Nothing really matters until the lawyers are done lawyering

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Quick note: I will be at NACDA in Orlando, Florida from June 8-10. In fact, our entire company is coming to NACDA. If you’d like to catch up with me or any of my colleagues, drop me a line at [email protected], and let’s schedule a time to talk! We’re here to give demos of Extra Points Library, talk sponsorships, or just catch up and grab beverages.

Here’s the thing with writing about sports. Eventually, there will be games. Those games will produce statistics, film, winners, and losers. The games are on TV, and the reader at home will be able to watch most of what us scribes see in the press box. There is a shared reality that even the most partisan fan will have a hard time ignoring.

So I can stick a microphone in front of coaches, players, or analysts who say that they think their team will be able to do XYZ. But then, eventually, we can turn on the TV and see if the team actually did it. We can’t construct an independent media apparatus where XYZ actually did happen. Our sources can’t work the proverbial refs until XYZ happens, or that fans believe XYZ happened. The Buckeyes either won last night, or they didn’t.

Increasingly, I don’t think that happens as much for other beats, especially politics. Sure, we have elections, which you’d think would present some dataset that would represent a shared reality, but increasingly, that isn’t the case. The interpretation of various real world or political stories can be siloed into partisan echo chambers, so consumers can still live in a world where their candidate or party or ideology is still undefeated, completely isolated from consequences.

I think this development creates all kinds of complicated questions for reporters. How do you cover what is actually going on in a way that readers will trust? How do you not get worked by your sources? How do you not accidentally write the same damn story, day in and day out?

Which brings me to the biggest college sports story. Lawsuits.

In case you missed this on Monday evening, Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reported that the major conferences are working on a path to protect themselves from the inevitable lawsuits over the NIL clearinghouse. Specifically: asking schools to waive their right to sue, at the potential risk of getting kicked out of their conferences. Via the story:

This is especially notable, as Dellenger mentions, because Tennessee just passed a state law that would allow schools in the Volunteer State to ignore NCAA rules about athlete compensation. Other states have laws on the books that would allow athletes to simply elect to not disclose any NIL activity to the clearinghouse.

Want to read the rest of the newsletter? Subscribe today!