KARL BARKLEY – FOUNDER OF D3DIRECT – EPISODE 1231

Website – https://www.d3-direct.com/

Email – dthreedirect@gmail.com

Twitter – @D3Direct

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Karl Barkley is the founder of D3Direct.  D3Direct exists to share the stories of NCAA Division 3 student-athletes and explore their journeys from recruit to the real world. 

D3Direct is the go-to source for info & advice on D3 recruiting, admissions, and post-grad ventures.  Karl speaks directly to D3 student-athletes and coaches to learn about their college experiences and share those takeaways through the D3Direct Platform.

Karl played his collegiate basketball at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where he was a team captain for two seasons. 

On this episode Mike and Karl discuss the transformative journey of NCAA Division 3 basketball and its impact on student-athletes’ lives. Karl shares how participating in Division 3 basketball serves not merely as an athletic endeavor but as a pivotal launchpad for future success. Through the exploration of the D3 Recruiting Playbook, we emphasize the necessity for prospective student-athletes to understand the intricacies of the recruiting process, enabling them to make informed decisions regarding their educational and athletic aspirations. Furthermore, we delve into the invaluable alumni networks, leadership experiences, and life skills that Division 3 athletics uniquely offer, thereby enhancing personal and professional development. Karl and D3Direct help reduce the uncertainties that often accompany the recruiting journey, ultimately guiding student-athletes towards optimal pathways for their futures.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Karl Barkley, Founder of D3Direct.

What We Discuss with Karl Barkley

• Participating in D3 basketball is not merely a conclusion but rather a significant stepping stone towards lifelong success and personal development
• The importance of academic excellence in enhancing opportunities for student-athletes, impacting both their admissions prospects and financial aid availability
• The D3 recruiting playbook serves as a comprehensive resource for aspiring student-athletes, guiding them through the nuances of the recruitment process from start to finish
• Networking with coaches and peers during recruitment camps can significantly enhance a player’s visibility and potential for receiving scholarship offers from colleges
• Division 3 programs are increasingly exploring NIL opportunities, potentially reshaping the landscape of college athletics and providing new avenues for financial support for student-athletes
• Why the challenges and unpredictability of NIL in college sports, suggests that a structured approach may be necessary to ensure sustainability and fairness in the recruitment process
• The importance of understanding the recruiting landscape and managing expectations effectively
• Scholarship opportunities exist at Division 3 schools, often overlooked due to misconceptions about financial aid
• The necessity for families to seek scholarships and financial aid to make education affordable at D3 institutions
• The increasing mobility of athletes and the potential future need for contracts to ensure stability in the evolving landscape of college sports

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THANKS, KARL BARKLEY

If you enjoyed this episode with Karl Barkley to let him know by clicking on the link below and thanking him via Twitter.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR KARL BARKLEY – FOUNDER OF D3DIRECT – EPISODE 1231

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

[00:00:21] Karl Barkley: Going to play D3 basketball is not the end goal. It is a launchpad for the rest of your life. And I really think truly that the alumni network that you get from being a part of that team, the life experiences, the leadership, all the academic, all the internship, the job experience, stuff that comes with it, sets you up better than any other level.

[00:00:41] Mike Klinzing: Karl Barkley is the founder of D3 Direct, which exists to share the stories of NCAA Division three student athletes and explore their journeys from recruit to the real world. D3 Direct is the go-to source for info and advice on D3, recruiting, admissions, and post-grad ventures. Carl speaks directly to D3 student athletes and coaches to learn about their college experiences and share those takeaways through the D3 direct platform.

Karl played his collegiate basketball at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where he was a team captain for two seasons.

Are you or an athlete you know planning to go D3? Check out the D3 recruiting playbook from D3 Direct. Their playbook gives you a clear step-by-step roadmap to the recruiting process. What coaches value key milestones from early high school through application season and how to build a targeted list of schools that fit your needs?

The playbook demystifies, researching D3 programs and how to stand out without chasing every camp or showcase the modules cover things like writing emails to coaches. Building an effective highlight tape using social media, planning camps and visits and navigating application strategy. You’ll get templates, checklists, and an outreach plan to communicate confidently.

Learn how to compare financial packages and avoid common missteps. By the end, you’ll have a prioritized school list and a decision framework you can use to land your best fit opportunity. Click on the link in the show notes to get your D3 recruiting playbook from D3 Direct.

[00:02:14] Dan DeCrane: Hi, this is Coach Dan DeCrane from Gilmore Academy and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

[00:02:23] Mike Klinzing: Give with Hoops is the first platform turning basketball analytics into fundraising impact. Every stat tells a story and now every story drives sponsorship engagement and team growth programs nationwide are transforming basketball stats into funding power. Learn to use performance data to attract sponsors, engage fans, and raise more with every play.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Karl Barkley, founder of D3 Direct. Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Pod for his second appearance. Karl Barkley from D3 Direct.  Karl, welcome back.

[00:03:28] Karl Barkley: Yeah, Mike, honored to be back on and excited for the conversation.

[00:03:32] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do with D3 direct and trying to have an impact on the world of college basketball, high school basketball, and just give people a blueprint for how they can better manage their college decisions.

So why don’t we start there with the D3 recruiting playbook that you put together, and just give us an idea of what that’s all about. The genesis of Genesis, where the idea came from and what the process was like for putting it together.

[00:04:03] Karl Barkley: Yeah. I think it came about because, whenever it was 15 years ago or so, when I went through the recruiting process and I had to figure out all these things on my own, I was reflecting.

Where we are at the current moment and there’s still really not any kind of cohesive guidance for families. We’re running a big survey right now. We would encourage any listeners here that are coaches, families recruits or parents to get in there and answer that, but we’re trying to figure out what people do when they encounter recruiting problem.

And it seems like the majority, again, still this lack of cohesive information out there are going to Google and now AI to try to solve their problems. But we figured we’d try to plug that hole. Specifically for D3 recruits, it’s very different processes. Your son just went through it to land at Ohio Wesleyan, and I would love to get into that a little bit just because recent experience is the best to talk about.

But yeah, we really wanted to just plug that hole and try to provide clear, affordable information to families in one spot so they knew where to look. They don’t feel like they have to run around and try to solve all of these answers, reinvent the wheel when so many people have done it before and we’ve just tried to package together that collective information and share it with families.

[00:05:18] Mike Klinzing: What are some of the key areas, without diving specifically into all the details, but what are some of the key areas that you focus on that you think people just in your conversations struggle with the most in the process of trying to figure out, Hey, what level of player am I? Hey, what schools do I want to go to?

What are my opportunities? Where are the areas that people are struggling in your experience?

[00:05:42] Karl Barkley: I think all of those, for sure. The other question too that comes up all the time is just when should I start? Right now, 2020 sevens are getting recruited. This summer 2026 class is mostly locked up.

