Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. One of the strangest American institutions is
Speaker 1: college athletics. In no other country in the world are
Speaker 1: college sports such a big business as they are in
Speaker 1: the US. To get a sense of perspective of just
Speaker 1: how big college sports are, an ESPN article in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen showed that in forty states, the highest paid state
Speaker 1: employee is a college athletic coach, with a majority of
Speaker 1: those coaches making at least two million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Half a million student athletes participate in college athletics at
Speaker 1: any one time. As I speak to you, this year's
Speaker 1: NCAA men's basketball tournament, March Madness, has just ended. At
Speaker 1: the same time, the NCAA is facing the most serious
Speaker 1: legal battle in its history. There's a case before the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court right now in which the plaintiffs, former college athletes,
Speaker 1: are arguing that the current limits on athletic compensation constitute
Speaker 1: a violation of antitrust law. It's a case that challenges
Speaker 1: and could change the entire underlying structure of how college
Speaker 1: sports operate. The oral argument last week was striking, just
Speaker 1: as Clarence Thomas, who doesn't always say anything in oral argument, said,
Speaker 1: it just strikes me as odd that the coaches salaries
Speaker 1: have ballooned and they're in the amateur ranks, as are
Speaker 1: the players. Help us understand the current model of college sports,
Speaker 1: where it came from, how it's developed, and how it
Speaker 1: might be improved. We're speaking today to Professor Eddie Como.
Speaker 1: He's a professor at the University of California Riverside. His
Speaker 1: research centers on the college student experience, with a special
Speaker 1: focus on athletics. He's the founder and executive director of
Speaker 1: the Center for Athletes Rights and Equity. Before earning his PhD,
Speaker 1: he played baseball at the University of California, Berkeley. He
Speaker 1: was drafted by the Texas Rangers and played minor league
Speaker 1: baseball in their system. All in all, a fascinating background
Speaker 1: and just the perfect background to offer an informed, insider, critical,
Speaker 1: scholarly view of the way the system works. Eddie, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here with us. I want
Speaker 1: to start with a big picture question that I've never
Speaker 1: understood the answer too, and which reflects one of the
Speaker 1: themes that we're focusing on deep background this year, which
Speaker 1: is the theme of power. How did the nc double
Speaker 1: A get all the power that it has to set
Speaker 1: the rules for college athletics across the board? That is
Speaker 1: a million dollar question that if you just look back
Speaker 1: to the history of the NCAA, it relied on amateurism
Speaker 1: principles that were adopted by the nineteenth century British model
Speaker 1: that we play sport simply as an advocation, as a hobby.
Speaker 1: The minute that we begin to pay athletes for their labor,
Speaker 1: it may lead to unscrupulous behaviors. And so when they
Speaker 1: adopted these nineteenth century British model, they had a rulemaking
Speaker 1: in place that simply said that you're just going to
Speaker 1: play as a hobby. We are student athletes that are
Speaker 1: simply here to play, to get exercised, to enjoy for
Speaker 1: just the purity of it. But unfortunately, when you think
Speaker 1: about this structural arrangement of college athletics, over time it
Speaker 1: became increasingly commercialized, right and those who were engaged in
Speaker 1: the rulemaking process were the ones who benefited quite handsomely
Speaker 1: from that enterprise. And that has continued on today in
Speaker 1: terms of who makes up this model and who actually
Speaker 1: makes the rulemaking here, and that you know is part
Speaker 1: of the reason why we see this power playing out
Speaker 1: is that you know, they have so much power in
Speaker 1: terms of rulemaking policies that play out, which in my
Speaker 1: viewr barometer for whether or not we're inclusive. You're already
Speaker 1: opening my mind a lot. Start with this nineteenth century
Speaker 1: British amateurism. What I hear you saying is that when
Speaker 1: you add to that attitude actual money made by the
Speaker 1: colleges and made by the NCAA, there's a total contradiction
Speaker 1: between the idea of amateurism and the de facto professionalism
Speaker 1: where money is made. Am I hearing you right? That's
Speaker 1: absolutely correct. And so what we see happening is that
Speaker 1: we amateurize the athlete, but we commercialize the product. Right.
Speaker 1: So here in lies the contradiction as well. When we
Speaker 1: think about how we're defining amateurism, right, we don't want
Speaker 1: to blur the lines of amateurism and the professional trappings.
Speaker 1: We want to ensure that there's a clear line of demarcation.
Speaker 1: That is, that is fundamental to the NCAA member institutions position.
Speaker 1: We want a clear line. We don't want to blur
Speaker 1: those lines. But the minute you start to commercialize that enterprise,
Speaker 1: you know, we start to get into the weeds. We
Speaker 1: start to see how you know, you have football coaches
Speaker 1: that make upwards of ten million dollars, the average basketball
Speaker 1: coach might make three million dollars a year UM, and
Speaker 1: other externalities such as sponsorships that are also have their
Speaker 1: hands in the cookie jar, all on the backs of
Speaker 1: these college athletes, right, particularly in the revenue generating sports
Speaker 1: of football and men's basketball. UM. And then also as
Speaker 1: you think about the sort of evolution of amateurism, you know,
Speaker 1: we started out where athletes weren't being compensated at all,
Speaker 1: right for um, their their educational suit. But it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty six that the NCAA decided that we're
Speaker 1: going to allow four year guaranteed scholarships to athletes. And
Speaker 1: this was at a time where they were trying to
Speaker 1: sort of curb the unscrupulous behavior that was playing out.
