(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today has dedicated his life to educating and inspiring students through athletics.

As the athletic director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he has led the Tar Heels to 24 national titles.

My guest today is Mr.

Bubba Cunningham, a leader who believes in the power of sports to shape character and to produce excellence.

Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

(upbeat music) - Bubba, welcome to Side by Side.

I have followed you for a long time.

You were at Notre Dame.

You actually attended Notre Dame and played golf there.

But then you were associate athletic director at Notre Dame.

Then you went to Tulsa, I believe, and maybe Vol State.

I mean, you've had a very colorful career and a very accomplished tenure in all of those places.

And then you came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and you've been there for 15 years as athletic director.

You've had a great, great journey and a great, great experience.

What is it that troubles you the most about sports today?

- Well, things have changed a lot, and thank you for having me.

It's an honor for me to be here with you, and what you've been able to do at High Point has just been remarkable, not only from the university, but from the entire community and the city.

- Thank you.

- And the University of North Carolina, so thank you.

I've been so fortunate to work on college campuses for 30 years.

As you mentioned, I've worked on four different schools, two public, two private, two regional, two national, so I've gotten a lot of different experiences.

What concerns me is that we're starting to lose our sight of what we're about as an intercollegiate athletic entity.

You know, it's always been about creating opportunities for students to come to campus, get a great education, and play the sport that they love.

But the acceleration of the commercial activity in sport has really changed the dynamic, and particularly in football and basketball.

And I'm afraid that we have to really recenter ourselves and say, "What does it look like in 10 years, "and how do we get there?"

Because we've been off track for about five years now.

Ever since the lawsuit and the losing in the Supreme Court, it has really changed the direction.

So I am worried about the commercial activity and the connectivity to higher education.

- So when you say commercial, you're talking about portal and NIL, and that's what you're talking about.

- All of it.

You know, television is driving conference affiliation.

It drives what time you play.

It determines what day you play.

It has an incredible amount of class misses based on who you play in the conference affiliation.

So the commercial activity is driving the revenue up.

The media contracts are greater than they've ever been.

Salaries are greater than they've ever been.

Facilities are better than they've ever been.

Services to students are better.

But that has created other challenges that we didn't anticipate.

And now we're starting to wrestle with those.

The students want to move more freely.

They want the transfer portal.

They want NIL activities.

But all of that has an impact on the individual student in their academic life.

- How does a coach build a sense of teamwork and cohesion in his or her team when he has an enormous amount of movement due to the portal and due to NIL offers?

- It's a big challenge.

It is probably the biggest challenge we have in college athletics today.

It's trying to build a culture within your team that kids will stay.

Athletics is hard.

School is hard.

But what people now, when it gets hard, they leave and go somewhere else where it's an easier opportunity for them or an opportunity that we get to play.

It used to be you would come and you'd sit on the bench or you didn't play at all.

And then you're a sophomore, you got to play a little bit.

Junior year, you'd play a lot.

Senior year, you would start.

That doesn't happen anymore.

If you don't come in and start right away, you're thinking, well, there's another opportunity somewhere else.

The instant gratification is a challenge for our kids.

- Maybe they go to a smaller school and somewhere else and maybe the coach says, you come here and you can start because that coach is trying to fit the specific role on his or her team.

- Right.

- But it's about money too, is it not, Bubba?

I mean, when you talk about NAL, they move not just so they can start, but because they're given some significant dollar offers by universities.

And sometimes I wonder, how would faculty think about that?

How would administrators think about a basketball player or a football player making significantly higher income than they do?

- Well, I agree.

I think that's a problem.

And we have some student athletes across the country who are making a lot more than the faculty members.

The tutors that try to help them stay eligible as they travel all over the country, they make more money than they do.

So it's a challenge that I think we have to really wrestle with.

And I would never in my wildest dreams think that we'd have to go to Congress to try to help solve our problem.

But ultimately, I do think we're gonna need some assistance from Congress.