And signed and admitted into schools. We have 20, 20 eights and 2020 nines reaching out and saying, Hey, what camp should I go to get exposure this summer? And I’m like, you don’t. That is not your concern. You don’t need to worry about that at the moment. Go out, get better, have fun, be a kid.

If you’re a 2029 right now, just enjoy being a kid in your hometown. The time for that kind of focus, next step comes later. And we detail all of that in the playbook we have. We interviewed college coaches to say, okay, freshman year, sophomore year, junior and senior, here’s exactly what you should be doing.

Here’s how you should be conducting outreach. Trying to include things like templates for emails so that you don’t have to dream up. Exactly. There’s so much pressure to come up with exactly the right message. Oftentimes simple is better. And we have a couple templates in there to show kids how to do that.

So those would be two things, the timing and then the structure of messages how to do that. So

[00:06:53] Mike Klinzing: I think the big thing that I’ve experienced, and this is not necessarily specific to my son and I, but this is, I think just in general, people really have no idea what they don’t know, if that makes any sense in that they’re out there and they know that either they themselves as a player want to play college basketball or frequently were thinking about parents, right?

Helping the kids to be able to navigate this situation. And parents don’t really know exactly what they should be doing, how they should be doing it. And then oftentimes those players also don’t necessarily have. A resource in maybe their high school coach hasn’t had somebody recruited, maybe their A U program or their A U coach doesn’t have the right connections to be able to help them to get in front of some of the different college coaches.

And so therefore, people are, again, as your survey shows they’re flying blind, just randomly reaching out for information. And I always feel like if you could put together the playbook that you’ve put together and get that out to people and educate them about, Hey, here’s what you don’t know, that’s what they first have to understand.

And then once they know what they don’t know, all right, then let’s help them to know that. Yes. And so I think it’s a two step process where you’ve have to recognize that I don’t have all the information I need, and then the next question is, where can I go to get that information? I think that’s the niche where.

You, me, people who are in this space trying to help people, are trying to figure out how do we get to the people who need this information and then put it in such a package that it can be beneficial to them. So I think that’s where, I think that’s where we are, Carl.

[00:08:43] Karl Barkley: Yeah, absolutely. I always say defined problem is way less scarier or way less scary than an unde, undefined and unknown problem.

Like you said, if you don’t know what to look for, you’re going to feel a lot of anxiety about the process. And I feel like if there’s anything D3 direct was built to try to do is just take the anxiety and that stress off of kids because, again, I went through this process, I lived it, I’ve now helped, hundreds of families, one-on-one and thousands off social media navigate the process.

And I feel like we already put way too much on kids, whether it’s test prep, whether it’s, these college decisions, whether it’s, internships like. If we can ratchet it down one degree, to work against that tide. I think that’s the goal.

[00:09:30] Mike Klinzing: Tell me a little bit about the experience that you shared with me when we were talking on the phone before the podcast a couple days ago about your experience going to a camp where you quickly realized, hey, there’s a bunch of guys that are at a level maybe above where I’m capable of playing.

because to me, that really rang true in terms of, I think it’s difficult sometimes for people to have a good understanding of self-awareness of where is it that my best fit is going to be. And that’s not to say I always feel like I have a hard time. If a kid is being recruited by mostly division threes and then they have one division two offer, or maybe they have a division one offer somewhere that I have a really hard time telling the kid, Hey, don’t bet on yourself and don’t go.

Give it a shot. because that’s what I did and it worked out for me. But yet, at the same time, I think there’s a lot of people out there that are completely unrealistic about where they fit. Or they just, again, don’t understand how good the varying levels of college basketball are. I don’t care who you are, whether it’s division three n ai, division two, whatever, how good you have to be at to play at those levels.

Just relay that story that you shared with me because I thought I found that for me to be, I found it to ring true.

[00:10:50] Karl Barkley: Yeah. Yeah. Just for background but those that aren’t familiar, I grew up in Davidson, North Carolina, so the, we’re famous for helping to produce Steph giving, like sending him to the NBA.

I grew up going to this to Bob, M’s. Basketball camp. So every summer, that was what I did. I’d play in the backyard, I’d go to Bob, M’s basketball camp, and that was what I did in terms of a structured, organized camp experience. Flash forward to high school, I played at North Mecklenburg High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, which is really good.

Had a long history. When I was there, we had multiple D one guys on the varsity team. I was lucky to make the JB team. I was actually, I was the last guy to get handed to Jersey the night before the season was supposed to start. There was the 15th and 16th guys, me and this other kid. And the JB coach handed me the jersey and said, you’re on the team.

Which was a pretty brutal way to, to find out that you didn’t make it for the other guy. I was lucky. I was not very good and they really gave me a chance, I think, because of how hard I worked in the tryout. I played one season on jv, didn’t get a lot of time. Played sophomore year, started playing more, getting better.

And it was that summer after sophomore year that my, that varsity coach took me and a bunch of guys up to this camp that you mentioned. So we all pile into a passenger van from, Charlotte, North Carolina. And we drive up to Pennsylvania. And the camp is not for me like I am. I am going on this trip, but I am not the intended audience for the coaches that are there for the, the level of talent.

And you were trying to, you were mentioning like, how do we help kids find out, what their level is? For me, this was con like how I learned what my level was and how I got context there because I was matching up against guys that were just way better than me. I had played against good ones in high school.

Good, good. Had great teammates. North was awesome. We had a good conference, but like this was the top of the top and, it just, there was something about being in those drills and being like, whoa, I just got beat baseline. And the guy dunked. Alright maybe I’m not the Duke or Michigan State level recruit that, that the coaches are watching for on the sideline.

But I will say with that camp, what I loved was that it was the first time where I really just had I see these camps as just an endless opportunity to get better. And it, I don’t know if they still do this, but at this camp they did a 6:00 AM workout. So before the day got going, the drills and stations started like eight.

But you could get in there early before breakfast and a college coach was there. Would run you through drills. And I thought that was the most incredible thing. So every day I got up early and I went to this 6:00 AM workout. And nowadays if I tried to do that and then go through the whole whatever eight hour day, I would be exhausted.

But as a 16-year-old high school kid, I was able to do it. And so I think, I just soaked it in. And, but again, to your original question, like I just really got humbled in any kind of expectations about, growing up in the state of North Carolina and maybe playing for Chapel Hill or Duke someday were pretty fairly squashed after that week.

[00:14:01] Mike Klinzing: And I do think that the way that things are today, and I’ve told this story about my own recruiting back now we’re talking a long time ago. I graduated from high school in 1988. So my stories are in no way relevant, but I was someone who had no idea exactly. The process looked like. My high school coach had never had anyone that was recruited, so he didn’t really know.

My parents didn’t really know. I really had no idea. And so going into, hey, I knew I wanted to play college basketball. I was playing with and against guys who eventually all played I shouldn’t say all, but a lot of guys that I played with and against played division one basketball and guys played at other levels too.

And so I always used to, again, just like you you measure yourself against the guys that you have an opportunity to play with and against. And so at the time I felt like, hey, I’m a division one basketball player. And so I was being recruited by Kent. I believe it was my, probably at the end of, toward the end of my junior year.

