ARCHIVES ADVERTISING iTOONS INDEX TERMS EMAIL eSTORE SHOW HACK! LINKS PODCASTS KOMIX

cyberbarf

DEMISE OF COLLEGE SPORTS COMMENTARY

The student-athlete is becoming an extinct species. An historic settlement agreement that will distribute $2.8 billion in back damages to former athletes and creates a new revenue-sharing model for athletes in the future. This settlement of three anti-trust cases topples the NCAA's long-standing rules around amateurism and protects the schools from future legal challenges. (However, there are other cases still pending against the NCAA and schools.)

College sports had been tightly controlled by NCAA competition rules which did not allow student-athletes from receiving anything from a school except scholarships, tuition, room and board. Employment, endorsements, booster gifts, etc. were strictly prohibited. It was argued that a student-athlete was getting the benefit of a four-year college degree (which at top schools could be worth more than $60,000/year.) But opponents of the system stated that the NCAA and the schools were making billions of dollars off student-athletes performances, especially in football and basketball championship seasons. They argue that the students' should be paid for their sports services to their schools.

Corruption has always been a part of college sports. Alumni would pay a student or their parents to play at a school. Alumni would hire family members to get around athlete payment rules. Or cash envelopes to recruits would be standard operating practice. But the landscape is rapidly changing like a runaway train.

In the 1970s, the state of Nebraska tried to determine whether paying their football players was feasible. Its budget office determined that to make student athletes school employees would bankrupt the school: besides the salary, employment taxes and required benefits, the cost of workers compensation for injuries would be massive. (As it currently stands, students are covered by their parents health insurance plans and not any school sponsored employee programs.) The idea was quickly dropped when the Nebraska football team was at the peak of its championship power. The idea laid dormant for decades.

In the antitrust settlement, the defendants, the NCAA and power conferences,will create and implement a new college model, including a potential new-look enforcement and scholarship structure as Yahoo Sports reported. Schools have been trying to reign in the wild west approach to athlete NIL money (which has caused one student to sue a school for not paying him what was promised.) The NIL program legalized the under-the-table aspects of payments to college players. Coupled with the new transfer portal which nullified scholarship restrictions to one school, each school year student-athletes became free agent players. Some of the to college players reported annually received millions of dollars in NIL money.

It starts a new conversation: are student-athletes going to school for education or just for the money?

The framework for the new college model is revenue sharing. If that sounds familiar, it is the model that many pro leagues have adopted through collective bargaining. How much revenue can schools share? The short answer is 22% of their average athletic department revenue, or about $21-22 million annually. Attorneys and commissioners agreed to use an average of power conference revenue streams as a default formula to determine an annual revenue-sharing limit. They took three of the four most significant revenue streams in an athletic department: TV contracts, ticket sales and sponsorships (donations were not included) to generate an average for the 69 power schools. That average, according to documents obtained by Yahoo Sports, is around $100 million.

The cap is the same for all schools despite wide variance in resources. Ohio State's athletic department led all programs with $250 million in revenue last year. That is $100 million more than the program that ranked 20th in the nation, Arkansas at about $150 million. A $20 million price tag for Ohio State is 8% of its budget. A $20 million price tag for Arkansas is 13% of its budget. Scholarship costs are about $15 million on average for a power school will be in addition to the revenue share cap. By combining the two figures and associated costs of running athletic programs, the new model takes 50% of athletic department revenues, on par with the going rate for any collective bargained revenue sharing agreements at the professional level.

In the past, administrators and alumni stated that college revenue sports made money in order to support the non-revenue and educational costs for non-student athletes. Any athletic surplus revenue went back into the school's general fund to meet current operating expenses. Now, it would appear athletic budgets will be segregated and not net-cash positive to the schools. In 2023, under the old model, Ohio State athletic department only generated $5 million in profit from its athletic programs. Under the new model, it would appear that it would run a massive deficit with the additional player expenses alone putting it at a negative $15 million.