We are losing every single lawsuit relative to antitrust.

And that means that we can't have any rules that aren't challenged.

So I think we're gonna have to get some limited antitrust protection.

But ultimately, and this may be heresy, but I think at some point, we're gonna have to get to collective bargaining for football and basketball, if not everybody else.

- You mean like a union?

- Well, maybe.

It's a little bit like a glorified independent contractor.

Because independent contractors obviously can select when they would participate or when they would do the job.

In college athletics, it'd be a little bit different.

But I think we wanna make sure that student athletes remain students primarily.

But have the ability to collectively bargain so we could put some limits on the transfer portal.

Limits on eligibility, limits on some of the benefits they receive, but then compensate them.

Or if you negotiate for that, now you've relieved yourself of some of the antitrust issues.

- So the alternative would be what is now, which is sort of negotiating with individuals.

Or really with their agents.

- Right.

So the negotiation would happen at the conference level or the national level.

It would not happen at the individual school level.

- I see.

- Because there's too many different state laws, right to work states and union laws and things of that nature.

So it'd have to be elevated to a larger group.

- The parameters that are set at that level.

- Right, right.

And I think in the next couple of years, that's something I really wanna work on.

Because I think that we need a national governing body for collegiate athletics.

But right now we're not cohesive.

We don't have a good understanding what does our future look like.

So we need to really specifically think about what does that future look like?

And then build back from that to today.

And say, here's the benchmark we have to hit in the next five years to get to where we want to be.

- You've been very active with the NCAA, I know.

And you've been on the board and chaired the selection committees and more.

So if anybody knows about this stuff, it is you.

At the same time, you came to Carolina and I think I'm right on this, correct me if I'm wrong.

But during your tenure the last 15 years, Carolina has amassed something like 23 or 24 national titles in a variety of sports.

What are you the proudest of in your tenure at Carolina?

- Well, our coaches and our student athletes, they're just fabulous.

And it's inspiring, as I mentioned, that working on a college campus, and you know it, you see it every day.

There's nothing more inspiring to see these young, energetic, enthusiastic, positive students.

And they're attracted to the institution by our coaches.

And so you go to a coaches meeting, they swell with pride of the success that they've had and their mentorship of our student athletes.

And then what the students go on and do after they graduate.

And then when they come back to campus, they realize what a great experience it was.

That when they're here, they think it's so hard and tough.

And then they come back and say, "This was the best four years of my life."

So that's what makes it very inspiring.

- It is indeed, you're exactly right.

And you've seen in the last, especially the last five or six years, tremendous movement among conferences.

Even in the ACC, we've seen people move out and people come in.

And for some of us, sports fans like me, it seems complex and complicated to be playing Carolina, to be playing Stanford, for example, on both shores of the United States of America.

Where is this all going, Bubba?

And at that level, ACC, SAC, et cetera, but also at mid-majors, this is also beginning to happen.

I see fracture in conferences.

And then you see merging and purging of some.

You see some that are coming together.

Something down in Texas and Florida, two conferences coming together to create two regions and so on.

- Yeah, I think what we've seen is exactly what you said.

We're driven by conference affiliation because that gives you access to the NCAA tournament.

Conference affiliation has been driven by media rights.

And so people have moved out of the regionality of conferences, which is how they were designed, play your local community and get good rivalries in the community.

I think we'll see the pendulum swing back a little bit.

The NCAA has already changed its governance structure to be more sports specific.

So I think you'll see more governance by sport.

I think you'll see greater alignment between the NCAA and the national governing bodies.

So soccer, for instance, I think will be the first one that might create an additional championship or take the championship in conjunction with the NCAA and create a new championship with USA Soccer and the NCAA and create a sport that's more consistent at the collegiate level as it is with youth soccer, high school soccer and pro soccer.

- I see.

- And I think that'll help on the regionality of what we're doing.

I think you'll play more regionally, less nationally.

- So I wanna make sure I understand what you just said.

