Collective and the revenue sharing and how that impacts college hockey.
1:05:24
And probably, you know, motivation for people like Nick and people who are concerned about Gopher Hockey to get active in this space because it is going to make a difference with players over the next couple of years where they decide to play hockey because getting a few extra bucks can be a big motivator.
1:05:41
And Nick, I'm kind of curious when you kind of link in the NIL.
1:05:44
Is this whole year kind of season, almost like a test season to see where things are?
1:05:51
Yeah, I think it's definitely a test.
1:05:53
You know, talking with the coaching staff a little bit.
1:05:56
I mean, the kids are there.
1:05:58
They're committed.
1:05:59
Like, it would be great if we had this amazing war chest right now and we could just disperse that out through an NCAA NIL GO compliant way.
1:06:09
But I think a lot of teams are in the same boat, right?
1:06:13
You know, we've got what happened at Penn State and we hear some hush hush numbers and some rumors about this is what's happening here and there.
1:06:21
But I think a lot of teams are just kind of like on the wait and see, right?
1:06:25
And how is this going to work?
1:06:27
How is this going to shape out?
1:06:29
What is, what's a standard rate for a social media post?
1:06:35
Is that $5?
1:06:37
Is it $500?
1:06:38
Is it $5,000?
1:06:39
What's going to be approved by NIL Go?
1:06:41
And certainly, you know, they do have some basic numbers there that say, okay, anything over $600 has to be reported to NIL Go for approval.
1:06:50
And I think a lot of teams are really waiting to see how that process goes.
1:06:56
And, you know, Eric, maybe you want to touch on it.
1:06:58
I believe Deloitte has kind of a algorithm of like, what's an appropriate number?
1:07:04
And they look at your social media followers.
1:07:06
They look at the amount of people that go to the games, etc.
1:07:10
Right.
1:07:11
So everything is kind of just a little bit of a wait and see.
1:07:14
But I think next year will be the be an incredibly important time to have some sort of war chest, you know, talking with the staff saying, geez, you know, which one of your kids do you think could go and leave the program next year, you know, with the transfer portal?
1:07:31
And it was like, okay, well, here, this kid might turn, go to the NHL.
1:07:33
And it was like, well, no, actually, every one of these kids could, right?
1:07:38
If somebody has, if they, if you're going up against the New York Yankees, right?
1:07:43
It is now a business and, you know, every one of these kids is susceptible to leave, right?
1:07:47
So having something that's like in place and ready to go for next year is big.
1:07:52
But I think, you know, we would definitely like to get going now so that we kind of build that up and start acclimating to the new environment as it starts to roll out.
1:08:05
Because I do think like when Jimmy Sagerud decided to come back, there was a legitimate financial commitment to him from Diggetown Athletes to help make that possible.
1:08:15
That's coming from fans who support Diggetown Athletes and designating men's hockey as their beneficiary.
1:08:22
That is a factor that came up with him deciding to come back.
1:08:26
I think it's important for Minnesota to be able to have some money to retain players, because that could make a big difference whether or not you get to a frozen four or not.
1:08:34
Whether you have a chance to get to a title game or not, is retaining players like that for that extra year.
1:08:40
Look at a player like Connor Kurth, where he didn't sign an NHL deal, he signed a PTO.
1:08:45
It's like, okay, well, what happens if we've got a little extra money in the kitty, and we can have a Connor Kurth on the team?
1:08:51
Do you think that would change the dynamic?
1:08:53
When you look over my shoulder here, this national championship team, we didn't lose a single guy.
1:08:59
We had Jordan Leopold stay.
1:09:01
We had Paul Martin there.
1:09:03
We had Johnny Pole, Jeff Paife.
1:09:06
We had all these guys that chose to stay.
1:09:09
Having a team that's a little older, a little more senior, that's been there, done that credit is huge.
1:09:14
I think if we have players like that, we're able to incentivize them to stay an extra year or two, that's an extra arrow in the quiver for Bob to shoot.