Where will that initial shortfall be covered by? The ability to increase TV revenues may be limited as TV contracts have been long term deals. The ability to cut non-revenue sports, but that creates potential Title IX issues (which are not addressed in the settlement). The colleges diverting educational and foundation money to pay for athletic department deficits. Or the worst case scenario, borrowing money to pay these costs.

Investment bankers have begun circling around schools with the idea of investing in college sports to ease the pain of the transition to the new model. But investment bankers are well known for stripping companies bare, sucking out all the cash and assets, to create zombie companies. The bankers are willing to start loaning money to cover the revenue sharing, but at what interest rate? Will they take the TV contracts as collateral? And what happens if a school defaults?

Unknown is how federal and state labor departments will view this new model. If it is decided that the payments are compensation subject to employment taxes and benefits, the schools $20 million payments adds another $8 million in FICA taxes and employee benefit costs (excluding workers comp). And if athletes are employees, it is probable that the IRS will claim that the schools tax exempt status would be in jeopardy and demand income taxes on, at a minimum, all athletic revenues. And what if the total tax exemption is lost? Donations would no longer be tax deductible which would dramatically strain college budgets.

The settlement seems to be a patch-work of ideas and concepts but lacking the big vision. If you are going to pay athletes, then you might as well call them professional and segregate them from the educational part of the school programs. Schools and alumni could set up for-profit corporations to run sports teams (thereby shifting the liability risk away from the school and its assets). The schools could license the name, trademark, mascots to the new sports team entity as well as lease the stadium in order to generate some positive revenue to the school. At the same time, the for-profit school teams would be subject to probable athlete unionization and collective bargaining agreements just like other professional sports leagues.

And if this comes to pass, the idea of amateur college sports comes to an end. College teams would become paid minor leagues for professional football and basketball teams in the NFL and NBA. Perhaps the NFL and NBA will become investors in the for-profit schools in order to assert some control over their future draft choices.

In the end, no one is going to be truly happy with the situation. If athletes are getting paid (by our calculations if the revenue sharing has to be split between all student athletes it is only $10,000 per year per student) then will not coaches demand that their athletic training be their full time job instead of going to school for an education? Universities would become sports vocational training programs. There are many athletes that would be eliminated from getting the college degree they want or need (especially if they are not pro-level talent). You cannot serve two masters at the same time. This is going to be a real legal, cultural and societal mess.

cyberbarf

AI NEWS NEWS

Washington Post staffers were told by their new CEO that the newspaper will be looking for ways to use AI in its reporting as it seeks to recoup some of the $77 million it lost last year. The paper's chief technology officer announced to staffers that going forward, the Post is to have “AI everywhere in our newsroom.” It is unclear, however, what exactly that directive will entail. The new CEO began working as publisher of the newspaper at the beginning of 2024. Almost immediately, reports about his past NewsCorp's hacking scandal in the early 2010s of the royal family and several celebrities resurfaced. He denied participation in that scandal, but he does have a reputation of running tabloid publications. As a result, this is a grim story for the Post and journalism in general. AI is not a savior technology that can revive the newspaper business that needs professional accuracy, fact checking and context to all news stories. AI is woefully illiterate in all areas of journalism ethics, grammar skills and contextual thought.

A big law firm associate decided to create Couch Potato Salad, a daily word puzzle game thatÕll make you want to kick your Wordle habit to the curb. Zack Gross created the game which prompts users to describe an AI-generated image using two common phrases linked together by a shared word. Gross explained that it usually takes quite a bit of prompting and “a lot of trial and error” for DALL-E 3 to create a workable puzzle, but now heÕs able to use it to create a new puzzle each day of the week. An example of the puzzle game result is below. This game use of AI prompt technology does not answer the questions about the copyright infringement, unauthorized data training, etc.