And things happened, I guess slower back then. You weren’t being recruited quite as early for division one as you might be today. But I remember Kent called me up that. Spring or summer and said, Hey, you want to come down for a visit? And I’m like, eh, I don’t know. I, at that time you only got five official visits and I’m like, I have to save one for Carolina.

I have to save one for Ohio State. And I had no idea. That’s honestly what I thought following my junior year. That was the infor, that was just, that was where I felt like I was at. And then from that point on, when I decided I was going to go down and take an unofficial visit, and I still remember my mom and I eating lunch at Wendy’s, paying for our own food.

And then after that they, they stopped recruiting me and then I had to re-recruit myself back almost at the end of my senior year. And I only got lucky because the kid transferred and I was the seventh freshman in a seven freshman class. And I just ended up getting lucky. But I had been recruited by a bunch of division three schools throughout the course of my senior year.

And I just felt Hey, I’m a. I feel like I’m a division one player based on the guys who I played with and against. And, but I didn’t know anything. I made some bad decisions that if I had, probably had somebody that could have helped me or I could have had a recruiting playbook, would’ve said, Hey Mike, if this school’s interested in you, this is probably about as high as you’re going to be able to shoot, so let’s just go ahead and show them some real interest.

So maybe this can actually happen. And obviously now today with social media and all the things, now, you’re not just comparing yourself to the people in your own little geographic area that you might know. Now you can compare yourself to a, this kid who’s across the state, or this kid who’s all over the place, or this kid’s signing with this school, or whatever.

And so there’s almost more information, but it’s almost information overload where there’s so much noise that I’m not sure it’s even, I’m not sure it’s any better, having too much information than it was having too little. Yeah.

[00:17:10] Karl Barkley: Yeah I think there are definitely challenges there because it’s, especially once commitments start getting posted on social media, it’s like, it’s very easy to get caught up in that and ask why I’m not getting that?

Even when  you’re working hard and you’re, maybe you’re talking to some coaches, but you’re not quite there with a commitment. Yeah, I think it is tough. I feel like what we try to, we at D3 direct try to counsel recruits on is get into a community of recruits. Try to reach out to other guys, gals if you’re playing women’s hoops, and just connect with them.

Learn what they are doing what worked for them. Especially if they, got an offer. Maybe, staying in the same geographic area. If there’s someone a year or two years above you in your area who did something well, got a commitment, reach out and learn from them. Most times people are willing to talk and so again, try to like.

Ratchet down the pressure of it’s me against everyone else out there and make it a little more collective. Yeah, at some point if you were the seventh freshman, like there is a guy that didn’t make it the eighth guy when in my situation there was the 16th guy for JV who did not make it. There is a, it is competitive at some point, but not everything has to be me against the world for recruits.

So I think use social media and build your own network of recruits that you can talk to and learn from.

[00:18:30] Mike Klinzing: I couldn’t agree more that if you have that connection with people, that it allows you to just bounce ideas off of them and it allows you to compare notes with, Hey, what are you doing that’s working?

Why are you doing it this way? Here’s what I’m doing. And maybe we collectively can learn from one another. And I think that is super important. If you have a good a U team and a good a U program, I think that. The best programs, the best coaches help to facilitate that with the idea that they’re helping not just their own program by being able to post commitments and, hey, we’ve got this many players going to this many schools or whatever.

But when they’re doing it and they’re in it for the right reasons and they’re really trying to help the kids that are part of their program, I think that’s when you really get something going that can be helpful to the players who are participating in on a particular AAU team. And I’ll give you a story from my son’s recruitment.

It goes back to something that you talked about earlier when you said, Hey, right now, okay, we’re talking about, it’s March of 2026, so most of the 2026 graduating class has already made their decisions. There may be a few random spots out there, a kid that still is going to find a place, but for the most part, that recruiting was done last spring and summer.

And now we’re looking at 2020 sevens. And what I found with my son’s experience is. The year, the summer before his junior year. So after his sophomore year, which would’ve been his second to last, a u season that year, we got together with a group that ended up being our same group for two years and that group heading into their junior year.

We went 37 anD3 and wow. We had five, let’s see, which we ended up with four or five of our kids that played college basketball. One was D two, we had a couple D3s NAI. Our team was not filled with division one super athletes, but we were all, it was 10 kids that I just loved to watch them play.

They all played hard. They played together just a great team and we played high level competition. We went to good tournaments. We lost three times all year and nobody watched us play. When we were at big tournaments, nobody, there might’ve been a coach, that strolled through and was in between games and sat down on the baseline for five minutes, right?

Yeah. They, but nobody was actively seeking out to watch our team play. And again, we were a good team. We had good players that eventually ended up playing college basketball. So what I tell people is, look, if you’re a high level division one player, people have already identified you when you’re in ninth, 10th grade.

And if they show up at your games, they’re not necessarily scouting you. They’re just there to make sure that you know that they’re there. because they want you to, they want you to know that they’re, that you’re on their radar. And if you are a division two right.

[00:21:25] Karl Barkley: Brand association.

[00:21:26] Mike Klinzing: Correct. Exactly.

And if you’re a division two or a division three player, those coaches are focused on one year out. So this spring, those coaches are focused on 2027. And if you’re a 2028, sure. Again, somebody might stroll by your court. Peek over at you, but they’re not going to be sitting down actively scouting you and then to build on the story.

Then the following year with my son’s team heading into their senior year, I would say almost every game that we played, there were multiple coaches there watching us play. Either trying to identify people from our team, or there were already people on our team that coaches had identified, and then they were there showing again that interest of, Hey, we’re interested in you.

We want to sit and watch you play. So what I tell people all the time, Carl, is that you have to be very careful with a, how much you travel prior to that last year.

[00:22:29] Karl Barkley: Yep.

[00:22:29] Mike Klinzing: You’re not traveling to try to get exposure when you’re heading into your junior season because you’re not being exposed to anything.

Nobody. Nobody is trying to, nobody is actively trying to watch you. The following year. Then you need to make sure that your A U program, your A U coach understands which tournaments are going to be ones that coaches who could potentially be recruiting you are going to be at, which goes to, I think another point that I’m sure that you’ve talked to people about is if I’m a Division three player in the state of Ohio, I do not need to travel to Las Vegas.

I do not need to travel to Charleston, South Carolina. I don’t need to go to Florida to play a U tournaments because the schools that are going to be recruiting me if I’m a Division two or a Division three player are going to be in Ohio, or they’re going to be in a state that is contiguous to Ohio. So you have to again, be intelligent as you put together what you’re doing from an a U standpoint.

So I’m sure that you’ve talked to people that are in that same sort of experience.

[00:23:35] Karl Barkley: Yeah, I know it’s hard. Again, it’s like the keeping up with your, with the next door neighbor, the Joneses. Like when you see your friend or your, another person in your area going to Vegas or going to Florida like you mentioned for these tournaments, you have to ask yourself like why are they doing it?