Speaker 1: Many boosters and alums were trying to channel and push
Speaker 1: athletes toward their school by offering them money under the table, right,
Speaker 1: So they felt like they can curb that by offering them,
Speaker 1: you know, four year guaranteed. But if you fast forward
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy three, they went to one year renewable scholarships, right,
Speaker 1: And how do you justify going from four years to
Speaker 1: one year? Right? And so many you know who are
Speaker 1: I would say critics of the NCAA would say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they defined amateurs and whatever way they want,
Speaker 1: whatever is in their own self interests, right, But this
Speaker 1: one year renewable scholarship then says that you know, the
Speaker 1: coach can non renew your scholarship for any reason. Right.
Speaker 1: You can have a four point o GPA, and just
Speaker 1: because of the coach doesn't like your politics or doesn't
Speaker 1: like the way you're performing on the field, you know,
Speaker 1: you can lose that scholarship. So, so, what justifies the
Speaker 1: change over time in scholarships when if the goal is
Speaker 1: to support athletes so that they can you know, matriculate
Speaker 1: and graduate and have some sort of support as they
Speaker 1: go through their program of study, explain to me why
Speaker 1: the nt double A as a kind of like collective
Speaker 1: entity hasn't been broken by individual actors, Let's say colleges,
Speaker 1: who would say, we can make more money and change
Speaker 1: the situation by going out on our own. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the leagues I don't know, the Big ten
Speaker 1: or you name it, would say, well, we think we
Speaker 1: can make more money by breaking away from the NCAA,
Speaker 1: doing it our own way, keeping television revenue and paying
Speaker 1: our players. You know, that's a good question, and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna trying to be as pragmatic as possible. When
Speaker 1: you think about college sports a source of entertainment, an
Speaker 1: opportunity to bring folks together for a common goal, perhaps
Speaker 1: to win, to win a national championship, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of stakeholders that enjoy this entertainment and they understand
Speaker 1: the beauty of that. And so then to push up
Speaker 1: against something that has a history of bringing folks together,
Speaker 1: whether you have lawmakers, legislators you know who are also
Speaker 1: could potentially be pushing back on a model that you know,
Speaker 1: many would argue as inequitable. I think the fact that
Speaker 1: there's a source of entertainment has been part of our
Speaker 1: history and legacy that is hard to disrupt that. The
Speaker 1: other piece, which I think is probably a more compelling
Speaker 1: argument to make here, is that college athletes are very vulnerable. Right.
Speaker 1: They don't have collective bargaining, they don't have the leverage
Speaker 1: to really push back on a system that many would
Speaker 1: argue or not in their best interests. We saw in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen at Northwestern University where Kane Coulter, the quarterback
Speaker 1: at the time, try to push to get athletes to
Speaker 1: be able to bargain collectively, but that didn't play out
Speaker 1: with the labor relations board. And we saw multiple times
Speaker 1: during the pandemic where players because of they didn't feel
Speaker 1: protected during the pandemic and trying to go out and
Speaker 1: play football. You have many people rallying around that, but
Speaker 1: they just don't have the power right to be able
Speaker 1: to orchestrate something on a level that pushes back against
Speaker 1: a system that is not always in their best interests.
Speaker 1: And so I see two things. You have many stakeholders
Speaker 1: that enjoy a sport in its current form and don't
Speaker 1: want to disrupt that. They like the status quo and
Speaker 1: they want to perpetuate that on the backs of these
Speaker 1: vote athletes. And then the other piece too is the
Speaker 1: lack of power, the lack of ability to really bargain
Speaker 1: collectively for their own rights and well being. There are
Speaker 1: two key power elements there. One is if the athletes
Speaker 1: had a union, they would be much more empowered to
Speaker 1: act and I know you know you're not an union lawyer.
Speaker 1: Neither am I, but what can you say about why
Speaker 1: the National Labor Relations Board didn't say ultimately that athletes
Speaker 1: should be able to unionize. I mean it's striking to me.
Speaker 1: You know, I teach on a university like you do.
Speaker 1: Graduate students have organized to unionize, not because they're playing sports,
Speaker 1: but because they're teaching classes, and in general, the NLRB
Speaker 1: has been relatively sympathetic. A lot of people on campus
Speaker 1: don't like that, but there they've been successful in many
Speaker 1: instances of getting unions validated. And it seems to me
Speaker 1: that there those graduate students have even less of an
Speaker 1: argument for unionization than the athletes do because they're bringing
Speaker 1: in so much revenue for the university and they're also
Speaker 1: being compensated. So I mean, as a matter of morality, justice,
Speaker 1: and logic, it seems like student athletes should have a union.
Speaker 1: So why don't they? Right? That's a good question, And
Speaker 1: if we talk specifically about the case study of Northwestern
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, the Labor Relations Board actually punted on
Speaker 1: this issue, and part of that is that they didn't
Speaker 1: want to make a decision that's going to impact the
Speaker 1: entire landscape of college athletics. The argument has been one, right,
Speaker 1: like Northwestern is a private school, right, so they have
Speaker 1: a little bit more autonomy and flexibility than perhaps the
Speaker 1: public school. So so if this was enacted, this would
Speaker 1: apply to Northwestern, but not necessarily say UCLA Public University.