1:09:28
So, Veegs, you gotta hand it to Mr.
1:09:31
Connor Kurth, though, graduating in three years while playing a D1 sport is not easy, so hats off to him just for doing that.
1:09:41
Yep, he's a hacker player for Minnesota, he decided to move on, but he's got that degree in hand and that goes a long way for those guys, yep.
1:09:49
You like to see that.
1:09:51
You know, the landscape's so crazy though.
1:09:53
I mean, you've got the major juniors issue right now.
1:09:57
You know, suddenly, they're allowed to come in.
1:09:59
The other thing that's not really being talked about a lot is what's going to happen with the NHL Collective Bargain Agreement and how the free agency rights are going to change.
1:10:07
I mean, previously, there's been a difference between major juniors and what their free agency rights would be.
1:10:12
In other words, when a team loses their draft rights, versus how that rule was applied to college hockey.
1:10:19
And the earlier reports have said that they're going to merge it into one big rule.
1:10:23
And I think it was like age 22.
1:10:25
So, when a kid turns age 22, is what I read, at least at one point, the team would lose their draft rights.
1:10:31
So, if you draft them at age 18, they spend two years in the USHL, or in major juniors, you know, suddenly they're 20 years old, they arrive on campus at Minnesota, we only get them for a year.
1:10:43
Because the school is not going to want to wait, or NHL team is not going to want to wait and risk losing them to free agency the following year.
1:10:52
How does that, how's that going to work out, Veegs?
1:10:55
I know you kind of follow the NHL a little more than most of us, but.
1:10:59
Yeah, I mean, because they don't want to have that loophole where players can go into college and become free agent, you know, the Blake Wheeler loophole that they can earn by playing those extra years.
1:11:11
I still think it's going to shake out to where most players, by the time they would be a senior in school, if they finish that year and they go into that next fall unsigned, they could be a free agent.
1:11:24
So I think what you're going to see is a lot of HL teams are going to want to have players after that junior year of eligibility signed that summer.
1:11:33
So they don't have to go through that risk of that next year where they would lose them.
1:11:38
And I think that's ultimately how it's going to shake out with the CHL players.
1:11:43
Three years before they would have a threat of being a free agent.
1:11:47
I had heard it might move up a bit, like a couple months.
1:11:50
Instead of August, it might be May or April.
1:11:54
But the NHL teams aren't going to want to let players go back for that year and risk that time.
1:12:00
Whether it's August, July, June, it's not going to matter.
1:12:03
They don't want to go through that issue of having a player play a season and then when that season ends, the next one's a free agent.
1:12:10
They just, they're not going to want that.
1:12:12
Okay.
1:12:13
Okay.
1:12:17
How are you feeling about this team right now?
1:12:20
August 12th, Veegs.
1:12:24
I really like some of the guys that are coming in after seeing them at the World Junior Showcase.
1:12:28
LJ Mooney.
1:12:30
Okay, LJ Mooney up to your shoulder and then Jacob Rombach looking down at you.
1:12:37
If anyone hasn't seen those, or interviews with them at the World Junior Showcase, you must see them just to see how Veegs is looking up and then looking way down.
1:12:45
It was quite the combination there, Veegs.
1:12:48
Yeah, the World Junior Summer Showcase was great for us, giving all that access to the players.
1:12:53
Yeah, Dave Fisher from USA Hockey was great to work with as he set that process up.
1:12:59
I think the Gophers are going to be in better shape than a lot of fans are expecting for next year.
1:13:03
You know, we've often talked about how Motskos wanted to get this roster older and more experienced.
1:13:09
Well, maybe they're not quite as old, but they're definitely experienced.
1:13:13
A lot of these players have all played two, three years of juniors as they come in.
1:13:17
You know, they've had guys like Becca Hendrickson delay his enrollment and play that extra year junior before he comes in.
1:13:24
Javon Moore, same process.