What is the point? And if it is, if they’re playing on some shoe circuit and that, and they, their goal is just to play the best competition possible, then great. That’s awesome. But yeah, to your point, like no one is really, unless you are in that top one to 2% of recruits, no college coach is just randomly going to be at your game.

And I think you have to get yourself in the right gyms. Like similar to what I was talking, like when I went to that camp as it, after my 10th grade year, I was not in the right gym for me. I was getting better. And if you want to put yourself in that to face some adversity and play really good competition, do it and you’ll get better and you’ll learn about what you need to improve on. Alright? If you don’t have a left hand, that’s going to get found out very quickly. If you’re playing better competition and you’ll learn that you need to adjust or you need to learn how to finish in a different way. But I think, there are gyms that are right for different levels.

They’re for high academic D3s, there are camps that filter by GPA, so you have to have 3.0 GPA, so everyone in there is getting it done in the classroom. Like you mentioned, if you’re from Ohio and you want to play in the NCAC or another like contiguous state around Ohio, there are elite camps where division three schools are bringing all of their recruits to one place and you can compete in front of that head coach.

So it’s just about finding the right gyms, because I completely agree. I saw some post the other day that family had spent, I think it was $35,000 over four years to play AAU play travel basketball. And the, they didn’t they’re going to play in college now, but they didn’t actually get offers until their senior year or like junior, after junior summer, because they went to two or three camps.

But all the rest of it, like 27, 20 $8,000 was just

[00:25:43] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.

[00:25:44] Karl Barkley: For ego and glamor,

[00:25:46] Mike Klinzing: yeah. I do think that look, there is some fun in the travel experience. And so if you’re on a younger team and your team’s going and you’re traveling out of town for a tournament, because it’s a fun bonding experience for kids, the parents, the coaching staff, it’s just, it’s a group that you like and people want it great.

Do it. You just have to understand again, what is your motivation for doing that. If your motivation is, my kid’s in seventh grade and we need to travel to a city that’s four hours away to play in a tournament, because there might be some coaches there, there might be coaches there. If it’s a tournament that is four grades sixth through 11, but the coaches that are there are not there to watch your seventh grader play again.

They’re there to watch the kids that they’re actually going to be recruiting. There’s plenty of time for your seventh grader to get that exposure. And I think, again, I keep coming back to the same theme when it comes to the recruiting process, the decision making in terms of what school do I want to go to?

And it’s just educating people on what they need to look for, what they don’t know. And I think that starts really honestly, back in third, fourth grade, as kids begin to get into. Travel basketball, a U basketball, understanding what it is that you’re trying to get out of it. Like you made a great point about the camps, right?

You can get something out of a camp, the old school camps from 20, 30 years ago where it’s the fundamental camp, and you’d go to a college camp and that coach would be there and running a camp. And it wasn’t about trying to get recruited by that school, it was just you’re going to the camp to get better.

And I think so many people now don’t look at it in that same way. They look at it as I’m going there to get myself exposed to these college coaches. And again, there are certain camps and certain places as you described, that you can go where that does take place. And yet at the same time, you can be in those environments.

It can be about more than just being exposed. It can be, Hey, there are college coaches here who are running the stations and they’re showing me things that I can work on, so let me take that. I’m playing in games with lots of other players who have aspirations of playing college basketball, probably at all different levels.

Again, depending upon where you’re at. So you have an opportunity clearly to utilize those to get better. I think part of it is just, again, the mindset of going into it with an understanding of why am I here? What am I trying to get out of it? Is what I’m trying to get out of it. Realistic based on the circumstance.

I think that’s always the challenge,

[00:28:33] Karl Barkley: right? Yeah. Especially on that point about coaches, like when don’t take for granted the people who are running stations because, or that are coaching your team like. At almost all of these big exposure camps, you’re going to have someone assigned to your team. And it might be a high school coach, it might be a D3 assistant.

Like I went to one and the assistant of at Vassar was there. His name was Peck. And I didn’t necessarily want to go to Vassar at this time. I didn’t. I was from North Carolina. I was almost a little too far, but he gave me such great feedback on my game and was a great guy and just helped me out a ton.

And I think if you lean into that relationship it can be really beneficial. There was another one at Davidson, again, growing up, going to these camps at Davidson. Guys like Ryan, me, who is now again, the head coach of Vassar Brendan McShay, who ended up becoming my assistant at Swarthmore College, my assistant coach, but at the time was at Allegheny.

Just again, a lot of guys you can learn from and you never know where they’re going to go. So just because someone is a high school coach to the time or at a school you’re not really interested in don’t dismiss them, don’t blow them off or big time them because you think you’re better or you don’t want to go there because you never know where that person is going to end up.

The basketball coaching world is so small and, it’s just funny how those small connections can then lead to opportunities down the road.

[00:29:58] Mike Klinzing: It’s absolutely great advice. And I think when Cal went to the camp at Yale and there was just coaches all over the place there and yeah, we went to the stations and he’s there and trying to learn from every single coach that’s running the station trying to build a connection, talking to the people, the guys that coached his team and you try to go and you do it and you try to play the right way.

And I think that’s another sort of misnomer that’s out there with players is I’ve got a score. 25 points a game. I’ve have to do all this flashy stuff in order to get somebody to notice me. This is another thing that you and I talked about on our call, is people don’t necessarily have an understanding of what a coach is looking for and why.

From the outside somebody might look and say, Hey, this kid’s averaging 23 points a game. This other kid’s averaging six. Why is the kid who’s averaging six, the kid who’s being recruited and has an opportunity to play college basketball versus this kid who over here who’s scoring 23 points a game, but maybe just do it in such a way or has the physical characteristics of a kid that it’s just not going to translate in the same way.

And I think that’s something that people lose sight of is you can impress somebody with your work ethic, with your ability to pay attention and focus and follow directions. And those things matter because when you’re a coach and you have a kid in your program, if that kid. Isn’t going to pay attention in drills and you have to teach it to them seven times everything that you do before they finally get it.

That’s a big difference Before the, between the kid who you show something, they’re locked in, they pick it up the first time. That’s a valuable skill that coaches want in their program. That I think gets discounted a lot too. And people just want to see the flashy stuff and kids that they’re not scoring a ton of points, they’re unhappy, but yet a lot of times it’s those little intangible things and the things that the average person doesn’t see and the average player might not think about.

But then the things that really drive winning that, I think when you start talking about how should I be trying to play when I’m at one of these camps, or how should I be trying to play with my AAU team? There’s all kinds of things you can focus on besides scoring.

[00:32:15] Karl Barkley: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think. Yeah.

Again, so many thoughts on that, but coaches, one can tell when you’re trying to play outside of your game. So I think to your point, do things that you have practiced at those camps. Don’t try to level up at the recruiting camp because it’s not going to work. And they’ll be able to see through that.

