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Hello, Ohio State fans, Dave Biddle, Patrick Murphy here from 24-7 Sports and Bucknuts.com. After a very interesting press conference with Ohio State Athletic Director Jean Smith, he spoke with us for nearly an hour. I mean, I don't even know where to begin.

You guys, let's begin, Patrick, with his thoughts on name, image, and likeness. I asked him just, you know, his general thoughts on it. And if he thinks specifically that there should be regulations regarding name, image, and likeness right now, it's kind of the Wild West.

And he said, yes, he does think there should be regulations. And he made an interesting comment. I didn't see this coming. He said, he absolutely thinks there should be some type of regulations. He agrees it's the Wild West.

But he says he doesn't think the regulation should come from the NCAA. He thinks there should be federal regulations. This should come from Congress. I found that very interesting. But bottom line is he thinks there should be regulations. And we've got it to, you know, get out of, I know it's brand new still kind of brand new.

It's still new. We're still trying to figure out our way. But clearly he's got a lot of power. And he's a guy that thinks there should be some regulations. I have to think that's going to be coming down the pike at some point.

Yeah, I mean, the whole situation, I'm seeing it over the last year plus he was asked specifically about recruiting and Ohio State kind of being behind the eight ball in terms of the way that it was used.

He said that he agreed he thought Ohio State was was a little behind with with the way some other schools, not the schools themselves, but boosters or different organizations have used the NHL benefits to help that program.

There are different programs. Land top recruits and that's been a big topic this past recruiting class something. I don't think a lot of people thought was going to be a major issue with the NIS. And he was asked directly about it said he thought it was an issue, but yet is interesting regulating it on a federal level, you know, that takes the NCAA out of out of the picture.

It makes makes it a national thing right now different states have different rules. So so while the schools themselves can't be involved, some states can handle things differently, you know, Ohio is different than Texas, which may be different than Alabama.

And so that's where I think the federal level from his perspective really comes into play and tries to like even the playing field for everybody in terms of what you can do, what you can't do.

I think it's tough though to find time on a federal level for this to be done. I know that it has been politicized to some degree, but you know that that's probably not the first thing many people in Congress are thinking of when when going to work every day.

It's like Ukraine Russia and then like NIL, like come on guys get your priorities going. Let's get with the NIL stuff. Right.

Forget about this Ukraine Russia stuff. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, Gene Smith is a fan of NIL. He's glad that they have NIL. He just thinks it should be regulated. And he said we was talking about some of the football players these happy four that are on full ride like Travegan Henderson, but he was seemed really happy about some of the, you know, non revenue sports that there are some athletes here at Ohio State that maybe getting 30% scholarship that now are getting making all this money on on YouTube and TikTok and they can more than pay for their tuition.

They're going to be making up to $200,000 a year on YouTube and TikTok. So that stuff is really cool. Another thing I asked him was about big 10 divisions. Is he happy with the status quo with football with it being the East and West? Or does he think, you know, there's been some talk, get rid of divisions, just go one through 14. Then the two best teams play each other in the big 10 championship game. It could be a rematch.

In today's game, and there could be a rematch this year with Ohio State and Wisconsin theoretically because of the crossover games. So he kind of went a little back and forth. It seems like he would be okay with getting rid of divisions. He would just need to see the plan.

Yeah, that's kind of the way I took it. And he even seemed okay with potentially getting rid of the conference championship games, as long as that doesn't impact the college football playoff and team being able to get into that in the big 10.

The division things interesting because at one point that was the thing, right? You needed divisions, because if you wanted a conference championship, that was how you were going to be able to get into the playoff. And now the big 12 doesn't do it.

And they've still had teams make the college football playoff. There's talks about whether you should play eight or nine games and not having a conference championship game, not having divisions might make that a little bit easier.

So there's been conversations among the big 10 athletic directors in terms of what to do. And there isn't any talk about free shuffling of divisions. It's either do we keep divisions or do we get rid of them. And that's been a conversation among athletic directors and something that I think they'll continue to talk about here in the near future.

You know, we could see a definite change of the landscape with the big 10 if they go back to the straight up, you know, eight, nine games against whichever teams instead of having to play your conference or your divisional opponent each year.

By the way, like we're going to have the full one hour. In fact, it's already on YouTube. You can get on our YouTube page or Bucknotz 247 YouTube page. The full hour of Gene Smith's press conference is on there. So make sure after you watch us, of course, that you watch the Gene Smith press conference.

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