Speaker 1: And so the argument for many, particularly the NCAA, has
Speaker 1: always been this imbalanced, this competitive equity issue, that if
Speaker 1: we allow an opportunity for Northwestern embarking collectively, what about
Speaker 1: those other schools? Would there be parody in college sports? Well,
Speaker 1: part of that argument, you know, around competitive equity, has
Speaker 1: already been debunked. Right when we think about recruiting, there
Speaker 1: is no competitive equity, particularly in Division one school. I
Speaker 1: was just reading how the University of Georgia spent four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on recruiting four a week. Part of
Speaker 1: that was private jets and a number of coaches that
Speaker 1: actually went to help with that recruiting process. If you
Speaker 1: look at a Division in one school where I'm at,
Speaker 1: you see Riverside, you know we're probably not flying private jets,
Speaker 1: perhaps using a buddy pass on Southwest, and so it's
Speaker 1: not there is no competitive equity when you look at
Speaker 1: the amount of money that's made at Alabama, you know,
Speaker 1: where they may have a budget of over two hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars and other universities might be around seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't add up. So, you know, I think
Speaker 1: part of that is the punt because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be responsible for the changes in college athletics. But
Speaker 1: the other piece, you know, I'm excited, Noah about the
Speaker 1: fact that there are sort of this movement toward better
Speaker 1: equity among athletes where they were talking about the nil
Speaker 1: conversations that's playing out right now. You saw what happened
Speaker 1: with the Pac twelve conference where a lot of players
Speaker 1: were pushing back on the lack of protections during a pandemic,
Speaker 1: And what was the motivation behind actually having these players
Speaker 1: come out and play. Was it all driven by the
Speaker 1: potential losses that might play out if the season didn't ensue.
Speaker 1: So these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1: So I'm on the one hand, optimistic that we can
Speaker 1: move in at directed, but I'm also understanding where folks
Speaker 1: would prefer the status quo because they think that changes
Speaker 1: might disrupt that sort of ethos of college athletics. I
Speaker 1: want to ask one more power question, but before I do,
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you to unpack for for
Speaker 1: listeners the name image likeness issue. You were talking about,
Speaker 1: the NIL issue in case folks don't know what that is. Yes, So, name,
Speaker 1: image and likeness. If you're a student, a non athlete student,
Speaker 1: and you come up with a novel idea you can
Speaker 1: get you can be compensated for it. There's no guardrails,
Speaker 1: there's there's no caps in terms of how much money
Speaker 1: you can monetize your name, image and likeness. But but
Speaker 1: the athletes can't. Right. This is actually part of case
Speaker 1: law and we can go back to O'Bannon versus the NCAA,
Speaker 1: which was a class action antitrust lawsuit where Ed O'Bannon,
Speaker 1: a former All American basketball player, charged at the NCAA
Speaker 1: violated the Sherman Act by using athletes image and likeness
Speaker 1: in live game broadcasts and video games while not allowing
Speaker 1: them to receive a share of that revenue. And so,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, In about June of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: Judge Wilkins concluded that the NCAA amateurism rules as it
Speaker 1: was written at the time, were more restrictive than necessary
Speaker 1: and in violated the Sherman Acts. As a result of that,
Speaker 1: the ruling required the NCAA to permit member institutions to
Speaker 1: compensate athletes up to the cost of attendance, which was
Speaker 1: about five thousand dollars per year in deferred payments for
Speaker 1: the commercial use of their name, image, and likeness. Of course,
Speaker 1: the NCAA appealed that verdict in the US Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals of the Nice Circuit, and then in December of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen allowed athletes the full cost of attending college,
Speaker 1: and again that was around five thousand dollars. So the
Speaker 1: point here is that although athletes can't be paid unlimited
Speaker 1: amounts of money if they are seen in video games
Speaker 1: for their name, image, and likeness, the judge did rule
Speaker 1: that for educational purpose or educational expenses, they can receive
Speaker 1: up to five thousand dollars. And then, of course we
Speaker 1: see now ongoing litigation about name, image and likeness of California,
Speaker 1: the first state to sign into law name Image and Likeness,
Speaker 1: which would allow players to be paid for their name,
Speaker 1: image and likeness. Starting in twenty twenty three, Florida will
Speaker 1: actually be the first state that will allow players to
Speaker 1: be paid for their name, image, and likeness, and starting
Speaker 1: July one of twenty twenty one. And so now an
Speaker 1: athlete can go to their local high school and run
Speaker 1: a camp for youth and be paid for it. Now
Speaker 1: a player can go out and sign autographs and be
Speaker 1: paid for their name, image, or likeness. And this is
Speaker 1: something that over a dozen states now are moving forward
Speaker 1: with legislation, while at the same time, the nca and
Speaker 1: member institutions are pulling together a work group to figure
Speaker 1: out if they can come up with a uniform policy.
Speaker 1: And then this goes back to what I said. Their
Speaker 1: argument is this, if California and Florida, in a handful
Speaker 1: of other states are allowed athletes to be paid for
Speaker 1: their name, image, and enlightness, it would lead to competitive
Speaker 1: inequities or imbalance of power. So they feel like it's
Speaker 1: in their best interest to come up with new policy
Speaker 1: that uniform before these new states roll out their new legislation.
Speaker 1: But there's also, you know, concern and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if this is more of a bark than a bite,
Speaker 1: but the NCAA said, if these states do move forward,
Speaker 1: they'll be ineligible for competition. Now, that brings us to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court case, which is before the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: right now, and which we'll get a decision this year.
Speaker 1: Usually by the end of June is the traditional decision
Speaker 1: time for the hardest cases, although last year it went
Speaker 1: into July because of COVID. What's your take on that case?
