(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with one of the hottest rising stars in sports media.

Yeah, he's laughing, but it's true.

It's John Fanta, broadcast and reporter at Fox Sports.

Only 28 years old, killing it, actually called your first pro game.

Did you do what Sarah Kustok, The Nets on the Yes Network?

- I, I got started with NBA TV in the NBA world with the great Sarah Kustok, Steve, and called the Liberty last week in their season opener down in Washington.

That was a lot of fun as well.

- Listen, you come out of Seton Hall University, one of our longtime higher-ed partners.

You go into sports broadcasting there.

Where did your obsession and your passion, John, come from when it comes to sports, broadcasting sports at every level.

Where'd it come from?

- Growing up on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio.

Because when you grow up in the Cleveland area, you live, breathe, sleep, die, bleed, Browns, the Indians now the Guardians and Cavaliers.

That's the way of life in northeast Ohio.

So my dad, Jerry and my grandpa, my mom's dad, John, who I'm named after, I can remember being five, six years old, going over on a Sunday afternoon for a Tribe game with Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez and Omar Vizquel and all these guys that I looked up to growing up.

And I would listen to a game, I'd listen to the first or second inning, and then the third or fourth inning would come on.

And if either of those guys left the room, I'd turn the volume down and I'd start calling the game and they'd come back in and they're listening to me call the game at five or six years old.

I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that people got to do that in what I thought was some sort of a job and turned out it was.

I thought, "I gotta do this.

I had to do this someday."

So that's how it started.

You know, John talks about being about five or six years old.

Fast forward.

I'm at Madison Square Garden for the Big East Tournament, rooting for Seton Hall.

I'm at Prudential, rooting for Seton Hall.

John's just not calling the game.

He knows where I'm going here.

They got these big oversized pictures of his face and there are dozens, hundreds of people holding up pictures of a guy who's not even playing.

It's John Fanta broadcasting the game.

How and when did that start?

A and B, how does that make you feel?

- Well, it makes me feel really humbled, proud, but not necessary, but very appreciated because I am not on the court playing the game.

I'm not laying my life, laying my body out on the line for Seton Hall to win a Big East game.

But it's always been my way of playing the game of life.

- What do you mean about that?

Did you want to be an athlete?

Some of us actually believe we had the skills and tools.

- Yeah.

- To play at a high level... then reality hit.

What about for you?

- I was a pitcher growing up.

I threw strikes.

I was smart enough that I thought at fourth, fifth, sixth grade, Steve, if I just get the ball over the plate, I'll be left in the game.

I could shoot in basketball.

I could not run the floor like a deer, that's for certain.

And in football, I was a left guard at St. Ignatius High School.

I get done with my sophomore year of football.

The head coach, the varsity program, calls everybody in for end of season meetings.

He calls me in one-on-one.

He says, "You know, you play the game with passion, but you're a lot better at talking about it than you are playing it."

But that was the best thing I could have heard because a year later, Steve, instead of riding the bench in 30 degree weather during a state championship game at Fawcett Stadium, I broadcasted from Al Michaels' Sunday Night Football booth that the Hall of Fame game spin in.

And I called my high school winning a state football championship instead of riding the bench.

And that made me think, "I'm a competitor."

That night I was the number one quarterback in the booth.

I wasn't on the field, but that's what kept my passion going.

How did I get to Seton Hall?

Senior year of high school, my college counselor gets me going on a tour.

I wanted to go to the New York area, Steve.

I knew I didn't wanna stay in Ohio.

I didn't wanna stay in a bubble.

I wanted to expand.

Florida, Syracuse, St. Bonaventure, St. John's, all different kinds of schools.

I'm getting ready to go on a college tour with my family.

Before I leave, that Friday at my high school, my college counselor hands me a brochure and says, "Hey, by the way, there's this Seton Hill University in New Jersey."

I go, "It says here, Seton Hall."

She goes, "Oh yeah, yeah, Seton Hall, while you're out there, why don't you take a look at it?"

That was the best brochure I've ever been handed 'cause without that brochure, I'd never find Seton Hall.

Without that brochure, I'd never meet with a guy you know, Pat Lyons, the athletic director at Seton Hall who told me the moment that I met him, "You come to Seton Hall, you have an open doorway to my office and an open doorway to opportunity."

And I turned to my parents and I said, "This is the metropolitan area and they're offering me an opportunity.

I am not gonna do wrong by it."

- Wow.

We think we know what the path is gonna be.

And then there are these brochures and people and circumstances and whatever that change the course of our lives professionally.

I'm gonna follow up on something.

Can we do some controversial, not con-- tough stuff in sports?

- Yeah.

- Okay, so here's the deal.

College sports as an old school, Big East fan, I remember the Big East in the 80s with Patrick Ewing and Mullen over at St. John's.

And you know the rest, right?

And Rollie Massimino, down at Villanova, the coach and Louie over at St. Louis (indistinct).

Why am I saying this?

How the heck, John, are we supposed to root for a team when every player on the team at any moment can enter the transfer portal and leave?

Seton Hall is actually losing one of the star players to the rival team at St. John's.

