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Matt Brown - the go to person for all of this stuff - had a great take on this...

First, he notes that everyone is doing something like this:

the models the Big Ten is reportedly considering don't actually give up equity in the league. Instead, our mystery PE firm is giving up front capital in exchange for a piece of future revenues over an extended period of time.

It's not that different from what most Power 4 athletic departments (and heck, most athletic departments, period) do with their multimedia (MMR) rights. The school gets a guaranteed amount of money up front, and the two entities split future revenues beyond a certain point.

A lot of people in college sports are taking meetings like this — not just P4 athletic departments (off the top of my head, I know of at least eight schools that have at least listened to firms pitching similar relationships), but also coaches associations, the FCS football playoffs, conferences and probably other entities I've forgotten about.

The he asks the question: what is the money actually for:

I think the single biggest mistake any school could make here is using the short-term financial windfall from outside investment to simply pay players.

The problem with this thinking is that it is completely short-sighted.

Let's say you take that huge chunk of cash (eight figures? nine?) and throw it into players. Guess wrong, and you paid a bunch of guys to transfer, sit on the bench or otherwise not perform ... and then once they leave, you've traded future earning potential for nothing. No equity. No revenue-generating assets. Nothing whatsoever that changes your current financial position.

And shoot, even if you guess right — well, those players graduate.

You usually borrow money because you want to build something that will help you grow the business. Maybe that's hiring more people so you can make more (or new) stuff. Build a new warehouse. Get new equipment to launch new services. Then, if it works out, your revenues go up, and you can pay back your investors.

If anybody, be it the Big Ten, an athletic department or any other entity in college athletics, wanted to raise outside money, I'd want to hear them explicitly explain what they want the money for.

My personal favorite was the candy orange helmets we wore for the Ohio State game 10 years ago

Give me some version of those, the current maroon and the script Hokies on white and I think we're cookin.

I was told you can't get any recruits if you don't use nike... I bet we could buy some recruits with an extra 17M in revenue though...

Can't agree more. Orange should be more common place in the uniform cycle. "BuT oThEr ScHoOlS hAvE oRaNgE", who cares. I bet we start winning again, nobody cares. I would however vote that when we wear orange, unless it's an attempt at an AOE uniform combo, we should incorporate some maroon. I for one think the orange unis with the metallic maroon helmets (with metallic orange VT) we had a few years ago would be a sick look.

Click on the handle. I'm pretty sure that's not Marcus Vick's profile.

Also, shout out to @comitttaxfraud being CC'd on the tweet.

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My sister and I were latch key kids in the late 70's and early 80's. Mom stayed at home with us while Dad worked until I was old enough to go back to school. When I started in first grade, Mom went back to part time substitute work (probably 3 days a week). By second grade, she was full time teaching again. My sister and I navigated buses or walked to and from school every day and let ourselves into the house. (I understand that today that would have DCF screaming). Both sets of grandparents were both 4-5 hours away, we had moved for Dad's job.

That said, when I had a serious accident just before starting 6th grade, Dad's Mom packed up and babysat me in my bed rest for 2.5 months because Mom had to go back to work. I learned more card tricks, rummy wars, and we read the entire trivia pursuit box of questions.

But what if we are releasing energy drinks and his flavor is called stomp?

Sixty is the new thirty....

I'm in that picture somewhere, but haven't been able to find me for some reason.

My parents met in the USAF and got married then once Mom started having kids, she got out(and legally had to at that tine in the mid 50s). Being a military family, we moved every 18-24 months around the country and the world. Obviously no family nearby in most cases. I never even knew 3 of my 4 grandparents as they died before I was born or while I was an infant(I was the 6th of 7 kids(she also had 5 miscarriages) - mom was 36 when she had me, 43 when she had my baby sister). The oldest 6 of us plus 4 of the 5 miscarriages were within a 9 year span and she had 5 kids under the age of 5 including twin infants. Needless to say, she did not work outside the home as raising us was her primary focus-particularly since my dad had frequent 30-90 day TDY (temporary duty) stints as well as a year in Vietnam in 1967/8, Zero outside help with the kids.

My ex she had a previous child, and she and I had 2 kids together just 11 months apart and likely would have followed in my parent's footsteps if she hadn't had her tubes tied (TWICE cause they grew back together). Both my parents were local but couldn't take care of the kids full time. Childcare was cost prohibitive even then back in the early 90s (we figured out that if my wife had worked she would've had to make $20k(current amount would be $40k) AFTER taxes just to BREAK EVEN after the costs of clothing/transportation and daycare, so we struggled with just me working.(plus she had chronic medical issues and disability on top of that).

My daughter -now 33-has 4 kids under the age of 5 (born March 2020, May 2021, May 2022, and August 2023). She works full time job from home and her husband is professional firefighter. They don't use daycare either.

So that's multiple generations - none of whom had other family members as full time caregivers for their kids. Not saying it wasn't more common in the previous generations for extended family to watch the kids but certainly not universal by any means.

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