What South Carolina AD Jeremiah Donati said on 107.5 The Game on Thursday (Part One)

University of South Carolina Athletics Director Jeremiah Donati was a guest on 107.5 The Game with Jay Phillips and Elijah Campbell on Thursday afternoon. He discussed an array of topics surrounding the Gamecocks.

Below is a transcript of the first half of Donati’s appearance with minor, insignificant edits for clarity.

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Q: How was your first trip as AD down to the SEC meetings? Did you get Paul Finebaum’s autograph? Did you go swimming in the Gulf? How’d that work?

Jeremiah Donati: Hey, you know, Paul actually came to see us on campus about a month or two prior, and so I got to know him a little bit before I was able to go on air with him. He’s a funny guy. You know, he’s incredibly well-read, and the conversation can go a lot of different directions. It was fun catching up with him, and it was fun to be on the show.

Q: Let’s jump in. We’ve got you for about a half hour here. We probably don’t have time to get to everything we’d like to, but let’s start with the House Settlement. You’ve been very good about keeping fans up to date on what Carolina is doing to be ready for this. Now it’s here, and you’ll begin implementing some of these settlement things. Certainly, the biggest one, Jeremiah, is revenue sharing with the athletes. Where are you with that now, with just a few weeks until those things begin?

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, well, those plans are ready to go. We created those budgets back in the spring and informed our coaches of those. So, we’re ready to execute those and get those players under contract. It’s funny because some of those are just literally transferring former contracts from the Garnet Trust over to the University. So, some of it now is just a matter of getting those on the right heading, so to speak.

But there’s also–this is interesting and this is kind of pertinent to our conversation; I literally was just talking to a staff member–we had our first real NIL deal submitted through the Clearing House through NIL Go, which was kind of historic. “The Football Player Not To Be Named” submitted a deal for an autograph session. So, I thought that was kind of interesting to kind of witness history on our way to get to the office and talk to you guys. So, it’s all in play. It’s kind of surreal to think that it’s here.

We have talked about it, you know, for the past year. You have heard me talk about it for six months, but all of us as athletic directors have been talking about this for a year. To see it here now is surreal. So, it’s exciting. I mean, there’s a lot of optimism, I’d say, coming out of Destin and Orlando, which is where I was earlier this week. Overall, the sentiment is one of optimism.

Q: Jeremiah, that kind of leads me to the question that I had for you. Because it’s such a new world now that the House Settlement is going to take place and the revenue sharing is going to be happening, I think a lot of people have questions as to what that leaves with NIL collectives. So, my question to you is, how does this change the relationship with the Garnet Trust? Or does it change really anything at all from that standpoint?

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, it changes it significantly in the sense that, you know, I think one of the questions the fans have, or that I’ve heard, is that they say, ‘well, how are these NIL deals still going to pass? What are we going to do about NIL?’ The answer is, well, we’re taking on that role of paying the players because NIL the last couple years has not been NIL. It has been pay-for-play. The value of a player is the value to the team, not the marketing value, which is what NIL was intended to be. So, you know, that’s quite a shift in mindset. And so getting our fans there, getting all fans there, getting our players there, getting our coaches there, is just going to take a little time.

And so, you know, back to your question about NIL collectives: they’re going to look different because they’re just not going to be able to operate as they were. There was some statistic as Deloitte was creating this Clearing House product, NIL Go. The data they had looked at, looking backwards, there was over 70%, Seven-Zero, 70% of those deals would not have passed muster because they were way above market for the value of services. That, candidly, was nowhere even in the ballpark. And so that’s going to be a market correction that we’re all going to have to just live with and accept and understand that NIL is not going to be as much of a recruiting tool as it has been in the past.

I think the downstream effects of that is it will tamp down, I think, some of the transfer activity, transfer portal activity we saw, which I think is probably a good thing. One, just because there will be not as much chaos in the system. But, two, we have got to remember that all of our student-athletes are students, as well. So, to think about transferring three or four or five times in your college career is just not setting a young man or a young woman up for success. So, I’m not saying the transfer is a bad idea. I think if there’s a better place for you, then by all means, you should be able to go explore that. But I think when you’re really talking about going someplace and leaving year after year after year, I don’t think that’s in the best interest of any student-athlete.

Q: We’re talking to Jeremiah Donati, Carolina’s athletics director here, as, of course, just last week the House Settlement was approved by Judge Wilken out in California and begins to be implemented ahead of the next school year. How much can you share with us about your specific department and the allocation to the athletes? What percentages have you guys decided upon when it comes to football, basketball, baseball, etc.? Or is that work still being done, or is that something we might not be privy to?

Jeremiah Donati: No, just not privy to just for this reason. It’s just–this won’t surprise you–it’s proprietary for competitive reasons. You can imagine that any number you put out there becomes a target for a competitor. So, our numbers are all very healthy. We’ve obviously announced we’re at the top. You know, we’re going to fully participate, but for competitive and proprietary reasons, you’re not going to see any athletic departments announce what they’re doing. In fact, a couple of my colleagues who did that earlier in the spring have since backtracked on that. So, you know, I’m not trying to be coy with you all. It’s just something that we’re going to keep in-house for now.