Seton Hall got a player from St. John's the year before.

Number one, the transfer portal, they can leave.

Where's the loyalty?

Second of all, the name, image and likeness issue, meaning you're getting paid from boosters, donors, whatever.

And the schools that have a bigger NIL; name, image and likeness, pot of money.

It's like the Yankees.

I'm a Yankee fan, but it's college.

It's not the pros.

Has college sports basically become the pros?

- It's worse than the pros right now.

It's more extreme than the pros right now.

The pros have contracts!

They have a salary cap where if that's broken, there's penalty to it.

Where there are guardrails.

If you sign with a team, you've got a deal, you've got a contract to oblige by.

Well, right now in college sports, Steve, there are no contracts.

There needs to be revenue sharing.

There need to be contracts.

But for contracts to happen, college sports leaders would have to go against their very fundamental values.

They have to make concessions to these athletes who right now have total control.

And by the way, I don't blame a player one bit for seeking his or her value.

They're trying to make a living for themselves and their family.

And so they're going out into the transfer portal and it's becoming a bidding war, one that the rich are gonna keep getting richer in.

And the middling schools are not gonna be able to keep up with, at least with the elite talent.

- What's it gonna do to the game, John?

What's it gonna do to college sports?

- Well, if you're revenue sharing- - What does that- Explain revenue sharing.

Explain what that means.

- So, so revenue sharing would be a system in which the NCAA is governing this system and each school has x amount of dollars that they're paying out to their athletes.

But you and I well know, all of these schools have different levels of budget.

Even something as basic as a Rutgers versus a Seton Hall.

Rutgers is a state university in the Big 10 Conference that has football.

You can't set them up on the same type of- - They're gonna be able to compete with Ohio State or Michigan given their money?

- They're not going to be, if they're following a similar salary cap, they're gonna be in debt.

Okay.

So it is creating an issue that- Where we're heading is the other college sports, which handout scholarships and have set up and structure.

And those athletes are going to the school on scholarship and competing for that school.

If a school is having to allocate more and more and more to keep their football and basketball having a pulse, which is the lifeblood of a university in a variety of capacities, there's just not enough to be able to both do that and cover everything else.

I predict that those Olympic sports will look more like a club model in five to 10 years.

You're not gonna see scholarships, not across the country.

There might be a select grouping, you know- - But what sports are you talking about?

What sports are you talking about?

- I'm talking about baseball, softball, field hockey.

- So there's not gonna be, wait a minute, are you saying, are you saying that college sports is going to come down to football, basketball, and a little bit of baseball?

- No, I think what we will see is the high major institutions will be able to function in some capacity with organized sports.

Okay.

By high major, I mean Big 10, Big 12, - SEC... - [Steve] What about the Big East?

- And ACC.

- (John) The Big East in basketball is gonna be able to keep functioning 'cause they get, because first off, they've won four of the last State national championships.

- Also, Connecticut changes things.

The University, UConn changes all the dynamics.

- Right.

And you can't tell the story of college basketball without the biggies.

But these biggie schools with this settlement that's happening right now, for those who aren't following the NCAAs, working on a settlement in Washington.

- [Steve] NCAA is the regulating body is supposed to manage this, regulate it and lead it.

Go ahead, John.

- They're working on a settlement with the House of Representatives and with Congress to be able to pay back-pay.

- Hold on.

This is now in Congress?!

- This has gone to the House of Representatives, yeah, - Why is the federal government, the House of Representatives, involved in college sports?

- Well, why are they involved?

Because you have former student athletes who have filed suits against the NCAA pursuing what their value would've been had NIL been in place when we were in school.

- Like players from back in the day?

- So now you have damages being paid out.

This is being worked on as we are speaking.

So the point is, the NCAA is in hot water and a school or a conference like the Big East does not have football money, Steve.

In fact, the majority of the other conferences that exist outside of Southeastern conference football and Big 10 football, they don't have that type of revenue and that type of money that they're generating.

But they're going to have to pay!

They're going to have to be part of the payments for these back pays of things that they had nothing to do with.

- John, I know you get, yeah, I know you know this is a great broadcast, so I only got a few seconds left.

Where does it leave us as fans of college sports?

Are we just pawns in this whole thing?

- It leaves you in a jeopardizing position.

It leaves you in a position where you're basically rooting for your coach and you're rooting for your school because you're in alum attached to it.

But in terms of having attachment towards your players?

Forget about it.

- And by the way, just to be clear before we get outta here, coaches would recruit players, promise their parents, "I'll take care of your kid," and the next year, get a bigger deal and leave.

So the kids and the family's got the shaft as well.

So John, 10 seconds.

Go ahead.

You don't think that's true?

- There's no more, "I'll take care of your kid.

I'll make him become a man."

The first question is, "How much are you willing to give?"

- John Fanta, broadcast reporter, only 28 years old, killing it, rising star in sports media.

Check him out.

And by the way, it's who gets like, been in this business forever.

No one's doing a big sign of me at a game or anywhere.

Well done, John.

- It's coming.

- Yeah, it's too late.

John Fanta, stay with us.

We're right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

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