Speaker 1: And to start with, just to remind listeners or for
Speaker 1: those who haven't been following it so closely, what's at
Speaker 1: stake there? I mean, that's an antitrust challenge to the
Speaker 1: whole practice of the NCAA prohibiting cash related or cash
Speaker 1: similar benefits to be given to athletes, right, I mean
Speaker 1: if they if the Supreme Court were to uphold the
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals there, how radical a change would we
Speaker 1: be likely to see? So, you know, again, if we
Speaker 1: think about the structural arrangement of college athletics, there are
Speaker 1: many people who benefit quite hansily from the enterprise coaches,
Speaker 1: athletic directors, conference commissioners, sponsors, TV contracts, CBS, turner sports
Speaker 1: on the backs of athletes. So I don't actually see
Speaker 1: this as a radical change in an institution of higher
Speaker 1: learning where athletes are putting their lives on the line
Speaker 1: risking injury, right, spending a disproportionate amount of time on
Speaker 1: their sport at the expense of their educational pursuit. You know,
Speaker 1: there are studies that suggested athletes spend more than fifty
Speaker 1: hours a week on sport related activities, not to mention
Speaker 1: the mental fatigue, the physical exhaustion, the nagging injuries that
Speaker 1: are accompanied with those who participate in sport. To now
Speaker 1: have into law or to think about allowing more educational
Speaker 1: benefits for athletes. So if they want to pursue an
Speaker 1: internship and they need to be funded for that opportunity,
Speaker 1: there's a chance with this new legislation that that could happen. Right.
Speaker 1: There's also opportunities that if you wanted to go to
Speaker 1: professional or graduate school, these schools, these member institutions can
Speaker 1: provide sort of an escrow account at the end of
Speaker 1: their eligibility. So this is not just giving payments to athletes.
Speaker 1: This isn't incentive for the academic success, right, So I
Speaker 1: can get behind opportunities that tie to their academic goals
Speaker 1: and obligation in the institute of higher learning. I'm not
Speaker 1: at all just in favor of just paying athletes just
Speaker 1: to pay them right. I do feel like there should
Speaker 1: be some structure in place. There should be some at
Speaker 1: timing for these individual institutions to decide what that formula
Speaker 1: might look like, what that might look like in practice,
Speaker 1: and so I think it would be a shift. It
Speaker 1: would be actually a sea change if, in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court upholds the plaintiffs in this case, Austin
Speaker 1: to allow those educational benefits something beyond you know, I
Speaker 1: think right now we're talking five nine hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: dollars to be exact, but to exceed that number, which
Speaker 1: I think was arbitrary to begin with. To be able
Speaker 1: to exceed that and have something at the end of eligibility,
Speaker 1: I think would be a nice gesture on the part
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court to really support these athletes and
Speaker 1: they're going through, you know, a very rigorous program and
Speaker 1: also trying to balance their athletics. You mentioned along the way,
Speaker 1: there's something that I think a lot of casual fans
Speaker 1: don't know that a lot of athletes will put in
Speaker 1: up to fifty hours a week or more on their
Speaker 1: sports while they're going to college full time. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I remember very vividly the first time I
Speaker 1: learned about that. It was when I met Corey Booker
Speaker 1: back when we were, you know, each in our early
Speaker 1: twenties to write out of college, and he was describing
Speaker 1: to me how he discovered that he was a really
Speaker 1: good student, and he said it was because when he
Speaker 1: was recruited to Stanford, he was red shirted as a freshman,
Speaker 1: he played football, and then there was a new coach
Speaker 1: who came in and what would have been his fifth year,
Speaker 1: and the coach didn't believe in red shirting, so he
Speaker 1: lost the year of eligibility that he still had available
Speaker 1: to him. And he said, I was really upset about it,
Speaker 1: and you know, Corey was also I think the student
Speaker 1: body president. He went and met the president of Stanford
Speaker 1: and said, you know what's going on here? I really
Speaker 1: want to play and the coach was really firm about it.
Speaker 1: And so Corey said, for the first time in my
Speaker 1: college career, I didn't have to spend fifty hours a
Speaker 1: week doing football. And it turned out I was really
Speaker 1: good at school, and I was really proud of how
Speaker 1: well I was doing. Suddenly, and I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, how many hours a week did you spend
Speaker 1: on football? I just I was just blown away by it.
Speaker 1: I mean, lots of us have part time jobs in college,
Speaker 1: but the idea of working a full time or more
Speaker 1: than full time job that is profoundly physically exhausting and
Speaker 1: then going to college just suggests to me the absurdity
Speaker 1: of the idea that there is amateurism of any kind here.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a full time job coupled with educational attainment.
