Sound Off Louisiana

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (photo courtesy of The Advocate).

In today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature, founder Robert Burns addresses the payments now being made to college athletes with a focus on a little-covered bill in the Louisiana Legislature this past session to provide an additional $34 million in such payments via Gov. Landry’s proposal to hike the tax on online sports wagering in Louisiana:

9/23/25:  Burns elaborates on the framework under which college athletes are now paid and provides his strategy for circumventing HB-639, a boost on the tax on online sports betting which is estimated to generate $34 million to facilitate such payments.  Note that Burns inadvertently referenced the drive thru order taker at Raising Cane’s as “Peyton” Manning when that should have been “Cooper” Manning!  [Note:  We apologize for the intermittent blurring that transpires on the above video].

Source material and props utilized in the above video:

1. Former LSU wide receiver Abram Booty’s efforts to produce movie “work horses” to focus on alleged exploitation of college athletes.
2. Fox Sports’ ranking of top NIL college football players’ earnings.
3. Hilarious Raising Cane’s commercial with Arch Manning, Archie Manning, Cooper Manning (Arch Manning’s dad), Garret Nussmeier (whose father, Doug, is an assistant coach with the Saints), and Raising Canes founder Todd Graves.
4. Advocate article entailing the onset of universities being able to DIRECTLY pay college athletes with a cap of $20.5 million per school.

From the above Advocate article:

That night marked a monumental shift in college sports. Under the settlement, Division I schools now can pay players for the first time starting July 1. Similar to other major programs, LSU plans to pay its athletes the maximum $20.5 million during the upcoming school year

As a result, LSU officials projected a usually profitable athletic department to have an $8 million deficit during the upcoming fiscal year. Zinn said LSU “will work aggressively to mitigate that” and could balance its budget by the 2027 fiscal year.

……..how third-party NIL could let them exceed the cap, their search for more money and why they feel confident in the future.

The cap will increase annually by 4% and be reevaluated every three years. LSU plans to meet the cap as it rises throughout the 10-year settlement.

5.  HB-639 in 2025 Regular Legislative Session.

6.  Original Fiscal Note for HB-639.

7.  Final Enrolled Fiscal Note on HB-639.

We placed the estimated fiscal impacts within the text during segments of the above video, but let us produce a table which succinctly summarizes those impacts:

8.  Link for approval of Coushatta compact eliminating tax on bets at its Indian Casino.

9.  Highlights of the January 2024 Amendment of the Coushatta Compact eliminating the tax on its gaming activities:

10.  Burns draining Draft Kings online sporting account of all but $300 when bill passage became obvious:

11.  Coushatta Casino Sports Bet (ZERO tax):

12.  Draft Kings bet placed at Queen Casino (HB-639 impacts ONLINE sports bets only and NOT bets placed at brick-and-mortar facilities for which the sports betting tax remains at 10 percent!!).

13.  Online Draft Kings bet when boosts and incentives (e.g. “no sweat bet” or “profit boost”) are offered.  For those bets, which are typically limited to $5 or $10, Burns will continue to make online (hence leaving $300 in the online account) because:  #1) they tilt the odds in the bettor’s favor, and #2) they are miniscule compared to the larger bets Burns used to make online prior to the passage of HB-639 and Gov. Landry signing the measure into law.

So, that’s it in a nutshell regarding our stance on HB-639.  Perhaps others think the measure is fantastic, and maybe a few folk seeing this feature may haul off and open online sports betting accounts to help keep college athletics programs competitive with others across the country.  That’s the chief argument advanced by proponents of the measure.

Nevertheless, as Burns states on the video, that sentiment is not the feedback he’s gotten from a number of former online sports bettors who have literally walked away from sports betting altogether after the passage of HB-639.

It’s important to note that those fiscal notes linked above hinge on online sports betting remaining constant.  We guess those forecasts would go up in smoke if many folk do like Burns is doing or others he has spoken with about the measure.  In our opinion, the existing program was working just fine, but Gov. Landry opted to try to fix something that clearly was not even remotely broken by pushing HB-639 as strongly as he did!  The result, at least for us, will be a dramatic decline in the sports wagering taxes we generate for Louisiana, and we’ve illustrated above and stated on the video how we intend to accomplish that goal.

