Mike Brem

Husband, father, native Texan, Houston Cougar, lawyer, Big Law refugee, Rodeo Houston lifetime director, Texas country music fan.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@PikettyWIL Have you spoken with China and India about this?

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@BlueBoxDave These are state, not federal, offices. What’s Congress’ authority to do anything about them?

[🏛 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 🏛 @nonregemesse]

Did someone kidnap a Spartan Queen or something?

[Joseph Duarte @Joseph_Duarte]

Inside Sunday’s @HoustonChron Sports

✍️ https://t.co/ubCeRu85c6

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@VinnysCorner1 Le Grand Orange

[Houston Baseball @UHCougarBB]

Key additions to the crew 🔑

Coach Davis' inaugural coaching staff is taking shape!

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@shipwreckedcrew I feel the same way about volleyball. Super fast action.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@realdanihgh @EdLawDude Why would the players want collective bargaining? They already have unlimited free agency and no salary cap.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@mckenzielaw Hear! Hear! I am an unrepentant, free market guy, but I thought college athletics were supposed to be something outside that.

[David McKenzie @mckenzielaw]

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, asked about the legislation last week, offered the kind of line that gives the whole game away. "If someone chooses to write legislation that focuses on us because we've done things so well," he said, "I look forward to learning that explanation."

Allow me to provide one.

Mr. Sankey, you and Mr. Petitti, do not actually want to win the dance. You want to own it. (That this needs explaining is itself the explanation.) The realignment moves of the last decade were never about formal exclusion. They were about consolidating enough brand value into two conferences that the resulting media rights advantage becomes insurmountable. Industry estimates project the SEC and Big Ten will distance themselves from the ACC and Big 12 by as much as $40 million per school annually in the coming years. That is not competitive success. That is economic foreclosure. At $40 million per school per year, the SEC and Big Ten buy every elite coach, every top recruit, every facilities upgrade, and eventually every championship. The other conferences are not being kicked off the dance floor. They are being priced off it.

That is the trajectory the Protect College Sports Act is responding to. The political coalition behind the bill is not the excluded. It is the soon-to-be-economically-foreclosed. Senator Cantwell named the goal in plain terms: "trying to make sure that nobody runs away with the eyeballs or a certain amount of revenue and hijacks the rest of the system." The hijacking is happening through media rights consolidation. The bill is the legislative response.

To be clear, I do not think this bill is constitutional. I don't. Targeting two identifiable conferences raises Bill of Attainder concerns. Handing enforcement to a private commission of the regulated parties is a Carter v. Carter Coal problem. Tying Olympic sports protections to a pooling mechanism the SEC and Big Ten can veto is structurally incoherent. The courts will sort that out.

But constitutional or not, the irony of this moment cannot be understated. The SEC and B1G asked Congress for help running away with the system. Congress decided they were the system that needed restraint. The infrastructure the SEC and B1G to entrench themselves has been turned against them by the same legislators they courted. Neither could not have imagined this outcome seven years ago when the lobbying began. Neither probably could not have imagined it seven weeks ago.

For anyone who has spent the last decade listening to Mr. Sankey and Mr. Petitti explain how their conferences are uniquely valuable, uniquely deserving, uniquely positioned, and now uniquely aggrieved, this is truly hilarious. Every spring meeting press conference about competitive excellence. Every appearance on the talk show circuit explaining why the SEC just means more. Every white paper about why pooling rights would not work. Every interview in which the answer to "is this fair to everyone else" was some version of "we earned this."

All of it produced a bill that uses those same arguments as evidence for the prosecution. Those two conferences spent, what, 15 years telling everyone they were too good to share? Congress listened, agreed, and decided that being too good to share was the problem.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@jsaberous @evan7257 Me either.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@NoahB77_ @11point7 There are 21 pitchers on the Auburn roster.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@HawkEmDownChris JR Richard

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@ShannonTerry Why would the players agree to collective bargaining? They already have unlimited free agency and no salary cap. What could the schools possibly give them to give that up?

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@ColeParke_wsc The regionals are the best.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@klkdave @DudespostingWs Fine. Illegal pitch. Same principle.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@ndioli74 @CFBHome This is Cal Poly’s first Super, and it has only been to five regionals in the last 24 years. It is also Little Rock’s first Super, and it has been to precisely two regionals in history. So, while we can all enjoy the Cinderellas having their moment, it’s lightning striking.

[Mike Brem @MikeBrem]

@aaronfitt The players need to do better.