Scientists claim to have the blueprint for an insane medical breakthrough. Neuroscience and biomedical engineering startup BrainBridge announced that it has created an AI-mechanized system for performing head transplants. The procedure would graft a head onto the body of a brain-dead donor, maintaining the memories, cognitive abilities and consciousness of the transplanted individual. The researchers believe the innovative surgery would help patients with untreatable conditions like paralysis and certain cancers, as well as other neurological conditions. BrainBridge plans to utilize surgical robots and artificial intelligence to reconstruct facial feature for full facial muscle use. This sounds like Dr. Frankenstein in the 21st Century. The brain is the most complex organ in human body which we still not truly understand to a level of swapping out brains like car batteries. But again, sci-fi medical theorists continue to propose these wild devices or technologies . . . remember cryo-freezing humans for immortality. The only one that worked was on FUTURAMA.

OpenAI announced it would pull one of the ChatGPT voices named Sky after it created controversy for its resemblance to the voice of actress Scarlett Johansson in Her, a 2013 movie about artificial intelligence. The Microsoft-backed company posted that it paused the roll out while it worked on the issue. The news comes one week after OpenAI debuted a range of audio voices for ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, a new AI model called GPT-4o, and a desktop version of ChatGPT. Users watching the live demonstration of ChatGPT's audio capabilities immediately began to post on social media that the Sky voice sounded like Johansson in the movie. Johansson got a company to take down its use of her voice. The company claimed that it used a voice actress who sounds similar, but the public can see the intent to confuse with Johansson. Hollywood stars are actively protecting their likeness, voice and reputations as AI continues to invade their performance space.

If c chatting it up with a fake ScarJo not doing it for you, why not try a conversation with the leader of China? ThereÕs a new chatbot based on Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was trained using the books, literature and speeches of the Chinese leader. His ideological doctrine has been created during his tenure as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The chatbot will probably be used to continue to indoctrinate citizens in the ways of communism and the XI way. If it sounds like a leader can live forever, cue 1984, this may be the blueprint.

cyberbarf

SECOND TRY CYBERCULTURE

Last month was the failed Watcher launch. Now, the Try Guys.

The Try Guys are a successive YouTube channel of skits, missions, games and comedy routines. The original founders learned the YT algorithm secrets of creating viral videos at Buzzfeed, but went off on their own to create their own company. It grew to 8 million followers. But when family man Ned Fulmer was caught having an alleged affair with a staff member, the Try Guys scandal hurt the company badly.

Try Guys Keith Habersberger and Zach Kornfeld revealed in an interview with Anthony Padilla that the viral drama with former member Ned Fulmer caused them to lose millions of dollars in brand deals - - and prompted the creation of the groupÕs 2nd Try subscription service. Back in September 2022, Try Guys co-founder Ned Fulmer was removed from the YouTube group after allegations of him cheating on his wife with an employee went viral on social media. The remaining members of the Try Guys addressed the situation in a video shortly after the incident, revealing that they had no idea what was going on at the time and were saddened by the news.

In the interview, the Try Guys revealed the Ned Fulmer drama made them realize everything they had built their business on was “fundamentally broken” and not built for sustainability. “Being YouTubers, you are reliant on advertisers,” Zach said. “When we went through (the Ned Fulmer drama), it changed how our channel was surfaced. It chased advertisers away because we were too hot. We lost millions in brand deals. It sent our company into a tailspin. If this can happen, it means that this is not sustainable.”

The remaining core members Keith and Zach, admit in addition to the scandal cost their company millions of dollars in advertising and sponsorship deals, the YT algorithm is being tweeked toward video content that does not meet their creative vision. Therefore, they decided that they needed to start their own subscription channel, Second Try.tv, in order to stabilize their revenue streams.

The new platform will have exclusive and early release content featuring more cast members. They explained that the old standard Try Guy videos would remain free on their YouTube channel but released later. The subscription channel at $5/month is a means of leaving Patreon behind.

