And now it's my honor to introduce vice president and director of athletics at the University of Toledo, Brian Blair.

He's been a leader in athletic programs across the country, and is one of the youngest and most forward thinking aides in the business.

Brian, welcome.

Great to have you here on Business Lively 60 and business Life after Hours.

Brian Blair: Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

I always enjoy seeing you and enjoy this conversation for today.

Kristi K: One of the big things that we're talking about on this show is the change and the shift in collegiate athletics.

You've been in athletics for a long time as a player, and also now as an ad.

tell us a little bit more.

And for our audiences sake, what is name, image and likeness and what is happening with the NCAA in terms of new policies that are being set for collegiate athletics?

Brian Blair: Absolutely.

So for the longest, phrases, it almost endorsements.

student athletes at the NCAA level couldn't take part in endorsement.

So we couldn't have an area restaurant pay a student athlete for an appearance or autographs or for a commercial, or using their true name, their picture, their image, their digital landscape, and or their likeness of them to promote those products.

And so a couple years ago, this came about, and I think everybody thought it'd be more of that endorsement type model.

I think what we've seen is you kind of have this bifurcation in two different directions of what it's become.

there's traditional endorsement model.

and we certainly I think if you've been to any of our basketball games, you see some of our student athletes in a commercial for Nunez chips, or other entities, or signing autographs or selling jerseys and apparel with their name on it.

That's that's a portion of it.

Then you have this other portion where it's really become some of our most loyal supporters, being willing to donate their money to student athletes through our initial collectives or third parties that support Toledo Athletics and make sure those student athletes have the opportunity for an opportunity and in return, their student athletes take part in nonprofit activities, whether it be hospital visits or soup kitchens or other type of activities within the community.

So when you say, you know, you're kind of talking about two different realms, but both are incredibly important to what we do in incredibly important in the landscape of college athletics.

Kristi K: We are truly living this in real time in terms of student athletes and athletic departments.

So I'm curious to know, for you personally, is this a long time coming?

Like, do you feel like student athletes should be getting paid at this point?

Brian Blair: Yeah, I do I mean, it's interesting.

So I started my career after law school going and working in L.A. in a post graduate program and a half, and we'd sit in those scenarios, those meetings, and we'd have waiver cases, and we talk about NCAA rules.

And one of the things that first jumped out at me is, what can a student athlete do an endorsement when a professional athlete can, or some of our coaches do, and you see a Nick Saban on an Aflac commercial with Don Staley, like those are coaches, do an endorsement deals and always struck me, well, why can't we do that?

Why can't student athletes do that when that's all well out of our problems?

Well, that was a long time ago.

Fast forward to now.

Kristi K: If they would have just listened to you.

Brian Blair: Yeah.

At all ideas, I'm sure.

but if you fast forward to now and they have that opportunity, I think what is shown is that's really good.

And the student athletes can take advantage of those.

And I think the great thing is, in a market like Toledo, we have more opportunities in many of our counterparts throughout the league.

I think the other piece of it is something we're still trying to get our hands around.

When you've got third parties and many people don't understand what name, image, likeness or NATO is, and you're trying to explain it and explain how it's different in the same.

Some of our university fundraising, there's just there's a lot of confusion, a lot of moving parts.

And I think that's the piece we're really trying to get straightened out and be more informative and inform people, okay, you make whatever decision you want to make with your money, but at the same time, we want to make sure you're informed about all the great options to support Toledo athletics.

Kristi K: So that's a great point.

Let's drill down on that for a second.

So as donors, you can give and have given, let's just say to the athletic department and the program for years.

And now all of a sudden name, image and likeness groups, these Nil groups are coming along.

And now I have an option of either giving to you and the athletic department or to the programs that really recruit and have to retain some of the student athletes.

So that money then would go to the players, it would go to endorsements or commercials, perhaps a new car for players, recruiting them, and perhaps they go into the portal.

Is that truly how it works?

And give us a little bit more background on that?

Brian Blair: Yeah.

I mean, I think now you've got one more bucket, to, to have an option.

And I think there's some nuances to make a donation of this get you parking or sweet access versus this gives you access via the collective to what they can and want to do to incentivize, those donors to support those activities.

but certainly, I mean, this is a huge piece of recruiting and retention of, of student athletes.

And when you've got high quality student athletes, we want to make sure everything that we offer the University of Toledo, you never walk away from here feeling like I have to go somewhere else to get that opportunity.

And whether it's name, image, likeness, whether it's high cal, high character, opportunities where there's nutrition, we want to make sure our student athletes have every single opportunity here that they would anywhere else in the world.

So they say, hey, you know what?

I want to be a rocket.

I want to stay a rocket.

I want to graduate a rocket.

And that's always going to be our goal.

Kristi K: So okay, let's step back a minute and look at some of the the conferences.

So you have a school like the University of Toledo in the Mac, the Mid-American conference.

But when you start to look at the SEC or the Big Ten or the big 12, those schools may or may not have unlimited budgets when it comes to name, image and likeness and therefore recruitment and retention of student athletes.

How does a school like the University of Toledo and a mack school really compete?

Brian Blair: Yeah, I mean, there's an old saying, I think it comes through the Marines or Navy Seals.

It's how do you eat elephant?

Well, one bite at a time.

Right.

So I think it's important to not say, okay, what we have is not what X Big Ten School has.

So we should just give up.

I think our starting point is dominating the Mid-American conference.

If we dominate the Mid-American conference to the degree that I know we can leverage it on natural resources, that's going to make other opportunities on the other side of that a lot more attainable, right?

So I think whatever we do, we start with, are we the best in the conference at it?

We were the first in a conference for me and I know standpoint to have an AI program in the first in the conference have, you know, collectives and all the Metro show that were leaders in, in io through the conference.

So I think that's the appropriate starting point.

Kristi K: The big win.

Brian Blair: It is, it is.

And we're first the conference championships.

We're first in GPA.

We're first in a lot of things.

Right.

So one sustaining that but then asking what's next and what's that next layer of aspirational peer we want to compete with.

I don't know that that necessarily automatically jumps to a Big Ten or SEC program, but there's a lot of programs in between that in the Mid-American conference that we need to make our next focal point.

So we continue to climb that ladder and continue to be competitive.

And it's got to be more than transactional.

And I think that's the most important thing.

It certainly in know All plays a big piece of that.

But our coaches play off a big piece of that.

Do do they have the deep relationships with our student athletes where it makes it really hard for that young man or that young woman to walk into that coach's office and say, hey, I know you loved me.

I know you walked into my home as a 17 year old recruiting me.

I know you've cared for me.

I know you've given me and pick me up when I was down, but I've got an extra 5000 over here, so I'm going there.

We want to make that conversation as hard as possible, because we love our student athletes as much as possible, and we show them we love them.

And I think that combination of giving them a great experience, letting them play in front of packed stadiums and arenas and having coaches and other staff rooms that really love them and build deep, meaningful relationships.

That's a recipe for success.

That's a recipe we've always been at for them.

And I think in this new world, that's probably more important than ever.

Kristi K: Well, Brian Blair, thank you so much for this perspective.

It's great to hear from an athletic director in terms of the new transformational landscape that we're facing and living in real time.

So thanks for being in business life and business life after hours.

Brian Blair: So thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.