So we are in late August and that means that baseball's run as the only major sport in action is quickly coming to an end.
Now the college football season kicks off on Saturday, though week 0 isn't exactly the strongest slate of games.
Now meanwhile, the US Open is back in town with the main draw tipping off.
On Sunday over in Queens and here in New York, some optimism growing for the NFL regular season with both the Jets and Giants securing victories in their latest preseason games.
So joining me to discuss this and more is Rick Harrow, FinTech TV sports business analyst.
Rick, thanks so much for joining us and welcome back.
Thank you, man.
All right, Rick, so even though it's the offseason, let's start off with LeBron James.
A story from Bloomberg yesterday reported that years ago LeBron raised nearly $300 million in upfront cash by issuing private bonds through a company he controls called King James Funding, and that is a part of the underlying trend in which a lot of high network athletes, they structure this Wall Street-style celebrity bonds to get massive liquidity early.
So, let's break this down for us.
Well, it's not new, but it is not for the faint of heart, you know, Michael Jordan, Shaq, Serena, some of the highest awareness net worth individuals who are entrepreneurs as well decided to sell their entrepreneurial spirit and basically create effectively blind trusts where if you believe in their ability to make some dollars you're going to invest and LeBron clearly He's got dollars in other leagues.
He's got dollars at Liverpool for soccer.
He's interested in the PGA Tour.
He's made some connections.
And so don't bet against LeBron James, and he's going to be an amazing component to what some say will be the Philadelphia 76ers' title run, although I know I'm talking to somebody in New York.
Don't cut me off.
But at the end of the day he'll be evaluated in the boardroom acumen, not just on the court.
Yeah, you know what, Rick, I think a lot of people have decided not to bet against LeBron.
But now let's turn to the real fun, Rick, and that's college football.
So the season kicks off this Saturday with week 0 action.
But we're not going to lie, Rick, there's a little disappointment with the slate.
So only one ranked team is in action, and that's number 14 USC.
So is there anything worth tuning in for this specific week, or do we actually still have one more week to go?
Well, let's defer that question to the NFL preseason question, because there's a definite answer on this one.
On this one, it is interesting.
I went to Northwestern undergrad.
Now my math classes, I went out to, uh, you know, Wrigley Field instead of going to math classes.
And also, you know, law school at Harvard, there is no such thing where you start with week 0.
What's week 0 all about?
But that's, that is the way to standardize.
And by the way, the NFL and college.
Giving up a couple of really interesting windows the Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening where the FedEx Cup final will happen by default, and Monday night usually you have something.
This year you have nothing.
I understand it's not a great week, but it will be a great season.
Take a look at what the college football world has.
I see that on the graphic, but $3.5 billion in merchandise bought, about 540 million households tune in a year, and.
69 million people show up personally.
When you think about it, these fans, by the way, are 1.6 times more likely to earn 1000 than other non-avid fans.
And the reason I'm saying that is you don't need a great slate to continue college football the way it looks now.
I'm from Miami, though I didn't go there.
Watch the Hurricanes again, national championship game last year, maybe this year.
You didn't ask me, but I'm telling you.
All right, Rick, well, we, let's talk a little bit more about the NFL.
So we all have that one player from our favorite team that skipped senior year and went over to the NFL, but having them come back if that didn't work out always seemed like a pipe dream.
So that's obviously what we're seeing this week with uh Cleveland Browns tight end Daquan Wright entered the college transfer portal.
So.
As expected to join the LSU Tigers, so this caused the Big 10 and the SEC to pass a rule banning NFL players from going back to school to play football.
So take us through this wild and interesting situation.
Well, we don't have enough time because it's antitrust issues.
It's evolutionary.
It's what the governance is.
It's the big two versus all of the other conferences and what leverage they have.
Suffice to say that there are enough players coming up where they want to control the ability for players who have left to come back on a free watch.
So that's.
The theory behind it, obviously the schools that want those players back are going to want to create the exceptions.
Free looks interesting.
The leagues have a precedent to sign with an agent.
The agent acts for you.
There's a whole bunch of eliminated eligibility attached to that.
This, by the way, Johnny, is a work in progress, so we'll have to see how it all shakes out.
Awesome.
Definitely.
Thank you so much for joining us, Rick.
Definitely appreciate your time and your insight on what's going on in the world of our sports.
See you next week, whenever.
Go Giants, go Jets.
How's that?