The other thing too is like coaches are, they all get these lists at most of these camps and they’ll, you’ll have a jersey like number or bib number, and they have all your information on the, with the BIM number. And I’ve been at one of these camps and watched 2D3 coaches stand next to each other saying I can’t get this guy because his GPA’s too low, but he should go here, or,

You should check them out. They’re, they were slightly different levels of academics academic schools and they’re trading information. They’re trading that scout, like you mentioned. Maybe it was they set a screen well, they’re like, they ran back on defense and broke up a fast break for the other team, but whatever it was their scouting together, they’re sharing information.

All those things are helpful to you getting recruited. The other thing too, I would say is with your teammates, and this goes back to what I was saying about trying to not make it zero sum. Like it is not you against everyone else at this camp. Your teammates just like in a ba real basketball game are you’re playing together.

And so I would say take a second to get to know these people. Especially if you’re at the event, there’s a little bit of downtime, put your phone away, try to talk to them like you, the least you can do is maybe you’re going to make a friend. Maybe you learn a little bit about their process, something that informs you.

Maybe they took a campus visit to a school you want to check out. But at the end of the day too, people play better. Like you were talking about this team, you put together no superstars, but you guys had a great winning percentage because the guys liked each other and they jelled. And I think the same thing applies to the recruiting camp.

If you can foster that dynamic. Everyone is going to play better and that team will collectively get more eyes on them throughout the course of the camp. Versus one guy trying to shoot every shot one guy, everyone ball hogging. It’s no coach is going to watch that.

[00:34:22] Mike Klinzing: That’s such a great point.

If you befriend somebody, maybe they’ll pass you the ball. Let’s just simplify it and just say that, that if we out of middle we just, yeah. If we just take it down to the bare bones of the existence. It’s funny that you say that because I know that when Cal was back going to different camps, he would always say to me, he’s good guards always to play with me because I just keep setting screens for him.

And so then they always want to come off screens with me setting them. because I’m willing to, in a pickup game right type environment, which a lot of times that’s what you have at a camp. There’s not many guys that are looking to set screens or do those kinds of things. And so he’s I always try to find who the best guard is on our team and.

Be the guy that’s going to go out and set screens for him and then I can roll the basket and maybe I get the ball, maybe I don’t, but I’m freeing up a guy who he’s probably going to score because he’s the best player on our team. So somebody’s going to be like, Hey, how’s this kid getting open? Then all of a sudden it’s, now you go to the second level of here’s the kid who’s scoring all the points.

How’s that kid getting open all the time? How he doing? How’s right? So here’s the guy who’s setting the screens, lemme take a look at. And so I think there’s all kinds of things that, again, you have to be aware of what good basketball is. And I know you can probably attest to this, that a lot of times I’m amazed how many people don’t understand what good basketball looks like and what good basketball is.

[00:35:45] Karl Barkley: Yeah.

[00:35:45] Mike Klinzing: In terms of like you talked about just sharing the ball, getting along with guys where it’s not just, Hey, my turn, your turn right. We’re just taking turns coming up the floor and. This time I got the ball, so I’m going to go one-on-one, I’m going to shoot it, and the next time we’re fighting to see who gets the inbounds pass so that guy can just dribble up the floor.

I know you’ve seen teams like that. I’ve seen plenty of teams where teams had a lot of talent and they’re not a team, they’re just five dudes out there trying to go one-on-one. And to your point which I really liked is nobody wants to watch that. I can’t tell you, Carl, the number of times that guys coaches would come up to one of our kids on our team back when Cal was playing au and just say, we love watching your team play.

because you guys play like a real team. Like you guys look like a real high school or a college team. Like you’re actually running things. You’re actually cohesive on defense. You’re trying to do things and playing together and again. That reflects well on every kid that’s a part of that team. Because now a coach can look at it and say, okay, I see this kid how he fits into a team defensive scheme.

I see how this kid is a guard who handles the ball, but he’s not just looking to always get his own shot. I see how he’s setting up the next guy. Or I see how he comes off screens, or I see how he leads the fast breaker. I see how this kid on the wing sprints, the floor, all things that you need to have to be successful in a system in a college game as opposed to just, Hey, the kid who looks great in a pickup game could be completely different from a kid who fits well into a system at the college level.

And I think that’s always, again, a dilemma that maybe parents players don’t necessarily always understand what it is that a college coach is looking for. And I know you’ve talked to enough college coaches they want Yeah, yeah. What they want. So let me ask you this, let you talk to college coaches.

What are the things that they tell you that, hey. This is what we want, what are the things that they’re looking for? Obviously, I always say there’s a requisite level of talent that you have to be able to play at any level of college basketball, but once you get beyond that, what are things that coaches are telling you that they’re looking for?

[00:37:58] Karl Barkley: Yeah, it’s funny, I just asked this question to Justin lt, which l which is, he’s the head coach of Pacific University out in Oregon, forest Grove, Oregon. And he said, I try to just make sure that they love basketball. You have to show me that you love the game before you’re going to get recruited here. And I think another part of it, he didn’t say this directly, but I think you have to prove, demonstrate your interest in the school as well.

He mentioned that they don’t let people commit unless they have visited, they’ve stepped foot on campus. And I think in combination, both of those things show a coach, okay, this is more than just coming here to get an education. It’s, they want to really commit, be a part of the team. There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that.

And then the second thing is, you’re serious about the school. This is not just an only basketball endeavor. It’s have to be both sides of that, especially at a school, that’s going to challenge you academically. There are tough stretches of the season when you’re deep in conference play and you’re taking two trips a week, probably two to three hours away from campus, and you’re not able to get your stuff done, in normal times, like your homework and your, any kind of social hang that you want to have.

And those are the moments where that question and that answer from Coach Blunt comes through, which do you really love basketball enough to take that road trip, get home at midnight on a Tuesday night, and then have to really grind with your schoolwork the rest of the week? And do you really want to be there just in case anything happens with your, with your athletic career, if you get hurt you’re not getting the playing time you thought you deserved.

You have to, you’re having to work a little harder. I think having both sides of that. Is the real, is the formula that a lot of college coaches are looking for.

[00:39:39] Mike Klinzing: A great point, and I’m sure that you can speak to that point in terms of your own college career and guys that you played with who are a part of the program, you see it, I think on every level.

It doesn’t matter what team I’ve ever been around. There are some guys that love it. There are some guys that like it. There are some guys that are like, sometimes those guys have talent and that enables them to stay, even though they’re just eh. They’re not necessarily, they don’t necessarily love the game.

But I do think it’s a great point, right? That if you bring in a kid who loves the game to your program, those are the kids that are going to put in work off the floor. They’re the kids who are going to put in work in the off season. They’re the kid who is going to go from being a freshman to being a senior. And you’re going to see that learning curve and that growth curve just go in a positive direction and obviously.

At the division three level, that’s, I don’t want to say more important, but because there is no workouts in the off season, there is no team activities, there is no coaching. Whereas Division two, division one, you might not love basketball. But if you’re going to be on the team, guess what? You’re in the gym, you’re be playing a lot of

[00:40:54] Karl Barkley: basketball.