Speaker 1: And I guess what I'm wondering about that is, how
Speaker 1: can the NCTIA get away with the story that they
Speaker 1: are quote unquote giving an education when the students have
Speaker 1: to get their education in the what time is left
Speaker 1: to them after performing a full time job. It just
Speaker 1: seems so outrageous when you hear that number, right, And
Speaker 1: the question for me is how do you strike a
Speaker 1: healthy balance between academics and athletics. I have a huge
Speaker 1: problem with the fact that because of this arrangement of
Speaker 1: college athletics and the sort of demands from the coaches,
Speaker 1: the demands from playing, the fact that you now have
Speaker 1: a conference realignment where schools are realigning to conferences because
Speaker 1: they can think they can get bigger TV contracts, and
Speaker 1: with those bigger TV contracts, schools are likely to travel
Speaker 1: greater distances. When you're traveling greater distances, it's likely that
Speaker 1: those players will spend less time in the classroom. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're now seeing this real push towards sort of
Speaker 1: their athletics at the expense of their academics. And then
Speaker 1: just even thinking about majors, right, Like many athletes are
Speaker 1: pursuing majors that aren't even aligned with their career interests
Speaker 1: just so that they can maintain their eligibility, right, And
Speaker 1: so the structure is not working at all. And then
Speaker 1: when you think about the sort of the propaganda that
Speaker 1: plays out, well, you know, most athletes will go pro
Speaker 1: and things other than sport, right, and athletes are graduating
Speaker 1: at a higher clip than their non athlete peers. But
Speaker 1: if you disaggregate, right, those athletes in revenue generating sports,
Speaker 1: and then you disaggregate by race ethnicity, right where there's
Speaker 1: a heavy concentration of specifically black athletes, their graduation rates
Speaker 1: are hovering around fifty five, right, And that's the federal
Speaker 1: graduation rates, right, And that's that's disappointing, particularly when we
Speaker 1: think about how black black students make up about three
Speaker 1: percent of colleges and universities, Yet they make up over
Speaker 1: fifty p scent of those who are dribbling basketballs or
Speaker 1: trying to catch a football right. That to me is disturbing.
Speaker 1: And so if we believe that the model in its
Speaker 1: current form is working well, as some probably believe, they
Speaker 1: think that the system is working the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to work, that if we continue to define amateurism and
Speaker 1: our own self interests, perhaps maybe we convince the stakeholders
Speaker 1: who enjoy this sport that somehow we should figure out
Speaker 1: how to sustain it and not tear it down or
Speaker 1: burn it up or blow it up right, or reimagine
Speaker 1: a different structure that allows athletes to identify majors that
Speaker 1: align with their interests, that allow them time in a classroom,
Speaker 1: that allow them to do internships in the off seasons
Speaker 1: or during the summer time that better positions them for
Speaker 1: life once the music stops playing. Those the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that I'm thinking about, And I'm not sure this
Speaker 1: current model, where we have increasingly commercialization of sport, where
Speaker 1: there are different stakeholders in power that are making the
Speaker 1: rules right, You're not necessarily going to get a fair
Speaker 1: process right because somehow to magically think that those who
Speaker 1: are making the money and profiting will somehow say, you
Speaker 1: know what, this should be a fair model. I should
Speaker 1: begin to share the pie. I should thinking more about
Speaker 1: a more equitable approach to this. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that's buying out. That's why you see advocates of athletes
Speaker 1: pushing back. That's why you see some athletes coming out.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing too. Noa that many of these athletes,
Speaker 1: particularly in revenue sports, are low income, first generation athletes.
Speaker 1: To ask them to say why not boycott? Why not
Speaker 1: play today? That's just not a fair question. You know.
Speaker 1: The question for me is goes back to the power
Speaker 1: question you begin You started out with, how can those
Speaker 1: empower reimagine a different structure? How do those empower relinquish
Speaker 1: some of that power? Right to then say we need
Speaker 1: a fairer model in place. Right, those are the kinds
Speaker 1: of questions we should be asking rather than saying, well,
Speaker 1: athletes have the power, they should stop playing. No, it's
Speaker 1: not their responsibility. Yes they can play a role, but
Speaker 1: I'm not expecting them to be Muhammad Ali. I'm not
Speaker 1: expecting them to be a Colin Kaepernick. Right, they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to be right, they're seventeen eighteen nineteen. I think
Speaker 1: they're courageous for what they have done thus far. But
Speaker 1: I think that if we can push back on those
Speaker 1: who are actually benefiting in questioning that model, I think
Speaker 1: that would be a better approach than simply putting the
Speaker 1: onus on the athlete, we'll be right back. I want
Speaker 1: to get to the how we should reimagine this, But
Speaker 1: in order to do that, we have to, I think
Speaker 1: dive into two more elements of the power structure here
Speaker 1: that we've touched on but haven't really but you've written
Speaker 1: a lot about. One is the question of race, because
Speaker 1: when we talk about power in the United States, race
Speaker 1: is almost always hanging out somewhere in the background and
Speaker 1: sometimes in the foreground, and in this case it's really
Speaker 1: important to get it on the table. And the second
Speaker 1: is capitalism, also always present when we talk about power
Speaker 1: in the United States. So let's try to not that
Speaker 1: they can be fully separated, but let's take them one
Speaker 1: at a time, and then from there we can make
Speaker 1: our way to what could change. Realistically, they would make
Speaker 1: this a better system. So start with race. You mentioned
Speaker 1: national graduation averages, but at a deeper level, even beyond
Speaker 1: the graduation averages. What does it mean for this whole
Speaker 1: system and structure that, as you were saying, something like
Speaker 1: half of the people who are playing the big ticket
Speaker 1: sports in American universities are African Americans. Yes, and so
Speaker 1: you know, part of part of as I think about
Speaker 1: again this structural arrangement of college athletics is who benefits
Speaker 1: who benefits from this athletic enterprise. When we think about,
Speaker 1: you know, the percentage of white head coaches in basketball
Speaker 1: and even in football, um, and then the number of
Speaker 1: black athletes that are actually playing that sport, right, it
Speaker 1: doesn't add up when we when we when we think
Speaker 1: about this sort of racial analysis of college sport. Why
Speaker 1: is it that you have disproportionate number of black athletes
Speaker 1: playing football, but the overwhelming majority of basketball coaches are white? Right?