Now, if Landry opts to get “cute” and advance another measure to further tax brick-and-mortar bets to fund SPORT, it’s not something we want to do, but make no mistake, we will join others who have totally walked away from making sports bets at all in light of the passage of HB-639!

EMS Reform’s Walter Beach

Our site visitors may recall our August 7, 2025 feature in which Walter Beach, who is the co-founder of EMS Reform, elaborated upon his opposition to EBRP Mayor-President Sid Edwards’ controversial  plan to merge EBRP EMS with the BR Fire Department.

In today’s feature, Beach continues to elaborate upon his opposition to Edwards’ proposal and updates everyone on the current state of affairs entailing the merger:

9/17/25:  Beach provides update on Edwards’ plan to merge EBRP EMS with the BR Fire Department and provides insight into his discussions with those involved in the decision-making process.

We hope everyone is enjoying a very nice weekend.

LSU Interim President Matt Lee prepares to respond to a question about AI’s impact on the job market for college graduates posed by Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns.

LSU Interim President Matt Lee was the guest speaker at the Baton Rouge Press Club (BRPC) meeting of Monday, September 15, 2025.

As would be expected, Lee’s prepared remarks of approximately 44 minutes were all centered around promoting LSU, and we’ll supply a link for his presentation in its entirety for those who wish to view his praise of LSU.

We at Sound Off Louisiana, however, in light of the extensive coverage of AI’s expected impact on the white-collar job market, particularly that of current and upcoming college graduates, felt a need to pose a question to Dr. Lee regarding his thoughts on AI’s impact on the job prospects for those college grads.

Proving that he eats way too much (by virtue of the fact he’s way overweight despite what folk are about to read), Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns almost never misses his morning four-mile walk on a treadmill at his apartment complex’s workout facility.  That requires 90 minutes, and during that time, Burns focuses every morning on the broadcasts of Squawk Box and Opening Bell.

Virtually every morning, these shows focus intensely on AI and its impact on the workforce, and the shows are comprised of both CEOs of the Mag 7 and other major non-tech companies who explain the incredible impacts that AI has already had on their operations and, very importantly, how they see their operations benefiting strongly from AI between now and 2030 (coincidentally just after LSU’s record-breaking incoming Freshman class graduates).  Here is a non-exhaustive list of statements that have been made by these corporate executives or other technology analysts on these broadcasts:

• By 2030, up to 37 percent of all white-collar jobs will be eliminated by AI;
• For new attorneys at law firms, if they have not attained third-year associate by now, their jobs are virtually certain to be eliminated in the next three years;
• If one has assets or if one will receive assets through inheritance, such folk “will be just fine,” but, for folk who have a need to build assets through working, they are almost certain to encounter very stiff headwinds because of AI (that wealth transfer is estimated at $124 trillion between now and 2048 and many economists say it will make the overall economy strong for a protracted period);
• While AI (and to a much greater extent after 2030, Robotics) will affect all aspects of employment, the displacement is going to commence at entry-level jobs for current and upcoming college graduates who may have been under a false illusion that their jobs were safe from such displacement.

Regarding the final point in the above list, as Burns pointed out to Lee in his question which we’ll present shortly, Tik Tok is loaded with thousands (and we’re not exaggerating) of video clips of current and recent college graduates (many of whom have graduated from Ivy League Universities), who have flatly stated to parents of students contemplating sending their children to college to refrain from doing so and calling college a “scam.”

Many recent college graduates have posted Tik Tok videos of them being laid off in real time (via Zoom) with the personnel manager flat-out saying that they’d been replaced by AI.  Ironically, all of these recent college graduates post Zoom calls wherein they are told point blank that their jobs have been eliminated by AI advancements, after which almost guaranteed will next come a sentence strongly encouraging them to use Prep AI to search for a replacement job.