[00:40:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Whether you want to be or not, you’re in the gym. Whereas Division iii, your season ends and you don’t want to be in the gym until practice starts the next fall. Guess what? You don’t have to be in the gym. There’s no coach mandating that you’re there. You’re not working out with the coaching staff. So I think that goes to one of the things that is a huge positive for division three, and you can probably speak to this better than I can, but the opportunity to play high level college athletics, but also to have that balance as a student and as an opportunity to.

Integrate yourself into the campus and be able to maybe participate in some other things that I’m not sure at the division two or certainly not the division one level. The way the rules are written today with the amount of contact hours that coaches can have with players outside of the season, it’s really difficult for a kid who’s playing division one basketball to maybe do some of the other things.

It’s hard enough to get the class and do all the things just to get your degree, let alone to take advantage of some of the other things that a college campus offers. So maybe you can speak to what your experience was like at Swarthmore in terms of what you were able to do outside of the basketball program that maybe you wouldn’t have been able to do had you gone and played at a higher level, if that question makes sense.

[00:42:21] Karl Barkley: No, absolutely. I think the first thing that I think about is I have known players that have played at like Stanford, walked on at North Carolina, gone D one and I think there’s one person at Boston University used to talk about how their summer was just basketball. They just went back to campus and they just played, lifted, did everything.

And it was just this, it was a full-time job. And I think for me, my summers were about internships. They were about being home. Working out, like you mentioned, a lot of it was self-determined. Like I was supposed to be in the gym four days a week, lifting. Did I do that every week? No, but you could tell when you got back to campus who had been in the gym and who had not, because, some people put on five to 10 pounds and other people were right where they had been at the end of the previous season.

I would say, there was this element of, it was a little more self-determined in terms of how much you worked and how much time you put in. But the other thing too was yeah, you got this much more full experience of life, I think you got to go, like I said, get a go, go get an internship. I had teammates that were doing research in labs on campus over the summer, studying different things.

Some chemistries, some bio publishing papers by the time they were graduating, which I thought was really, it wasn’t for me, but I thought it was pretty incredible that they could have their name attached to something like that and then still get it done on the court and have a great, athletic career.

So I just feel like it’s a reason that we try to promote the D3 level. It’s not for everyone. And, there are cost challenges that we’re aware of and we try to work to help people figure out, but I think it just, when you go D3, a Bo Desi, who used to be the head coach of McAllister.

Now an assistant at Denver University, he used to say this and I love it because he would say, going to play college basketball, going to play D3. Basketball is not the end goal. It is a launchpad for the rest of your life. And I really think truly that the network, the alumni network that you get from being a part of that team, the life experiences, the leadership, and then again the collective, all the academic, all the internship, job experience, stuff that comes with it, sets you up better than any other level at the moment.

And I really think, especially in the NIL era, that comparison and the value proposition that each offers has never been clear.

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[00:45:28] Karl Barkley: Yeah,

[00:45:28] Mike Klinzing: it’s so interesting just how college basketball itself has changed. Obviously there’s the huge change with NIL and the portal and how that has impacted what’s gone on. But I think about, and again, I’m an old guy, so I think about what my experience was like playing Division one basketball, and I honestly feel like my experience as a division one athlete was probably closer to the current division three experience than it is to the current Division one experience.

Because here’s what happened, Carl. So we would play our season, and when our season would end, we’d have a post-season meeting, and then I would get like a two page Xerox document. Hey, here’s your workouts, we’ll see you back here in August. There was no summer workouts with the coaches. There was no, we’re lifting together as a team, none of that.

And so the day the season ended, the next day I was just in the gym playing pickup basketball with. Other guys on the team or whoever was there. And then in the summertime, I was working out on my own. I was shooting on my own. I was finding places to play on my own. And to be honest, like I love that because it gave me, like you said, it gave me some control over what it was that I was doing, which is, again, similar to what you have in division three right now.

You have a post-season meeting, your coaches talk about, Hey, here’s what we think you, here’s where you are, here’s what we think you need to do. Here’s some ideas of how you can do that. And hopefully we’ll see you back here when this season starts next year. And you’ll have done those things. And now in division one, those guys are on campus like 50 weeks out of the year.

And yeah, I always say, I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to listen to the same voice for four years straight year round. And I think in all honesty, I think if you could. Inject truth serum into division one coaches that 75% of them would probably say that it’s too much now. Nobody’s ever going to not utilize the time they have.

because if you don’t and you lose, you’re going to lose your job. But you’re getting asked. But I do think that in so many ways it’s a lot. It’s a lot for the kids, it’s a lot for the coaches. And that’s why, again, I love the idea of division three, which gives you, again, that freedom to make your own decisions and put your time in.

And you can work as hard as you want to, and you can be a division three player and work harder than a guy who’s playing division one basketball. You just have to organize that and do that for yourself. And yet it does afford you opportunities. I’ll give you a great example, Carl. So at Ohio Weston, they have a program where you can write a grant to go and travel and be part of.

An educational experience, let’s just say, so last summer, Cal wrote a grant, and not every student obviously takes advantage of this, but Cal wrote a grant to be able to go to Italy and he worked with a group called We Rewilding Europe. Essentially, he was trying to look for and study brown bears in Italy.

I had no idea that bears even lived in Italy, number one. But secondly, he had the opportunity to go with another student entirely paid for by Ohio Wesleyan. They were there in Italy for 13 days, and what an incredible experience for him to go and be able to manage that whole trip on his own. He had to manage the budget, had to keep track of receipts, had to understand make connections with all these groups in order to justify the trip.

He had to make connections with these different groups prior to going on the trip, and then come back and make a presentation about the trip and what they did. And so that’s an experience that. He could only get at the Division three level. If you’re at the Division one level, you don’t, you barely have 13 days off the whole year.

And again, that’s not to say that division three or Division one basketball wouldn’t be great. And anybody who has an opportunity to go and do that and play at that level, by all means, go ahead and do that. But we’re just trying to point out again here the benefits of Division three basketball, some of the things that people don’t think about in terms of the entire package of what it is that you’re getting.

And then I got my shirt on, I got my shout out to Coach Reg and the, we are D3 guys three. So those guys are, every guy that’s, on the shirt is playing professionally somewhere as a Division three player. And so people oftentimes have this misnomer that I can only get to the professional level if I’m playing division one.

There’s lots of different paths to be able to, if that’s what you want to do. It’s bend on, it can be done. There are ways to do it no matter where you start out. And it’s just, it’s the same journey of the best third grader isn’t always the best high school varsity player and

[00:50:33] Karl Barkley: Right,

[00:50:33] Mike Klinzing: the best college player or the best, the most, the player who gets to play professionally isn’t always the guy who starts at whatever level.