Speaker 1: Why is it that the overwhelming majority of those in
Speaker 1: senior leadership position, whether it's conference commissioners or even presidents
Speaker 1: of colleges and universities are white? Right? And when you
Speaker 1: think about the actual labor, when you think about the
Speaker 1: amount of revenue that you generated, they're not there to
Speaker 1: see the coach, They're not there to see the commissioners,
Speaker 1: there's there to see these prize recruits, and so on
Speaker 1: some level, Noah, I see athletes viewed as property, disposable property.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you bring more than fifty percent
Speaker 1: of athletes in to play football and basketball, but only
Speaker 1: roughly three percent are part of our non athlete peers
Speaker 1: that happen to be black, that says something about how
Speaker 1: you view black bodies as somehow a commodity as long
Speaker 1: as they remain eligible. But once their eligibility ends, and
Speaker 1: we can see this playing out with graduation rates, that
Speaker 1: somehow they're they're they're disposable, they're no longer wanted. And
Speaker 1: so I see that as deeply disturbing as I think
Speaker 1: about this, this this structural arrangement, and to what extent
Speaker 1: are we moving in a direction where we're actually trying
Speaker 1: to have the next Corey Booker, trying to have the
Speaker 1: next athlete who's able to balance both their academics and athletics.
Speaker 1: And too often, unfortunately, whether it's anecdotally or through evidence,
Speaker 1: is that these athletes position themselves and do a lot
Speaker 1: for the university and invest in a university, but too
Speaker 1: often the university doesn't have the capacity to love them back.
Speaker 1: So it would one way to address this, not to
Speaker 1: fix it, but to address it, be to say that
Speaker 1: when an athletic scholarship is granted, you have to, if
Speaker 1: you're the university, pay for that students full four years
Speaker 1: of education or even more if it takes longer to graduate,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether the person continues to serve as an athlete.
Speaker 1: Would that at least begin the process of making the
Speaker 1: university think of its recruited athletes as people rather than
Speaker 1: as as you say, bodies, particularly black bodies, who can
Speaker 1: be abandoned if they're no longer producing the labor that
Speaker 1: the university wants too. I would even take a step
Speaker 1: back and actually think about, you know, the history of
Speaker 1: college athletics and how athletes, particularly black athletes, are brought
Speaker 1: into the enterprise and use for their athletic abilities, and
Speaker 1: then the output is oftentimes a life where they're not
Speaker 1: well positioned for contributing to the greater good their communities,
Speaker 1: preparing themselves for professional or graduate school. And there's something
Speaker 1: to say about the ways or how black athletes are
Speaker 1: brought into the system and then pushed out of the
Speaker 1: system prioritizing their humanity of who they are right, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's value to the extent that it should.
Speaker 1: Too often I see them as inferior intellectually, but somehow
Speaker 1: being able to benefit them athletically. And this is what
Speaker 1: many you know, Afro pessimist scholars would label as anti blackness,
Speaker 1: right where they don't see the full humanity of these individuals,
Speaker 1: they see them as subhuman. So I think, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: if we're going to recruit black athletes, if we're going
Speaker 1: to bring them into our institutions, they have to see
Speaker 1: their full humanity. They have to see them as both
Speaker 1: gifted and talented on the field of court and in
Speaker 1: the classroom and start from that vantage point. Otherwise will
Speaker 1: continue to see this sort of perpetuation of athletes and
Speaker 1: this you know, being seen as commodities and eventually disposable.
Speaker 1: So that's one the other piece too. Yes, I agree
Speaker 1: that if we can ensure that athletes have a four
Speaker 1: year guarantee scholarship right where they know that they're not
Speaker 1: at the mercy of their coach, where they don't have
Speaker 1: to miss a study group because the coach wants them
Speaker 1: to spend extra hours on the field of court, and
Speaker 1: if they don't add adhere to the coach's demands that
Speaker 1: somehow they could be subject to terminating their scholarship or
Speaker 1: non renewal of their scholarship at the end of the year.
Speaker 1: So I think that's that's a good starting point. But
Speaker 1: also seeing them as human, of course, it is really
Speaker 1: important part of this entire longitudinal process that's playing out.
Speaker 1: This is not as forced, right, this is reflective of
Speaker 1: larger society, So I'm not I think there's added layers
Speaker 1: to be a black athlete than a black non athlete
Speaker 1: student because of the exploit of structural arrangement in which
Speaker 1: they're situated. But I also see, you know, black people
Speaker 1: generally being seen as fully humans as a good starting point.
Speaker 1: I'm very influenced by the Afro pessimism school of thought,
Speaker 1: though it also always makes me nervous because its conclusions
Speaker 1: are as by definition, pessimistic about the possibility of change.
Speaker 1: What about a thought that sometimes occurs to me when
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this, which is maybe do it you
Speaker 1: know the British way? You know, I mean Oxford and
Speaker 1: Cambridge have organized school sports. They're all done by student groups.
Speaker 1: It's all student organized, in student led The students hire
Speaker 1: and fire the coaches, and there's zero athletic recruiting none,
Speaker 1: there's no recruiting at all. Anyone who's going to be
Speaker 1: a student athlete has to already be admitted to the
Speaker 1: university and to the college that they go to on
Speaker 1: academic grounds, and some of them turn out to be
Speaker 1: good athletes, and then they organize themselves into into teams
Speaker 1: and they hire and fire the coaches. That's a radical,
Speaker 1: radical difference from the way we do it in the US.