1:13:26
He delayed his enrollment after the program, played a year junior, comes in more experienced.
1:13:31
And I think the transfer portal, adding guys like Critchert and Lucky are going to help Minnesota providing a little bit more experience and depth.
1:13:40
I think Lucky is going to be moving back to center for Minnesota this year.
1:13:43
That's really important for the Gophers.
1:13:46
As you look at hockey teams, strength down the middle, super important to having centers who can win draws, who control the center of the ice, defensemen who can protect the net and good goal-tending.
1:13:55
And the Gophers are solid in all those areas.
1:13:58
You look at their blue line core.
1:14:00
You know, Cal Thomas and Luke Middleset and Leo Gruber, that's a pretty good starting point for a blue line core.
1:14:05
And then you started adding guys like Whipple and Rombach to that crew.
1:14:10
They're going to be big in experience and heavy back there.
1:14:13
And I think one thing you look at with this coaching staff is they've really emphasized size over the years, putting these classes together.
1:14:20
And this is going to be one of the biggest Gopher Hockey teams we've seen in a while.
1:14:24
And when you have a team like that, you can take a guy like LJ.
1:14:27
Mooney, who can totally change the pace of play on the ice.
1:14:30
And we saw that time and time again during the showcase.
1:14:33
And he's going to be adding that to this line up this year.
1:14:36
I actually think, you know, maybe some of the talent that has moved on to pro hockey is going to be missed.
1:14:42
But I actually think this power play this year has a chance to be better just based on the creativity that they have coming back and the workers they have.
1:14:49
They can win second chances on the power play.
1:14:52
So I think it's an optimistic year for Gopher Hockey.
1:14:55
Yeah, we saw Mooney on the power play and penalty kill veegs in this during this showcase, so and we saw him taking face offs too.
1:15:02
So pretty versatile.
1:15:05
So 51 days till the season get started.
1:15:07
Let's go Golden Helmet Collective.
1:15:10
Let's get that going too, man.
1:15:12
Come on guys.
1:15:13
Let's go.
1:15:16
I know so many people are saying I want to work with them.
1:15:21
I want to volunteer for them and helping out, and if it's getting more people on or PR or all this other stuff, you'd be surprised how people are very excited about this.
1:15:33
Yeah, it's something that we've seen.
1:15:38
I don't want to say I was hesitant, but you launched something and you're like, okay, is this going to work?
1:15:43
I know, clearly, I'm a Gopher fan.
1:15:46
Yeah.
1:15:50
You kind of wonder, is this going to be real?
1:15:54
Then when you have that soft launch and people see a little bit about the logo and your mission statement, and you see that people are as passionate as you are, and even more so, that just, I mean, it's been great.
1:16:06
I mean, the businesses that have lined up to work with us is, I call it heartwarming, and that is a great way to describe it.
1:16:16
It's been awesome to see.
1:16:18
Like I said, we're just trying to do it the right way.
1:16:22
It's great to just launch something, but if you don't launch it the right way, then it doesn't really matter.
1:16:29
But yeah, the businesses have been really impressive.
1:16:32
The individuals, the 75 names, my email was just blowing up with people and extremely qualified.
1:16:41
It wasn't like some 13-year-old kid that just likes editing videos here and there.
1:16:46
These were business professionals that wanted to join, that were offering their services.
1:16:53
I mean, I think I was on spring break when Jupe, you and I were talking, and these were texting a little, and you need to talk to Eric Brever.
1:17:02
We start talking about this, and it's like, hey, there's an opportunity to do something special that's almost like grassroots, community-driven, that people can be proud of, and I think we can be incredibly complimentary to the existing NIL ecosystem that's out there already.
1:17:23
When we come to market, I think it's going to be really beneficial for kind of everybody, not just the players, but the people that get to feel like they're part of something and they contribute to the success of this program.
1:17:36
And Eric, I think that's kind of one of the keys is that everyone's coming together, you know, we're using connections.
