Don Yee is known as the agent for Tom Brady, Julian Edelman, Sean Payton and others.
But his years-long attempt to shed light on the inequality of what he calls the ‘collegiate sports-industrial complex’ may be just as impactful on the game of football as the work he does with those grits.
This week, I spoke longingly with Yee on our podcast about college football at a crossroads this summer of COVID-19.
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According to Yee, the resurgence is that athletes have disappeared because they have been built for months by the Dumb and Dumber coalition of coaches, college presidents and administrators.
“It’s a situation that in my view has gained at least steam over the last 10 to 12 years,” Yee said. “There was such a dramatic influx of money into the collegiate sports industry complex that when you put that kind of money in, there was just one person’s focus on generating more and more money and that focus has unfortunately taken over … college administrators, college presidents, athletic directors and coaches.
“They actually took their eyes off the ball because they saw the fact completely that they had a workforce that was not compensating,” Yee added. “In their single-minded pursuit of every dollar, they have forgotten about the care and concern of the athletes.”
Patriots Talk Podcast: Don Yee and the Remedy for the ‘Industrial Complex’ of Football Colleges | Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
Everyone knew big-college sports were dripping with hypocrisy and greed. It’s a shell game in which literally thousands of people raise the billionaires dollars they generate each year and the only ones who never see it as a legal dollar are the players.
The pretzel logic it uses to justify it is laughable. The best way to enjoy the product and the games is, literally, to ignore reality.
Yee has forced people to look at it for the past decades.
“Through the decades, we have created a unique system that does not exist anywhere in the developed world,” he said. “Nowhere in the developed world does this exist. Where you have a system every year, a small group of footballers – there are 130 Division I schools and among those 130 schools, let’s say 50 to 60 are the most critical players for that company for that particular season.
“That it’s a few thousand young men, and what they’re doing is strapping on the equipment and rolling out there for an ever longer season – now as many as 14 games – and going there and putting their bodies in line for substantial sums. to generate revenue to support the lifestyles of the administrators, the coaches, the coaches in the non-revenue sports, all the non-revenue sports programs and athletes who then – by extension – the US Olympics program support (as a breeding ground for the athletes before they become Olympians).
‘The success of the football program also supports the very existence of the university, because if the football program is successful, the university can then start a piggybacking of the excitement and success of the football team and start multi-billion major campaigns for new to build buildings on campus etc. All of this is due to the efforts of a very small group of young men each year. We tolerate it. Eventually we are distracted by the pom-poms and the bands. ”
Yee and I have discussed so much more, including if he thinks there will be an NFL equivalent to the NBA G-League (NBA), yes, details about his new venture that will help teams to the players easily find what they now have to kick over rocks to discover (like Malcolm Butler) and how the change in college will be hired by the players.