And so it’s just, I think it still comes back to Carl, and this is, goes to the whole theme of the conversation, right? Is education, which is what you’re really trying to do, is to put information in front of people that’s going to help them make decisions. And I want to go back to one of the things that you said in your last comment about helping people understand how to manage the financial part of Division three, right?

Because that’s another area where I think people aren’t educated, right? They think, oh, it’s. Crazy expensive. They see the sticker prices of some of these universities, and two of my kids go to schools that when I look at the sticker price, I’m like, yeah, I don’t know that I could afford to pay the sticker price, but thankfully I have two good students that were able to make it work and navigate.

But I know one of the things that you’ve done with D3 Direct is put out your scholarship Sunday. So talk a little bit about that piece of what you do and how you put that together and what it is and how people could benefit from subscribing to the email newsletter and getting that information as you’re starting to make decisions about colleges.

[00:51:43] Karl Barkley: Yeah. Yeah. First of all, I would just say, I would agree with you, like college, some of these tuitions are, the sticker price is 95, 90 $8 a year, which is just outrageous, on its face. It’s afford. I don’t blame recruits for seeing that or parents for seeing that and thinking, okay, this is not for me.

The scholarship Sunday newsletter came about because we were like, okay, there’s have to be, we kept getting this question or this encountering this thing, this myth, especially on Twitter, where people were like, oh, D3’s great. We’d share a story like Somi Willoughby, like on your t-shirt.

We are D3 plays at Marietta, goes and plays pro Hank Morgan Hamilton plays D3 playing in the G League for the Celtics organization right now. Those guys go to these schools that have high sticker prices and then in the comments inevitably would be, someone would say, oh yeah, it’s D3 so I can’t afford it, so I’m not going to consider it.

And so we just thought, how about every single week we go online and we find one real scholarship. Because if you’ve ever looked for scholarships online, there’s a lot of garbage out there. And there’s these things that are like. No essay scholarships. And I would just say to any recruit or parent listening, if it sounds too easy and too good to be true, then it’s, and all those are just sweepstakes and you’re entering your information to some loan company or something that is going to just serve you ads.

So steer clear those, we try to parse through all of it and just every single Sunday deliver one email with one scholarship or a couple scholarships. There’s four this weekend to families so that you can find something that upcoming deadline that you can apply for, that you can use to just lower the cost a little bit.

Sometimes they’re $500 this weekend, they’re they’re $65,000 awards, so that one’s a little bigger. But yeah, I think overall just trying to show people that there’s a, there’s an avenue to towards getting a more affordable tuition and. We’re just trying to do that, I think every weekend. And if people want to subscribe and hop in, we’ve gotten responses from parents, which has been great, which is Hey, I applied to a scholarship on your list and I got it and saved me $5,000 a year.

And again, that’s not going to take down the entire 90 5K, but as you mentioned, if you have good grades, maybe you get 60,000 off, maybe you get 40,000 and all of a sudden you just slowly chip away at that number and you end up with a much more affordable rate. At the end of the day.

[00:54:19] Mike Klinzing: Stuff all adds up.

I know that a lot of schools have, you take a campus visit, that’s a thousand you apply online, that’s 500. There’s a bunch of little things that if you just take some steps, it adds up. And if you get enough of those little steps that you can add together, eventually you get down to the point where. For both of my kids, both for Cal at Ohio Wesleyan.

I have a daughter who’s going to graduate from Denison this year. That for both of them academically, just by applying for various scholarships, and then also through the universities wanting them to come, they look for ways to be able to give them money, to be able to knock down those tuition prices. And so it’s definitely feasible.

It’s definitely doable. Obviously, that leads to a key piece of advice or a key thing that you have to consider is the better your academics, the more opportunities you’re going to have to go to school in different places. 3.5, 4.0 student, you’re going to have way more opportunities than somebody who is a 2.0 or 2.5 student, or you’re going to have cheaper opportunities to be able to go to schools.

And so I think if I was going to give one piece of advice to somebody whose kid’s in sixth, seventh, eighth grade, and you think your kid might have the ability or might want to at some point play college basketball don’t just have them in the gym 12 hours a day. Make sure that they’re spending some time with their academics and they’re taking care of their grades.

Because I will say that having kids with good grades opens up so many more opportunities across. Every level. And even if your kid is not an athlete, obviously the grades that they have make a huge impact on what schools they can go to and what it is going to cost to go to those schools. So I think that’s a key point that sometimes gets lost in, right?

We focus so much on the athletic side of it, we forget that. Yeah. The academics is a huge piece of why colleges admit students.

[00:56:28] Karl Barkley: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think too, I’d add one more thing there is think about how much your family makes, right? If you are, we’ve, one thing we tried to pull together recently was this list of schools, D3 schools that we could find hadn’t made announcements about zero tuition programs.

So at some financial cutoff, you’re not going to pay any tuition, and that’s a guarantee for all these schools on this list. I think it was like, ended up being 20 or 21. And I’m sure there are others that were missing. But for most of those it’s a, it’s 150 that. Band of 150 to $200,000 a year household income.

And there are a lot of families out there who do not make that and are missing out on these opportunities to get free college simply on that fact alone. And I to your point about academics being helpful for admissions, if a coach knows that you are going to be it’s an easy admin and you’re getting this all this money and you’re going for basically for free, that just makes you as easy as possible to recruit and they’re going to love that.

So I think, especially if you are sub $200,000 of annual household income, try to look at D3s and look at the assistance program that they have because, we just helped this one family track and field athlete out Washington state. Really good student 4.0. Really good runner, borderline D one and D3.

And they were debating a couple DD ones who were going to give them some money off, but they were still going to probably pay 40,000 a year. And we got them convinced them to go to Tufts or to look at Tufts because they had a zero tuition program and they were able to get in and get about $80,000 off of, I think Tufts is like 95 now.

So much better result. And it was just because they had the patients and were willing to do that research to find the better option.

[00:58:22] Mike Klinzing: Again, coming down to educating yourself, figuring it out, knowing where the resources are. And I think that’s again, where what you’re doing with D3 Direct is something that anybody who’s in this position that is being recruited, that we’re trying to figure out what’s the level where I’m at, i’s a tremendous resource.

Is there anything that you guys are doing that we haven’t talked about that you think could be beneficial for somebody who’s listening to the podcast to know about? Just talk about if there’s anything that we missed here in our discussion that you guys are doing that you think could be beneficial.

Yeah.

[00:59:01] Karl Barkley: Yeah. You hit on the playbook, which is great. I think we’re going to try to bring out more resources to help athletes understand what NIL is. Look behind the scenes on how to process a deal, make sure you’re, in compliance, not jeopardizing your ability to play. And, but I think understanding, again, if there’s a little piece missing from a financial standpoint to make something work, how you can leverage NIL to get a more affordable education.

And then I think we’re going to start trying to do a lot more just with making one-on-one help affordable. And we have some developments coming there. But yeah, just try to get athletes information that’s reliable and just help more kids on their journey. Try to be the resource that I wish I would’ve had whatever 15 years ago when I was navigating all this and getting a lot of, getting a lot more nos than I was Yes.