But I think all of our coaches will tell you they feel good about it. What’s interesting is that, just for this year, there was an interesting loophole that a lot of us took advantage of. That is, if you were able to front-load some of these contracts before the rules changed, you could kind of change the proportionality of those distributions this year, for this year only. In other words, if you were able to say front-load some football contracts before the rules changed, you could take some of football’s rev-share and give it to a sport like baseball, for example. So, that’s probably the best and clearest example I can give you. So what I’m telling you is that those percentages will be a little different this year than they will be traditionally in the future.

Q. That’s one thing that’s kind of going to lead to here, as well. I mean, what’s that conversation with the coaches, like, in terms of getting what they need as well? You mentioned that you think all the coaches, are really happy with what they’re going to be able to be receiving and have allocated. But what kind of goes into those types of conversations, in terms of just getting and making sure that all of your programs get what they need? Because I think that’s one of the most untalked about hurdles of what universities are going to be facing now, in terms of having to distribute this money across the board.

Jeremiah Donati: Yeah, that’s a great question, Elijah. So, here’s the way I would put it. And I probably misspoke when I said all of our coaches are happy. I think they’re content. Because any coach would tell you that they want more, and they should want more. But the reality is, when you’re playing with a “hard cap,” which we are, for the first time ever, it’s a zero-sum game. So, I give to men’s basketball, I take away from this sport. I give to women’s basketball, I take away from that sport, I give to football…

There’s only so many resources that could go around, so you’ve got to find a mixture that makes sense, and you’ve got to kind of determine where the program is. Is it a program you need to put more resources behind because, you know, maybe you were lagging?

Obviously, football, we’re going to start there. Every school that has a football program that wants to be competitive is going to start there. You have got to feed the beast. It is not breaking news or a shock, but football is paying the bills. It is paying them by a long shot. So, you’ve got to make sure that you keep that program healthy and they have what they need.

You’ve also got to find a way to strike that balance. You want to keep your coaches content and competitive. It’s going to be impossible to do it perfectly. There’s always going to be one coach who says, ‘Hey, this school is doing more. And they’re not wrong. There’s always going to be a school that is doing a little bit more in some sport because that’s the sport they’ve identified they can either be more competitive in or they’ve got a bigger tradition or whatever the case may be.

I think the best example I can give you is that some of these traditional basketball powerhouses: you’ve heard that some of these schools are taking a little bit less from the football side in order to feed the basketball side. So, those are decisions that institutions are going to have to make. I think, on one hand, it’s kind of exciting to think that people can make those decisions. Of course, that’s irrespective of any future rule changes or legal challenges. I think it’s a good thing for a school to be able to decide what they want to do.

Q: Jeremiah, let’s shift over. You mentioned it just a little bit–whether it was by design or just an example–with baseball. Certainly, you came from a school with a proud baseball program (TCU) into a school with a proud baseball program. Things did not go the way anyone wanted them to go. Take us through what your postseason decisions were like in an effort to make sure that this year doesn’t happen again around here, including, of course, the retention of Coach Mainieri and his staff.

Jeremiah Donati: Well, a couple of things. One, we all want the same thing, which is to get the program back on a trajectory and on track, on path to realize the success we’ve had in the past. There’s a couple of things before I comment on that.

We’ve got to be honest about where we are. We were picked to finish 14th in the SEC, and we finished 15th. If you look at the last eight years, we have struggled to be in the upper echelon of the league. You’ve had three coaches since we had our success in Omaha. All of that is to say that we have work to do. We had work to do a year ago–I guess Paul has been here almost exactly a year–we all want to get back to the same place. But we’ve got to be a little patient. When Paul got here–I wasn’t here at the time, obviously–I think anyone who was really looking over this reasonably will tell you that you made a coaching change for a reason. We’re rebuilding.

Obviously, this year did not go as well as we had hoped. There’s reasons for that. I’m not going to sit here and say we couldn’t have coached better or played better. We could have done all of those things better, and we will do those things better. But we needed more resources to invest in the program from an NIL and rev-share standpoint. We have provided that. I think getting the players here earlier to get them involved in the strength and conditioning program would be huge. That was one noticeable, kind of glaring impact that Coach Mainieri found when he got here, since we had not been involved in those things. Getting the new players here early and getting them involved in those programs would benefit us. So, we made the decision and investment to do that. And there’s a number of other things.

I think the players–we’ve done a really good job in the portal so far. I really like, even despite our fans being very vocal about their displeasure of the results–candidly, I’d be upset if they weren’t upset, as it tells me they care and want to be back in a place we feel really proud about. But I think we can get there.

It just takes a little time. No one likes the “p word,” the patience word. When the questions were coming about whether we were going to retain a coach after one year, I mean, it is just completely unheard of to move on from a coach. When you hire a coach, you are making an investment in him or her. You have got to give them a shot to be successful. You know, what message are you sending to people if you give them no runway? I tell you, it would become a pretty undesirable place to work.

I understand people’s passion for this. Trust me, I want this. I’ve been to Omaha six times. I want to be back there as fast as possible, too. But we’ve got to let Paul do his thing and be a little patient. I already like the way it’s going. We’re off to a fast start in the transfer portal, and we’ve added some really good pieces. So, there’s more work to do. I probably took the long way around the block there with you guys. I like their attitude going into the offseason, and I feel much better about next year.

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