Speaker 1: What do you think the about that idea and what
Speaker 1: would the racial fallout of that kind of a model
Speaker 1: look like. Well, in this sort of capitalism that's played
Speaker 1: out where where everyone sees a quest for the almighty dollar,
Speaker 1: you know, is that realistic to think that we can
Speaker 1: have a system that's not predicated on how much money
Speaker 1: that you can generate, or how much money that you
Speaker 1: can pay a celebrity coach and other externalities. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure in sort of this neoliberal rule that we can
Speaker 1: go back to a model where revenue is not central
Speaker 1: to the overall operation of that enterprise. I certainly know
Speaker 1: what to reimagine a structure that's fair, that fairly compensates
Speaker 1: the athletes not only for their labor, but also to
Speaker 1: reimburse them educationally, medically, and otherwise. I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: that they get an opportunity to engage purposely in the
Speaker 1: broader academic community because they're confined to the athletic department
Speaker 1: so often, so frequently, and so that you know, does
Speaker 1: hinder their progress, that does hinder the opportunity to position
Speaker 1: them for life after sport and have quantity career transition.
Speaker 1: I just finished up a study looking at the career
Speaker 1: transition of black athletes. And you know, although these you know,
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar facilities that they have, they mentioned they acknowledge that, yes,
Speaker 1: we have all these computers, we have one on one tutoring,
Speaker 1: we have you know, access to workshops, but because of
Speaker 1: the demands of our sports, we don't really get to
Speaker 1: take advantage of this. And it was a retrospective study,
Speaker 1: so I was interviewing them after they've already completed their
Speaker 1: eligibility and have moved on to preparing for the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Some of them have gone on to become first responders.
Speaker 1: Of them are doing academic advisings for athletes, some of
Speaker 1: them are teaching, some of them are working in nonprofits.
Speaker 1: But in hindsight, they're like, yes, yes, it was available,
Speaker 1: but the structural arrangement didn't really allow me to take
Speaker 1: full advantage of these resources. I wish somebody would have said, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the bigger picture, here's the long view. If you
Speaker 1: start to do this now while you're participating in your sport,
Speaker 1: you expand your networks, they'll be likely better earning potentials
Speaker 1: down the road. But they think about that. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, these are gifted and talent. So they they're
Speaker 1: adjusting now right, they're gonna be okay, they're gonna be successful.
Speaker 1: But had they been told that, you know, three or
Speaker 1: four years earlier, there might be more options for them.
Speaker 1: They would be better prepared, they would have more conviction
Speaker 1: in this process. So yeah, I'd like to reimagine that
Speaker 1: what that looks like. I have my own ideas of
Speaker 1: what that looks like. But certainly, let's start with the
Speaker 1: humanity piece. Let's talk about the four year renewable scholarships,
Speaker 1: and let's be more intentional about how they're engaging and
Speaker 1: is it possible at all to kind of curb the
Speaker 1: commercialization which we know does have an impact on their
Speaker 1: educational goals and obligations. The other thing, which many people
Speaker 1: may call extreme, which I think gets at your point
Speaker 1: here about reimagining a different model. Let's burn it all down.
Speaker 1: Let's burn it all down. Let's take away the commercial
Speaker 1: component of it and simply allow this to be an
Speaker 1: advocation where you have the opportunity to play professionally. But
Speaker 1: right now the lines are blurred. There is no clear
Speaker 1: line of demarcation. If you're making billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: this enterprise off the backs of these athletes, there's nothing
Speaker 1: fair about that model. There's nothing fair about that. And
Speaker 1: then to add on that while they're getting an education, again,
Speaker 1: it goes back to the outcomes. The numbers about graduation
Speaker 1: rais there's nothing quality about the education and that many
Speaker 1: particularly of these athletes in the revenue generating sports. So
Speaker 1: we can have that conversation about whether or not we
Speaker 1: want to continue to provide band aids to the current
Speaker 1: model and try to sort of tinker with the edges,
Speaker 1: or if we want to sort of disrupt it in
Speaker 1: its entirety and move on to something else. Any I
Speaker 1: wonder if we could close by my just asking you
Speaker 1: about your own personal path from college athlete to professor
Speaker 1: at UC riverside. How did it all work out in
Speaker 1: your personal experience and does your your personal experience influence
Speaker 1: your your academic work or thinking in your field at all. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for asking that question. It was always a given
Speaker 1: that I was going to go on to college, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. I was fortunate to have a great support system.
Speaker 1: My dad was a Southern University HBCU, was a pitcher
Speaker 1: and a football player. You know, I was a pretty
Speaker 1: good athlete, a pretty good student. I had the twice
Speaker 1: of a number of colleges to play baseball and also
Speaker 1: to play basketball, but I chose baseball because I thought
Speaker 1: I was better and I had many more offers. I
Speaker 1: chose to go to cal Berkeley, arguably one of the
Speaker 1: best public schools in the world. So it was an
Speaker 1: easy decision for me, and plus I got a chance
Speaker 1: to actually start my freshman year. We end up going
Speaker 1: to the College World Series. But you know, and then
Speaker 1: you know, three years later, I was drafted, played in
Speaker 1: the Texas Rangers organization, had a small stint with them,
Speaker 1: end up blowing out my Achilles tendant and had to
Speaker 1: figure out my next approach that I wanted to take
Speaker 1: in life, and I thought, hey, you know, can I
Speaker 1: stay in sport as an athletic director. I thought about that,
Speaker 1: but I was like, no, perhaps a probing thinker, and
Speaker 1: I went on to get a terminal degree at UCLA.
