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

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