I think what you just said is that some of the affiliations are driven by financial terms dictated by if Carolina plays another big school, the viewership is gonna be higher.

Therefore, the revenue from advertising is larger.

Therefore, a portion that comes back to the school is more.

- Exactly.

We just had a conference meeting yesterday and we were given the new television numbers.

Well, the state of California and the state of Texas is now in market for the ACC network because we have schools in California and Texas.

The subscription rates, the monthly subscription rate for ESPN is significantly higher when you're in market versus out of market.

So that raised the level, that raised the commercial activity.

So the universities all received the benefit from adding Stanford and Cal.

The problem is Stanford and Cal have to travel to the East Coast for volleyball, for soccer, for wrestling.

And it's really a hardship on our student athletes.

So I think the focus has to return to the student athlete.

What's best for them and how do we serve our student athletes?

- I don't know if you can answer this question for me.

I'm sure it varies from school to school, perhaps from sport to sport.

But what percentage of your, let's say it's Carolina, what percentage of your revenues to the athletic program comes from television?

- Television generates about a third of our revenue.

- Third.

- Yeah, tickets, television, philanthropy.

Those are basically the three main.

- And conference championships now?

- I put that into television.

- I see.

- Because all the money that the conference gets, I put that into television.

- I see, it's going back to the school.

- We do get money for NCAA basketball participation.

We get the academic money, all that.

But I put that into the television category.

- I see, I see.

How would that compare to a lesser school, lesser in terms of size and conference?

I mean, pick, in North Carolina, there are, I don't know how many D1 schools there are, but I'm gonna guess 25 or so, 20, 25.

If you took a, I don't wanna name a school, but take any school, they wouldn't get anywhere close to a third of their budget.

- No, probably not.

Most schools at the NCAA level are heavily subsidized by the institution.

You know, when I was, you mentioned Ball State and Tulsa.

When I went to Ball State, you had about a $17 million budget.

We generated about $4 million a year.

It was 13 million.

And it's interesting because when I first got there, I was trying to think of why do we have an athletic program?

What's important about athletics to make this place better?

And I came up with a mission for our intercollegiate athletics at Ball State.

And it was, we're here to enhance the educational experience of all students.

It wasn't the 300 that played sports.

It was for everybody.

You wear the logos, you wear the gear, you're proud to be associated with your place.

If our athletic program doesn't make the school better, we shouldn't have it.

And I feel the exact same way about North Carolina.

- Yes, and make it better internally, but also it can drive a lot of applications and can drive a lot of, you know, you take a mid-major, I'm thinking of school like Butler some years ago, mid-major wins, you know, big deal, NCAA goes all the way up, and all of a sudden their applications go through the roof.

- Right, it is a marketing position.

Athletic programs are big marketing assets for the university.

And I think that the idea of subsidizing, particularly the Olympic sports, because as you mentioned, the transfer portal, the NIL, the revenue share, football and basketball at the big schools are always gonna have enough money to support football and basketball.

But what we've been doing over the history of the NCAA is taking the excess revenue from those sports and providing all these other opportunities.

We're pushing the money into the ones that generate it.

So if we're gonna maintain the Olympic sports, then the institution's gonna have to subsidize.

We'll have to get more comfortable with that.

- And you're putting the money in one or two sports because what?

Because you can get return investment better or because the fans demand it?

- Well, one, you will get a return on your investment, but two, the participants that are playing the sport expect to be compensated above and beyond the scholarship.

And if you wanna be competitive, you have to buy talent, just like you're trying to attract great talent.

- Where's the end though, Bubba?

I mean, if I'm playing basketball, which would be a fantasy for me, but if I'm playing basketball and I'll come to your school, but I need X dollars, 'cause my agent is working on my behalf, right?

And he's arguing and debating with somebody that I need X dollars because there are three other schools who want me and I might be a seven footer and you need a seven footer and so on.

Where's this gonna end?

I mean, this is a climbing ladder that seems to be infinite.