Speaker 1: But I thought about how I can make my difference
Speaker 1: and impact those aspiring leaders, those current leaders. So I
Speaker 1: think about the interplay of education and sport book but
Speaker 1: more more generally, I think about racially minorities, students who
Speaker 1: haven't been well served by their colleges and universities, and
Speaker 1: how that I can help to empower them, support them
Speaker 1: in ways that would create a better today and tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and you know, just trying to resist the current structure.
Speaker 1: So it's been a hell of a ride. I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: what I've been doing, and you know, I'm just getting started.
Speaker 1: I have my new center, Center for Athletes Rights and
Speaker 1: well Being here. We're trying to do a lot of
Speaker 1: important work on the ground, whether it's organizing, but we're
Speaker 1: also trying to do a lot of research to kind
Speaker 1: of document the inequities that exist and figure out an
Speaker 1: equitable path forward. So it's been great. Now I think
Speaker 1: your work is just so important for getting clarity on
Speaker 1: something that we all love college athletics, but that we
Speaker 1: need to understand more deeply and be more critical about
Speaker 1: in order to work towards real improvements. So thank you
Speaker 1: for the conversation, and thank you for your fascinating work
Speaker 1: and for your continuing activism in this really, really important area.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me appreciate it, enjoyed it. Speaking to
Speaker 1: Professor Eddie Como, I was deeply struck by the illogical
Speaker 1: structure of the way college athletics works in the United States.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you have a principle of amateurism
Speaker 1: going all the way back to nineteenth century Britain. May
Speaker 1: be unrealistic even then, but at least based on the
Speaker 1: idea that no one should be profiting off of sport,
Speaker 1: not the universities, not the sneaker companies, not the television channels,
Speaker 1: just pure amateurism. Yet in America we've combined that old
Speaker 1: idea of amateurism with a totally capitalist system in which
Speaker 1: there's tons of money in the system. Money that goes
Speaker 1: to universities, money that goes to coaches, money that goes
Speaker 1: to sponsors, and ultimately, of course, money that goes to
Speaker 1: television stations. All of this, taken together, amounts to a
Speaker 1: system of what Eddie calls athletic capitalism, in which the
Speaker 1: interests of the players come last, and in which the
Speaker 1: principle of amateurism is imposed on them, whether they want
Speaker 1: it or not. Indeed, in this system, amateurism becomes a
Speaker 1: selling point itself, which is, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: sort of the very contradiction of the idea of amateurism.
Speaker 1: It's a professionalized amateurism, and it does not necessarily serve
Speaker 1: student interests. Simultaneously, Eddie points out even many of the
Speaker 1: improvements that have been made in facilitating good education for
Speaker 1: college athletes, like tutoring opportunities chances to work with study groups,
Speaker 1: are in practice not able to be taken advantage of
Speaker 1: by student athletes because they're subjected to a system in
Speaker 1: which the coach's word is final and performance is above all,
Speaker 1: and of course student's capacity to remain on athletics scholarship
Speaker 1: depends entirely on the will of the coach. This leads
Speaker 1: Eddie to think that in many, many instance, athletes, especially
Speaker 1: athletes of color, are being treated as mere bodies, people
Speaker 1: who are disposable and whose interests are not treated as primary,
Speaker 1: not even as secondary, but come last in the consideration
Speaker 1: of how things work in the system. He made the
Speaker 1: point that it should not be seen as a coincidence
Speaker 1: in this context that nearly fifty percent of those who
Speaker 1: play big ticket college sports are African American. How can
Speaker 1: this whole system change? Doctor Como raises a range of possibilities.
Speaker 1: They include greater unionization. They include the Supreme Court potentially
Speaker 1: limiting antitrust protection for the NCAA and the colleges. They
Speaker 1: include a deeper and fuller reimagining that doctor Como is suggesting,
Speaker 1: one that hints at change in the way we see
Speaker 1: the system, so that the athlete is treated as a
Speaker 1: human being and as a student first. Ultimately, the goal
Speaker 1: is at structure of money and power, do not leave
Speaker 1: out the athletes. It's clear we're dealing with a phenomenon
Speaker 1: that produces lots of good in the form of entertainment, engagement,
Speaker 1: university loyalty, but it also produces a substantial amount of
Speaker 1: inequity and unfairness at the same time. Ultimately, doctor Como
Speaker 1: isn't urging us to stop watching college athletics. He's saying
Speaker 1: we need to think hard and deep about how to
Speaker 1: reimagine and rethink a system of power that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: serve the interests of the human beings who are providing
Speaker 1: us with the entertainment in the first place. Until the
Speaker 1: next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe,
Speaker 1: and be well. And one more note, as I speak
Speaker 1: to you, more and more of our listeners are getting
Speaker 1: the chance finally to be vaccinated. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: a time when all of our listeners will have that
Speaker 1: chance and will be vaccinated if they choose. And when
Speaker 1: that happens, maybe I'll be able to stop signing off
Speaker 1: by telling you to be careful and to be safe.
Speaker 1: Then I can just wish you the chance to go out,
Speaker 1: have some fun and be well. Into the bargain. Deep
Speaker 1: background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Mo laboord our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and our
Speaker 1: shore runner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Speaker 1: Theme music by Luis Guerra at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Coott, Heather Faine, Carl mcgliori, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column
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