From yeses from college coaches. So coaches trying to help the next generation.

[00:59:58] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Lemme ask you about NIL and just in general, where do you think this thing ends up? Because I look at where we are now, and I’m talking across all levels, not just division vision three, but where do you see this thing ultimately settling?

because it just feels like what we have now is not sustainable. There’s only so many times that a school can go to a booster, an alum, and say, Hey, we need money. What do we need money for? And I’ve always said, like in the past, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, we need money. It’s going to go to our new practice facility, or it’s going to go to rebuilding our locker room, or it’s going to go to something tangible that is going to stay with the program for the duration of the time that whatever, for the duration of the program.

As opposed to now it’s like somebody comes to you, right? And it’s Hey, we need $5,000, or we need $10,000, or we need whatever that number is, what are you going to use that money for? It’s going to pay Joe’s salary for this year. And I’m like is Joe Good? Is Joe going to stay for more than a year?

And then next year you’re going to come back and now I have to pay Jimmy’s salary because Joe has gone to the NBA or Joe transferred to another school. And it just, that piece of it just doesn’t feel like it’s a, it’s sustainable. So I’m just curious what you think may or may not happen as we move forward, because there’s just so many moving parts to it.

[01:01:32] Karl Barkley: There really are. Yeah, and I would just say first and foremost, I think player mobility and players being able to move freely is a great thing. Like at the end of the day when I was in college, I definitely, I remember a lot of it was mostly division one transfers, but being held up by a coach who didn’t want them to leave and they couldn’t get that release.

And I think

[01:01:53] Mike Klinzing: I think

[01:01:53] Karl Barkley: the ability of players to move around now is a good thing. Generally, I do think we’re moving towards a system, this is mostly at the D one level where there are going to have to be contracts at some point. Because to your point, you can’t keep tapping these donor bases and saying, gimme a, let’s get a million dollars poured in for this one player, and then the next year they’re gone or do it for a coach and then the next year you have to pay their buyout.

And I think, we posted some stat and it was ridiculous. Like the buyout for Brian Kelly recently for him to leave. Was more than the annual budget for the entire level of division three. And so that is not sustainable in the long run. So I think yeah, some kind of player contract model in, as it applies to D3.

I think we are, there is going to be some element of the haves and the have nots. I think there was a good podcast recently on the left hash call with Coach Catanzaro from Lake Forest Football and he was talking about how, there are probably five or six schools already in D3 who are, have earmarked 250 to $300,000 for their rosters annually.

And that is not, touching the division one level. That’s like a, a mid-major backup salary at division one. But, it is definitely going to have an impact in terms of who they can get in and what players they can, recruit and make that spot and that experience affordable for. Yeah, I mean I think there’s a risk there that you exacerbate some of these challenges of, some people having a budget, other people not but yet competing for the same prize.

But I also think it can be done really well and, we try to showcase athletes who are, have a brand are using it to make some money and all these things that, it didn’t for a long time, it made no sense that a kid couldn’t, go back their hometown and run a camp and make money for doing that or, be compensated in any way.

So I think there are positives. I think obviously there are people at a much higher level than you and I having these conversations about how to structure this. But yeah, I have to think if there’s any kind. Based compensation or kind of loosely tied to the school because they’re always a separate entity in the school, then I think contracts are going to have to be in the future Of NIL.

[01:04:21] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I agree. I think you’re heading towards contracts, you’re setting, you’re probably heading towards some type of unionization. I think at some point you’re probably looking at do the Power Five conferences end up being a separate entity from the rest of division one, where there’s such a disparity.

Even you look at the NCAA tournament and you look at the Sweet 16 and every team basically is a Power Five conference. You’ve

[01:04:49] Karl Barkley: Yep.

[01:04:49] Mike Klinzing: Not that a Cinderella can’t win a game or two, but it’s going to get more and more difficult at that level just simply because of the budgets and the disparity there.

And look, inequality’s always going to be a part of every walk of life, whether we like it or not. But this has definitely made it even more of a challenge. And then I think on the division three level, like you guys do a really good job of highlighting kids who are doing it well. As you said that through their brand, they’re able to make a little bit of money on the side.

I know one of the things that I heard, I haven’t heard it talked about much. It happened. I heard this and I can’t honestly remember who I had this conversation with, but somebody was talking to me about that at the division three level, that you might at some point have schools that have alumni who have a lot of money and might say, Hey, we want to really have our program take off.

And so now suddenly, the NIL money at Division three, maybe it’s not the same as it’s at Division one, but maybe you have a program where schools sticker price is $98,000 and NIL now covers that player’s entire tuition. Like we’ll offer you. Through NIL, can we offer that in terms of we’re going to pay the entire tuition?

And I haven’t really heard that recently, but that was something that I heard a couple years ago that people were maybe worried that was going to happen. And in some ways it tracks with what we’ve seen in Division one, but it’s, right now it’s just the Wild West and the NCAA knows that anything, any rules that they try to impose, they’re going to get sued and they’re going to lose.

Yeah. And so because of that, it’s like they’re treading very lightly. And I actually had on Joe Paternos son, Jay, who he’s now a trustee at Penn State, and he’s part of a committee that’s working on trying to craft a proposal to put in front of Congress to be able to guide them in what colleges may want or need.

In terms of setting some laws and trying to help to put some guardrails in place to get this thing at least a little bit less like the wild west and more where there’s a set rule and I think the combination of contracts, unionization, and laws that are passed by people who understand the landscape and are still doing it with the best interest of the athletes, the sports, everything that goes along with it.

There’s some combination of all that I think can work to make this thing tenable. But I’m not sure how close we are to getting to that point right now.

[01:07:32] Karl Barkley: Yeah. It does feel like it’s a long way away. Yeah. In the meantime, I think try to, yeah, it’s like it’ll be interesting to see what kind of D3 schools and donor bases do.

I’ve talked to coaches who if. Love the support from a donor or who are really frustrated by it. And it just it’s very polarizing. So it’s sometimes yeah, you just have to see how it all shakes out. And we’ll be trying to cover that from a division three angle. People can follow that on x or our newsletter or Instagram or wherever they, check in with us.

[01:08:06] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. Alright, before we wrap up, Carl, share with people how they can get the D3 recruiting playbook, how they can subscribe to the newsletter, how they can connect with you. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:08:20] Karl Barkley: Perfect. Yeah. Just check out our website. It’s d3-direct.com.  That’s usually the best place to go for the latest from us. The playbook is on there. If you want one-on-one help with your recruiting process. There’s more information there. And there’s also information on how to sign up for the free newsletter to get scholarships Sunday, like we talked about every week.

Plus we push out a. Recruit, recruiting and or admissions guidance and advice posts every Wednesday. So free to access and yeah. Available all on the website. Again, d3-direct.com

[01:08:54] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. Karl, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Great to have you back on for a second time.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:09:59] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.