1:17:42
You've been on GPL for 20 years as a member, and you and I have been, we've known each other for quite a long time.
1:17:49
Getting people together, using our connections, you know, my connection to Nick and connection to you and then connection to other people and people wanting to do all this, this really can't be like a family type of collective.
1:18:04
Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's, as Nick said, it's heartwarming.
1:18:07
I mean, it's so cool putting all of us Gopher fans in a room and all of us getting us together.
1:18:13
And that's really what we're supposed to be is collective for the student athletes by the community itself.
1:18:19
We really want to see it in that way.
1:18:21
And it's purest sense.
1:18:23
It's the ultimate and fan club, right?
1:18:25
We really want to put this together as a giant fan club, that grassroots feeling of saying we're going to support Gopher Hockey together because it brings a lot of joy to us.
1:18:35
Well, it's very exciting.
1:18:37
I can't wait to you guys officially launch.
1:18:39
Obviously, it's going to take a little time.
1:18:40
Obviously, you got to still somebody legal and BS things out there for you to deal with.
1:18:46
But Nick and Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show, coming on our summer show.
1:18:52
Can you stay around for a little bit of overtime?
1:18:55
I can, if you let me give one quick pitch.
1:18:58
If you are a business that wants to work with Golden Helmet Collective, we would love to hear from you.
1:19:04
Info at goldenhelmetcollective.com.
1:19:08
Reach out to us.
1:19:08
We would love to speak with you.
1:19:11
We've got a lot of different opportunities.
1:19:13
We've spoken with a lot of different businesses.
1:19:15
We want to make sure it's a great fit.
1:19:18
Or send a DM to the X account or your X account or anything.
1:19:23
Exactly.
1:19:23
Or whatever is X account or any of these people.
1:19:27
Reach out.
1:19:29
That's what the family thing is.
1:19:31
We want people to get...
1:19:33
Or if you work for a business that you think, this could be great.
1:19:37
Talk to the business owner, talk to the CEO, talk to the manager, right?
1:19:41
Have them reach out to us.
1:19:42
That's literally what happened with one of our big opportunities that's come through.
1:19:48
It was just a random email.
1:19:51
Eric and I sat on the Zoom call with these gentlemen, and they were rabid Gopher hockey fans.
1:19:57
The guy had boards from the Frozen 4, sticks on the ceilings.
1:20:02
I texted Eric while we were on the Zoom.
1:20:04
I'm like, this is so awesome.
1:20:08
It was so cool, right?
1:20:09
Because you're like, hey, we're just launching this little thing, and then you have this huge, huge business reach out to you and say, you know what?
1:20:16
We love what you're doing.
1:20:18
We love the passion and we want to be part of that in any way that we can.
1:20:22
It wasn't like, hey, we want to do this and we're going to grind you drown and you're not going to make much on the deal.
1:20:28
It was, how can we help?
1:20:29
What do we need to do?
1:20:32
It's like I said, the heartwarming, it's the best way to describe it.
1:20:36
Well, we appreciate you both coming on.
1:20:38
Vego, I want to give you the last word here.
1:20:40
Anything we should be looking for before the season starts for Gopher Hockey?
1:20:47
I think the biggest thing to watch for Gopher Hockey coming into camp here is once they start practicing, I'll be on social media, I'll be on GopherPuckLive starting to put together who's playing with who, who's playing center, is as we see this group together, it's going to be a fun group to watch the Gopher Coaching staff put together.
1:21:06
I think this is going to be a good year for them.
1:21:09
That's just great.
1:21:11
Well, that's going to do it for our summer GPL Podcast.
1:21:14
We'll be back early October, I want to say, for season number 15 of the show.
1:21:20
For those of you watching live on YouTube or X, stay tuned for overtime.
1:21:24
For the rest of you, we'll catch you in the fall.
1:21:55
If you are watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and get notified each time we go live or post a video.
1:22:01
If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please rate our show and leave a review.
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