Microsoft has been the poster child for such videos with one frustrated graduate from the Class of 2024 stating that Microsoft offered him a promotion, prompting his wife to quit her job and them move to Seattle, only to tell him six (6) months after they made the move that his job had been replaced by AI.

Needless to say, he was not happy, and the only complimentary thing he had to say about Microsoft is that they gave him a generous severance package (we believe it was three months) for his trouble.  In the vast majority of other instances of such videos of tech layoffs, the standard severance package has been stated on the videos as “two weeks,” and, when the laid off worker asks if there is any leeway on that, they are always told, “We’re sorry, but no.”

When Burns posed his question of Lee, he referenced this Fortune article of September 4, 2025.  From the article:

The unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the United States has now surpassed that of all workers, marking a significant reversal of pre-pandemic labor market trends, according to an analysis from the Bank of America Institute.

Gen Z and labor market challenges

The report finds that over 13% of unemployed Americans in July were “new entrants” or people seeking jobs for the first time, “which skews towards Gen Z.” This proportion has not been seen in nearly four decades, since 1988, highlighting the acute challenges younger cohorts face when beginning their careers.

BofA’s analysis further ties the bleak outlook for recent grads to macroeconomic headwinds, including rising global trade tensions and the rapid integration of automation in the workplace. These factors disproportionately impact younger applicants and those without lengthy work experience.

So, with that, let’s now present Burns’ question to Dr. Lee and his response:

LSU Interim President Lee responds to Burns’ question on AI and its impact on the job prospects of current and near-term future LSU graduates and what he would say to parents to assuage concerns that obtaining a college education may be a “scam,” as so many recent college graduate Tik Tok posters have flatly characterized a college education in the present job market.

When Burns graduated from LSU (in December of 1985), all it took was a little computer knowledge (most especially Lotus, which was dominant then but was overtaken years later by Microsoft’s Excel), and the banking managers were both impressed and happy that analytical skills previously done by hand could now be done via spreadsheet with the capability to change variables to provide “what if” scenarios.  Bear in mind that, at that time, having a hard drive was a rarity, and Burns can still remember telling his mom that LSU offered a program to buy a computer through the University at graduation, and he was thrilled beyond words to be getting one with a ten (10) Megabyte hard drive!

In short, technology back then merely enhanced the jobs college graduates performed by making those jobs more efficient and productive because of the technology.

In sharp contrast, today’s technology appears literally created to replace workers in droves!  We firmly believe that the impacts of AI are beyond what most people, including us, can even try to envision.  For example, CPAs have historically examined very small samples of transactions at a company under audit in the hope that such testing may uncover any potential fraud.

As we stressed in this prior feature, the Trump Administration is determined to utilize AI to, in our opinion, conduct 100 percent audits to root out governmental fraud.  Humans simply aren’t capable of processing that kind of volume, thus triggering the need for extremely small samples and hoping that the fraud is detected.  AI, on the other hand, can perform these 100 percent audits so fast it boggles the mind, and it can do so at a miniscule cost vis-a-vis humans even with humans only sampling a small number of transactions.

When Burns attended LSU, economics professors explained the “high” cost of college back then to be not only the direct cost of attending (when Burns’ tuition approximated the whopping total of about $420 a semester) but also the “opportunity costs” of attending college, which is the four years of earnings the student gives up by going to college.

In our opinion, both costs have risen so significantly at this point to make it almost impossible to justify making a four-year investment in a college education!  We understand Dr. Lee’s need to downplay that fact and the impact of AI.  We will state, however, that we firmly believe that it is the “error rate” that Lee poses as his counter argument to Burns that will be “calibrated” to perfection over the next few years.

Further, with all due respect to Lee, we believe that he is grossly over downplaying AI’s impact on current and near-term college graduates’ job prospects.  As evidenced by the bullet points above and numerous college graduate Tik Tok videos, along with CEOs of major corporations in the U. S., we know for a fact that we have plenty of company who agree with us.  Nevertheless, sometimes the “herd mentality” is wrong but, in this case, our money is on the “herd mentality” being spot on!

Click Here to see LSU Interim President Dr. Matt Lee’s presentation in its entirety.