Watcher got huge blowback for charging $5/month for their new channel. However, the Try Guys have not had that initial pushback. It may be from their use of paid, premium content live finales like the popular “Without a Recipe” show.

In any event, the Try Guys claim that they will be running two channels at the same time. But it begs the question whether the old YouTube channel will turn into the neglected step-child as the company needs to push paid memberships in order to stabilize their cash flow.

In addition, the last founding member, the popular Eugene Yang, has stepped away from video content to pursue his own independent creative interests. This puts the Try Friends in the spotlight to supplement or perhaps surpass the video releases featuring Keith or Zach. Of course, the additional cast means additional talent and production costs. The company is betting their virtual farm on maintaining their current fan base and trying to expand it with different shows and concepts.

As of June 1st, the Try Guys YT channel is still at 8 million followers. But their first livestream after the announcement was a Pro-Palestine event which may rub some followers the wrong way. People go to entertainment sites to get escape the drumbeat of politics and news. It seemed like an odd choice to potentially push back on some of your audience's personal viewpoints on a hot-button topic.

It is also a huge risk to tell a channel's loyal followers to fork over $5/month to watch content they have gotten for free for a decade. But the subscription model is being phased in by many other top YT creators. Once again, time will tell whether this was the right decision for the creative community.

iToons

cyberbarf

FOUND BUT NOT LOST ON THE INTERNET

Spring is in full bloom and Nature continues to captivate 2024. Last month, a facebook post from Oregon shows a deer making friends with a rabbit. Cuteness overload in a political damning news cycle. It is like a breath of fresh air.

Source: facebook

And speaking of Nature, an Illinois bar has decided to sell Cicada cocktails. Illinois is in the center of cicada mania as both the 13 and 17 year cicadas will emerge this year. Millions of bugs are going to invade suburban and rural homes with their high whiny love calls and mounds of exoskeletons. Some people report hundreds on their trees while neighbors less than a mile away have yet to spy one ugly sucker.

Source: neatorama

A German train station has set up vending machines for unclaimed baggage. People can pay for the privilege of possessing other people's lost luggage items. This is not the first time. US cable used to have several scavenger shows about auctions for lost airline luggage or abandoned storage lockers. It does beg the question: how does someone lose their bags on a train?

Source: neatorama

The divide between left and right in American politics is literally dividing states. In the latest news, several Illinois counties have voted to try to secede from the state. There has been a long running feud between the downstate counties and Cook County/Chicago over the control of the statehouse and state spending (which this year tops $53 billion). The counties that want out are not contiguous which means they may want to flee to bordering states unlike the eastern counties in Oregon who want to move to Idaho because the conservative area only has 10 percent of the population/political representation so their opinions and needs are not being satisfied by the state legislature. Legal experts believe these movements are more show than reality as states are chartered by the Congress and the means of secession is unknown.

Source: NBC Chicago

It only took one day for an internet game to have a puzzle based on the day's headline. Couch Potato is an AI generated meme puzzle game that players have to guess the double meaning phrase. Well played human word suggestion.

Source: Couch Potato

FREELANCE CARTOONS, ILLUSTRATIONS

FOR

NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINE, ON-LINE

DO YOU CONTENT?

CHECK OUT

PINDERMEDIA.COM

cyberbarf

THE WHETHER REPORT

cyberbarf

STATUS

Question: Whether Trump's New York felony convictions will change the GOP campaigns?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether AI surge is another tech bubble that is about to burst?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether EV low demand will force car manufacturers to go back to make gasoline cars?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

OUR STORE IS GOING

THROUGH A RENOVATION

AND UPGRADE.

IT MAY BE DOWN.

SORRY FOR INCONVENIENCE.

LADIES' JAMS

MULTIPLE STYLES-COLORS

$31.99

PINDERMEDIA.COM STORE!

PRICES TO SUBJECT TO CHANGE

PLEASE REVIEW E-STORE SITE FOR CURRENT SALES