- It is if we don't get back to Congress and get to collective bargaining.

I think there's three things that we need to do if I look out 10 years from now.

We have to have an intercollegiate athletic system that's legally defensible.

And I think to make that happen- - When you say legally defensible.

- We can't get sued by every single state because somebody wants to play six years instead of four, or somebody wants to- - I see.

- Junior college doesn't count.

All of our rules that we have, since we're in violation of antitrust as a national governing body, every lawsuit we have about limiting a student's ability to do something, we get sued and we lose.

So we need Congress to say, you have a limited antitrust exemption so you don't get sued all the time.

So that has to be legally defensible.

I think it has to be financially viable.

And so to your point, not only do we have to, our rising revenue is terrific, but our costs are going through the roof.

So if we can collectively bargain, then I think we have a chance to keep our costs somewhat in check.

We also would be able to limit the number of transfers and we'll be able to limit the compensation.

And we maybe have to do it for the coaches as well as the student athletes.

And then the third thing, we have to make sure that we stay educationally based.

We always want to stay connected to the university.

I don't think we want to just license our brand to a minor league team, let them play in our stadiums.

So to me, those are the three things.

And I also think that we have to work together because High Point University, North Carolina, Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Texas, very different schools.

But somehow we all want to be participants in the basketball tournament.

And that's the thing that binds all of Division I together.

So we have to come to consensus.

Right now, everyone's trying to leverage each other and try to get to a different position.

I think we need to really pay attention to what we need as an association and compromise and figure out how do we do this so High Point benefits, North Carolina benefits, Elon benefits, and so does Texas.

- What role do agents play in all of this?

From my point of view, they play a huge role.

They negotiate on behalf of the player.

More often than not, they seem to persuade the player to take certain actions or go different places.

- Agents are very active right now.

Starting in 2021, when we lost the lawsuit at the Supreme Court level, agents got into the business and they're negotiating behalf of their client, the high school students, the current college students, and they're very active.

And there's a lot of money in the system right now.

So you can't blame people for getting into the place where there's money and new opportunities.

And there's very little regulation.

So it's fraught with opportunity as well as problems.

We have to figure out how do we get our arms around it.

- How do these players who make a lot of money protect that money and grow it and have it?

They don't make it to NBA as a basketball player as an example or NFL as a football player.

It seems to me they wanna get into some business, do something worthwhile.

Is there hanky-panky in the system?

Like in Hollywood or other places where the agents do well and the client sort of just falls by the wayside.

- I think it's across the board.

I think we have some that are really astute, have great agents and are very smart with their investments and how they spend their money and use the money.

And then we have some others I think are gonna be bankrupt and waste a lot of money.

And so it's across the board.

I think the better the athlete, the better the agent, the more successful they've been.

I'm fearful that the aunts, the uncles, the friend that's trying to help the marginal player, that that money is gonna, the student will get the money, they'll buy the car, they'll forget that they have insurance, they'll forget that they have a monthly payment.

- They forget they have a future.

- In a bad position later on.

And what we're trying to do is provide more education for those kids to make sure that they at least think about making better choices.

- Now, Bubba, you were born in Flint, Michigan, and you grew up in Naples, Florida, and you've had a long tenure now in athletics, but specifically as athletic director.

What are the one or two challenges that keep you up at night?

Besides those topics we talked about, specifically to you, what is it that bothers you?

What is it that you talk to your wife about and say, you know, I don't know if I wanna keep doing this stuff.

This is killing me.

This stress is killing me.

- Well, giving kids an opportunity to go to college is something that I've always really valued.

My dad was first generation college.

He joined the Marines so that he could go to school on the GI Bill.

And we had four, I have three, I have two sisters and a brother.

And he said, the greatest gift I can give you is education.

And so I really wanna continue to find ways for kids to go to college and get a scholarship and get a great education.

Other than the GI Bill, Intercollegiate Athletics provides that incredible opportunity.

So that's what keeps me up at night.

How do I ensure, how do I make the best chance that my kids, while my kids are all out of college, by our grandchildren, and how do other kids get an opportunity to do what my dad was able to do and provide for us?

And so it's just that I'm about education and opportunities and we have to continue to maintain them and give kids as many choices as possible to do that.

- Now, the life of an AD has ups and downs.

If the teams are doing well, you're on top of the world.

Everything works, philanthropy works, everything works.

But if it goes the other way, you have a bad season in a certain sport, you catch a lot of grief for it, I assume.

How do you deal with that?

- Well, it's funny, my mom, she's 91 years old, still an avid sports fan, still comes to all the games.

And she's asked me that question a lot.

And I said, well, all I do is I go to the teams that win.

Those locker rooms are Saturday Night Smart Fund.

If they're losing, I don't know.

- That's a trick.

You're very sneaky there.

Somehow I don't believe that.

- No, you have to be around.

Like we have a student athlete advisory committee meeting tonight, and I'll be at that.

You have to be in the locker rooms, you have to be on the sideline, you have to show support for both your coaches and your student athletes, win or lose.

And you're not gonna win every game.

We'd love to win every game.

But part of the struggle is you're gonna lose?

Now, what are you gonna do?

You're gonna get knocked down?

Do you get back up?

Do you quit?

All of those things, all those lessons you learn in sports, they're great for life.

And they're good for all of us.

Because you don't have the jubilation of the excitement of winning if you don't lose occasionally.

- Well, that's true.

I mean, life is like that.

- The greatest excitement I've seen so far was our women's fencing team won the ACC championship.

There was nobody in the arena.

We shouldn't have won.

And somehow or another, we ended up winning.

And it was our coach's 50th year, and he had never won one before.

I still get chills thinking, wow, Ron Miller, and this was about four or five years ago.

That's why you do what we do every year.

- And you had a sharper-- - Exactly.

- Yeah.

(both laughing) Something happened there.

So, you've been at Carolina for 15 years now, and you're gonna stay there in this role and other roles to help the chancellor along the way strategically and so on.

You have the experience and the know-how to certainly do that.

When you look at a coach that doesn't do well, if the season's not going well, whatever sport might be, that's got a weigh on you about, do I keep the coach?

Do I change the coach?

What are the parameters?

What are the steps?

What are the trends that happen that say, I gotta make a change?

- Well, you wanna continue to have a dialogue with the coach and know exactly you want, to make sure they know where they stand as you go.

But for all of our coaches, we have 21 head coaches leading 28 different teams 'cause of track and swimming, they're multi-sport teams.

I ask for our coaches to give me three goals in six different areas.

I want a competitive goal, an academic goal, a financial goal, a compliance goal, a student-athlete service goal, and a student-athlete experience goal.

Three goals, six different areas.

Depending on the sport, depending on the resources that we provide them, I evaluate them differently based on those six different areas.

So if, for instance, you're on a team that's lower resourced, I wanna make sure the student-athlete experience is superior, I wanna make sure that they're providing great service, they have great grades.

The footballs and the basketballs, you need to win.

The win-loss-- - You get a lot of pressure when they don't win.

- Yeah, and financially it makes a big difference.

If you're not selling tickets, then you're not gonna be able to support the other teams.

And they know that.

And the intrinsic value that the kids have, or the coaches have, they want to win and be successful.

- It takes a coach two or three years to get their act together, get the team together, and get the plan together.

- You do have to give them time to make that happen.

We've been very fortunate.

Our coaches have been there for a long period of time.

And we have a great group of coaches.

When I first got to North Carolina, we had nine of our 21 coaches that had won a national championship.

- Wow.

- And so I'm very excited.

And there's a couple more that have won championships in that time period as well.

- Very impressive indeed.

You know, I admire you for what you do.

And may God bless you as you keep on doing it, my friend.

And thank you for being with me today on Side by Side.

- Well, thank you.

It's great to be with you.

(upbeat music) - Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.